Five Things I Learned From My Blogging Sabbatical

I'm back!

I spent the summer in New York and in Vermont, where I have family. It sounds like a vacation, but it was really more of a working vacation--and I had to take a lot of client work with me. Of course, I wanted to carve out time in my schedule to have fun, spend time with loved ones, and even relax a little--that's what summer's for, right?--and something in my regular routine had to give. I couldn't give up the client work.

Most Probloggers would say it's blogging suicide to leave your blog dark for a month. I say it's not the end of the world. Here are a few things I've learned from my extended break from blogging.

Even the best laid plans don't always work out. You know how this is supposed to go. When you take a break, you need to write posts to cover that break. You need to timestamp 'em, turn off comment moderation, and lay low. If you do it right, your readership will never notice while you're away.

Of course, writing almost two months' worth of extra posts was way more work than I could've handled, even weeks before I left on the trip. And originally I thought I'd just continue posting as usual during the summer. It didn't work out that way, and sometimes things just don't work out the way you think they will.

Remember: you have a life offline. When I first started this blog, I had one rule: if it grows too onerous, it's OK to back off. I didn't want to commit to posting every day, not see enough return for my effort, and have blogging become a burden. But when I got started, I realized something: blogging is addictive. And I became a junkie. Before I left I had become addicted to checking my traffic, reading my comments, surfing other blogs, seeing who was linking to me. My blog was my way of connecting with others in my business--and I loved it. I still love it.

But when I was away, I realized that I had to spend time with the people who love me in person. And I had to spend time on real-life things that I love to do. No matter how much is at our fingertips online, depending on it too much can still reduce our world to the size of our laptop screens. I had developed tunnel vision and hadn't even realized it, and believe it or not, I needed the break.

Sometimes a break is good for your creativity. I was having a little trouble before I left thinking up great new blog posts. Sure, I was still enthused about my blog--but I was starting to feel like I'd written everything there was to write already. This blog is barely a year old, and I wasn't ready for burnout yet. But I was getting there. This break has recharged my creativity, and I've got a lot to talk about here in the next few weeks.

Your readers are more forgiving than you realize. I just checked my traffic scores on Feedburner. As expected, I saw a big drop in traffic in August. But I didn't expect my subscriber list to actually increase, which it did. My regulars stuck with me, and it looks like I even picked up a few new subscribers while I was gone as well. If your writing is good, people will stick around.

Traffic drops? There are ways to get it back. Regular posting will help. Commenting on other people's blogs will help. I'm going to go out of my way in the next few weeks to let people know I'm back and posting on a regular schedule again.

On a successful blog, you're supposed to post regularly every day. But that can take a toll. If you have to take a break, take a break. Tell people when you'll be back, and try to jot down a few ideas as they come to you while you're gone. When you do come back, you'll have some worthwhile things to say.

The Benefits of Blogging (Hint: It's Not What You Think)

I just saw an article on IttyBiz about social media marketing, and why it sucks. And this includes blogs. Basically, according to the post, us businesspeople and marketing people are really only talking to each other. The people who buy from us don't go to our blogs. They don't want to interact with us. They just want to find what they want quickly and for a good price, buy it, and go do other things.

I can't speak for everyone's blog, but I can say this commentary definitely rang true for me. The people who read my blog for the most part are writers. Not designers. Not SEO's. Not online entrepreneurs. (OK, maybe there are a few of you out there. But I think you're the minority.) And I know you all love me...but you probably won't hire me.

So if I'm not connecting with clients, what am I getting from this blog? It's not monetary gain; I make enough on this blog to go grab sushi every three months or so. That's not much sushi, folks. I explained this recently to someone who emailed me assuming that because my blog is well known in a few circles, I must be making money from it--and wanted to know how he could do the same thing. My email was a long explanation of the benefits of blogging--aside from money. Here are a few.

I do get clients this way. I just told you my readers are generally not clients. But that doesn't mean I haven't gotten work from this blog. Every so often someone looking for a writer finds this blog and likes my writing style. And every so often someone I know through blogging sends a referral my way. It does happen, even though my regular readers and commenters are usually not the same people who hire writers.

