How to Set Up a New Blog, Part III

Let’s Talk About Content

Now that my new blog has been setup themewise, and some work has been put towards both the design, and actually starting to get word out, it’s time to tell you about the different types of content I – and other authors – will be presenting on the blog.

Content is important. Before ever going out to find some readers, I wanted to provide a professional looking blog to the outside world. And one which a reader might stumble upon, and realise there’s more to read there, perhaps even to subscribe up to. Here, I’ll introduce most of the main types of content on blogs, and how these might be useful when building the base for my own new blog.

Blog Static Content (Pages)

The Chicken Diaries, as a blog, does not have that many static pages to it. These may be added to over time, so I will list some which I think are a possibility, and why, and those which I’ve started off with.

Home

For a blog, the home page is normally the front page of the blog, the one with the recent blog posts on it. Some have a splash page, and some blogs – like mine – have an option to have different advertising or media boxes on the home page from internal pages. Either way, although I had an option to not include the Home option in navigation, I think it’s important to give readers the quick option to get back to that home page, no matter how deep in content they are. Therefore, my home page is the first on the main navigation route, and is set as the index page for when people first find The Chicken Diaries.

Home pages are the initial display of your blog. Normally you would feature the latest or feature posts on this page, and provide the main navigation. I’ve tried not to clutter my sidebar too much with extraneous information, however. The home page on The Chicken Diaries features two feature posts – the most recent posts have a full content column image and blurb, and then smaller recent content with thumbnail images below that. How many feature items or posts populate the page is an interesting call, realising that there’s a good chance that most people won’t scroll down to see the other content. That’s where the sidebar ‘Recent Posts’ list comes in handy, particularly if it’s at the top of the page, and if you’ve made use of a good informational title on the post also.

About

Most blogs profit from presenting a little personal information about why the blog exists, or about the author(s) at least. My blog template – Thesis – doesn’t allow sub-navigation to other pages from the navigation menu, otherwise I would use the About static page and navigation header to lead the reader through to additional information such as the Authors profile pages, a site-map etc.

Instead, I’ve separated out the Authors page (see below), and used About to hold a welcome introductory page to the blog, and its aims with links to further deeper pages which discuss Second Life itself. From here, a Site-Map created with a free plugin, will eventually be available as an option.

Other About options some blogs have around this area, or as separate static pages – a contact page or form, or at least an email. I have just recently added a Contact Form to the blog, and this sits under the About page as a general contact, whereas author emails are dealt with individually.

Authors and Contact

Profiles

Because I will eventually have multiple authors for the blog, I have created a separate section to profile these authors. At the moment there are only two authors – myself and my Aunty in Second Life. So the profiles for both avatars are kept on the same page. However, as the numbers on authors increases, each will be given a separate page, with a quick summary from the main Authors page.

The profiles on The Chicken Diaries include some interesting details to develop the characters involved. The blog being a character-led blog, and with Second Life as a topic, I have carte-blanch to make up all sorts of things for the avatars/characters (or the authors can do so themselves). As the authors also are fashion reporters, their profile pages lead to other more hidden pages detailing – with some nudity – the credits to their whole avatar look. Skins, shapes and hair details are always sought after with Second Life avatars.

You may have a similar credit need if wanting to credit software, or your host system or affiliates for the blog. A Credits Page (or Supporters, Sponsors or Recommended Page) could well become a completely separate static page for you in the future.

Many bloggers use the about or profile page to tell the world a little about themselves, or their services. Be aware of giving too much information away on the web, however. Several previous websites of mine included personal photographs of my family members (I was a scrapbooker), and I was incredibly aware that I had a little daughter who’s safety was paramount. If I’d even put a rough location of my own whereabouts onto my profile page, then I was opening up some security problems with people finding me, or my daughter.

With such things as Who Is now, and information on your address becoming public record – and expected if you are sending mail shots out using U.S. based auto-responders or email newsletter services, please be aware of making your address or other personal information available. Consider using a relative’s address, or creating a proper business address for your blog if this is a possible future option.

