The Wax Blog

With these columns, we focus a lot on tips that help you get your blog started – things that will help you generate that readership, get them to engage and so on. It isn’t often that I talk about what happens AFTER you’ve got a captive audience available and how it should change your content.  Like anything good you do in life, your blog content needs to evolve. Once you’ve got that interest of readers, you need to keep it, and evolving your content is the only way that will happen.

To help you better understand what I am going to explain (in my next post) with regards to content for highly established blogs, let’s look at what I typically suggest you do with a blog that is just getting started. (more…)

Beth took a day off from her column (after writing solidly for a couple years now) so I thought I’d give it a try. No worries, she’ll be back next week with all her smarty pants blogging advice!

Over the past few years I’ve read quite a few e-books and even a few paperbacks on blogging, trying to separate the golden advice from the junk. I thought I would list just a few resources that I found to be very helpful in my quest to be a better blogger.  It seems as though e-books on blogging were all the rage in 2007 and 2008 – current ones are not as easy to find. Things change fast in the blogosphere so make sure you’re reading something that’s up to date.

Here are a few that have helped me a great deal:

31 Days to Build a Better Blog – This is Problogger’s main workbook and it’s an excellent resource. I did the tasks over the course of a little more than a month and saw a really strong increase in my traffic. I just noticed that he also has a new e-book, the Copywriting Scorecard. I haven’t read it but I would venture to guess it’s just as good.

This next one has a bit higher cheesy factor, but buried in all the hype in Six Figure Blogger is some really good advice for getting your blog off the ground. If you’re contemplating the basics (what to write about, platform, etc) this is a good one for you.

Keep an eye on Remarkablogger.com for his next edition of How to Start A Business Blog. He’s updating it (I think it’s going to be a ‘real’ book) and it should be really good.

If you’re into Kindle books, a good one for you might be Blogging for Pleasure and Money – Discover Easy Ways to a Successful Blog and Attracting Traffic Again, it’s pretty basic but it provides a nice roadmap and doesn’t overwhelm.

I wasn’t a huge fan of The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging but I know a lot of people who loved it. For $6 or so, you might find a few things in there and the history of blogging is pretty interesting in the first chapter.

Once you’re past a lot of the beginning basics, it’s hard to find an advanced ‘how to blog’ book – maybe you’ve heard of one that you might recommend? In the meantime, let’s keep reading Beth’s posts and maybe one day we’ll turn THOSE into an e-book.

The topic of plagiarism has crossed my path on a few different occasions recently, and it’s come to my attention that people just seem to think there are different rules when it comes to the Internet.

While we all learned how to appropriately source references in public school (in the days before the internet), some have thrown those guidelines out the window. That may be because there’s LOTS of plagiarism on the internet already that makes it appear that content theft is normal; it’s not at all uncommon to see the same content posted in 8 different places without a link or credit to the original writer.

I know we covered protecting yourself from how to Stick to the Facts to Avoid Content Plagiarism, but with so much discussion and confusion on the subject, let’s go back to the basics. You want to protect yourself from a lawsuit, and you don’t want to hurt your SEO rankings with too much duplication after all.

Guidelines to Avoid Online Plagiarism (more…)

Thanks to Wes Towers for this easy yet powerful list for business owners. Here’s how you turn blogging into marketing.

Marketers understand blogging is one of the best ways to reach out to their target audience. It has become an efficient way to share updates, news and other information to your customers and prospects. It is also a great way to share thoughts on issues as well. Although it will never replace the power of the telephone for one-on-one communication, blogging wins hands down for communicating to the masses in a cost effective manner.

A blog site sitting along side your main website lets you as a business owner boost your online presence. It’s an opportunity to share your company’s latest news, events and what’s happening in the industry. The problem is, many set out and never seem to get the readership required for it to really be of benefit to the business.

Now, let’s just say that you already have set up your blog and have even started posting content. What are you doing to let your target audience know about it? What have you done to increase your blog readership? Nothing? Sadly, that’s the answer most people give.

Here are a few pointers to help you turn your blog into a powerful marketing strategy: (more…)

By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

If you look at many of the top business blogs, you’ll find that use of lists within blog posts is a very common format. I’m a big advocate of this format as well, and there are a number of reasons why it works.

1. People are inherently lazy – people don’t read in full until something really catches their eye; they skim. If you have interesting information lumped into long paragraphs, trying to skim it is just too much work. Lay it out in a way that the eye is drawn to each point and you’ll capture interest and convince them to actually read.
2. You look like an expert – whether or not it’s actually the case, a list-style article naturally reads like a kind of ‘How To Guide’. If you’re dishing out advice, you’ve obviously got something intelligent to say.
3. Social media likes them – drawing off of #2, blog posts that give readers a take away are the kind of things that people like to share on social media. This, my friends, is always good!

You may not think that a simple thing like the format of your blog posts can add much value to how well they perform. But a simple change that really doesn’t alter the way you write, can make all the difference!

By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

Recently I’ve noticed that the line is becoming blurred between blog and SEO content. Theoretically, anything you post online must by SEO-friendly, but there are still noticeable differences – or so it used to be. If you’ve been following, you know by now I don’t like to fit blog writing into a limited definition as many do. But I also don’t think that absolutely anything goes because you don’t want your blog to become overly technical.

Before I get into where that line should be drawn, let’s consider what role an SEO article (you know the type that’s often produced by the major SEO firms) plays versus what a blog should accomplish: (more…)