I build credibility. A good blog can be a career-maker. Mine is building my credibility for clients; I can now tell people I run an award-winning blog, and I can point them to an online writing sample here that I"m proud of. When potential clients see I'm well-respected in my industry here, it raises my credibility in their eyes. It gives me leverage to charge more. It helps me grow my business.

I rise in the ranks. Blogging helps your ranking in the SERP's. Granted, my blog is not attached to my website URL yet--so I don't think it's helping that beyond simply linking to it. But my blog posts come up in plenty of keywords important in my industry, and it can lead possible clients to my website. Even if you just use Blogger, a blog raises your visibility and makes it more likely clients will find you.

I get to talk shop. I originally conceived of CatalystBlogger as a way to connect with clients. I sort of envisioned myself as a writing expert of some type, dispensing advice from on high on how to write better copy. But when I got down to it, that wasn't what I found myself writing about day in and day out. This blog turned into, essentially, a place for me to "talk shop." I don't get that at home; I don't go to work with coworkers who do the same thing, and I don't live with or know a lot of people among my friends and family who do the same thing I do. I get it here, with all of you. I get advice, encouragement, and friendship--I've even met a few of you in my area for drinks and lunch. Occasionally I get a referral from my new writing connections, and I'm always happy to send referrals to people I've had contact with through their blog and mine. Connectivity does make a difference.

Blogging may not make you rich. But even a moderately well-trafficked, well-written blog can help you make connections, gain visibility, and build a more credible face for your business. Don't worry so much about whether or not you're making money or actively selling on your blog. Even if you're just writing for others in your industry, you're still making a difference to your business.

Gender Generalizations: Asking for Trouble?

Just now I had someone make a gender-based generalization on my blog. It was pretty inoffensive, and I even related to it--but even so it stirred the pot a little bit. I had planned to reply in the comments, but every time I did my comment turned out about as long as a regular blog post. I thought this topic was too interesting not to devote an entire post to.

I relate to some gender-based generalizations--for instance, I'm not as strong as most guys I know. I'm aware of it. I come with all the necessary equipment to give birth, and I'm aware that guys don't. However, I do think that if you make general gender statements in public--even about something as obvious as physical difference--you're asking for trouble. Here's why I think it's a bad idea to make gender-generalization comments on your business blog.

Because nothing applies to everybody. Okay, some gender generalizations seem really obvious. But even some of the really obvious ones may not apply to the particular people who are hearing you. And I know that whenever I hear a generalization about women that I don't feel applies to me, I always feel a little twinge of annoyance. I start thinking something like "this person doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm not like that." I get a little defensive. Often I look at the situation rationally a little later and realize that the person means well--but my first reaction is always negative.

When you make generalizations about gender, you run the risk of giving a definition of manhood or womanhood that doesn't include the listener. And chances are that even if the person you're talking to doesn't get all offended, he or she probably had an internal moment of annoyance.

Because you'd be surprised at what's offensive to some. You know the one that sometimes bothers me? That old stereotype that women are more nurturing than men. You'd think that statement wouldn't be offensive; after all, being nurturing is a positive thing and if anything, women should like that such a positive quality is associated with them.

But I don't see it that way. I guess because to me, it sounds like saying women aren't as "tough" as men; or because women are so nurturing they're biologically better suited to staying home and having babies than going out in the world and being successful. To me--and to some other women I know--that phrase "women are more nurturing" has a lot of negative connotations. Someone who doesn't understand those associations might make a perfectly innocent comment about the nurturing nature of women--and cause offense where it wasn't meant. That's the thing about gender generalizations--you think what you're saying is perfectly innocent or even positive, but you might not know what you're wading into.

Even "physical" generalizations might cause offense. There's a lot of science out there that says women and men problem-solve, listen, and see the world differently. But not even scientific studies are always the last word--this article in the Boston Globe makes a lot of sense to me. It discusses how the studies that back up gender-based stereotypes are not always as conclusive as they look.

How good is the science behind brain difference studies? I'm not sure. But whether they're right or wrong isn't the point, in my opinion. If somebody tells me women or men are a certain way because their brains or hormones or something else in their bodies are just different, it doesn't close the conversation for me. And it might not be closed for whoever you're talking to. I'll still get a little bothered when someone tells me women are worse drivers than men, for example, even though there's a study out there that backs it.