Keep your personal profile information professional. Use it as a resume to your work, if possible, but keep an eye on the data you are making available. Many bloggers also link through to where-else on the web they can be found, including various social networking sites – as I do here on Juiced on Writing. The Chicken Diaries authors do have various weblinks out to Twitter or Plurk, but the authors have to be aware of how much information is available for them scattered across the web, and how, indeed, this may affect the blog itself, and their reputations.

Contacts

The Authors profiles also include contact details – in this case, email addresses using the mailto tag. These will remain on the main authors page for quick access. Because contact is important, I have also included these email addresses in a small text box on the sidebar. Other options, if dealing with only one contact point, is to put your email address in the main footer file for the site, so that it is available on every single page for a reader.

There are pros and cons on using the mailto tag on email addresses – the immediate benefit is that on clicking the link, the reader’s email program will normally open, ready for them to quickly send a mail. A con which many bloggers seem worried about is that robot programs out there drill the web for such open email addresses, and you end up with getting lots of auto-spam at this address.

In my own experience, having a good spam control through your ISP or email provider cuts out a great lot of these, and the benefits of having a one-click email contact for your readers outweighs the annoyances. But if you are worried about this, I would advice either -

• setting up a free email address for your contact address, and changing it regularly (remember to change the code on your contact blurbs on the blog also!),
• using an alternative contact means (such as a contact form which sends you the form messages) on your blog
• putting your email address onto your blog pages in the form of soandso at emailme.com, where the @ sign has been changed to ‘at’. This negates auto-robots finding the address, when looking for that @ sign, however also means the reader has to input it all manually into his own email system, with the risk he won’t bother.

In the Chicken Diarie’s case, because multiple authors are involved, each is contactable via an email tag (provided against their profiles and on the sidebar) but for overall site contacts, I have included a very simple contact form under the About page.

Archives / Best Ofs

In the future, The Chicken Diaries will have an Archives or Best Of Static Page. At the moment, because I am busy adding content, and remain with some categories unused, simply clicking on the categories sidebar list will bring up ample posts to read. However, as more and more content is added, there will evolve a series of content which are favourites for readers, searched for the most, and remain as drawcards to the blogs well after being first published. Statistics such as those provided by Google Analytics will provide me with enough data to work out the most popular posts. There are also some good Wordpress plugins for inserting which will list the Top 5 Most Popular posts in the sidebar.

For the sake of the readers, and as an internal resume of the excellent (touch-wood) content found within the blog, the most popular or interesting posts will be listed manually on a set of static pages available under a “Archives” or “Best Of” label, from the main navigation menu. These can simply be a list with a small description and link to the actual blog post on a static page.

Static Pages as Authenticity

Although the above pages may look different to you, they share something in common to the reader. Your content on the blog, and particularly these pages, should have been developed to provide a look into yourself as the blog author (or authors). Blog readers needs to be able to get to know their authors. Providing this in About Pages, and even lists of Best Ofs, is the best way to go about this.

Why is letting your readers know about the blog, and about yourself so important? Because in getting to know these little details, your blog, and therefore the “voice” of the blog, gains a level of authenticity. And that maps over to what you have to say on the blog – your posts. Whether they agree with what you’ve said or not, developing a good set of introductory static pages provides an environment where your posts at least will have some authority about them.

Other Static Pages

With the Chicken Diaries, I will try to maintain a minimum of static pages, to keep the blog looking clean and structured. But there are some other possibles for the future -

