Blogging 201: Best Practices and Media presentation

This is the presentation on “Blogging 201″, specifically focusing on SEO, content, and visual media. I presented at the Center for Non Profit Success. Let’s keep the discussion going on the comments.

Blogging Best Practices

These were compiled with my co-presenters:

• Sean Luechtefeld, [email protected]
• Brad Weikel, [email protected]
• Julia Rocchi, [email protected]

Being a blogger

1. Focus: Learn to write for the web, and stay focused on your message and keywords.
2. Style: Remember that blogs are a genre. Blog posts should be concise and easy-to-create — save deep analysis for research publications.
3. Visuals: Spend time creating strong visuals. A stock photo does not count.
4. Consistency: Be as consistent as possible in your voice, formats, and/or topics. This doesn’t mean saying or doing the same thing again and again; rather, it’s about setting a tone and direction that your readers can come to rely on.
5. Progress: Don’t let a quest for perfection slow down any particular post, but DO strive to learn from every post and improve the next one.

Blog Management

1. Planning: Good planning is the antidote to the common complaint “I don’t have any time.” Editorial calendars, clear writing roles, and deadlines help you produce good content more quickly.
2. Partnerships: When choosing external blogging partners, consider: a) how closely they align to your mission and goals; b) their reliability in posting and/or contributing; and c) what value they add to your content and outreach through participating.
3. Collaboration: Unless “blog editor” is a job title at your organization, your blog won’t be done well if it’s done by one person who is responsible for a slew of other projects as well. Engage people from across the organization to reduce your workload and provide a variety of perspectives for your readers.
4. SEO: Monitor Google Webmaster Tools.
5. Bottlenecks: To increase your posting frequency, figure out where in the workflow your posts are getting stuck (writing, editing, approval, posting, etc) and find a way to delegate, automate, accelerate, or increase capacity at that specific stage.