Because even if you don't mean to be sexist, you can come off looking that way. Some people might not be offended at all by gender stereotyping--they may even agree with some stereotypes. But unless you know how everyone you're talking to will respond, gender generalizations are definitely risky. Even if you don't mean to sound sexist, starting a conversation with "Women are all...." or "Men always..." might get people to see you as the type of person who makes assumptions based on gender--especially if they don't know you well.

Some people get annoyed at the fact that they have to watch what they say to avoid offending people. I know a lot of people who might say something like "well, if it's so easy to offend people, maybe they're the problem. Maybe they need to lighten up." I'm not really interested in judging whether it's wrong or right that people can get prickly over gender generalizations--but I think the reality is that they do. In a world where some social pitfalls are hard to spot, gender generalizations are obvious and easy to avoid--so why wouldn't you?

Four Reasons to Write Longer Blog Posts

I saw a post today at Writers' Perspective about how long blog posts should be. The author suggested that blog posts shouldn't be more than 300 words long. My first reaction went something like this: "300 words? Holy Truncated Blog Posts, Batman! That's too short!" Then I thought about it a while...and I realized that I agreed with myself. Three hundred words is a bit short. Here are the reasons why I fly in the face of convention and prefer blog posts that ramble.

You give your reader better value. How in-depth can you really be in 300 words? If you're just writing a filler post to get something out there, 300 words is fine. But if you really want to explore a subject or teach your reader something complex, 300 words might be too tight a space. Many readers come to business blogs to learn something--and if you're serving up puny posts on a daily basis, you run the risk of disappointing readers.

Miniscule blog posts make it next-to-impossible to put content first. One of the other pieces of blog dogma out there--one that makes a lot of sense to me--is the commandment to put your content first. You can promote the heck out of your blog, but if your content isn't great, you won't be successful at building an audience. At 300 words, it's extremely difficult to offer in-depth information readers will come back for.

Readers don't necessarily hate longer web writing. I wrote an entire post on this back in this blog's infancy: according to a Poynter eyetrack study, people are actually more willing to read online articles in depth than they are with print articles. This held true with long as well as short articles, which were read to completion online 63% of the time--compared with 40% of stories in broadsheets and 36% in tabloids. This turns on its head the old chestnut about how online articles must be short and sweet to get read.

Other bloggers are doing it. Check out some of the top flagship blogs out there--are they keeping their blog posts to 300 words? Here's a recent example from Problogger. This article is in-depth, interesting, well-written...and 1,080 words long. A quick check around the website shows that many of their blog posts are around this length; while a few are short, a lot are longer. Here's one of today's most popular posts from Copyblogger. It's 931 words long. Taking a look at all the other posts listed under "popular," it looks like only one is under 300 words long.

Speaking from personal experience, many of my favorite bloggers write posts both short and long--but I tend to enjoy, and return more often, to the blogs that have longer and more in-depth posts more often. In the Writers' Perspective article, the writer suggested paring down your language to get to 300 words. I agree that extra adjectives and flowery prose are bad--but I also think that when you edit a substantive post that closely, you can't help but snip off the meat of the subject as well as the fat.

What to Do When You're Stuck for Blog Post Ideas

It's tough coming up with great content day after day. Some bloggers make it look easy, while others intersperse in-depth articles with shallow posts that don't offer much value. Your blog is what you make it, though--and you'll do better if you make an effort every time.

The bad news is that Writers' Block happens to bloggers, too--trust me, you will occasionally sit down to write and have absolutely no idea what to say. The good news is that there are many things you can do to make it easier on yourself when you're stuck for ideas. Here are a few suggestions that go beyond reading the news.

Check out the forums. There are plenty of forums for just about any niche out there, and they can give you great insight into what people in your industry want to know. If you have a good answer to any of these questions--or you see an issue a lot of people are talking about--don't just post a response on the forum. Write a blog post about it. Then post a response on the forum offering some advice and a link back to your post.

Think about your worst-case clients. No matter what industry we're in, we all have horror stories. What are some of your worst ones? In the freelance-writing arena, people love to hear about problem clients and how the writer dealt with them. For best results, don't just write a rant--offer a strategy for dealing with these horror stories.

