Ian M Rountree

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Editorial Calendars – SEO for Bloggers Part 3

July 21, 2010 by Ian 2 Comments

Once we’ve had done with our writing, and ensured that we’ve kept with our purpose, we need to make sure we’re also keeping a schedule. While posting daily can be the bane of bloggers everywhere, that’s not what we need.

Blogging success is the descendant of consistency, not overload.

One of the big mistakes neophyte bloggers make is diving in full bore and establishing a five-to-ten posts per week schedule, expounding on everything they know without holding back. While this is certainly a good way to get noticed fast – some people just love having more and more in their readers – unless you’re ready to keep pace, it’s a trap. Falling into the daily post oubliette means, in many cases, that as soon as you lose one day, you lose stride entirely.

Missing your schedule can be catastrophic – once you’ve created an expectation, it’s hard to step down from it.

Aside from combating this simple problem by posting less (which is also a dangerous road to walk), one of the best tools to add to your kit is an editorial calendar. I don’t mean “Post about blue widgets every third Monday.” As much as strict scheduling can be helpful for some, it’s possible to take a more organic approach to the EdCal than this process.

I use a process called the Touchstone Calendar. Basically, since i know I’ll be posting between 3 and 5 articles per week for the entire month, I plan for the lower number (which would be roughly 12 posts per four week period). Knowing I need 12 topics, I’ve broken down my writing plan into between 10 and 15 broad categories. On my whiteboard, I have this list – and as I post, I erase each topic and call it addressed for the month. When I run out of pillar topics – up goes a new, fresh list.

The Touchstone Calendar allows me to keep up with my topics, without the danger of feeling constrained to a schedule. For me, at least, this is hugely beneficial to my stress level and maintaining my interest in my own projects.

Ensuring you not only keep up your relevance by posting to your blog, but also keep your topics tight and following your purpose means your direction, tone, voice and have a far better chance of remaining sustainable.

Image by taberandrew.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #blogchat, bloggers block, Blogging, edcal, editorial calendar, touchstone calendar

On Purpose – SEO for Bloggers Part 2

July 20, 2010 by Ian 2 Comments

Even when focusing on the work of creating great writing – and allowing yourself to just do the writing – divining a purpose for your work can be tough. It’s a deeper issue than just figuring out what to write about (the topic) or who to share the information you have with (the audience). Discerning the purpose for your writing is a chief part of creating truly lasting, worth-while material.

When crafting a work of words, allowing the purpose of those words to shine through is paramount to the writing’s success.

A lot of blogs talk about calls to action – big red buttons being big and red enough, carefully placed “Please subscribe” buttons being carefully placed enough. This is all flash in the pan without writing that illicits one of three reactions;

  1. Get More of This – We want people to subscribe, bookmark, or otherwise give themselves permission to read more of our work.
  2. Pass This On – Sharing, whether on a social network, by email, or just the impossible to quantify word of mouth.
  3. Continue the Conversation – Whether through comments, reactive blog posts; at any level of synchrony or asynchrony.

When we’re talking about the purpose of a blog, these three categories (not topics) of response are the best indicators that we’re doing our jobs correctly. Our audience decides their own level of involvement, certainly, but it’s our writing that encourages or discourages this involvement. By considering the purpose we want to endorse with our writing on a piece-by-piece basis, we’re encouraging these responses.

When we back up our writing with an action-oriented flow, we’re much more primed for the response we receive.

Building content of any kind around a given subject is important – enough writers stress relevance and subjectivity that I don’t think it needs more discourse. However, semantic value only gets us so far. Thrust of purpose gets people moving, and because the web is becoming so much more heavily active and interactive recently, giving people a purpose for material is important when being considerate of their fractured attention.

You can be as on-topic as you want, but if people can’t find a purpose for the material you’re giving them, you’re not doing everything you can to encourage their return or their continued involvement in your work.

