Tag: blogging

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Seven Tips For Successful Blogging

If blogging is a form of self-publishing, then is writing a blog post the same as other writing? Well, yes and no. While there are similarities, there are also some key differences.

If you want to blog, here are seven blogging tips to be a successful blogger:

1. Make Your Title Search Engine Friendly

Forget clever titles. They may work well in a magazine, but they fail to work in the online world. Instead, aim for SEO (search engine optimization) and to get readers’ attention. If search engines don’t like you, no one will find you.

2. Have One Point Per Post

The point of this post is how to blog successfully. The sub-points reinforce that. Anything else is a distraction.

3. Keep it Short

Our online attention span is fleeting, so keep posts succinct. Since search engines need about 300 words to index a page, use that size as a minimum. Lengths of 300 to 500 words is a good goal—unless your readers like long-form content.

4. Use Lists

Numbered lists or bullet points make your post easy to read. (Like this post.)

5. Be Scannable

People tend to scan while reading online. The careful use of bold text aids in scanning. Sometimes italics helps, but avoid underlining because it looks like a link. And skip using all caps because it looks like you’re SCREAMING.

6. Link to Your Blog

When you make relevant comments on other blogs, link back to yours. But never spam them or leave generic feedback; it will end up biting you. Also, link from one post to another, as I did in the opening sentence.

7. Ask For Comments

Blogs are about engagement. Ask a question to start the conversation. Though I vacillate on this, if you want comments on your blog, you need to encourage readers to share their thoughts.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

My Writing Goals for 2013

Last year, I posted my writing goals for 2012. They were:

  • To fully and totally complete my dissertation
  • To unveil my revised website
  • To complete the first draft of one book
  • To start book two
  • To query agents

How did I do?

My dissertation was finished and approved and my website was completely overhauled. I did complete the draft of one book (though not the one I intended) and started book two. Though I have had some informal interaction with agents, I have not queried any. I intentionally put this on hold, per the recommendation to wait until I finished writing the books.

There were also some other key developments that weren’t annual goals, having been started midyear:

So, looking forward, what are my goals for 2013?

  • To self-publish My Faith Manifesto (now titled How Big Is Your Tent?
  • To complete my two works in progress (God, I Don’t Want to Go to Church and 52 Churches)
  • To query agents to represent me in the above two books.
  • To rewrite my dissertation into a more accessible format.

I will post updates as they occur, but check back next year to see how I did on the entire list.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
News

Popular Posts: Top Posts for 2012 on Byline

Here are the most popular posts on Byline for 2012:

  1. Get Published Quick
  2. Be Careful With Slang
  3. Confusing Words
  4. Same Word – Opposite Meaning
  5. Why Do You Write?
  6. The 2012 Breathe Christian Writers Conference
  7. Writing Press Releases
  8. Writing Book Reviews
  9. Beware of Commonly Confused Words
  10. Don’t Just Think About Writing

Thank you for reading these posts!

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Six Reasons Why Your Blog Needs a Reader Profile

Recently a blogging guru encouraged me to write some reader profiles for my blog. Intrigued by the exercise, I gave it some thought. Before long I had penned profiles for five types of readers for my main blog, “Pursuing Biblical God.” I edited them today and have a bit more tweaking to do, but already the benefits of these reader profiles are apparent.

Reader profiles will help to:

Clarify Our Audience: Although I possessed a subconscious understanding of my target audience, it lacked clarity and sometimes shifted from day to day. With established profiles, the image of my audience will remain consistent.

Inform Our Writing: As I compose posts, writing them with one or more of my readers in mind will help ensure I will better connect with my target audience.

Eliminate Off Message Topics: Without a clear vision, it’s all too easy to write an interesting post but for the wrong people. If this happens too often, regular readers will give up.

Avoid Writing to Ourselves: I realize some past posts, although on topic, were more for me than my audience. In writing to both them and me, I serve my audience and engage myself. But if I end up writing only for me, I risk losing my audience.

Escape Digressions: With a firm understanding of who I’m writing for, I remain focused on my core audience and saved from penning pieces for a secondary group. Becoming distracted or diverting my attention is a disservice to my readers.

