May 18, 2012

You are here: Home / Archives for Bev Owens

Should I Answer The Comments?

May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It might take a little while before you start to get comments on your beginners blog. Are you wondering, “Should I answer the comments?” The short answer is yes but it can get a little more involved sometimes because it depends on the comment you have received.

Obviously, you want to build a rapport with your readers. Common courtesy dictates an acknowledgement that someone took the time to comment on your blog. Not all of your comments are going to be woven from the same cloth, though. Sometimes the person leaving the comment will be genuine and leaving a positive comment. While others are just trying to gain some recognition for their own purposes. It won’t take long for you to tell the difference.

To be honest I have a tendency to delete more comments than I let pass through because they do seem to be of the “self serving” nature. If the comment is “Nice post” or “great blog”, I usually click the delete button and move on. If they leave a comment that has some relevance to my post, I will let that go through. Sometimes I will respond with a polite thank you for visiting and sometimes it doesn’t seem that necessary. In the beginning stages of your blog, you might want to respond with that “thank you for visiting” comment.

I love it when someone stops by one of my blogs and asks a question because that creates a situation where a dialogue might continue and spark some added interest to the post or the blog itself. Those are meaningful and relevant to your blog and show other readers that you do like to interact with them. It also shows you that the person who left the comment is truly interested in your topic and will probably be a return visitor to your blog.

Comments are a good way to build those all important relationships with people on the internet. How do you know if you have a comment to answer or approve? The beauty of a blog is that you get an e-mail letting you know that there is a comment waiting for approval. Oh, when setting up your blog be sure to mark that comments have to be approved first…it keeps those spammers at bay.

Filed Under: Beginners Blog Tagged With: , , ,

Image Credit

May 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

Today in the series on a beginners blog, I want to revisit a topic that we lightly touched on earlier in the series. Image credit has always been the correct thing to do but it has not always been done properly. There has been a huge push, of late, with different platforms insisting that all images be credited properly. Some platforms are even taking down articles when it is found that the images used have no link to the source. So, this is a topic that needs to be stressed to the beginning blogger.

My husband had asked where he could find images to put in his blog. I gave him some ideas of where to look for those images and mentioned that he should always make sure that he did the proper image credit for them. In the post What about images? I only took a few lines to mention copyright infringement and explained about places to find legal images to use.

Where that post fell short was a good explanation on what to do to give the image credit to the person who allowed you to use their image. The easiest way is to use a hyperlink to the page where you found the legal image and also a hyperlink to any license that may be attached to the image. Since my friend, AJ, has so eloquently explained the exact process for the different ways to give an image credit on your article or blog post, I will direct you to her article: How To Credit an Image. Be sure to read it thoroughly and even bookmark it so that as you start your beginners blog you can reference her excellent directions on how to give each image credit that you use. It is an important practice and is becoming more important with old rules now being more stringently enforced.

Filed Under: Beginners Blog

Getting New Readers To Your Blog

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Continuing in the series on a Beginners Blog, I wanted to talk to you today about one way of getting new readers to your blog. It is difficult when you first start out to get a following. Even when you have studiously done your keyword research and written some down right awesome content. It takes a little while for the Search Engines to find you and place you in the search results for your topic.

You have contacted every friend and family member you can think of to read your beginners blog but the traffic is still just not where you want it to be. What can you do? We talked earlier in the series about a few things you can do to promote your blog and you should continue to do those activities on a regular basis.

A very good way to get new readers is to find someone who is also considered an authority on your topic and ask them to do a “guest post”. “What!”, you are saying. “You want me to go to a competitor on my topic and let them write on my blog! Have you lost your mind, girl?” Nope (well maybe but not about this suggestion). It is done quite often, actually and it won’t have to be an actual competitor. Find someone who fits into your category in a certain way but approaches the topic in a different manner.