The active web loves linkage – it needs it, craves it, and doesn’t get enough highly-considered sources for it. From an SEO standpoint, this means that anyone from the tiniest niche blogger to the biggest celebrity acting on your material (whether sharing, conversing about, or even passively subscribing to it) gets you points you wouldn’t otherwise have.

The little increments of points add up over time. As instant as the web appears to be, the spider’s crawl is a slow dance, requiring careful choreography to navigate. No one hits it big from their first post – no one. Optimizing your blog for search requires patience, purpose, and work.

But what intriguing work!

So – what do you think I’d like you to do with this post, now that we’ve spent so much energy talking about purpose?

Image by Eustaquio Santimano.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: bloggers block, Blogging, blogs, calls to action, purpose, semantics, seo, seo for bloggers

Just Write – SEO for Bloggers, Part 1

July 19, 2010 by Ian 7 Comments

Whether you’re just starting out as a blogger, or have been publishing for years, one thing matters to the success of your blog. It’s not a content strategy, it’s not an editorial calendar, and it’s not information architecture. It’s not your ads, your ebooks, your Work With Me page.

It’s not your blog’s design, or the witty pictures you include for visual interest. It’s not infographics. It’s not even, to a certain extent, your snappy title.

It’s your writing. Fail your writing, and you fail your blog.

This isn’t a secret sauce post. When I started writing, years ago, I had no idea what Voice was. There was no concept of SEO – I was journalling on paper. Even when LiveJournal happened in the late nineties, I wasn’t writing to get found, or to grow a business. I was writing to share information. That this sharing turned into a blog, which eventually became more professional in tone, and now moves towards a proper, considered content platform is completely incidental.

The evolution of your writing happens by itself, if you let it, as you write.

One thing I can tell you for certain, as a Search Optimization professional – your content is independent from your strategy the same way a battle is independent from the battle plan. What happens in the text – in the struggle for rankings – is what matters more than how well you plan your deployments, organize your silos, or define your verticals. What you write is what matters. All other benefits are incidental.

I’m not telling you to ignore SEO – not if you want to get found.

I’m asking you to take a long, hard look at what you’re writing, and consider – beyond the mechanical “add a title tag, this needs an alt tag” aspects of search optimization – the benefits of the words you’re using to publish your thoughts. To publish your business. To publish your life.

Why are you writing this post? Why does that page need more links? What benefit are you providing your clients? What possible purpose does that eBook have, if your blog is poorly written?

What have I missed that I should have added to this post?

Image by the Wandering Angel.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: bloggers block, Blogging, blogs, seo, writing

A Thought Experiment For The Weekend

January 29, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

Today, I’m completely out of things to post.  have one more piece I’m working on for tomorrow, a reaction to something another blogger wrote. But then I’m out. No more topics.

Yep. Blogger’s Block.

So I’m going to try a thought experiment. I’d love it if you tried it with me, but I expect I’ll have to post the results first to make sure people get the idea.

What I’m going to do is examine two scenarios, both under the title of “If I Were Going To Be…”

The first of these “If I were going to be” scenarios examines what my current job would look like, if I were going to create the position myself, from the job description right up to day to day reporting and coaching. That’s going to be the easy one. Big, difficult, but easier than the next.

Because the second “If I were going to be” scenario is – of course – my dream job. It’s what I would be doing on a daily basis if I had my druthers and could work either for myself or for anyone else – whichever decision I end up coming to – and will likely look nothing like what you’d call a job. In essence, I’ll be writing a job description for my perfect life.

I expect the two posts to drop on Monday and Tuesday, as long as I can make them not conflict with the launch of The Dowager Shadow among other things on Tuesday. But the weekend will have to be mostly taking notes, so I may be tweeting quite a bit under the #thoughtexperiment hash tag.

I wonder how this will turn out.

For now, have a picture of my son, playing with his shadow.

Shadow Games on FLickr
Liam, playing with his shadow. Photo by me.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: bloggers block, thought experiment, weekend project, writer's block

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