As most of my regular readers know I make a big differentiation between bloggers who create content for other’s to read because that is what they like to do and the career oriented blogger who has decided to make their blogging a career choice.

While the hobby; or casual, blogger shares their thoughts and opinions with us they do it without any thought of earning a living from it. In contrast the career blogger is attempting to create an income stream from their writings and one of the ways they do this is to build themselves into a brand; much like I try to do here at WinExtra where the blog name is the brand or if I had done it the right way from the beginning my name would be the brand.

Along those lines BL Ochman had an excellent post today on her blog called How to Have a Totally Fucking Amazing Corporate Blog and while the post was geared to corporate customers much of what she suggests could equally be applied to a brand blog and as such I want to go through a couple of her points but more with an eye to those of us career bloggers (hopefully BL won’t be pissed with this re-working of her original thought - which I totally recommend reading in the first place).

An effective blog is not:

1. an instant fix for lousy search or Technorati rankings
2. a blatant attempt to monetize your content to the point of driving away readers
3. quick and easy posts filled with quotes over content
4. easy to build a loyal audience
5. created overnight

What good is a blog and why put the time, money and effort into building and sustaining one?

Because you believe you have opinions and thoughts in the areas you are concerned about. You believe that you can bring unique thoughts and attitude to these subjects in such a way to make for interesting reading and possibly inform people about issues they may not have dealt with before.

Looking good

Even though you believe in your abilities to communicate your opinions and thoughts how you do it is equally important. Everything from the design of the blog itself to how you present each post and most importantly - readability.

The overall design should if at all possible try to reflect the subject areas and attitude that you want your blog to represent. The posts themselves should be engaging beyond their content. Whether you use graphics or different type styles they should enhance the presentation of what you are trying to say. A boring and dry to the eye post will get passed over more often than a post that does something to attract the reader’s eye.

Finally - love your readers

You can’t exist without readers - both loyal ones and newcomers to your blog - so

1. always be sure to give credit where credit is due and if that includes linking to their blogs or web sites always make sure you do it
2. surprise your readers; whether it be by linking to something totally off topic but funny as hell, or personal experiences as it might relate to your subject areas. Constantly rehashing the same old stuff gets boring and bored readers don’t come back.

As BL says - “Blog readers are there by choice. You can’t force anyone to read a blog.”

Truer words haven’t been said about this profession we have chosen to take up and BL thank you very much for a post that got my mind working; and damn I wish I had a cool business card like yours

Listening to: Dave Clarke - White Noise (Guestmix Ralph Lawson and Deetron)

Conversation Tags: BL Ochman, blogging, bloggers, blogs, brand