Let’s pretend that the topic of your beginner blog is collecting “mantiques” (that is an affectionate term for manly kinds of antiques like Gas Pumps, Tractors and such). Maybe you wouldn’t want another guy that also collects your stuff to come write on your blog. How about someone who has written a book about collecting Gas Pumps or whatever the collectible is? They would be thrilled to promote their book and you could let them link out to it and here is the bonus…wait for it. That author is going to let all of their friends and readers know that they did a guest post on your blog. Those friends and readers will most likely visit your blog to read what the Guest Poster had to say. They might take a look around your content, like what they see, and become a regular reader of your work, too.

Maybe you have found an artist that draws, paints, or sculpts things that pertain to your topic. Now, there would be a nice fit for a guest poster, don’t you think? Use your imagination and find people who share an interest in your topic and approach it in a slightly different manner. Their followers are exactly the targeted traffic that you are looking for. Keep in mind that their post will need to have relevance to your content and be something that your readers will find enjoyable.

Having a Guest come post on your blog is a very good way of getting new readers to your blog and keeping your existing readers interested enough to keep coming back.

Filed Under: Beginners Blog Tagged With: , , ,

How I Use Google+

April 25, 2012 By 1 Comment

You can ask a hundred people how best to utilize a social network and you will probably get 100 different answers. I wanted to share with you how I use Google+ as a social networking venue and hopefully help you to find your own method that will work best for your online writing promotions.

It would seem that our social networking is and will become even more important in our efforts to help drive traffic to our content. This isn’t a new concept, at all, but from all appearances is going to carry more weight than it did before.

So, how do I use Google+ that is different than say Facebook or Twitter? First, let me say that over a year ago when Google+ was in beta testing and the only way you could participate was to be invited…I jumped on the bandwagon and encouraged my friends to do the same. I wish that I could remember which A List Blogger I read at the time that suggested that this was going to be more than the next shiny thing tempting us to waste our time. But, alas, I can not remember who that blogger was! I’m really glad that I listened to him or her, though.

Obviously, as with any new social networking site, I looked for people that I knew to either invite in or add to one of my circles. That is human nature to find people we know. It occurred to me early on in the process that I wanted Google+ to be more than just “one more place” to share the same stuff with the same people that I share with on Twitter and Facebook. So, I began to look for other ways to network. After all, isn’t that what we need to do? Look for new people to network with? Possibly find new folks that would enjoy reading our content? Hmmm, yes that is exactly how social networking is supposed to work.

Even, though I have a circle that includes people that write on some of the same platforms that I do; I also have circles that are totally different. For instance, I have a circle that I have that allows me to share information and read their contributions that involve part of my heritage Native Americans. When I add a new blog post or find something that I think will interest that circle of people, I share it with just that circle. I have made some new friends and gotten some new followers that way.

I also have a circle that I call my Antique circle. I have added people in that one that share my love and interest in antique and collectible items. If I write something that has to do with that topic, I share it with that circle. See how this is working? I’m forming relationships with people who like or who are interested in a specific topic.

Over the course of the last year, I have used this system to now have just short of 1100 people who have included me in their circles. How did I find these people, many of which were new to me? Google+ makes it very easy. First I do a search within Google+ on a specific topic that I have an interest in and begin to look over what has been posted. I read through the entries and find people who have posted intriguing links and put them in a circle that pertains to that topic. I make sure that I like their post and usually leave a comment. Many have followed me back and a relationship begins to form.

Do I follow each person who puts me in their circles? No, I do not. I always check their profile and look over the things that they have shared. Sometimes there will be postings that I find upsetting or in bad taste and do not want to be connected with those posts.

I’m not saying that how I use Google+ is the only way to use it, but this system has worked for me nicely in the last year. I have made new contacts, gotten some new traffic, and found some fascinating people to network with. How about you? How are you using Google+? If you aren’t using it, I would recommend trying it. It is really much easier to find people who like the same topics that you do, than other social networking sites that I use.

Filed Under: Social Networking How To Tagged With: , , , ,

Assessing My Goals For 2012

April 18, 2012 By 1 Comment

Last week I took some time to assess my progress in the goals that I set for myself and writing for 2012. Some might think that it is a little early to be doing that, but I like to really study my progress each quarter. I keep an eye on things on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis but as a quarter ends, I like to take some time to really look at where I am at. That way if there are some tweaks that need to be done I won’t be caught unawares at year’s end.

