Blogging has become a popular way to share information, opinions, and ideas with readers from all over the world. But creating blog posts on a regular basis can be exhausting and difficult. One newer approach to blogging is ‘guest blogging.’ The idea behind guest blogging is to allow others who do not regularly contribute to your blog, but may be considered experts in their chosen field, to write a post that will appear on your blog. You get great content for your blog, the expert gets some exposure by posting in a place they normally would not.
There are several advantages to guest blogging. The first is simply the exposure factor. For the most part, you’ll be asking experts to guest blog, and those experts will have recognizable names and possibly even a following of their own. Not only will you have your regular readers, but you’ll be able to attract readers who would perhaps not read your blog but are attracted by the expert name. In the case of monetized blogs, more readers usually equals more money.
A quality blog needs quality content, and guest bloggers can give you that. An expert in a given field can create something readable, friendly, and unique. And your blog will take on an air of authority if you involve more than one guest blogger. Search out experts in your field and have them contribute quality content. It will increase your traffic and your blog’s visibility.
The best way of attracting traffic is through quality backlinks, and having a guest blogger post something informative and fun is a great way to generate some backlinks. If the guest blogger has a reputation and is searched regularly, you’ll soon find that other sites, some with excellent page rank (PR) are linking back to the post, and so to your blog. This will help to increase your own PR, though this happens slowly.
Having quest bloggers with recognizable and respected names will help your blog get a reputation for quality. It will also brand blog as a destination, a place for the reader to find what they’re looking for when they’re looking for it. Never underestimate the power of branding. Take the time to select guest bloggers who will truly enhance the reputation of your blog.
Instead of having a guest blogger post on your blog, or perhaps in addition to it, you might choose to be a guest blogger yourself. This will allow you to gain exposure by getting your name out there. You can engage with readers you may not have otherwise reached, and you can simply have fun doing it. Of course, your motivation for guest blogging might be to sell a product. In this case, you’d usually place a link back to the product or service you’re promoting. Affiliate marketing through guest blogging has become popular in recent years and is an effective way to increase your own sales.
As a guest blogger, you’ll probably have to supply a post that is thoughtful and well written. This gives you the opportunity to stretch your wings as a writer, gaining a better understanding of blogging techniques, keywords, and search engine optimization (SEO). You will also develop your own ‘voice,’ if you haven’t already. This will attract additional readers, both to your guest posts and your own blog.
Guest blogging is a fun and effective way to get your name, promote your own products and services, and increase the PR of your own blog. When hiring a guest blogger, look for someone who has a thorough understanding of their area of expertise, understands your needs, and is excited about the idea. Everything else will follow in time.
There are many great things about blogging. It allows you to interact with the online community and you can share your thoughts and feelings about many issues. However, not everything about blogging is fun. In fact, most bloggers will tell you that there is one particular thing about blogging that they would rather not have to deal with – blog comment spam.
Blog comment spam is insidious and annoying. These are comments left on your blog that are only designed to lead your readers to an outside website. Usually these websites are commercial in nature, but sometimes they are dangerous, leading your readers to download viruses that could destroy a computer. Not only are these a problem for your readers, but they make you look unprofessional. And while something they are easy to spot, some of these comments will be more difficult to ferret out.
The first thing you should do to keep your blog free of spam is to enable comment moderation. Most blogging platforms allow you to keep comments from posting until you have had a chance to review and approve of them. This is definitely a feature you should be using. In addition, if your blogging platform has an automatic filter to help identify spam, you should use this as well.
It is sometimes tempting to turn off comment moderation if there’s a conversation going on between your readers and you have to leave the computer for an extended period of time. Don’t do it. Disabling comment moderation only allows spam to fill up your comment boxes. If you do have to go away and cannot moderate your comments at all, turn all comments off until you return. It will save you a great deal of hassle in the long run.
Some blog platforms offer a ‘blacklist’ option. You can ban certain words without ever having to moderate those comments. While this is a great option for some words, there are other words that you might want to add but shouldn’t. For example, adding the word ‘financial’ to your blacklist will mean that any comment, even a legitimate comment, will be completely removed. Instead, choose comment verification, which forces users to prove that they are a real person, not some robot posting automatic comments.
Now that you’ve started moderating the comments your blog receives, you’ll have to decide if the comments you are getting are legitimate. As a general rule, legitimate comments will be relevant to your original post. Spam comments are often unrelated and include a link to an external, usually unrelated, website. These should be deleted immediately. Legitimate comments can sometimes have a link embedded, but this link will always be relevant.