Write a "What So-and-So Forgot to Mention" post. Are there any industry leaders in your blogging field? In mine, there are several--including Copyblogger, ProBlogger, and Dosh Dosh. Find one of the top blogs in your niche--the one everybody knows about. Pick a post, and write a supplement to that post with your own unique spin on the topic. Put the top blog in your title--it's sure to gain notice from others in your industry, and possibly even the top blog's writer. That's a good thing; it might inspire him to link to you.

Write a rebuttal post. I like to check out other blogs in my industry when I'm stuck for ideas. I especially like to look for things I disagree with. If I find one, I can write a rebuttal post. Disagreement is always interesting to readers, especially if you're going against an established opinion.

Rebuttals can be good for both you and the other writer, because they generate links and traffic for both. But still, you never know how the other party will respond. With rebuttal posts, it's important to keep the tone civil and make it clear that you're not intending a personal attack. You don't want the original writer to think you're trying to attract attention by dissing him in public.

Go off on a rant. Are you passionate about something in your industry? Is there something that bothers you about the way things are always done? Your blog is the ideal place to write about it. Readers love controversy and strong opinions. When you're stuck, think about the last time you were ticked off by some condition or reality of your industry, and write a nice long, cathartic rant. Make sure to keep it at least semi-professional; an "I'm SO SICK of my customers!" rant is probably not the greatest idea.

Keep an idea log. Some days you're brimming over with ideas, and other days you come up empty. On days when you have more than one idea to choose from, write them down. Always keep a list of ideas handy for when you're having trouble.

Write a few "emergency posts." Some days you just don't feel like writing--or you might not have time to write at all. It's never a bad idea to keep a few spare posts handy to make your life easier on these days. These posts shouldn't be about time-sensitive information like current news or a response to a recent blog post from someone else. Make them timeless--how-to posts make great spares.

A great blog offers in-depth, useful articles day after day, and as a writer it can be tough coming up with ideas. Use these tactics to prepare for the dry spells, and you'll never be stuck for ideas for very long.

To Bare or Not to Bare: What Should You Reveal in Your Blog?

The holiday season has come and gone, and with it I've seen a few holiday-themed posts. While most weren't religious, every so often one wanders into church. In the midst of all this religiosity, I went onto JCME's blog a while ago and found a thought-provoking post on neutral language and how much of your own beliefs to reveal on your blog.

The quandary is this: revealing personal info is often a good move on a blog. It humanizes you and lets your audience relate to you. Reveal too much, however--or reveal the wrong things--and it could backfire. Here are my thoughts on how to get personal on a business blog.

Religious references: Few and far between. Talking about your religion on your blog is a tricky issue. Many religious people feel that their religion is so much a part of who they are, they can't not talk about it. And if your audience shares your religious beliefs, it can be a good way to show them you're one of their own.

However, on a business-related blog, religious talk can do more harm than good. It limits your audience; for every person it appeals to, there's sure to be someone who feels repelled. Most non-religious people I talk to who read business blogs say that an occasional religious reference won't always drive them away from a blog they like, but if it happens too often or it's too obviously preachy, it might. Unless your blog is aimed specifically at a religion-in-business niche, it's usually best to stay away from the topic.

Politics: Avoid like the plague. Religion can be an excluding topic, but politics can be even worse. Especially in America at this point in history, politics is increasingly polarized--more and more people identify with the extremes on either side, and neither side is talking rationally to the other. It's easy to fall into the habit of seeing those with opposing views as "the other" and assuming that your readers, being sensible people, share your views. But that's a dangerous assumption.

Make a blanket statement against a certain political topic, and you risk offending a lot of people--that's obvious. But even subtle jabs at certain political situations can be more incendiary than you'd think. Unless your blogging persona is provocative and you're writing to a political niche, it's best to stay away from all mention of politics.

Personal interests: Keep 'em relevant. I have plenty of interests outside business writing, but my audience isn't coming here to read about those. Still, I think mentioning your outside interests can humanize you--and advertise your niche knowledge to potential clients. That's why I link to my other blogs and don't make them a state secret. Still, I know the audience for this blog doesn't necessarily share my outside interests--and I don't write about those things here.

