Bounty

One of the more interesting differences between paper books and web pages is trust.

We trust paper books to have a fairly well-defined kind of information.
Books usually have a quite well-known manner of presentation.
Given cover/jacket, Summary, and marketing, the book is effectively static.
You can trust a book to be and do what a book is.

Blogs are different; there are far less constraints to presentation.
Content, too, has no guarantee of consistency.
And, although both receive marketing, blogs get less of it and for good reason.
Blogs are more of a gamble.


You can, then, think of your readers as seeking buried treasure.
Marketing simply becomes a treasure map.
And your job is to reward them for finding you blog.


Be bountiful!

Apprise

Part of your daily challenge is nicely captured thusly:

Your job is to inform your readers.

In fact, a best-case scenarios would be to provide a crucial piece of information.

Presuming you've

• read up on your niche's state-of-the-art
• learned of any active bargains
• identified something distinctive worth sharing

Then your task is dissemination.

A well-connected blog will necessarily be part of a network.

Part of that will be links to and from your blog.
Others can be other forms of media (video, audio, and the like).
And you will find many, many readers by apprisal through social network.

Thus posting on twitter, tumblr, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc will also help apprise.

And remember:
Without value-laden content, apprisal will often discredit you.
With value-laden content, apprisal will increase your portfolio.

Accent

Languages can be said to be groups of phonemes.

Groups of people can be identified by the pronunciation of those phonemes.


Of interest is how those phonemes are heard by others.



This is where accent comes in:
                     
Accent is what someone, familiar with a phoneme, hears when it sounds different.

Said another way - if you know a language, you can hear when someone sounds different.


Learn the language of your niche.

Simply being passionate about the niche will give you some of the basic words.

Studying it will give you more.


Your goal is to speak the language of your niche with no accent.

Mastering this will contribute to your being seen as a legitimate source.


Be without accent!

Argue

This is the last in the series of posts on innovation.

Looking for a way to promote creativity and stimulate the neurons?
Talk!

All four of the other innovation tools are solitary in nature.
This one is social - find someone to speak with!

Pick a topic about which the both of you are passionate and share.
Nod your head and engage them about aspects with which you both agree.

Stand your ground about points upon which you disagree.
Be considerate, speak your position well - but engage!

The point here is that innovation can come from impassioned interaction.

Let today be an opportunity to get energized and excited about your niche!
Communicate with peers, neighbors, friends, and others.

Argue!

Read

A previous post spoke about ways in which one can be inspired to blog.
Today's post will be one of several breaking those items down.

Reading was recommended as a useful source of inspiration.

The challenge, then, is in identifying what should be read.

The glib answer is: everything!

In reality, each niche will have specific sources of value.

Part of your job, as information provider, is to know these sources.
If you do your job well, your niche will see YOU as one of these.

As for ways to find relevant sources, there are many:

1. Popular niches always have books and magazines
   There is a reason there are dozens of magazines dedicated to sports
2. Popular social niches also have twitter-feeds and blogs
   The desire to share, collaborate, and grow is universal
3. Popular technical niches tend to have Linked-In posts and such
   Many, many sources exist for technical niches.
4. Lastly, don't forget everything is connected.
   Most niches have other parallel subjects from which to draw

So go read - then share what you've learned!

Niche

Numerous previous posts have made mention of "niche".

In summary, niche is:

* Your over-arching blog focus
* The core theme of each blog post
* The general category to which your posts add value

Thus, if most of your posts are about cheese.
Then perhaps your niche is just "cheese".
It may, instead, be about cheddar.
Or, it may be "about cheddar that has been aged fifteen years".

Having a niche isn't difficult.
Knowing your preferred and precise niche can be.

This is especially true if your blog migrates topicality.

Tools exist which can help identify desirable niches.

Regardless - know your niche!

Timing

One of the hardest things to master in presentation is timing.

It can, in fact, be argued that anything well-timed will be well-received.

The same is true for a blog: a well-timed post can sometimes make a blog.

From an immediate-impact standpoint, content that best matches your audience is ideal.


And this is the secret to giving your blog the appearance of having well-timed content:

Have content.


It really is as simple and powerful as you may think.

The more content you've created (and the better it is tagged) the more you'll sync.

The more you sync, the more you'll appear to be providing just what your customer needs.


Remember:
It can take 10 years to have an overnight success.

Value

Implicit to the point of blogging is the idea of value.

There are different kinds of blogs; some are public, others aren't.

The ability to draw eyes is specifically associated with the value provided.

You could simply be journaling your own thoughts.

Value there would be the capture and dissemination of your voice.

You could be reviewing car dealerships.

Value there would generally be found in your offering a distinctive, useful perspective.

Again, it would be the capture and dissemination of your voice.

You could be sharing yarn and knitting patterns.

Value might be in how the patterns fit together and perhaps unique kinds of thread/yarn.