I take my goal setting quite seriously. After all it is a map, of sorts, to my career of writing online. This is not a hobby for me but a way to add income for myself and my husband. Since I retired from my full time job at the end of 2011, writing is now my full time job. I am a planner and always have been so the setting of goals for my writing is a natural way for me to move forward. I, personally, would not get very far if I didn’t have a plan to follow.

I figured out a few years back that the more articles that I have online the more potential for income there is. So, for the year of 2012 I wanted to increase my income by making sure that I added to each platform that I write on. I wanted to keep these goals reasonable and attainable. It doesn’t do any good to set the bar so high that you get frustrated in lack of progress and just give up. So, I tried to be realistic when I sat down to make the goals for 2012.

My plan has been to write something for each day of the week. I want to have 350 lenses at Squidoo by year’s end, which means that I need to write 2 new lenses each week. As I looked at my progress last week, I am actually ahead of my goals for the year for that platform. What an encouraging piece of data that turned out to be for me!

I also planned to write one new article on Wizzley each week to get my presence better defined on that platform and to start to generate better income there. My research last week showed me that I haven’t fared as well with that goal. So now, I know that some better planning for writing on Wizzley is needed to catch up.

My plan for my blogs was to write one post each week. I have stuck to the plan better with my Native American blog but have fallen short on the Gifts From Grandma blog. I am not going to panic at this stage because I can post a few posts more for a while so that there is plenty of posts by the time the shopping season hits in September. That is more important for the Grandma blog than the Native blog because it is directed more to a buying public.

There is an addition to the writing plan since I made my goals at the end of the year because I have started writing on an additional platform. My tweaked plan will be to average one article there a week until the end of the year.

By taking some time to assess my progress, I can see that I could change my plan a little and still reach the goals that I have set for myself. Have you assessed your progress for this year’s goals, yet? It is a good time to do it so that if you need to make a few changes, you still have plenty of time to do just that.

Filed Under: Writing for Web Tagged With: , , ,

Gaming The System Is A Bad Idea

April 11, 2012 By 2 Comments

I know it is very tempting to take shortcuts but when writing for the web “gaming the system” is a bad idea. Trying to find ways for your content to place higher in the SERPS in a short period of time can come back to bite you at some point. Search Engines like Google will eventually see to it that your shortcut technique won’t be beneficial to you any longer.

I am reminded of a saying from my childhood and probably yours too… “Cheaters are never beaters.” As simplistic as that childhood saying is, it rings true in so many facets of our lives, including when we produce content for the internet. We often see people who we believe to be authorities on how to be successful in our writing endeavors that will suggest that we use techniques that will get quick results for getting traffic to our content or place us higher on the Search Engine pages. Many of those suggestions are actually gaming the system that is in place and are not something that we should take part in.

The most recent Panda update is bringing one of those techniques to its knees as we speak. In the past Google looked at your webpage and counted the backlinks that pointed to it as a good indicator of the quality of your content. It was sort of like a “vote” for your pages and it computed those links as a part of your page ranking. Google suggested that the backlinks should come in a natural progression. As with so many things, people started to come up with ways for you to get hundreds of links to your site almost overnight. Over the years we saw services offered to create these backlinks for us. If you thought there was no harm in doing that and looked at it as just a way to save yourself some time, you just might want to start rethinking your backlinks strategy. It really was and is a form of cheating or gaming the system and the false success that you might have had for a while will be almost virtually wiped away with the latest Panda algorithm.

I have been writing online, in one form or another, for about 15 years now. I have seen so many services come along that offer to “help” a writer or webmaster to get better results in a short period of time. They offer to get us lots of links, they can spin our content into several articles, or they can get us hundreds of followers on a social media site. Folks, that is cheating no matter how you might want to look at it. In the long run it doesn’t save you any time and probably will cost you a considerable amount of money because at the end of the day when those services are shut down from the Search Engines de-indexing all of it, you will have to go back to square one and start all over again.

