7 Simple Steps to More Effective Business Blogging
INTRODUCTION
MyST Blogsite® was designed to help business people participate in
the conversational web with greater productivity than other business
bloggers. Accomplishing more by doing less is a key idea that runs
throughout the Blogsite platform and it is this productivity edge that
provides a competitive advantage. Many of the tips and tricks
presented in this eBook can be applied to any blog tools, but some of
the ideas presented require the advanced features found only in MyST
Blogsite®.
Maintaining a competitive blogging advantage requires a little
attention to make sure your blogsite isn’t absorbing too much of your
valuable time. It’s important to mention that you can never blog too
much – but you can blog so much that it affects your core business
activities and objectives in a negative way. Remember, you are not a
“blogger” – you are a business person that blogs.
#1
Blogging about your business or products and services is one of many
tasks that you do in your overall daily tasks. Successful business
people prioritize tasks according to importance. Blogging should be no
different – it should take a back seat from time-to-time.
Prioritize Your Blogging Time In Concert
With Other Important Business Objectives
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 3 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
#2
As with other business tasks, you are typically more productive if your
time for projects and tasks are scheduled in advance. This also allows
you to choose times that are most productive for thinking and writing.
Resist the urge to drift into your blog to write a quick post when you
are (or should be) doing a different task. In most cases, diving into a
new post just because it occurred to you at that moment, will result in
lower productivity output; even the smallest interruption can toss you
off the clear-writing rails.
If you have a blogging idea that flashes through your mind and you
must capture it, jot the idea on the back of a business card and pop it
into your day-timer. Or, if your computer is nearby, use your blogsite
to create a new post but only jot down the salient points of the idea.
Spend no time formatting, titling, or tagging your post. Select the
Embargo check box, and click the Save button. For those times when
you want to capture a blog post idea, keep a shortcut on the desktop
that points directly to the new item link in each of your blog channels.
The new item link is a direct link to the edit form for a new post and it
can be accessed directly through a shortcut or a browser favorite.
#3
Organizing your blogging workspace in advance will be a great time
saver. One way to create a focused writing experience is to leverage
the tabs feature in your web browser. Most browsers – specifically
Microsoft Internet Explorer® version 7 and the latest version of FireFox
– support tabbed windows. This allows you to open multiple web sites
and easily navigate and copy-paste from one to the other. It also
Designate Special Times for Blogging
Organize Your Workspace
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 4 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
allows you to save the open tabs to a single favorites folder that can
be opened with a single click later on.
The next time you sit down to write something for your blogsite, open
all of the sites that help you write in different tabs. This might include
a tab for Google, a tab for Google BlogSearch, a tab for WikiPedia, and
perhaps a few portals about your industry segment. And don’t forget a
tab for authoring your posts. If you link to your own posts frequently,
consider opening a second tab to your public blogsite domain so that
you can search for other posts related to the current writing topic.
Many of our highly productive users open a tab to their Blogsite
Intelligence Channels – more on this in Step #5.
Lastly, consider using the Google Toolbar to spell check your posts.
This is an ideal productivity tool that integrates with all Blogsite fields
and makes it possible to check the spelling for the entire post without
copying your content into a word processor.
#4
We all have a “golden hour”; a time when we typically think clearly
and can focus on writing without interruptions. Perhaps this is early on
a Sunday morning, or maybe it’s a quiet time early in the day before
your team arrives at the office and the phones begin to ring. When you
have highly focused time available – and hopefully it is scheduled time
– consider writing more than one post and using Blogsite’s Post to the
Future feature. This feature makes it possible to create a post that will
automatically go live at a specific date and time in the future. No
additional action is required to make the post go live, so you can “fire
and forget”.
If you leverage the full benefit of your golden hour, you will produce
more high quality content while also completing your blog tasks for an
entire week.
Post to the Future
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 5 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Review the Blogsite User Guide for details or log in to the MyST
Blogsite Online Support System (http://support.blogsite.com) and
search for “Post to the Future” for articles about this feature.
#5
Blogsite provides an excellent system for automatically gathering
intelligence about subjects that you blog about. Learn to use this
feature to create watch-lists of your competitors, your industry, and
sources of interesting news that can help you quickly zero in on a good
topic to blog about.
Intelligence channels are easy to master and they can be changed
frequently to gather content about topical and rapidly changing
situations.
Intelligence channels can also be scanned quickly to find something
that stands out or is eye-catching. Lastly, you can subscribe to
intelligence channels through an RSS news reader. This makes it
possible to be notified when new items are discovered by the
automated intelligence gathering process.
#6
The length of a good blog post does not determine its quality or value.
Being brief is difficult – we all have an urge to explain things in
greater, not less detail. You must resist the urge to say everything
about a subject because brevity creates three extremely valuable byproducts
– time, greater findability, increased likelihood of dialog
with prospects. If you write with brevity…
1. You give your readers a good reason to contact you. If you
inundate the reader with all of the details, you increase the
Learn To Use Blogsite’s Intelligence
Channels
Write Shorter and Simpler Posts
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 6 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
likelihood that your blogsite is a one-way street – all give, no
take.