Check the handles of readers posting comments. The handle might have a link embedded, but a legitimate link will always lead to either the commenter’s blog or a home page. They will not lead to commercial websites or anything selling Viagra or offering to check your computer for viruses. These are spam. You should also be wary of allowing anonymous comment. Most spam will be posted by the dreaded anonymous user.
Some spam comments are more difficult to recognize. However, if you see a comment with horribly bad grammar or a post that is so generic that it could apply to almost any blog post on the Internet, then the comment is probably spam. For example, “Great post … visit my blog” doesn’t usually lend anything to your blog at all.
If it looks like spam, it’s probably spam, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry. If you think it’s spam, delete it anyway. At worst, the commenter will have to repost it later, and then you’ll be closer to knowing for certain that it isn’t spam. Err on the side of caution and your blog will have a clean look that is free of spam.
Blogging has become something of a phenomenon in recent years. It seems that everyone is starting a blog, and for many different reasons. Some people are blogging to have fun and connect with other people of similar interests. Others decide to start a blog to promote a particular business. There are also those who wish to make money from blogging. All of these goals can be met thought starting your own blog, perhaps more than one.
However, starting a blog almost invites an invasion of your personal life. You are broadcasting yourself, or at least a part of yourself, to the entire online community. Anyone can find and read your blog, and this can lead to some problems when it comes to protecting your personal life and identity. You might even find yourself the victim of cyber-bullying or Internet stalkers.
Even bloggers who use their blogs as a personal journal expect some degree of anonymity. No one wants their telephone published so that scammers and telemarketers can find it. Nor does anyone want to have their address broadcast for all to see. And certainly no one out there wants to have their identity stolen, leading to possibly years of hassle.
But the Internet, and some of the people using it, has little respect for these personal boundaries. The Web gives people the ability to invade the personal lives of almost anyone connected to the Internet, and bloggers are especially vulnerable to this since bloggers tend to reveal more personal information than is wise. While the invasion of your personal life is not necessarily a problem that can be eliminated, it is something that can be guarded against to a certain degree.
The ways in which the Internet can help others invade your privacy are numerous. If your e-mail address is published, it is possible that you will receive hundreds of pieces of spam a day in your Inbox. This could eventually force you to secure a new e-mail, abandoning the old as unsecure. While this is annoying, it is more a nuisance than anything.
Other information is not nearly so harmless. With a name, address, phone number, and some other minor pieces of information, someone could steal your identity. You might find yourself on the hook for credit cards you did not obtain or use. You might be subjected to harassing telephone calls, threatening letters, or perhaps even an unwelcome visitor.
Avoiding these problems means forethought and planning. Before you hit ‘post’ on your blog, consider what you’re posting and remember that the Internet is interconnected. Check to see if you’ve linked your blog to your Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking sites. Then check to see if you have information on these social networking sites that you’d rather your readers not have access to. If there is too much information on your profiles (such as a cell phone number), unlink the social networking sites from your blog as a precaution. Your readers don’t need that much information.
A ‘Contact Me’ page is a wonderful addition to any blog. However, it is also a great way for people to start spamming you. Consider setting up a new, separate e-mail address to associate with your blogs. That way, your readers can contact you through e-mail but you are not exposing your own personal e-mail to anyone who might want to constantly spam you.
Examine your ‘Contact Me’ page thoroughly. There is no reason to post information here that could be used to track you down. Avoid any mention of your home address or phone number, and certainly remove your social security number. There have been hundreds of people who have mistakenly added their social security number only to have their identities stolen later. It might be a good idea to identify yourself only by your first name, and if you have to refer to your location, be generic. It’s okay to identify yourself as ‘Sarah from Ohio’ if it protects your privacy.
Be mindful of your content when blogging. Certain subjects are more controversial than others, and so attract people who might wish you invade your privacy. If you blog on politics, religion, stem cell research, gun control, or any other suitably controversial topic, make sure you have your privacy settings sufficiently high on whichever blog platform you choose. This should be done before you set up the blog itself to avoid have any information unintentionally exposed.
Be especially careful when using names. Many bloggers keep all their personal information hidden only to expose the names of their children, spouses, teachers, and coworkers. This is typically information hackers and stalkers look for. Information about your family and friends can be used to track you down (and your boss might be reading your blog). Create fake names for everyone in your life if you’re going to write about them in your blog.
