After her article was posted, she discussed with me some of the differences in the process of writing for blogs compared with writing articles for print. Whatever the differences may be, it’s clear that good writing transcends all supposed rules – bringing both the writer and the topic vividly to life in the reader’s mind. Here’s an example of Mireille’s approach in this excerpt describing only one of the wines featured in her Taste BC article:

Dunham and Froese Pinot Blanc. A full body is what struck me most about this wine, then it dawned on me: it tastes like Alsace! So rarely do we see good Alsatian Pinot Blanc in this neck of the woods that I nearly forgot what it tasted like–and here I was tasting a fine example, only it was from B.C! Excellent weight supported flavors of white peach and chalky flint with a charming white peppery spice at the finish. A mere $16cdn is what they were asking for this gem of a wine.

You can find out more on Mireille’s work as a wine industry consultant at her Wine Umbrella website.

We know that historians look back at the diaries of people long past, and find little interest in notations like: “the weather looks good today, and the fine wind means we will have a good day tomorrow.” Over time this kind of note loses even slight value. However, if on that day the diarist mentioned a world event, or a birth in the family, or something that would have a wider interest base, then the diary ultimately has more than personal value.

You know your blog is more than a diary, and yet the daily or events that it chronicles could end up being a soup of personal details of little or no interest outside of your closest friends. We help bloggers get the most out of their blog posts, so they can reach a wider audience and also to begin to expand the potential of what these posts can do. After a year of accumulated content, there is often enough material to create a print or e-book publication. In addition, your post could have information of interest to others 6 months or more along the line. Remember, your archived posts are a wealth of accumulated valuable content, which audiences can access again and again over time.

The beauty of blogging, of course, is that it is a bit more casual, that it invites clients and potential business partners to get to know you a bit better.

How, then, can you let your hair down a bit and at the same time not violate your privacy?

One way is what I call a Blogging Privacy Strategy.

It is quite simple. Sit down and make a list of the non-business activities and topics that you often discuss with your friends and family. Can’t think of any? Just remember the last Thanksgiving Dinner with aunt Maude or when you went to a brunch and movie with the Jeffersons. What did you talk about?

Maybe the list looks like this:

• Hockey
• Stephen Harper
• Aunt Maude’s arthritis
• Your son Matt’s homework
• News and events in Aunt Maude’s hometown, Winnipeg

Now the question is – what aspects of these topics would you feel totally comfortable talking about? Which ones would be 100% off limits?

Let’s take Stephen Harper, our sometimes not-so-beloved prime minister. If you are now a staunch supporter of the Conservative party, maybe you feel quite private about that summer a few decades ago when you thought it would be cool to be a wild-eyed radical and had a shouting match with young Steve. And perhaps on the other hand, Stephen Harper’s economic strategies are something you’ll happily discuss with anyone who’ll stand still long enough.

Now you take another piece of paper and divide it into two columns: Absolutely yes, and Absolutely no.

Your wild-eyed past goes into the “Absolutely no” column and “Harper’s economics” goes into the “Absolutely yes” column.

And so you go down the list. Chances are you’ll have more than one “Absolutely yes” or “Absolutely no” per topic. Chances are also that as you do this, you’ll come up with more topics.

Within less than an hour, there you have it: Your Blogging Privacy Strategy.

Bonus? You’ll also have a nice big list of topics to write about.

(Photo courtesy of leep)

Or in other words, are you looking for popularity and wide-reach, or in-depth one-on-one with your specific target group?

Both these approaches are valid in the blogosphere. Don’t assume that to be successful your blog has to reach a wide mass market. Isn’t blogging all about being outside of the mainstream media? Well, yes and no. More and more blogging is coming to the foreground as a viable medium in its own right, and, as dad always said, “With those rights come responsibilities.” Your responsibility is to your own audience, whether it is 24 close readers, or 2,000 mildly interested people, or 100,000 bots.

