Christian Little

Staying on Topic is extremely important. If your blog is about cars, then why are you creating posts about the stock market and forex? Keep your blog focused on a specific topic and make sure you stick to it, otherwise your readers will get confused and stop reading.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do all my blog posts focus on a specific topic or niche?
• Are comments from my readers on the same topic?

If you don’t check your spelling, you are shooting yourself in the foot. I’m not even going to address grammar issues here. Put it this way, if you are reading a posting on another website – doesn’t it irritate the heck out of you when you come across a spelling mistake? It sure bugs me, and it annoys just about every reader on the planet. There are hundreds of tools out there, you have no reason to skip checking for spelling errors in your posting. Heck, Mozilla Firefox has a built-in spell checker, which makes it even more ideal for doing your blog posting in.

Whenever possible, use pictures in your blog posts to emphasize your points. Pictures keep your readers’ attention, and it’s nice to see pictures instead of just a plain wall of text. It’s refreshing and gives them something else to look at, which will keep their attention for much longer. Generally I try to get at least 1 image in every blog post I make, but sometimes I throw in extras (like you can see in this posting).

One caveat to using pictures is don’t overdo it. If you flood a blog post with pictures, you’ll have the reverse effect and scare readers away. The only real exception tends to be with entertainment websites, as people expect more and more pictures.

The last major point I want to stress here is to always give credit when it’s due. If you are quoting somebody else, link to their website where they are saying it. Heck, take it a step further and list off a few related blog posts at the bottom of your posts – that’s what I do. Whenever I’m getting ready to make a post I check around to see who is talking about the same subject and I throw a link to show I’m not the only person trying to make the points discussed here.

Now there are dozens of other things I could go into about proper blogging, but I’m only going to summarize the remaining points:

• Endurance > Sprinting – blogging isn’t a race. Keep a steady pace, rather than trying to rush through it. If you sprint, you’ll find yourself exhausted and dreading your next blog posting, whereas if you take your time like me you’ll find it enjoyable and refreshing to update your blog.
• Blog What You Know – I can’t say this enough, don’t blog about something that you are at least familiar with. Every day hundreds of ‘make money online’ blogs popup over the internet thanks to people trying to imitate Shoemoney and John Chow, but the people running these sites have no clue about what they are blogging about. Heck, it’s common to see newbies going to digitalpoint forums and asking for advice on what to post on their new blog…I try really hard not to slap them.
• Procrastination = Self Destruction – Don’t sit there saying you’re going to do something, get off your butt and do it. Enough said.

I have lots of other little tidbits, which are sort of self-explanatory, so here you go:

• Comment on related blogs
• Update regularly
• Quality > quantity
• Don’t become a fad-driven blogger
• Don’t be an ass, do your research
• Reply to comments made on your blog
• Don’t post pictures of what you eat unless you are a food critic
• Controversy has it’s uses

That’s all for today folks, feel free to add your own suggestions.

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