Guide Guest Bloggers: Though I’ve not yet had a guest blogger, if I do, being able to share a reader profile will sharpen their work, making it a better fit for my readers.

Beyond blogging, many of these same benefits apply to have a reader profile for a book or article.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

By the Numbers

Being a numbers guy, I want to share some stats about this blog:

3 years, 1 month: the amount time I’ve been blogging
457: the number of posts
123,300: the number of words written (enough for a decent sized book)
1,272: average number of posts viewed per week (the most was 2,954)
14,718: the number of views of my top read post

Some things I’ve observed:

  • Posts receive most of their traffic within a week of being posted, but some are still being read a year or two later.
  • Most traffic is not a result of followers, subscribers, or newsfeeds, but of search engines.
  • Of traffic in a given week, most is not for recent posts but older posts.
  • Despite all of the traffic, the Google ad to the right generates only a few pennies of income a month. (Google ads are worthwhile on my Websites, but they’ve been a bust on my blogs.)
  • Soon after this blog was setup, I turned off the “track back” feature. Aside from never fully grasping it’s purpose, I was receiving thousands of spam track backs for every legitimate one.
  • Recently, I also turned off the comment section. The ratio of spam comments to real comments has escalated, now being at over 100 to one.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Five Ideas of What to Write

Hopefully, you’ve given some thought as when is the best time to write, as well as where is the best place to write. Even if these decisions are works in progress, needing to be fine-tuned, you need to move on.

Now we get to the question of what to write. Although, it may seem a nonsensical query; for some, especially those just starting out, it is not. Here are some ideas:

  • If you have a project, you need to be working on it. This is an obvious answer—if you have a project.
  • Work on a potential project, something that could turn into a project. That is, work on an article or a book that you could sell in the future. Write a query letter or proposal for this project.

However, if you’re just starting out, you likely need to develop and hone your writing skills before seriously embarking on a project. So, here are some more ideas:

  • Blogging is a great way to release creative ideas and develop a writing style. (I don’t put Facebook in this category, though I do know some who compose intriguing and well-written posts. I do not recommend journaling or keeping a diary as worthy writing exercises either; they are too informal, introspective, and narcissist—however, they may provide useful fodder for a future memoir.)
  • Write book or movie reviews. Work on developing a reviewer style and on being concise, fair, and helpful. Avoid the mistake of many professional reviewers—being unnecessarily critical or writing a review merely to call attention to your skill as a writer.
  • Writing exercises are other worthy considerations. “Exercising” will get you in the habit of writing and provide opportunities to develop your skills. Here are some ideas for writing exercises.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Going Forward

Regular readers of this blog (thank you, one and all) have noticed a decided decrease in posting frequency over the past six months. While Musings will remain alive and active, infrequency will become the new norm.

When I started Musings over three years ago, it was to provide a creative outlet, connect with others via the written word, and learn about the art of blogging. By design, Musings had no theme, other than to share the musing of my mind at that moment. While it was not a stream-of-conscience spew (that would be narcissistic and boring), it did bounce all over the place. No one would connect with all my topics, such as family, computers, nature, movies, politics, business, sports, weather, and even blogging about blogging.

Realizing the need to blog around a theme and for me to focus on areas of interest, I have begun to specialize. The result is that, going forward, I will primarily be blogging at:

I encourage you to pick the ones that interest you and follow me there, as well as occasional future posts here.

Thank you!

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Categories
Writing and Publishing

Is Blog Readership a Microcosm of Overall Activity?

I enjoy math and like working with numbers.  It is therefore not surprising that I track weekly blog readership.

The week prior to the US Presidential election, I noticed that the reading of my blog dropped 25%.  At first I assumed this was because too many of my musings were about the election; perhaps people were sick of politics and were skipping my blog.  Then I noticed that the drop-off occurred across the board in all of my seven blogs, even though political content only appeared in one of them.

The week of the election, there was a slight increase in viewers, but still well below pre-election levels.

Last week, readership completely rebounded for all seven blogs, even setting a new record for the week.

I don’t know if blog reading is a microcosm of societal activity in general, but it would seem that the election fervor and furor was such that it kept 25% of the people from doing what they normally do.

If that is true, then things must the getting back to normal!

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.