But you can talk about outside interests on your business blog. The key is to make the post relate to your regular topic in a creative way. There are a couple of great examples of this at Copyblogger: posts on what improvisational acting and jazz can teach us about blogging. These types of posts allow you to write about your outside passions in a way that keeps your business-blog audience interested.

Details of your personal life: Don't give away the farm. There are a few bloggers I've really come to "know" since I came on the scene, and I don't mind if occasionally they mention their personal lives on their blogs. But some writers take it a little far. I started reading SEO blogs a while back for a client project, and some of those folks talk incessantly about their personal lives. I had no idea so many SEO's were so into their cats.

My feeling is this: yes, talking about personal details can allow your readers to identify with you. If you occasionally talk about your kids, your spouse, your pets, or other things going on in your life, you'll seem more human and less like a business-talking robot. And some blogs, like Freelance Parent, are specifically aimed at a niche that spans business and personal life.

But this can be tricky, because some personal details can make you look less hireable. If you're going through a messy divorce or a difficult home purchase, for example, potential clients might assume you have too many distractions going on to focus on their projects. Talk about how much rum-spiked egg nog you drank at the Christmas party or how much you can't stand your brother in law, and you'll probably wind up hurting your professional reputation. And you always take the risk of boring your readers instead of intriguing them. Not everyone finds your cat, your two-year-old, or your irritable-bowel syndrome as fascinating as you do. If your blog isn't aimed at a niche that includes these topics, it's best to talk about these issues sparingly.

Bloggers walk a fine line when it comes to revealing personal information. And the position of the line can change depending on your niche, your persona, and your audience. Of course you want to be yourself on your blog, but to be successful you need to consider what your readers want to read about--not just what you want to write about.

My Other Blogs

I've mentioned before that I'm starting a few other blogs. These are outside of business writing, but two of them are relevant to other writing topics--so some of my Catalyst audience might be interested. Without further ado, they are:

Minion and Maverick. Like nearly every freelance writer I know, I work on novels in my spare time. I use this blog to talk about genre fiction writing--generally romance and fantasy. I run this blog with a friend of mine in publishing who writes on her genre interests too--which tend more toward children's and chick lit--as well as an insider's perspective on the publishing industry. She's blogging anonymously so she can write without worrying what her employer will think, but when Catalyst started getting a readership, we decided I should go public to get the blog a little more exposure.

Anyone who wants to get published nowadays should know that publishers expect authors to have their own marketing plans. My hope is that I can use this blog as a marketing platform when (someday) I start shopping my first novel around.

Living Literary. This blog is brand-new--excuse the bubble wrap. I'm using it to talk about literary writing; generally poetry and short stories. While this usually takes a back seat to my business and genre writing, it's my hope that the blog will inspire me to do more of this type of writing when I have time. I've been featured at several venues in and around Philadelphia as a poet, and I've started sending a chapbook to publishers. I want to be able to publicize my appearances, publications, and chapbooks here, plus talk about language, symbolism, publishing your work, and local markets in Philadelphia.

Philly Actress Blog. I love acting, and I've come across a lot of things in the Philadelphia acting industry that I've been itching to write about. I'm planning to write theatre reviews, talk about plays I'm in and the rehearsal process, landing an agent, doing film and commercial work, acting for film vs. acting for theatre--anything that might be interesting to an audience of actors. This blog is less career-oriented than my others are; it's mainly for fun.

I might be spreading myself too thin here--there are only so many hours in the day, after all. But I'm planning to give it a try. Even so, I'm keeping Catalyst as my principal blog; no slacking off here.

One Writer, Many Blogs

I've noticed that there are quite a few writing bloggers out there with more than one blog. And while some are clearly related to their writing business, others are on completely different topics.

Why have so many blogs? Despite the fact that it's time consuming, there are plenty of good reasons to have multiple blogs.

Reaching multiple business audiences. If you start to specialize in writing for a certain niche market, you might want to consider creating a blog targeted to it. It positions you as a writer of authority and experience in that market and it helps you reach potential clients.

