Top-Ten Blogging Best Practices

Back in March of this year, when I was still in charge of Oomph, Oxygen’s social network (which went down with the ship after the NBC aquisiton) – I attended the 2-day BlogHer conference in New York, hoping to promote awareness among the female blogger population. When I returned, Gerry Laybourne asked me to summarize my learnings from the conference, which I then sent out to our team of “anchors” (paid bloggers) in order to help them become stronger at their craft.

Keep in mind that our anchors were blogging on a community site, which is a bit different from, say, a personal WordPress blog – and some of my language here reflects that – but the main ideas are, I think, applicable to blogging at large. Now, if I can just learn to follow my own advice. Here is the email:

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Hola Anchors!

Many of you have emailed me over the past few months, asking for advice on your blogs – how to make your entries more compelling, and how to best get a rapport going with your readers. Hopefully you will find some of these tips -transcribed from my notes- to be helpful:

1. COMMENT! – This point is front, center and bold. If you want people to read and comment on your blog, you MUST read and comment on others. Oomphers will feel much more comfortable interacting with you when they see that a) you’re approachable and nice and b) that you take and interest in them. Also, never lose sight of the fact that Oomph is a community, and our agreement with you stipulates that you comment and participate, as well as simply blog. A social network is, by definition, a 2-way street and we expect all of our anchors to be actively participating. I think you’ll be surprised at how much more response your blog gets once you start responding to others.

2. ANSWER YOUR EMAILS – For all the same reasons as listed above. If someone emails you, they are taking in interest in you and what you’re writing. Try to answer each email within a reasonable period of time (w/in 48 hours of receipt seems reasonable to me).

3. KEEP YOUR POSTS CONCISE – There are exceptions to this, of course, but think of the posts *you* are most apt to read. At least for myself, when I see a 15-paragraph scroll-a-thon, I am more likely to pass it over (who has that kind of time!) or just to skim it for content I might be interested in. Here’s a little homework assignment – scroll through Oomph’s most recent blogs, and see which ones have the most comments. The ones with the most content? Or the ones that are clear, concise, and to-the-point?

4. STAY ON-TOPIC – For those anchors we hired to blog about a particular topic (and that’s most of you) – try to stick to the topic you were assigned. You were asked to blog because you have expertise in a particular area and it’s precisely that expertise that we want to share with our (your) readers.

5. STAY ON-SCHEDULE – We’ve asked you to post to your blog a *minimum* of 2 times per week, and we really need our anchors to try to stick to that as much as possible. The idea is that we *always* want to have fresh, compelling content on the site, and if we stay on schedule, there’s no reason we shouldn’t. When anchors start to lag, we’re left with page after page of 15-year-old angst-ridden cutters who aren’t exactly livening up the party (actually, I kid – we have some outstanding amateur bloggers on the site, but I hyperbolize to make my point).

6. WRITE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE IN MIND – One of the great benefits Oomph has to you, our anchors, is that you are given the opportunity to cultivate an audience and a brand. The more you blog and interact, the clearer a picture of who you’re speaking to will begin to emerge. Oomphers are there to read YOU. Figure out who they are, and speak to them.

7. MARKET TO YOURSELF – Use your Oomph short URL (www.oomph.net/yourscreenname) in your email signature, post it on your “other blog” or website, and generally get your blog address out there. Remember YOU are the brand you’re promoting, and while I and our press team are doing all we can to drive folks to your blogs, your participation is crucial to get readers to your Oomph blog.

8. DON’T BE AFRAID TO PLAY “MEME GAMES” - For those of you who don’t know what meme games are, here’s a simple example. Say I’m a music anchor… one of my blog posts could be “Set your ipod to shuffle, and list the first ten songs that come up.” and then list your first 10. You’ll be AMAZED at how many responses you get. Even though this might seem a little “juvenile” for Oomph, EVERYbody loves these games as it gives them a chance to participate without having to come up with something brilliant to say. They’ll also keep checking your comments to see what others have posted.

9. LINK TO OTHER BLOGGERS/SITES IN YOUR BLOG – Not only do search engines use relevant outbound links to elevate your page rank, other bloggers will also look at their site’s referrers, see that you sent people over to them, and then check out YOUR blog (and hopefully link to it!)

10. LET US KNOW OF PRESS WORTHY EVENTS IN YOUR LIFE/CAREER – Recently one of our anchors had his new book optioned by Paramount Pictures. That’s HUGE news, and something our press department can definitely use to create an Oomph-related press announcement! If you have stuff going on that’s relevant to you or the topic you’re writing about, please let us know as soon as you can. HELP US HELP YOU!!