Adam Sund Photo Blog Photography is the new black.

Blogging about blogging – Meta Blogging

A few weeks ago I participated in a blogging course by Danish blogger and journalist Anne-Grete Belmadani.

I’ve decided to write this blog post on, well yeah, blogging, so I guess I’m kinda meta blogging this very moment. The post is going to be quite extensive, where I’ll dive into HOW TO BLOG, how to create a blog, how to make your blog more visited, so if you’re into blogging – have your own blog or just gets turned on by whatever I write, hopefully this is gonna be useful.

The course, which ran over two evenings of 2 ½ hours duration can be grouped into three broad themes;

1: How to get started
- To create a blog
- To select the content, name, theme
- To design the blog

2: General information about the "good blog"

1: SEO - Search engine optimization
- Increase traffic through a few easy steps
- Learn to use keywords
- Know your readers – website optimizing

Course leader Anne-Grete,  had a rather fundamental basis approach to the course  that first evening.

She walked us through creating our own blog - since I already had my own blog at that time, It didn't seem that relevant to me.

It was actually because of the person next to me at the course that I got new knowledge about SEO (Search Engine optimization), as in my case it is most relevant at this time, since I already made my experience with the creation, design, choice of content, etc.

At the end of the second course Anne-Grete posed some relevant questions that can be used in a reflection process when the plan for one's blog should be tightened up.
Despite the fact that around 70% of the course was wasted on me, I was somehow inspired to search for useful information on my own, and in the text below should be a combination of acquired knowledge from the course and what I myself subsequently read and tried.

1: How to get started

If you already have a blog and is fairly satisfied with the design, feel free to skip this section.

There are more and more opportunities to create your own blog online, and as more are using this medium, it becomes much easier to use.
A  woman from the course asked “if the regular website is going to be replaced by blogs”.

With the blogging services  provided today, you can pretty much do with a blog as you can with a regular website, only much easier. So unless you have very specific needs for a website (flash programming as an example), a will the blog be sufficient.

Before I get all completely confused, I’ll hurry up and differentiate between a blog and a blogging tool.
The latter is such as WordPress, Tumblr, blogspot and other websites / programs that offer a platform where you can have your blog.
I use WordPress, which is a program you’ll have to place somewhere on your  own website's server - in my case http://adamsundphoto.com.

When it is placed on the server, you can access it via a specific URL and access the admin page where you can edit everything on the blog.

This stands as the clearest difference between WordPress and the other blog services, with Blogspot as one of the most popular. Here you will not need your own domain, instead you visit blogger.com and creates your own blog,  called yourBlogName.blogspot.com.
Blogspot and WordPress are quite similar in structure and options, so I will talk about  WordPress since I have the most experience with this.
Hopefully needless to say, this site is created using such a blogging service.

Designs can be freely downloaded and installed

plug-ins like "tweet this", random photos, tag cloud is all free plug-ins you can search, download and install free with a few clicks.
So, if you’re somewhat  drawn to this whole blogging, swing by blogger.com and try to play around with it a bit – it’s scary how addictive this gets.

2: General information about the "good blog"

Where section 3 is about how to practically make the blog easier to find,  this section is all about making the blog worth reading in the first place.
A good blog is an interesting blog - a place where the reader can get something, whether it is new knowledge, useful information, relevant links, interesting pictures or the ability to win something, - It's all about GIVING the reader something.

Think about it: What blogs and websites do you spend time on?
The websites I have bookmarked are:
- News - they give me information on current news situations.
- Blogs about photography and Photoshop - they give me relevant information on new products, guides to lighting, tutorials for image editing etc.
- Web  Comics - they give me a good laugh.

Although the content differs, they all give me something useful that has some sort of value to me, whether it’s unique or something  presented in a neat and goodlooking way.

Your blog should do the same.  Either present your reader with something unique ( a guide YOU made) or something available other places, only wrapped up and served much neater.

If it’s somehow contrary to the plans you have for your blog, try to see if it can be combined.

For instance, I use my blog to provide my readers with useful information on various matters, but also to tell then what’s going on in my life. I try to keep it balanced so that readers don’t get bored with my jabbing about myself and canceled flights to New York (Damn you Ash cloud).

Use images
- Blog entries with pictures and read more often than those without – this is a fact.

Write catchy headlines
- Be provocative rather than boring and informative (the news media do it, so why shouldn’t we?)

Blog often
- Make it a habit to blog, write it into the calendar, and teach your readers when they can expect a blog entry from you. When reading your blog because a part of people’s daily routine, you’re on the right track.

3. SEO - Search engine optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a science itself, and I will only scratch the surface here.

In short terms, this is about making search engines like Google find your blog and how to make your blog seem relevant to the search engines, thus making it appear higher in the search results.

As a blogger, there are luckily some very practical things you can do to improve your chances in this blogging jungle we soon find ourselves in.

The practical tips, however, are only relevant if and only if the content on the blog is in place. It is no use making bad content easy to find, because people are not going to read even if it does come up first on Google.

There are a number of places where you can register your blog, thereby making it more accessible in search engines, and I recommend  you visit the following pages:

Dmoz.org
Technorati.com
Google.com/addurl

These sites ask you to register your blog with a series of keywords.
These words, keywords, are alpha omega when it comes to SEO.

For my part, photography, Photoshop and tutorials are the keywords I most often use and as soon as Google catches a recurring pattern in a website's use of keywords, then it begins to understand what you are and how you should be categorized.

It increases your chances of getting the right traffic directed toward you.
Make sure keywords are both in the title, tags and main text, since Google considers these areas relevant (in that order).
Do you have pictures in the blog entry, write information about the picture in picture link (most blog services allows you to do this).

Google offers two very useful tools to be used in conjunction with your blog:

Google analytics allows you to get information about your visitors at a relatively detailed level.

Also see which keywords people use on Google to find  your blog AND see who links to you who link to you.
Google Alert - this tool can be configured to send you an email every time people mention your blog / name / product / copy your text.

This can prove to be a useful tool if you need knowledge about your web presence.
Google website optimizer gives you the opportunity to see which pages the readers spend time on and the pages that get people to leave the site.

This is taken directly from the course with Anne-Grete Belmadani,  so like she said, I would encourage you to ask yourself these questions and answer them to yourself:

• What is my blog about?

• What do I want give my readers?

• How will I give my readers this?

• Why do I want to blog?

• How can my blog back up my company's goals?

• How often will I blog?

If you feel like digging depper into blogging, there is plenty of useful information out in the blogosphere – here is a good place to start http://www.seobook.com/bloggers.

If you have tips on how to blog or you feel like I’ve missed something, please leave a comment.