Top Ten Guerrilla Blogging Strategies – #2
Sun. Jun 28, 2009 
6 Comments
In my last article in the Top Ten Guerrilla Blogging Strategies I discussed “Purpose” and “Focus.” Basically, a blog about everything is a blog about nothing. Know your blog’s purpose. Keep your blog focused.
Content is King!
This is the simplest concept and yet the most difficult to do effectively … unless, of course, you are a prolific writer such as myself!
A blog is all about content, content and MORE CONTENT!
When you have decided your blog’s Purpose and Focus you also need to develop what I call a “Content Plan” i.e. what?, how much? and how frequently? What you will write about is directly related to your blog’s Purpose and Focus but you will be surprised at how easily you can stray.
How much you will write about … well, that’s up to your abilities and the subject. If your site is about butterfly collecting you have at least 28,000 posts to write! … one for each species! This means you can write one post every day for 76 years! If you’re Acme Shoestrings … well, you’ll have a tougher time creating content but I can think of at least two dozen topics on shoestrings off the top of my head.
Another consideration in the “How Much” category is brainwidth - the bandwidth of your target audience’s brains. A guy like me could go on and on and on … ad infinitum and bore you to tears! A typical blog post should be in the 300 word range. Beyond that, if your content isn’t spectacularly written, insightful or interesting (to someone other than yourself) your visitors will stop reading and come to the likely conclusion that you are boring.
How frequently you create new content is a factor of “what” “how much” and your blog’s zeitgeist. Is your blog being supported by outside advertising and/or marketing, how many new visitors are arriving every day? is it trending upward? downward?
In our web-accelerated lifestyle we get bored pretty damned easily. For me, web geek that I am, if I come to your blog 2 or 3 times in a week and do not see any new content your blog pretty much drops off my list! Not everyone is like this; a majority of your visitors will likely check back once a week for 2 or 3 weeks before they give up on you.
My general rule of thumb is ONE lively, interesting, information-laden post PER WEEK. If you can write that much you’ll be able to keep people coming back for more.
Imitation is the Sincerest Form
Now, what I am about to say will get more than a few people riled up. If you feel you are having trouble keeping up with your content goals – you’re extremely busy, you’re about to go on vacation, you have writer’s block – then go “borrow” someone else’s content.
Find a fellow blogger you respect that has similar content, copy the first paragraph or two of one of their posts, paste it in your blog with their byline and link it to that particular entry. I also suggest adding a “View Source” at the bottom linked to the original. Then, add their blog to your blogroll.
Do NOT copy the whole post. Do NOT EVER claim it as your own. ALWAYS give credit, provide links and accolades to the original writer. If you have the opportunity, ASK to do this first. ALWAYS remove the post if the author objects.
I have found that most bloggers appreciate the link and the acknowledgement because it helps them reach new people, too. And who knows, he/she may want to use some of your content too and you’ve created a symbiotic relationship.
Next week in our Top Ten Guerrilla Blogging Strategies – Linking Strategies.
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A great article with some interesting information. Thanks.
I’m not so sure about this advice. Asking is probably key.
My concern is as follows. If your website is of higher PR and a newbee is working really hard on writing content; whose blog is going to win the duplicate content war? Who will appear on Google first?
Now I do agree giving the backlink is very helpful. Also, I realize that your readers may discover him through the post. However, the content he wrote has brought readers to your site not his initially.
Just food for thought.
What has your experience been when you have tried this approach?
Let’s me first state that the whole “duplicate content deficit” fear is highly over-rated.
I know. I know. There are SEO folks out there curling their toes at that statement, so before y’all start venting … read on.
You have a blog. What is MORE important to you … Google rank? or real readers? No. Really.
Ok. Now that I’ve rankled y’all … The duplicate content deficit was primarily designed to guard against a company (or person) replicating the exact same site under a large number of domain names. And, I am not talking about having your blog composed of largely copied/duplicate articles.
Shared content works by keeping new, relevant content on your blog hence keeping your readers returning and reducing attrition, as well as providing the link opportunity.
There ARE in fact, very successful (if overgrown feed) aggregators whose blogs are strictly duplicate content. These sites make money, have huge traffic numbers and are very useful to readers … AND they have relatively strong page rank.
Expanding your brand is also very important and we, as business people, are urged to write articles for publication to expand links to our site. See http://tinyurl.com/kjrfc8 for more information. Again, you could view this as a duplicate content issue or a traffic generation and link creation tactic.
The goal, particularly in blogs, is to create a large amount of traffic, increase your Alexa ranking, so you can sell advertising and make money.
In my experience, the content first indexed often retains the higher page rank. To ensure this, when I post articles on free article sites, I do it about a month after I first posted it on my site. If I want to “win the duplicate content war” as you put it, I will “wrap” keyword infused content “around” the duplicate content – like add a preface to the content and a summary at the end.
All in all, some great questions Jocelyn. Much appreciated!