IZEAFest: Improving Your Content
September 16
Susie Gardner’s Improving Your Content presentation as a part of IZEAFest in Orlando, FL dealt with the elements of a successful blog.
- Content is king, obligatory slide (with gold crown).
- Your content needs to inform, attract, deliver, entertain,
inspire, and convey. - Assuming you goal is to have an audience:
- You want to keep the audience.
- You want to attract new people.
- Speaking of goals, you should have one.
- The goals should be in line with what your audience is
expecting. - Make yourself a mission statement to define what your
goals are with your content. - Having an audience of “everyone” isn’t to cut it.
- The goals should be in line with what your audience is
- Niche
- By finding a niche, you get to be specific with your
content. - If you are not passionate about what you are writing
about, then it’s going to get boring. - You don’t have to be an expert about what you are writing
about. - Examples of niche:
- Online journalism
- Candy
- Logo design
- By finding a niche, you get to be specific with your
- Frequency
- There’s a magic formula:
- Step 1: First out how much time it takes you to
create a post (x) - Step 2: Find out how much time you have in a day (y)
- Step 3: y/x equals you are able to write
- Step 1: First out how much time it takes you to
- There’s a magic formula:
- Comments
- They are free content.
- Comments come to you as a reward for the hard work
in putting in quality content. - Comments get to grow your content, unless you get to
that success bracket where you literally cannot handle
the load. - They are some downfalls, people don’t want to deal with:
- Spam
- Flamewars, etc.
- You can work on worst case scenarios,
- Create a policy in case stuff shows up that you don’t
want.- By having a policy others will know how you will
determine to deal with it.
- By having a policy others will know how you will
- You need to respond to comments to show that you are
encouraging - Ways to encouraging comments:
- Blog posts with ancedotes are good. Stories about your day are things
people respond to. - Asking a leading question at the end of the posts,
asking for input.
- Blog posts with ancedotes are good. Stories about your day are things
- Food for Thought
- Experimentation is okay. You have a moving target with your blog.
- Carry a notebook with you to capture ideas for blog posts.
- Everyone loves a good a tangent.
- Spelling, grammar, and editing count.
- Contests and polls.
- Guest bloggers.
- Rants/unpopular opinions.
- Cool blogs:
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