Suburban Oblivion

Tips for Bloggers, New and Old

// August 11th, 2007 // Online //

• Unless you are writing your blog strictly as a journal, stay away from the truly mundane. If it is a cute story about something your child did, some dumbass move your husband pulled, a funny account of a conversation with friends, it’ s a good read. If it’s a description consisting of nothing more than how you had chicken salad for lunch, don’t bother. As a rule of thumb, if you would call and tell a friend about it, it’s worth blogging about.
• Use spellcheck. Use spellcheck. Did I mention use spellcheck?
• Write like you speak. If you don’t normally use 5 dollar words in your speaking voice, don’t try to use them in your writing, as you won’t sound authentic. Don’t be afraid of the grammar police, sometimes a sentence needs to start with an ‘and’ or ‘but’ to make an impact.
• If you use blogger, do not allow it to automatically log you in when you comment on someone’s blog. Why????? you ask? Because when a person clicks on that link, it goes to your profile, not your blog. Filling in the information manually will create a direct link to your blog, giving you more of an opportunity for traffic and more links with Technorati.
• Get your Alexa redirect link, and use it. For some reason someone out there decided that Alexa ranking is important. Your Alexa ranking will often be used by companies to decide how important you are in spending their advertising dollars with you.(Think paid review sites.) A simple and easy way to start boosting your Alexa ranking is to start using your redirect link. It will look just like this- http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.yoursitehere.com Fill in your site address and use that link instead of your normal URL in things like comments, message board preferences, blogrolls, etc. You’ll notice a boost in your ranking within a week or so, depending on your normal traffic.

• Submit your sites to Reddit and Stumbleupon religiously. Stumbleupon in particular can be a HUGE source of traffic, depending on the catagory of the post and time of day submitted.

These are just a few things I’ve picked up lately, there may be a part 2 down the road! Feel free to add your own helpful tips!

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