2. You increase your content output. This is a critical time-saver
because it can improve your productivity by an order of
magnitude. Imagine if your posts were half the length – you’d
have twice as many posts for the same investment.
3. You create posts that are more focused. Search engines love
focused information – and the more focused a post is (e.g., the
less it is about), the easier it is to find.
In business blogging it’s better to be prolific and flood your market
segment with lots of opportunities to grab attention. Search engines
will still consider your content as highly recommendable because your
brevity will provide useful information and references to other content
such as the stuff you might reveal when talking to someone. This is
where Blogsite Link Properties come in – they provide a framework for
organizing calls-to-action.
Link Properties, which are like are bibliographies, are highlighted
references to other content related to a posts’ subject matter. While
embedded links in the content body are valuable, Link Properties stand
out to your readers and search engines. They take on a slightly higher
importance because they are grouped, bold, and include a title,
synopsis, and URL – far more data than would accompany an
embedded text link.
Link Properties are ideal for linking to the most important ideas about
a post. This might be a website where you found a story related to
your post, or a link to a whitepaper on your main website. Link
Properties elevate the value of a short post by calling attention to
related content that readers should click on next.
Tip: Consider using link properties that include your email address or
even your phone number. Create link property titles and summaries
that compel your readers to ask you for more about the subject.
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 7 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
#7
Bloggers often spend a great deal of time formatting the layout of
pictures, out-quotes, embedded videos, and even embedded feeds.
These tasks are timeconsuming
and generally
require some knowledge of
HTML and javascript code.
Captyx components eliminate
much of the tedium of
creating and integrating
these types of information
objects.
Captyx is an extremely
productive set of tools that
help you integrate
professional-looking components and with far less effort. Captyx is
also considered an ideal method for capturing and sustaining customer
attention because many of the components provide fields for adding
actionable links.
The example above shows a Captyx BlogSearch component that
automatically embeds a continually updated RSS feed into the post
content. This is advantageous for many reasons, but most important –
it allows you to create a cross reference of your post to the highest
ranked blog posts in about 30 seconds – all you need is a well defined
search query. This saves you lots of time and effort finding good
bloggers to link to that are discussing your chosen subject.
Use Captyx Components
INTRODUCTION
MyST Blogsite® was designed to help business people participate in
the conversational web with greater productivity than other business
bloggers. Accomplishing more by doing less is a key idea that runs
throughout the Blogsite platform and it is this productivity edge that
provides a competitive advantage. Many of the tips and tricks
presented in this eBook can be applied to any blog tools, but some of
the ideas presented require the advanced features found only in MyST
Blogsite®.
Maintaining a competitive blogging advantage requires a little
attention to make sure your blogsite isn’t absorbing too much of your
valuable time. It’s important to mention that you can never blog too
much – but you can blog so much that it affects your core business
activities and objectives in a negative way. Remember, you are not a
“blogger” – you are a business person that blogs.
#1
Blogging about your business or products and services is one of many
tasks that you do in your overall daily tasks. Successful business
people prioritize tasks according to importance. Blogging should be no
different – it should take a back seat from time-to-time.
Prioritize Your Blogging Time In Concert
With Other Important Business Objectives
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 3 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
#2
As with other business tasks, you are typically more productive if your
time for projects and tasks are scheduled in advance. This also allows
you to choose times that are most productive for thinking and writing.
Resist the urge to drift into your blog to write a quick post when you
are (or should be) doing a different task. In most cases, diving into a
new post just because it occurred to you at that moment, will result in
lower productivity output; even the smallest interruption can toss you
off the clear-writing rails.
If you have a blogging idea that flashes through your mind and you
must capture it, jot the idea on the back of a business card and pop it
into your day-timer. Or, if your computer is nearby, use your blogsite
to create a new post but only jot down the salient points of the idea.
Spend no time formatting, titling, or tagging your post. Select the
Embargo check box, and click the Save button. For those times when
you want to capture a blog post idea, keep a shortcut on the desktop
that points directly to the new item link in each of your blog channels.
The new item link is a direct link to the edit form for a new post and it
can be accessed directly through a shortcut or a browser favorite.
#3
Organizing your blogging workspace in advance will be a great time
saver. One way to create a focused writing experience is to leverage
the tabs feature in your web browser. Most browsers – specifically
Microsoft Internet Explorer® version 7 and the latest version of FireFox
– support tabbed windows. This allows you to open multiple web sites
and easily navigate and copy-paste from one to the other. It also
Designate Special Times for Blogging
Organize Your Workspace
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 4 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
allows you to save the open tabs to a single favorites folder that can
be opened with a single click later on.