If you are going to post information about other people (including photos), get their permission first. If they don’t want their names or pictures posted online, respect that. Protecting their privacy is just as important as protecting your own.
If you are really worried about who might read your blog, consider creating a blog that only those you invite may read. Most blogging platforms have optional privacy settings. These typically allow you to limit readership to those who are on your friend or contact list. You should also ensure that you protect the username and password of your account when you’re blogging. Your account has certain information that you wouldn’t want others to see, so make sure you have a secure password and change it often.
It is impossible to be completely protected as a blogger, but you can still be aware of what you post. Read everything before you hot ‘post’ and make sure there is no identifying information. There is very little room for error when it comes to protecting your privacy online. Once something exists in cyberspace, it is out there forever. So think long and hard before you put any piece of information online.
Blogging is a truly unique medium for sharing the written word. In the past, once something was written, that was it. There was virtually no communication with the writer, and what communication there was could take months and weeks to reach the readers. Blogging has changed all that. Now, an internet writer or blogger can post an article or other piece on a blog, a reader can comment, and the writer can immediately respond, if they so choose. Blogging allows readers and writers to interact on a level never really seen before.
However, with this interaction sometimes come problems. Blog comment boxes are a prime target for spam, abuse, and just plain bad manners. But you can take some steps to help ensure the integrity of blog comment boxes with a few simple tips, whether you’re commenting on someone else’s blog or responding to a comment left on your own blog.
Leaving Comments on Another Blog
As a general rule, don’t comment unless you have something to say. Constantly posting “Nice!” after each post you enjoy can get annoying, and you’ll probably have your posts deleted by the blog owner or moderator. You also shouldn’t post “Boring!” after a post.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t post. Just make sure you have something constructive to add. It’s even acceptable to disagree with the post, but do it in a respectful manner. Present your case and the reasons for disagreeing with the post and move one. Don’t insult anyone or anything, simply express your point of view. “With all due respect, John is an idiot,” is generally not considered an acceptable comment. If you can’t think of anything to add, then add nothing.
Don’t troll. Trolling is searching out places to place provocative comments designed to illicit a desired response, usually anger. If you’re going to disagree, do it politely. Just because everyone else seems to be trolling for places to irritate people doesn’t me you should do the same.
You’ll also want to avoid excessive self-promotion. For the most part, don’t post links back to your own blogs. If you have a blog that is relevant to the content your reading, then it might be an interesting addition to the comments section, but otherwise you’re simply drawing traffic away from the current blog, and that’s just not polite.
Of course, you should comment on blog posts you enjoyed, or even those you disagreed with. That’s what the comments box is there for. You get to decide what to say and how to say, but don’t be drawn into long arguments with other posters. Make your point and move on. You probably don’t need to comment three times on the same blog post.
Comments on Your Blog
Before you even think about how to respond to comments, consider adding a comment policy section to your own blog. Detail exactly what is and is not acceptable by posters. You could ban things such as swearing, defamatory language, racism, or any comments that attack any group of people. You’ll also want to enable comment moderation so that you can approve each comment before it’s posted. This will help eliminate spam and comment abuse.
Don’t delete a comment simply because it expressed an alternate point of view. If someone disagrees with you and does it well, it can be the starting point for a great debate on the issue. Engage with those who disagree with you, ask their opinion, and don’t be afraid to correct your post if you got your facts wrong. As long as a comment isn’t abusive or disrespectful, and it contributes something to the conversation, you should probably approve it.
However, there are some comments that you should delete. Among these are: “Boring,” “What?” “Cool,” and anything that really doesn’t add to the comment section. Anything posted by someone just trying to get attention should also be ignored. If you get a great many comments, you may have to exercise some discretion when it comes to approving comments. It will generally be the one-word posts that you’ll decide to delete.
Anything off-topic or excessively self-promotional should be deleted immediately. Someone who posts a link to their political blog on your dog training blog is only looking for traffic to their own site. However, if one of your readers posts a link to a sled dog training blog after a post that concerns winter activities for training dogs is adding a relevant and interesting link. That you should let stand.
Remember to engage with your readers. If someone posts a question, you should take the time to answer it, either in your own comment or by modifying the original post. Readers enjoy being able to contact the writer, so add a “Contact Me” page as well. While you probably can’t be online twenty-four hours a day, check your comments at least every two days for comments to deserve a reply. Comment boxes are what make blogs unique. They should be used frequently and appropriately. Comment frequently, do so with respect, and always respond to engaging comments left on your own blog. If you do these things, you are truly participating in an online community.
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