• Advertise With Us – many blogs offer advertising space, whether in headers, banners, or sidebar spaces. There are some Second Life blogs which do this, and a minor few of these are absolutely peppered with sponsor blocks of twenty or more flashing blocks down their sidebar, making the experience of reading them interesting, to say the least. There is advertising here on Juiced on Writing, but I remain unsure if I’ve got the right mix or too much on it, as such. (Over time, I am analysing which advertising works for me, and which is expendable). I think Advertising is a difficult thing to judge for a blog, but it may be worth offering a few – and very few – spots for advertising with affiliates at some time into The Chicken Diarie’s lifetime, and then watch the figures on the uptake for those.What is important to me as a blog owner and author is that I uphold principles on any advertising I present to you – I only advertise products which I’ve tried and liked, and which I have reviewed through the blog itself. Simply sticking up a sideblock without knowledge of the features and benefits to the blog readers doesn’t “do it” for me. And most good bloggers know that the best way to sell a product is not via banners etc on the blog, but by actually reviewing the product in your content, and referring back to that review or updating it over time.
• Downloads, Offers, Freebies etc – many blogs offer downloads of some sort. This one does, offering free ebook downloads on the subject. The Chicken Diaries probably won’t do this, however would welcome being able to provide some types of offers to its reader-base.
• Recommended / Shopping etc – similarly, many blogs offer affiliated products. This one does, in amazon books and cafe press products. The Chicken Diaries probably won’t do this, because I also want to be able to blog about anything and everything, so recommending one product available in-world, over another is not an option. I may well advertise such products – see above – and review products. But I won’t be setting up a recommendation or shopping section.
• Resources or Links – this is a popular blogging page, the links one. I once owned a blog which got thousands of hits just because of the links I had gathered. However, gathering and maintaining links is an extremely high maintenance and often thankless job. And in the world of Second Life, even higher. Inside that virtual world, businesses and their links to their store-fronts (SLurls) come and go on a daily basis. And the inworld businesses move all the time. Moving stores from one region to another is a matter of taking the whole store into your inventory, and teleporting elsewhere. It might take a lot of clicks and some time, but moving stores or shutting them down is a matter of a few days at most, not months of local council permits, planning, building, advertising and address changes. SLurls therefore, vanish as quickly as you’ve had time to log them. And there are hundreds of thousands of them. So creating such a links directory is nigh on impossible, and not something I’m prepared to do. There is a minor linkroll in the sidebar, slanted towards general Second Life and ultra-niche specific (chicken) areas within the world, and if this gets too un-manageable, then I may stick those links onto a page, as a complement to the niche-side of the blog (chickens, to be matter of fact). But that is the limit to providing links.
• How Tos, Introductions, Glossaries– I’ll deal with How-Tos as posts below. But you may have noticed that with The Chicken Diaries, I used my About page to link to deeper static pages, which quickly discuss Second Life. For many blog topics, particularly on niches like Second Life, or hobbies for that matter, there is the big chance that your blog will be stumbled on because of the topic, but that your new readers may not have much knowledge of that topic. Writing How-To do something posts is a good idea, but so is an introduction to the theme in general, or a glossary if you are going to use acronyms and words which mean little elsewhere in the world. In my case, I wrote a quick introduction to Second Life itself, then thought about glossaries. Second Life has a huge virtual dictionary of words and acronyms, and many of these appear by rote within posts on the blog. However, this feature of providing a glossary remains in construction at The Chicken Diaries – I have had problems with glossary plugins, with bugs in one which could have been used to provide a set of static pages of glossary items to refer to, and another in-use which provides pop-up definitions through posts on various words, but does this for far too many accidental portions of words. Despite this, consider if an introduction to your blog topic is in order, and whether providing a glossary or some definitions will help your newbie readers out.

Dynamic Content – The Pillar Posts

Finally, we move onto the bigger content types – your actual blog posts. Let’s pull these apart and see what types are identifiable and popular out there.You’ll see these being used everywhere, and most are quite natural to write.

How to Title Your Posts

Firstly, though, let’s not forget about titling your posts with keywords. Sometimes, in my opinion, this is rather overdone by some bloggers hoping to hit the search engines. You’ll be aware of that going on too – how many times have you seen posts like – : “Top Ten Tips for Cleaning Your Toenails” or “How To Make Money Without Even Trying”

As annoying as I find those titles, they do point out a couple of the top types of pillar content for you.

What is Pillar Content?

Pillar Content is explained pretty well in the freely downloadable “Blog Profits Blueprint” by Yaro Starak. So go get it, if you don’t have that already. But basically pillar content is just a coined phrase for any content that your readers see value in, on your blog. So, hopefully, the vast majority of your content on the blog is going to be pillar content.

Pillar content is content that will bring new readers to your blog, will have other blogs backlinking to yours, and will bring in new readers at much later dates if search engine listed. Not all of your content can be pillar content, but you should try for a good lot of it.