The next time you sit down to write something for your blogsite, open
all of the sites that help you write in different tabs. This might include
a tab for Google, a tab for Google BlogSearch, a tab for WikiPedia, and
perhaps a few portals about your industry segment. And don’t forget a
tab for authoring your posts. If you link to your own posts frequently,
consider opening a second tab to your public blogsite domain so that
you can search for other posts related to the current writing topic.
Many of our highly productive users open a tab to their Blogsite
Intelligence Channels – more on this in Step #5.
Lastly, consider using the Google Toolbar to spell check your posts.
This is an ideal productivity tool that integrates with all Blogsite fields
and makes it possible to check the spelling for the entire post without
copying your content into a word processor.
#4
We all have a “golden hour”; a time when we typically think clearly
and can focus on writing without interruptions. Perhaps this is early on
a Sunday morning, or maybe it’s a quiet time early in the day before
your team arrives at the office and the phones begin to ring. When you
have highly focused time available – and hopefully it is scheduled time
– consider writing more than one post and using Blogsite’s Post to the
Future feature. This feature makes it possible to create a post that will
automatically go live at a specific date and time in the future. No
additional action is required to make the post go live, so you can “fire
and forget”.
If you leverage the full benefit of your golden hour, you will produce
more high quality content while also completing your blog tasks for an
entire week.
Post to the Future
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 5 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Review the Blogsite User Guide for details or log in to the MyST
Blogsite Online Support System (http://support.blogsite.com) and
search for “Post to the Future” for articles about this feature.
#5
Blogsite provides an excellent system for automatically gathering
intelligence about subjects that you blog about. Learn to use this
feature to create watch-lists of your competitors, your industry, and
sources of interesting news that can help you quickly zero in on a good
topic to blog about.
Intelligence channels are easy to master and they can be changed
frequently to gather content about topical and rapidly changing
situations.
Intelligence channels can also be scanned quickly to find something
that stands out or is eye-catching. Lastly, you can subscribe to
intelligence channels through an RSS news reader. This makes it
possible to be notified when new items are discovered by the
automated intelligence gathering process.
#6
The length of a good blog post does not determine its quality or value.
Being brief is difficult – we all have an urge to explain things in
greater, not less detail. You must resist the urge to say everything
about a subject because brevity creates three extremely valuable byproducts
– time, greater findability, increased likelihood of dialog
with prospects. If you write with brevity…
1. You give your readers a good reason to contact you. If you
inundate the reader with all of the details, you increase the
Learn To Use Blogsite’s Intelligence
Channels
Write Shorter and Simpler Posts
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 6 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
likelihood that your blogsite is a one-way street – all give, no
take.
2. You increase your content output. This is a critical time-saver
because it can improve your productivity by an order of
magnitude. Imagine if your posts were half the length – you’d
have twice as many posts for the same investment.
3. You create posts that are more focused. Search engines love
focused information – and the more focused a post is (e.g., the
less it is about), the easier it is to find.
In business blogging it’s better to be prolific and flood your market
segment with lots of opportunities to grab attention. Search engines
will still consider your content as highly recommendable because your
brevity will provide useful information and references to other content
such as the stuff you might reveal when talking to someone. This is
where Blogsite Link Properties come in – they provide a framework for
organizing calls-to-action.
Link Properties, which are like are bibliographies, are highlighted
references to other content related to a posts’ subject matter. While
embedded links in the content body are valuable, Link Properties stand
out to your readers and search engines. They take on a slightly higher
importance because they are grouped, bold, and include a title,
synopsis, and URL – far more data than would accompany an
embedded text link.
Link Properties are ideal for linking to the most important ideas about
a post. This might be a website where you found a story related to
your post, or a link to a whitepaper on your main website. Link
Properties elevate the value of a short post by calling attention to
related content that readers should click on next.
Tip: Consider using link properties that include your email address or
even your phone number. Create link property titles and summaries
that compel your readers to ask you for more about the subject.
Copyright © 2007 – MyST Technology Partners, Inc. Page 7 of 8
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
#7
Bloggers often spend a great deal of time formatting the layout of
pictures, out-quotes, embedded videos, and even embedded feeds.
These tasks are timeconsuming
and generally
require some knowledge of
HTML and javascript code.
Captyx components eliminate
much of the tedium of
creating and integrating
these types of information
objects.
Captyx is an extremely
productive set of tools that
help you integrate
professional-looking components and with far less effort. Captyx is
also considered an ideal method for capturing and sustaining customer
attention because many of the components provide fields for adding
actionable links.
The example above shows a Captyx BlogSearch component that
automatically embeds a continually updated RSS feed into the post
content. This is advantageous for many reasons, but most important –
it allows you to create a cross reference of your post to the highest
ranked blog posts in about 30 seconds – all you need is a well defined
search query. This saves you lots of time and effort finding good
bloggers to link to that are discussing your chosen subject.
Use Captyx Components
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