Category — Blogging Help

Of the 13 tips in the guide on How To: Write a Really Crappy Business Blog (found via John Lampard at disassociated.com) this was the one I see occur most frequently:

Never post anything. The easiest way to have a blog that’s crappy: Set up the blog, post once, and then never. post. again. This tip’s great because it involves no work on your part. It’s like you never created a blog at all. Which might have been better.

I think the rate of abandoned corporate blogs is higher than personal blogs. At least 75% against 50% is what I’ve seen while maintaining the list of 7000+ active Australian blogs here at blogs.com.au. Just as an example here are five 1 2 3 4 5 off the top of my head. I have a secondary list of non-active blogs that I maintain in the hope that they will one day have posts again but rarely does it provide any RSS activity.

It seems strange that businesses which usually pay significant amounts to maintain their image offline with expensive logo designs, costly advertisements and shiny double laminated matt business cards would let their blog stay online abandoned for the world to see a last blog post dated from over a year ago. It isn’t a good look to customers who would half be expecting to hear crickets or see tumbleweeds rolling by your blog. Neither is it fair to existing readers who would have been used to checking in to see what your company has had to say.

Either maintain a goal to write on your blog with a consistent but achievable posting schedule or close the blog down. If you are going to stop blogging and leave it online then ensure there is a farewell post encouraging customers with other ways to maintain contact with the business so people don’t assume you are no longer operating because you haven’t update your blog recently.

I’ve just noticed that a friend’s blog is running a very old version (2.1) of the popular self-hosted WordPress blogging software and his site has regrettably but understandably been hacked.

If you have a non-current version of WordPress installed the first thing you should do right now, regardless if you think your blog has been hacked, is to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and make sure your themes are clean of any malicious content/links.

If you don’t, your site will be at risk of being blocked by network and ISP filters because of offensive content as well as more importantly it will get your blog banned/dropped by search engines. Technorati and Google do not show any sympathy towards a site that is compromised.

While it is definitely a boring 15 minutes waiting for your FTP program to upload the files and some more time is lost testing as well as possibly tweaking plugins/themes to ensure they work with the new version it is much less stressful than having your your site hacked.

The latest stable release of WordPress is version 2.5.1 and can be downloaded for free at http://wordpress.org/download/

One of our fave photobloggers, Boudist, has recalled a quote on how it sometimes feels for new readers when they visit an existing blog…

Someone once described the frustration of blogs to me by saying “it’s like walking into a conversation half way through”. It’s a sentiment I sympathise with and I think an about page can help orient first time readers

That’s an excellent reason to put together a decent about page

As usual, the wisdom on all things blogging, Darren at ProBlogger, has some quality posts on the topic.

…here is a little reality check for the wannabe problogger inside of some of us.

No one will know or understand or believe what you do.

Found via Tumblr

I commented on a post at the Australian sports blog The Roar a week or so back and received this short email welcoming me to their blog:

From: The Roar To: Anthony
Date: Feb 5, 2008 7:51 AM
Subject: Welcome to The Roar

Hi Anthony,

Great to have your first comment on The Roar!

Please keep the comments coming - and feel free to submit your own article should you feel inspired.

We also encourage you to tell your friends and colleagues about The Roar. You can email the article that you commented on here - invite your mates into the debate:

http://www.theroar.com.au/2008/02/05/bennett-to-step-down/email/

Cheers,

The Roar

www.theroar.com.au

Subscribe to our free daily email:

http://www.theroar.com.au/subscribe-to-the-roar

I wanted share it here at The Local because I thought it was a wonderfully simple thing that any blogger can do to introduce yourself to your blog’s commenters and thank them for adding to the conversation. Well done The Roar!

LOL

Copyright pictures for sad children and found on Tumblr via Did You Ever Notice?

via 30+ different people on Tumblr.