Most of the types of content out there, for blog posts, are easily recognisable, so let’s list these, as I can or will use them on my own new blog. Now, some of these are possibly not applicable to how I want The Chicken Diaries to go, but you can see all of them in use in blogs on the Second Life topic I’ve chosen, just as you can find them scattered on every other blog out there.

What I would hasten to add is that I implore you not to over-use any of these as a strategy to find readers. Those blogs which simply provide lists all the time get boring to read very quickly. The point of a blog is to publish your voice. People want to read it (hopefully) and to provide this “voice”, you need to use a multitude of blog post types which are closely associated with the subject you want to blog about. Lists, or reviews are not always appropriate.

List Article

We see these a lot. Search engines love them. Normally they’re entitled something search-worthy like “Top Ten…” or “Twenty Ways to ….” or “Top 100 Hotels to take your Dog to” for instance.

Listing is a great way to get a lot of content across. I like to use lists when I have a lot of URLs to give out, for instance. Other bloggers love lists so much that they will gladly list the items of their latest breakfast for you. Lists are also found as a technique used to force the creation of content virally – in blog memes. You see these all the time, also – you get tagged by some blog friend who has voted for you to provide a blog post on “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Me” or similar. Then you have to tag five other bloggers. Although these are a good way of providing a short fun post, think about the benefits to your reader again.

One of the better recognised ways to use the list format is as a weekly or monthly archival or best-of post. Very popular blogs like LifeHacker have been known to do this. Because they have so many posts during the week, the most popular or most interesting are listed out in a linked list as a Best Of feature at the end of each week.

The Chicken Diaries will be using list posts from time to time. If enough posts are posted, a weekly Best Of the Week list may be generated, and simple lists to SLurls inworld may also become a feature, provided the reader wants them.

How To Article / Technical Blueprint

The how-to explanatory article, particularly enhanced technically with screenshots, images, graphs etc,  and step by steps, is a huge hit with search engines, particularly if you get the How To….do something…in Topic Name with appropriate key words into the title. Hence the title of this series, lol.

Many people, if not searching for the general term, may stick the words – “How To” into their searches. So, a post called “How To Raise Chickens in Second Life”, may get me a reader, but probably not.

How To articles are some of the most popular on blogs, however, and you will often see these featured in the Best of Lists or static archival pages. People go back to them, if written well.

Second Life does feature a number of blogs which provide How Tos. Second Life has a huge learning curve in how to become a user within it, how to design for it, even how to learn to communicate with people. However, as I am not a designer inside of Second Life, and still a relative newbie, I don’t consider it appropriate or necessary for me to be re-doing how-tos on all of that, when there are much better versions of those instructions found elsewhere.

I may well point readers to those How Tos, from time to time. And The Chicken Diaries will occasionally provide it’s own How Tos, on particular niches. One of these is in chicken raising techniques, and I’ve recently put up a step by step on using some new magazine technology I was privy to over the last weekend.

Definition Article

In essence, defining one of the terms or nuances of your niche topic will get you newbie readers. And if you’re working in a less-competitive blog niche, then using definition articles is a very good way to go.

The Chicken Diaries won’t be using definition articles, unless we discover a brand new concept in Second Life. Juiced on Writing has a few definition articles around – those, too, were on areas of writing which were new to the industry, or where terms were being coined that I was, myself, trying to understand.

Terms and acronyms in Second Life are a problem, however. In an effort to sort that out for any new readers, I looked into glossary functions, but with limited success. The Chicken Diaries will have a glossary of some sort to allow for this, with further development.

Resource Report

Resource reports – free reports, PDFs, articles readers can download. You will see quite a few resources here on Juiced on Writing.

One idea for the creation of resource reports is to do a series of blog articles, (like this one) and wind these up into one larger resource report for download. In fact, where you have a lot of similar topic-ed posts, putting them into a series is a very good idea, breaking up too long a posts, and moving and developing your posts through sub-ideas and associated topics.

With some post topics, you can also go back at a later date, to develop an associated idea, thus producing a series over time. These lead well to an archive post or even a resource report.

Some popular blogs offer their Best of…The Blog articles as a PDF download annually.

I have not considered resource reports for the Chicken Diaries as yet. I’m not sure if these are likely as a review blog. Other Second Life blogs, owned by designers, do offer PDFs or links to online magazines or catalogs of their goods. I presume that over time, there may well be A Best of The Chicken Diaries option to provide, but at the moment I won’t dwell on this article type too closely.