The best way to go about being successful in your writing is to remember that “Content is King” and to write your own original content to present to your readers. Don’t copy someone else’s work and present it as your own, don’t pay someone to create backlinks, and don’t use someone else’s images without their permission. Be original in everything you do. As our parents and teachers used to tell us, “When you cheat, you are only cheating yourself.” There really are no shortcuts to success whether it involves online writing or in the business world. It takes hard work, dedication, and originality. But, Bev, things go viral and that is almost always an overnight sort of event! Yes, but think about it. The creator of that video, blog post, or image did what? They were unique in what they provided, it might be quirky, it might be silly, but in every case it was original and gained the popularity because people truly liked it and suggested that their friends and family take a look at it too. That is the way it is supposed to work, if it is truly good and worthy, the public will find it, pass it on to people, and link to it. There is that “natural” progression that Google has suggested all along. Gaming the system is a bad idea and something that you should be very careful to avoid.

Filed Under: Writing for Web Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Review Of The Writing Site Webnuggetz

April 4, 2012 By 1 Comment

This week I would like to do a review of a relatively new website for authors to write articles on, Webnuggetz. I say relatively new because the site is less than a year old as I write this post. To be as young as it is, the site is already placing nicely in ranking in Google with a PR of 2.

The owner, ThomasC, and his team are working long hours to make sure that the site has quality authors writing original content for the site. As a new writer on Webnuggetz, I have been impressed with the personal communication from Thomas in particular. He took the time to welcome me but it didn’t stop there. He actually read my articles and pointed out that I had some broken links. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I believe that it is. First of all, he cares enough about his site to read each article to make sure that it hasn’t come from a spammer. Secondly, he sincerely wants his authors to have success with their articles and that is why he took the time to let me know that my links weren’t going anywhere. My mistake would not have taken any monies out of his pockets because of the way the site is set up for payment. He mentioned it anyway. That is over and above what we usually see from the owner of a site.

So, let’s talk about the revenue at Webnuggetz. Thomas does not take any cut out of the money you earn on your articles. Yes, you read that correctly. The money you make is all yours. He does place a couple of his own ads on each page but they are unobtrusive and do not interfere with your content. You can, and are encouraged, to us Adsense on each of your articles. You can also link to any affiliate companies that you work with, too. As an example of what you can make your page look like on Webnuggetz, take a look at one of my articles about Scarlet Fiesta Dinnerware.

I believe that Webnuggetz is a real up and comer and will continue to gain in popularity as time goes on. I also believe that none of us should put all of our eggs in one basket and should spread our writing online over a few good sites. One of the reasons that I believe Webnuggetz will be a good fit for many writers is that ThomasC is an experienced author on a few other popular sites and understands the needs of the authors along with the necessary maintenance of a multi-user site. If you are looking for a good, quality site to write on, give ThomasC and his site Webnuggetz a try. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Filed Under: Writing for Web Tagged With: , , ,

More Tips For Getting Traffic To Your New Blog

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We have been discussing, in the last few weeks, tips for getting traffic to a beginner’s blog. We have discussed starting on a multi-user site like Writing Online. We have discussed how a passion for the topic and adding new content on a regular basis helps by boosting you up in the SERPS (search engine result pages) so that people can find you. So, what else did I do in the beginning to get new traffic to my blog?

I told my friends and family about my blog and how proud I was (and still am) of it. If we were talking in person, I wrote down the url for the blog so that they could check it out. I also added the url to my e-mail signature. No matter who I was sending an e-mail to or what the topic might be of my email, the recipient was given a link to my blog. It was subtle just under my name but I do believe it helped me get new traffic in the beginning.