Have you seen that kind of devil-may-care stance that many bloggers affect or express becoming a little more mannered, as the audience widens? It becomes, in fact, the blog-style of choice. There is a blogger voice, a social attitude that many would-be bloggers might feel they have to emulate. Don’t. It isn’t necessary. If all the popular kids in high school do this or that, it doesn’t invalidate your particular voice or approach in any way. Once we get out of high school we realize this. There is no need to perpetuate the tyranny of social hierarchy and its many discontents through the blog world too.

Your blog is your own. Do what you like with it. If you are reaching out to a few select readers, in depth, speak directly to them. But if you are reaching out to the “masses” then by all means uses the blogger-voice, the wise-cracking bon mot, the shock factor, the now so-last-night Paris Hilton name-dropping, whatever it takes, right?

If you aren’t up for all that, just remember that reaching your client group through your blog can help them keep in touch with what you are up to, and it may not be really important for you to water down that message by adding references or keyword groupings that will up your google juice.

Now there some truly wonderful popular blogs out there too, and there are really good solid ways of building popularity and widening presence.

How do you want to interact – person to persons, or broadcaster to public? It’s all within your reach. Understanding media is all about understanding audience. If we want humans reading our blogs, we have to demonstrate some humanity to speak to humans. Then we can layer on the purpose of your blog, the intended people you wish to reach, the message you wish to give and the communication and community you want to build .

1. Job – When creating and maintaining a company blog, your are paid your regular pay to perform this task. However, I have seen many company blogs abandoned shortly after starting and this is for one of two reasons. First, the owner or someone high in the organization is the blogger. Second, the blog isn’t a company priority.
2. Revenue – If the blogger is receiving income from his blog directly, they are very motivated to keep blogging. For most, this isn’t enough revenue to quit their full time jobs, but it is enough to provide positive reinforcement. When the revenue doesn’t match the expectation, the blog becomes abandoned.
3. Passion – Enthusiast or hobbyist will often create blogs to showcase their passion. I have one that has been maintained for almost a year and a half now. The sustainability of these are based off two factors. First, is the blogger passionate about their topic that they can weather the initial months of talking to the wall. It can feel like an outsider trying to join a conversation that is already too full. Second, will the blogger receive positive reinforcement with others appreciating the contribution to the topic or will the blogger receive punishment which will then be associated to the hobby itself.
4. Voice – The blogger has something to say, and they want someone to read it. You can also call this ego blogging. This one is tough to sustain. In my opinion, most people overestimate how much they have to say.

Read here for the whole post.

Our job here is to help with number 2 – and I guess, with number 4; the two, in fact, are connected. A good blog has an authentic voice. Part of my personal passion is to help people articulate their voice. That sounds a little strange – but the truth is that just as with a singing voice, it also takes experience and skill and determination to develop a writing voice. And, let’s be clear, that voice can have a wide variety of tones, pitches and colour. “Authentic voice” does not mean you have to sound stiff or relaxed, casual or formal, intellectual or down-to-earth. It just means that you figure out

• what it is that you really think (and perhaps also feel) in the many roles you have in your life (business person, parent, friend, volunteer, etc.)
• which ones (one? all? some?) of these roles you want to give voice to; and
• let the words come out, without immediately censoring them. Let them come out on the paper/screen. You can always edit a bit afterwards. It’s the pre-editing – editing before you have something on paper/screen – that is so frustrating, and this frustration leads to loss of motivation.

Some people don’t have a problem with this. However, if you want to have a web presence and take advantage of the powerful tool that blogging is and you don’t have a lot of writing experience, you might be in a bit of a quandary. That’s where having some assistance with writing, at least for a little while, can be very helpful. Then, rather than abandoning your blog because it’s too hard slogging and because you don’t know how to let your voice shine, you can stay motivated to keep it going.

To those who are regular bloggers, blogging help may seem unnecessary, but if you are new to it, or don’t feel computer-savvy, blog help is a must if you want to communicate this way.

You might think the old joke about jogging applies here: “I have someone who does that for me.” How can anyone blog for anyone else? This has been a topic of conversation among bloggers, and there is much to be said on the side that adamantly insists that the people who are blogging should express themselves personally, without intermediary. But time restraints, or computer problems, for example, sometimes mean that blog help can be needed.