The Article Writer's Matt Keegan provides a great example. In addition to a general blog about freelance writing, he blogs on a wide variety of business-related themes including the airline industry, the auto industry, cruise ship employment, and financial topics.

Inkthinker's Kristen King does this too; she also blogs on women's issues and pet-related themes.

A place to write about your passions. Most of us have interests outside of our businesses. But the audience for your freelance writing blog may not share your passion for musical theatre. That's probably why Susan at The Urban Muse writes about musical theatre on a separate blog; Matt Keegan from The Article Writer writes about religion outside of his business blogging, and Irreverent Freelancer's Kathy Kehrli writes about her love of books on a separate site.

Professional vs. personal. It's part of business-blogging orthodoxy that our business-related blogs should include only minimal personal info. But writers who want to get personal--either in public or to a private audience of friends and family--often open up private blogs that include their personal views, activities and opinions--and they're usually not aimed at a specific niche audience.

You're getting paid. There are plenty of ways you can get paid for blogging; sometimes you're doing it anonymously under a client's name and sometimes you get a byline. But I'm sure at least a few multiple-blog writers are handling some of their blogs as paid projects.

I'm in the process of launching a few new blogs that cater to my interests outside of business writing. While I get ready to announce their existence on this blog, I would love to hear from other writers who have multiple blogs. Why did you choose the topics you write on? How do you manage marketing and writing for more than one? And do you feel like you get out of blogging on multiple topics enough to make up for the energy and time you put into it?

Finding My Blogging Voice

I remember reading Frank McCourt's biography, Teacher Man, a few years ago. Somewhere in there, McCourt said something about teaching that's stuck with me: it takes about five years to really get a handle on your job as a teacher. Some of it's figuring out how to manage grades and paperwork; some has to do with designing lessons and teaching effectively. But most of it is because it takes that long to find your voice. Once you're established in your teaching persona, you start to feel at home in front of a classroom.

It's the same with blogging. When I started this blog, I knew that there were plenty of other great sites out there that offered similar information--and that the "voice" I chose would set me apart. While I think I still have a lot to learn about settling into a voice that works, here's what I've picked up so far.

You need to choose something authentic. The thing about blogging is that it's an endurance activity. You have to keep coming up with post after post without getting stale or bored or blocked for ideas. If the voice you choose isn't something that comes naturally, it's going to be very difficult to maintain. I tried a couple different personas on when I started blogging--from mildly acerbic to authoritative and businesslike. After a few posts in each of these styles, I realized that a more casual and positive voice was easier for me to return to day after day.

Choose a persona you wouldn't mind clients seeing. No matter why you're blogging, you should be aware that potential buyers and even current clients may wander onto your blog from time to time. How well does your blogging persona mesh with the face you wear when you talk to them? And what would clients think when they get a look at your blog?

Writing blogs such as Irreverent Freelancer and The Frump take problem clients and unreasonable employers to task as part of their persona. Clearly neither of them is aimed at buyers, but there's always a possibility that clients and potential clients will find those blogs. Each writer has to deal with the client perception issue.

Know why you're blogging in the first place. Are you trying to position yourself as an expert? Appeal to buyers? Share your knowledge with others? These are all very different reasons to blog, and each calls for a slightly different voice. Looking around at other writing blogs, I'd say Problogger and Copyblogger do a good job of setting themselves up as experts-among-experts in the field of blogging and copywriting; The Copywriter's Crucible is a great example of a blog that aims to educate and attract buyers; and The Article Writer seems more casual to me--and focused on sharing knowledge with other freelancers.

Respect your readers. What do your readers want to read? This probably has more to do with what you write about than how you write about it, but it's still a big part of your blogging personality. I've learned to think "what will readers get out of this?" every time I sit down to write a blog post. I've even posted something, let it sit for a few hours, come back and completely re-written it later. Whatever persona you choose, quality should be a part of it.

Check out what else is out there. What other voices are already out there? It can help to find bloggers whose voices appeal to you, just to get a sense of what you could be doing. Reading other blogs can also tell you where the vacuum is in your blogging industry. Are you seeing a lot of professional, formal blogs--and could you be the one to add a slightly edgier voice to the community? Are you seeing a lot of bloggers trying to be funny--and could you add a bit of levity and authority? If your voice is different from the norm, you may generate more traffic.