So, too, would value be provided through asserting your unique identity.

It is also true that the absence of voice removes value.

Without a reason to stand out, to identify and provide a unique voice, value is lost.

One could even say that genuine value ceases to exist when voice absent.

Provide value.

Sticky

One of the words mentioned throughout numerous posts is "sticky".

I first ran across the term in the book above.
It may be purchased by clicking the image or [this] link.

Being sticky is that elusive character that makes something memorable.
It is why urban legends survive but your remembered grocery list is incomplete.

It is an effective means of ensuring your core message is remembered

• by your customers
• by your staff

And clearly this is what makes branding and product-placement work millions.

Make your posts sticky!

Relevance

It has been said, "For want of a nail, the kingdom is lost".

One of the most potent aspects of this phrase deals with meeting needs.
So too should your blog be satisfying a need.

The challenge, of course, is accurate identification of your niche and its associated lack.

Without knowing your niche, you will not appreciate its scope.
You also will not be able to gauge relevance.

Gladly, numerous tools exist that can offer help.

Too, this ties into tags.

As noted, tags can help your content be discovered.

Tags can also be used to identify the content for which others seek.
In that context, tags are referred to as keywords.

Etiquette

One of the most powerful aspects of the Internet is the lack of walls.

This creates an opportunity for vast groups of people to connect.
It also creates a useful and convenient excuse for being rude.

Your challenge as a blogger is simple:
To create useful, relevant, and unique content for your niche.

Being considerate of others augments the value your content contains.

This doesn't mean to subsume your voice into political-correctness.

But it does mean that your target audience is bigger than you know.

And part of your challenge is to honor that core audience.

Tags

You may have noticed that each of these blog posts has several tags.

These are important:
Search engine discovery is impacted through their use.
Blog users can identify those posts associated with their own interests.

In addition, they can be thought of as an opportunity to establish two lists:
Collections of posts associated with specific content
Areas of interest that have not yet been given their own write-up.

Ultimately tags help organize information.

Please use tags each time you post!

Voice

Voice is that aspect to writing or speaking that uniquely identifies.

It is what helps you:

* pick a person out of a crowd

* identify a loved one

* recognize yourself

In blogging, voice sets you apart from everyone else.

It is, thus, important; it can also appear to be difficult.

There are several aspects to retaining your voice.

Most can be summarized as follows:

* Change

  Most topics are not static: try to stay current on yours.

  Do your best to read other blogs and grow daily (even if only a little).

* Don't lose sight of yourself

  Copying others can be tempting.

  Doing it too much can make it difficult to recognize your own voice

* Don't lie

  Advertising content you don't believe in can destroy your integrity.

  So can advertising content you don't understand.

  Losses to integrity tend to be accompanied by a detriment to voice.

  

Paring

One of the other things that blogs are about is the absence of content.

Paring, as an expression of focus, is important:
Choosing what NOT to include has a direct impact on your message.

Another aspect of paring is word-choice.
Each of the posts on this blog are titled with a single word.

This helps with post-focus.
It helps filter my idiolect, establish my scope, and direct my post.
It also helps YOU, the reader, prepare to absorb the post.

I will leave you with the standard business-case joke/riddle conveying this:

There are two rules to succeed in business.
1. Never tell everyone what you know.

Blocked

Most of us tend to experience an occasional inability to form words.
This experience is affectionately known as writer's block.

In my experience, the primary cause is associated with focus.

The most common deals with a distracted focus.
This kind of focus is usually lost due to other things.
This often happens when one is expected to write and finds other things more interesting.
It can also happen when your mind is focused on things other than your writing topic.
Incidentally, it is also why, under pressure, this form of focus-loss often dissipates.

The second most common cause is that of the absense of focus.
This kind of focus is usually lost due to lack of discipline.
This often happens when one lacks a definitive timeline.
This form of focus-loss can often be resolved through writing more-often.

Note:
One common way to recapture the ability to simply write down everything.
Called "stream-of-consciousness", the goal is to allow your mind's tongue an outlet.
After a small season, the mind will often return back to the desired focus.
It will, of course, require some degree of editing.

Content

As mentioned previously, blogs are all about dynamic content.
If you've taken the trouble to ensure your blog has a focus, content should follow.

Content comes in several categories:
New:

     Most-rare, this is information simply unavailable elsewhere.
     This is blog-gold.
     This is usually the hardest to make sticky.

Extended:

     This is repackaged information that is found elsewhere.
     It is how genuinely useful information stays atop the pile.
     It is also a way to ensure your own relevance.
     This is also the easiest to make sticky.
     Often this includes linking to other sites.

Referral:

     This refers to information predominantly provided by another source.
     Excellent for relevant points that do not directly tie to your blog's focus.

One last content note:
All blogs have a voice; selecting a focus for your blog gives it that voice.
Be sure to include this voice in each post (and for all content types).