Over the weekend I met with a client who has some extraordinary art work that she wishes to show online, and what better way to do that than by blogging? The hurdles to be overcome are many, not the least of which is simply navigating the blog software and finding out how to save the text. Some of what she wrote had not been saved actually, so luckily she had a backup of the writing that could reproduce the blog postings that had been lost. Then we had the obstacle of the image size. After going through the learning curve of the scanner and finding out how to use it, she learned how to scan her artworks, and how to save them, then I came in to help make them ready for upload. Each piece is very beautiful and the images are extremely symbolic and meaningful. They work very well on the screen, as the light passing through the textures is very compelling. Because they were saved in quite large formats, we went over the ways to make the images smaller, and more blog-ready. In the process we discovered that there were many areas still to be determined in this blog-to-be, many parts still to be done, and definitions of the relationships between the static pages and the blog postings, as well as header information were still to be worked out.

Just because the blog software like wordpress is so easy to use, and wordpress.com makes it so very easy to do, we mustn’t make the assumption that this means everyone will have the patience and interest in developing their own blogs. Experienced bloggers have all been there, learning how to post images, how to make the most of the blogosphere, and how to best communicate in this medium. It is a continually expanding area of expertise, always shifting. That’s where we come in with blogging help and assistance, at whatever level a client might need it. We can offer that experience to new bloggers, so the trial and error process is reduced somewhat.

At the end of the day, you get a great blog, and you can add to it yourself with confidence, or we can help provide content, research or links to enhance your blog presence.

technorati tags: blogging, time+management, art, art+work, artists

We included his extensive discography which is introduced by a great article that really reveals the life of a working studio musician in London in those days. Through the blog Robert has been in contact with others, and has brought out even more stories than those he includes in his self-published book.

Check it out here.

A blog can really help when you are writing of a memoir, as it is episodic, and can be completed in stages, as it grows naturally. It seems easy, then the compiled blog postings can be edited together in book form. The people at Lulu have named this “the blook” – a book created from blog postings.

(This entry was included in the first LinkedIn Blog Carnival)

Right off the bat – I’m not a golfer. So this is also a challenge to all you golfers out there: what does this blog look like to you, from the point of view of someone who really knows about this noble sport?

I’ll look at it from the point of view of a potential client, who might want to get her feet wet with a few golf lessons. What does Dave Smallwood have to offer me?

Focus and readability

When I first chanced upon the host site – the Ontario Golf site – I saw the word “instruction” right away and made a beeline for it. Check – I’m in the right place. Well done! Dave doesn’t confuse his readers.

The next thing I noticed that his paragraphs are nice and short. The longest is six lines long. I’m not intimidated by big blocks of text, which makes me want to read on. Great!

Images: Unprofessional – but they do the trick

He provides pictures to illustrate the text. While I thought this was a great idea – apart from illustration, it also breaks up the monotony of text – I would suggest he use better images. The colours of Dave’s images tend to be drab and a bit unfocused. So there’s room for improvement in that area, although in Dave’s situation, it’s better to have any image than none.

Why is that? First of all, in his situation, the information that the illustration provides is more important than how he presents it (content, here, is more important than form). For other professionals – photographers, for example, or fashion designers – form is almost more important than content, and posting images of such quality would be an absolute no-no. It all depends on the industry.

The other reason why the below-par quality of Dave’s images may not matter so much is because the rest of the web site provides a relatively good and professional visual presentation, so a few mediocre photographs can be forgiven.

It goes without saying, of course, that we will always advise you to only use best-quality images on any of the blogging projects that we help you manage.

Headlines that go the distance

I like the headline of one of his posts, “Greater Club Head Lag Means Greater Distance”. Dave says, “It is likely that 98 % of all golfers have no idea what the title to this article means. Regardless, all are very aware that they would like greater distance.”

That’s one of the secrets of a good headline: Marry a desire (“greater distance”) with a mystery (“greater club head lag”).

What desires do your clients have? What mystery tip do you have for them?