PureBlogging

Let’s continue with the “Blogs on…” series, our little series of “getting to know you” posts, which were intended to give my readers a little insight on the stuff I read in various categories, and likewise for readers to share some of their favorites in the comments as well.

I started out with blogs on blogging, then blogs on movies. Now, let’s do blog on music.

Also, just so this post doesn’t seem totally off topic, I should mention that blogs in all industries can often provide insight into good blogging strategies, whether it be in the are of design, marketing, or writing. Even if you have a blog about making money online, you can learn things from blogs about movies, football, or pottery. I think you get my point.

1. MTV News – Ok, this is really more of a news site than a blog, but its suscribable by RSS feed, which is good enough for me. This is one area where MTV still excels as far as I’m concerned. Like I mentioned on the movies post as I linked to the MTV Movies Blog, their television content leaves a little to be desired, but you can still get good new from them online.

2. HypeBot – This is a blog by Bruce Houghton (a WPN Blog Partner), which keeps up with happenings in the online music industry. It’s not so much a place to get news on artists, but to learn about industry news, and he is always on the ball there.

3. MySpace Blogs – There’s no better source for information about bands than to go directly to their MySpace page and follow their blog there. 9 times out of 10, this will be the best place to get the most current news on the bands you like. Just subscribe to the feeds of you favorite bands, and you won’t have to worry about keeping tabs on them.

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I got a few more comments when I just did a short list of links, than when I included little explanations with them. I don’t know if here is any real significance to that, but I’ll just go with the quick links format. You can discover what they are for yourselves

- How To Build A Community On Your Blog

- Rules For Accepting Guest Posts

- BlogWorld Expo: Doing Business With Advertisers (Video)

- Self Branding: Comments That Leave More Than Just An Opinion

- The Dinosaur and the Journalist

- How do I import my blog entries or RSS feed into Facebook?

Enjoy.

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I want to talk a little bit about user engagement. This is a subject I got into in my article for WebProNews about Johns Wu, but when it comes to blogs, it can really make or break you. First of all, if your users are not becoming engaged in your content, then you’re probably doing something wrong.

In other words, if you never get any comments, then something’s not right. This could be for a variety of reasons however.

1. Your Content.

The most obvious reason for lack of user engagement is having bad content. If your content is boring, poorly written (to the extent that it becomes unreadable), or just simply brings nothing new to the table, people are just not going to be very interested in reading it, let alone commenting on it.

2. Visibility

It could also just as easily be that readers can’t find you. If they don’t know you exist, they  can’t very well comment on your artilces either, this is where marketing comes into play (obviously).

3. No Encouragement

Sometimes people need a litle encouragement to actually participate in the conversation. There’s no reason why you can’t come right out and say something like “please let me know what you think in the comments”, or to a more subtle extent, something like, “what do you think?” Let readers know that you really are interested in what they have to say, and this can spark quality discussions, that can often even turn out to be more useful to readers than the original post itself. That is the beauty of a blog as a source of information, you don’t have to rely on one perspective.

Advertisers will salivate at a blog that gets a lot of comments, because not only is that a sign of the blog’s popularity, but is also a strong indication of a like-minded readership (even if opinions vary, the base interests are probably still there), which can make ad targeting easier.

There is no question that user engagement is paramount to the success of most blogs.

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If you’ve ever needed inspiration to keep blogging, just look at Johns Wu. This is a guy who sold his blog Bankaholic to BankRate.com for $15 million. He’s only 22 years old. Dreams can come true.

I conducted a little Q&A with him and posted it at WebProNews.

I’ve contacted him again, and should be writing a follow up article for WPN, which will look a little closer at how Wu achieved his success.

Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, we’ve posted some more great video interviews with bloggers (like Darren Rowse and Jeremy Schoemaker to name a couple) on the WebProNews Video Blog. You’ll definitely want to watch those.

Update: Posted the article. Didn’t get a response from Rowse or another one from Wu yet, but it still looks at how authority and user engagement can be use to achieve success. I may still follow up yet again if I hear back from the others.

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Having a good title for a post is probably something that we all know we should do consistently, but might not always give the thought we should. I know I’m guilty of it. I’ve even written about the subject before, but let’s face it. When you’re blogging, you don’t always consider every detail of every post, even if you know you should.

The title really is an important aspect to a blog post, particularly for your readers who use RSS Feeds. It is one thing if readers just visit your blog on a regular basis to see what you have to say, but for readers who digest your content through feed readers, your post might just be a headline to them, similar to the subject line of an email. In fact, I’ve written about this at SmallBusinessNewz in the past.

If you don’t hook readers in with a title that grabs their attention, there’s a good chance your post will just get lost in the shuffle. I know I personally have so many feeds syndicated through my reader that I couldn’t possibly read them all on a daily basis, but I read the ones that stand out to me, and others will do the same.

Some good titles ask questions that readers hope to find the answers to in the post, use hot keywords that are sure to attract attention, use humor, or inspire curiosity in other ways. In fact, I think “curiosity” is truly the key to getting your content read, so if you can capture that, you should be golden.

PuttingBlogsFirst has a detailed and thought-provoking post about writing good headlines here.

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If you blog, you have reached (or will reach) some point where you just can’t think of anything to write about. You have an audience, and they are expecting a new post from you, but you just don’t really have anything to say.

Of course, there is always the option to not say anything, and it is definitely better to skip posting if you don’t feel like there is any value to what you would say. Another option, though, is to look for something to write about. Luckily with so many tools on the Internet at our disposal, there are a ton of ways to find topics to write about, even ones that are relevant to the niche you are known for. You just need to know where to find those ideas.

My favorite tools for finding topics to write about are:

1. StumbleUpon – I really can’t stress enough how useful I find StumbleUpon to be as a blogger, particularly its search feature. Frankly, I was a little surprised to see that eBay’s trying to get rid of it already. When you stumble through pages for any given keyword or phrase, you know you are going to get good results, because the way StumbleUpon works will allow you to see other pages that others have already given a “thumbs up” to.  So when I search for “blogging” for example, I know I’ll get all kinds of quality articles and other things related to blogging. I can then look at those and be inspired to add my own take on any subject that I might “stumble upon” related to blogging.

2. Google News – Often times, I will also use Google News for this purpose, but in this case, you’re only searching through relatively new items, and can find some news articles on issues relevant to you niche. Again, you can use these articles as inspiration to get your own thoughts rolling on said issues.

3. Google Reader – With Google Reader (or other feed readers…Google just happens to be the one I use), you can not only scroll through posts from all of your favorite blogs, but again, use the search tool to see what people on those blogs might be saying about any given subject that you wish to tackle or your niche in general. The reader (Google at least) will sort search results by date, so you can be sure you have the most current posts possible.

4. Audience Participation – When all else fails, you can always ask your readers if there are things they would like you to write about. That’s good for one post itself. Or you can do something like I did (or am currently in the process of doing technically) with the “Blogs on…” series, where I have specifically asked for audience participation.

5. Human Beings – Sometimes just speaking with other people in person will spark an idea for something to write about. Particularly if you work with people within your niche regularly. A live conversation you have with somebody can easily be translated into words on a blog.

There are definitely more tools available to you to help with writer’s block. What are some that you use?

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