Some people are very deliberate in choosing a blogging persona; others seem to just write what comes naturally. Over time, I'm sure I'll become more aware of my voice and how to make adjustments to deliver the results I'm looking for. Hopefully, it won't take five years.

We Made the Short List!

I'm thrilled to announce that CatalystBlogger has made the short list for Michael Stelzner's Top 10 Blogs for Writers awards! I've got some stiff competition, though. These are the nominated blogs:

Catalystblogger
Copyblogger
Copywriter Underground
Copywriting Maven
Freelance Parent
Freelance Writing Jobs
Get Paid to Write Online
Golden Pencil
Heather Strang, Writer
Ink in my Coffee
Renegade Writer Blog
The Urban Muse
Web Content Writer Tips
Web Writing Info
Write From Home
Writer Mama
Writer’s Resource Center
Writing for Writers
Writing the Cyber Highway

I feel pretty good to be up there with such great blogs. As I was setting this post up I took a peek at each of these, and here are some of my favorite posts:

Copyblogger has a post up on what improvisational acting can teach us about blogging. This is an appealing post to me because acting is my second love. I earned two majors in college; one in theatre arts and one in writing. Anyway, I love both business writing and acting, but rarely do I find a place where the two intersect. I give Copyblogger a lot of credit for such a creative (and useful) post.

Get Paid to Write Online writes about how to manage your workload so that you're not depending on just a few lucrative clients. I've definitely had points where most of my work has come from just a few clients, and once it was very bad news for me when a client left. We're all safer when we're getting our work from multiple sources.

Ink in my Coffee. This person is a powerhouse. Check out the word counts she's racked up on the two novels she's working on--they're up at the end of each post. She does all this in addition to running an extremely successful writing business. I think I have a new hero.

Web Content Writer Tips has a thoughtful piece up on the pros and cons of making your rates public. I wrote about this when I first decided to do it, and it was definitely not an easy decision. This post brings up a lot of good reasons both to avoid doing this and to try it--many of which I hadn't thought of before. I particularly like how James talks himself into putting his rates up by the end of the piece, even though he started off with the opposite view.

There's a great piece on Web Writing Info about the harm crappy content does to a business--even if it's just a keyword article. It's never made sense to me why businesses that would never dream of sending a marketing brochure or sales letter out less-than-perfect are completely happy to throw garbage content at the search engines. If anything, many more people will see those online articles than will ever see your sales brochure. Courtney's piece should be required reading for anyone starting an article marketing campaign.

Writer’s Resource Center has a lively discussion going on about the ProCopywriter debacle. Definitely worth a read. And while you're at it, check out ProCopywriters to see if they're using the content on your blog.

The winners will be decided in December. Best of luck to all my fellow bloggers!

How Often Do You Post?

It astounds me sometimes to see people posting to their blogs every day in addition to running their writing businesses.

I’ve been looking around at other writers’ blogging habits to figure out what the norm is. There are plenty of people who post quality content every day; some blogs I read regularly, like The Article Writer Blog, Writing Thoughts, and ChrisBlogging, have all managed to find ways to deliver on-topic content on a more-or-less daily basis.

Not every writer does, however. Some manage to get around the “thou shalt post every day” creed in creative ways, like the guest posts over at InkThinker. Others simply post on a regular non-daily schedule. Bob Bly posts once a week on his blog, and for goodness’ sake—if it’s good enough for Bob Bly, it’s good enough for me.

I feel Matt Ambrose at the Copywriter's Crucible said it best, however: when it comes to blog posts or articles, quality matters. If you really want to impress your prospects with your knowledge and expertise, your blog posts need to be in-depth, well-written and well-researched: not just parrotings of the latest news and developments. I worry that, at least for me, posting too often could mean a degeneration in content. Matt posts once a week, and he always comes up with something worth reading.

I think some writers can deliver great posts on a daily basis, but for those who can’t, it’s better to stick with a less-frequent schedule—as long as it’s regular. For me, I think I’ll stick with two or three times a week. I’d love to hear from other bloggers on how they decided on their schedules, how their traffic is affected, and how they manage to stay consistent.