5 Blogging Practices to Get You Noticed

Blogging is a great way to be social online, to extend your influence and to build community. Most of you already know these things. But we’re all busy people and this is a rapidly evolving sphere. So the following question is nearly always pertinent and worth revisiting: Are you using your blog most effectively?

To build a blog that people flock to is tough. Even a blog with solid, authoritative content can still not have a loyal following. One must consider how to bring new readers in. The following five blogging practices can help keep your little soapbox on the radar.

5 Smart Blogging Practices

1. Stick to your posting schedule: If you set a posting schedule, stick to it. The best posting schedule seems to be a daily post at least (150 words +) and a weekly long post (650 words +). This is a minimum that works well. The public likes new, fresh content regularly.
2. Get involved in other blogs in your niche: Comment frequently and get noticed on trafficked blogs in your sector.
3. Use Google Alerts to keep you in the loop: Google Alerts will alert you when niche related blogs you follow post new content. Arriving early helps you participate in the core of the conversation. Google’s alert granularities evolve as does the nomenclature in most sectors. Make sure your alerts are relevant and up to date. Expand them. Refine them.
4. Leverage FeedBurner (Google) services: Are you up on the full scope of what FB can do for you? Are you pinging all the top services? Are you serving a consolidated SmartFeed ™ that works across devices and clients? Are you building an email subscription base? Make sure you’ve squeezed the last drops of utility from this free service and that you’re tracking new features as they arrive. (Note: Not many new features are arriving now, but once the Google backend integration is done, rest assured that they will be.)
5. Deliver concise, consumable content: Tight, high value content and Top X lists are great ways to reel in traffic. The public and the search engines love high impact content. As part of this, it’s a good idea to periodically publish Top X lists which summarize useful lessons learned from your real world experience and/or testing. Focus on consumable value. It makes the blogosphere a better place and will attract links.

Source: cmswire.com

Announcing Google Weblogs (beta)

Today we’d like to offer you a sneak peek at an exciting new product we’ve been working on: Google Weblogs.

Since Google bought Pyra Labs in 2002, we’ve been dreaming, planning, and implementing the next revolution in personal publishing: Google Weblogs.

Google Weblogs, or “GWeblogs,” or “Gblogs,” which will launch later this year in a public beta, is the next revolution in personal publishing. Here’s what you can expect:

• Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.
• No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
• Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
• Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
• Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.
• Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!
  

Excited? So are we! Take a look at this sneak peek of Blogger Buzz, powered by Google Weblogs.

We’ve put together a quick video tour to take you through the highlights of Google Weblogs. Check it out!