If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed a nice new profile photo today. It was taken for the March issue of Austin Woman magazine that will feature several local Austin women who are involved in social media, including Sheila Scarborough and Connie Reece.
As part of that, they asked me to share some brief blogging tips. The third one I listed made me feel hypocritical because I haven’t posted here in so long; so, I decided to publish them here now and try to do a better job of taking my own advice.
Tips for Blogging
Be ready for a conversation. Blogging may seem just an outlet for your thoughts and opinions, but what differentiates a blog from other web sites is the interaction with readers.
Read and comment on other blogs. This jump-starts the creative process, introduces you to bright minds you can link to from your blog and creates links back to your blog.
Post often. It doesn’t have to be daily, but once a month is too infrequent for you to develop your voice and build rapport with readers. Blogging as a team can help with frequency.
Don’t fear the blank page. A great way to get more comfortable talking online is to start microblogging at Twitter.com. It helps you develop your voice, and you soon find topics you want to expand beyond the 140-character limit.
Don’t be afraid, but do be aware: You can share your thoughts without sharing too much personally identifiable information; but, always remember that those thoughts can be searched and found online by anyone. (just read my previous post here for a lesson on that one)
Lagniappe: include photos and videos, make it easy for readers to share, enable RSS feeds and get to know these sites: Technorati, Google’s blog search, Friendfeed, Flickr, YouTube, Stumbleupon, Delicious.
LPT 