Reviews

Reviews of products, websites, anything – this is one of the most popular blog post types. And in Second Life, too. The vast majority of blogs on Second Life are review blogs, particularly the Fashion blogs, of course, but also many others.

However, some second life blogs doing reviews, have some slanted attributes. Some fashion bloggers are actually sent the products for free to review, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, unless – in my opionion only – the blog refuses to review anything unless it is sent the items freely in the first place.  This is setting up conditions which I am unwilling to do, especially giving up an independence in reviews. With literally thousands of designers in Second World, it becomes interesting to see the same few being featured on several blogs all roughly around the same time also.

Other Second Life blogs, based on reviewers opinions, have centred themselves around providing criticisms over avatar looks, or fashion sense. And you very rarely find reviews which don’t end up loving everything they’ve reviewed, or on the contrary side, picking something to pieces to sensationalise the review. However, the majority of Second Life review blogs do a good job of providing succinct dialogue and the important close-up shots of the products under review. What many don’t do well is provide the links to actually go out and buy the products which cuts off the reader from actually making that purchase if they like the designs shown.

Reviews are a difficult thing to do well, both with honesty and whilst also dealing with any negatives you, as the reviewer, may see, particularly with free products sent to you. On Juiced on Writing, I have, as a majority principle, provided reviews of products which were not sent to me for review. I’ve gone out and become interested in them, then decided to provide a write-up on them, after paying for the product. And I’ve been careful to give both the positives and possible negatives towards the product, as far as my usage of it went.But reveiws, in essence are one person’s opinion, and the author has to be prepared to hold firm on that when questioned by some product owners who may not like how one sentence was termed, or when correcting mistakes. It takes a lot to manage a good review.

The Chicken Diaries is, and will, do reviews. A policy towards designers sending TCD authors stuff for review has not yet been needed. Reviews at this point, are on products the authors have purchased or received on hunts in-world, so like many fashion-blogs out there, the reviews remain more a fan-post than anything.

The Opinion Article

Ah, the main staple of many of the other blogs, the great opinion article. Many professional bloggers know the value of providing a well-thought out opinion article on subjects such as politics etc. Those types of articles provide many more comments, and therefore backlinks, hopefully other blogs talk about, or argue their point, and the whole thing engineers more backlinks and therefore popularity to the blog.

Second Life runs some pretty dramatic opinions. Many bloggers and commenters are wound up about many of the political issues, and the Second Life ‘drama’s’ have often moved off blog posts and onto other social networks such as Plurk and the SL forums. Bloggers have been called names, written about in negative terms elsewhere, and some appear to actually enjoy those types of massive and dramatic arguments, seeking them out or even blogging to cause them, or commenting on other blogs to keep the momentum of the drama up.

The Chicken Diaries has a general policy not to enter into those debates, to protect its authors from the open negativity found elsewhere. However, blogs by their nature, are an author’s opinion, so comments and debates about something said on the blog are welcomed. And editorials on such dramatic topics will, from time to time, be posted up on The Chicken Diaries, but the comments and backlinks will be monitored and administrated if it becomes apparent that negative comments are being used as a means to get backlinks back to other blogs.

Policies about slanderous comments, name-calling, etc found on The Chicken Diaries will be enforced if need-be. The main onus on The Chicken Diaries is to have fun, and to provide an environment for all the authors to allow them to feel happy enough to blog about anything they wish to, and to feel supported in that. However, that doesn’t mean that if one author expresses an opinion taken wrongly or rightly as incorrect elsewhere, that the other authors will suddenly go in all guns-blazing to support their author, thus causing more commentary out there. Political blogging games will not be entered into, where risking the reputation of the blog.

In fact, I don’t read all that business out there, and if I do, I make sure I read it all, to get hold of the full facts, before forming my own opinions. But you can survive in Second Life without ever being aware of the vast majority of drama out there, and so can The Chicken Diaries.

There You Have It

The last in this series on setting up a new blog. I hope you got something from it, and would welcome you over to The Chicken Diaries to see how my own new blog is getting on.

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