So, basically what I am suggesting in this week’s tip is to “advertise” your blog. Let the people in your life know about your new endeavor. It doesn’t cost anything to talk about it nor does it cost you anything to place a link into your email letters. Tell people you come in contact with on a daily basis about your new blog, they just might be interested and check it out. You can make simple little business cards with the url on them with your computer. They don’t have to be anything fancy to begin with. If you are following my advice about being on a multi-user site, your url is going to be a long one. I suggest that you make just a few to pass out to people when they show interest. It is easier than them trying to remember a long url. You can make new ones when you run out.

A simple little tip that just might bring you traffic that you might not have gotten if you didn’t spread the word to the very people who are rooting for you to succeed.

Check in with me next week for another tip for getting traffic to your beginner blog…

Filed Under: Beginners Blog Tagged With: , , ,

Blog Traffic For The Beginners Blog

March 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Last week I talked to you about starting a beginners blog on a multi-user platform to help generate blog traffic for your beginners blog. It really helped me in the beginning and I think it would benefit you with your new blog, too. So, what else did I do to get some traffic when my blog was brand new just out of the box?

AJ was kind enough to respond to my post last week and she brought up a good point. I picked a topic for that blog that was something that I was and still am very passionate about. What does that have to do with getting blog traffic? Actually, quite a lot. Because I am passionate about my topic I am able to continue to add content on a regular basis and that is very important in the beginning. Is it the passion or the adding content that is important? Both. The passion drives me to constantly be looking for new things to add to my blog. Adding content on a regular basis gives your new found audience something new to read and keeps them coming back to see what you have written about.

Without the passion for the topic it is difficult to keep your enthusiasm up. Trust me, if you loose your zeal for the topic your readers won’t take long to follow in your footsteps. Your personal connection to the topic will shine through in your writing of your posts and make people want to return to read more.

Adding new content on a regular basis also helps gain blog traffic. The search engines like Google love a blog that is updated often with new original content. It helps get you placed higher in the SERPS (search engine  result pages) when people are searching for keywords that are included in your post. How often should you add new content? There is no magic number, really. What I did was post something new every day for the first couple of months. I couldn’t keep that up for an extended period of time, but in the beginning,I feel it really helped get blog traffic by adding so much new content. I slowed down to three posts per week for the next few months and then finally settled in to a pattern of posting one post a week or four times per month. Back to that passion part…I haven’t run out of things to write about yet.

I just looked at my stats on my Native American Totems blog, as I was creating this week’s post. February of 2012 was my most successful month to date for blog traffic with over 7200 visits for the month. Can you see me doing the happy dance?

Join me next week as we continue to explore getting blog traffic for your beginners blog.

Filed Under: Beginners Blog Tagged With: , , , ,

Beginners Blog Looking For Traffic

February 29, 2012 By 1 Comment

We have spent the last few months answering questions about a Beginners Blog that my husband asked me as he contemplates beginning his own blog and now it is time to talk about ways to get traffic to that new blog.

Years ago I tried doing a blog or two that were standing all alone out in the blogosphere and I have to tell you they did not fair well. My topic was cool and it was a popular one but there was just so much competition out there that it was a rare thing if someone found me and my little blog. I had no clue how to go about getting that much needed traffic and hopefully readers that were interested in what I was writing about.

In 2009 I was working with a small group of people and the discussion was to start a blog using the tools that we had learned about keyword research, article writing, and general promotional techniques. A few of us, including myself and AJ, took the discussion seriously and started a brand new blog on a multi-user site.  I started what has become my first successful blog…Native American Totems. We are going to talk about the things that I did back then to get that blog generating traffic and how I have grown it since then.  The lowly little blog has grown to a readership of an average of 5,000+ readers each month and I make some nice money with it each month.

What was the first “right” thing I did? I put that blog on a multi-user site in the beginning. When you start your blog on a site like we have here at Writing Online you have the added advantage of a built in audience. The other members can see on the home page that you have written a new post and generally they are supportive enough to go read it and sometimes comment on it. Perhaps they like it so much that they share it with their friends on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.  Being on a multi-user site helps you with traffic in your early stages of blogging.

Join me next week as we continue our discussion on getting traffic for a Beginners Blog…

Filed Under: Beginners Blog, Writing for Web Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts