There are so many faces behind blogs. Sometimes you would even find out that there is only one person behind several of them. Wouldn’t that be an amusing thing?

It is nice to meet up with fellow bloggers. That way, you learn about their personal lives as well as share tips with one another. There’s something about sharing a cup of coffee and tips on writing. Maybe you could even talk about search engine optimization techniques.

Forming online friendships could be stimulating in terms of personal growth as a blogger. There are social aspects to consider. Imagine the social networking you could do. You might be from different backgrounds and blogging networks. But still — you could learn so much from each individual’s experiences.

It is probably not easy to set aside a lot of time to meet up with other people if you are blogging as well as having a dayjob. It doesn’t have to be a major event anyway. Even just sharing a cup of coffee or a stroll in the park will do nicely. Who knows? Your meet-ups might even be the very thing you could talk about on your blogs At least the next time you trackback to those people, you could really associate a face with the name and URL. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

If you are aware that you have been having these troubles, there’s hope for you! At least you have already acknowledged it. Now it’s time to do something about it. Here’s one way you could do it. Get a copy of the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss. I personally haven’t finished reading my copy yet. However, I do believe that it is an important book to read. There are plenty of real life examples and the anecdotes are really funny kind of sad. It is funny because you could somehow see how sentences could look so absurd. It is sad because you know that it happens — maybe too often. It sometimes makes me think of the show “Kids Say the Darndest Things” and that maybe as children, we should have tried learning more of these matters in school.

Do commas really matter? How about apostrophes? Some people don’t really seem to care about it. These punctuation marks help us get our message across. It’s not just a matter of words. Punctuation marks indicate pauses, emotions and so much more. When you think about how sentences become more meaningful with these punctuation marks, you will not look at them with disdain again. Whether you have been blogging professionally for a long time already or maybe you are still fairly new to blogging, you will learn so much from that book. Hopefully, I would also be able to apply whatever I learn as I continue to blog everyday.

Do you have RSS available for your readers? What do you give? Full text or excerpts? This question is something that came up as people discuss their thoughts on sploggers. After all, some of these splogs mainly rely on the feeds they could scrape from. Personally, I could say that I like giving full text in my RSS, more often than not, because that means that the readers could easily access my thoughts anyhow — be it on the blog itself or through their favorite blog reader. For someone who thinks about the accessiblity of the information, full text might seem to be the best way to go about it. However, as seen online, full text feeds are abused in so many ways so maybe it’s time to really think about things. Hmmm. If you choose the title only way, you’d have to really write your headlines very well. Might as well do that for the sake of readability and SEO all at the same time.

There is also the option that you only give out the titles of your blog entries on RSS. I have seen it before while going over some random feeds in Rojo and the thing I personally don’t like about having titles only is that you have no other piece of information to give your readers unless they click the link. There are still some positive points about giving only the blog entry titles on RSS: It could also help your reader sift through so much information by letting him/her gauge how relevant your blog entry is to him/her based on the title. However, I think that the drawback here is that the reader would have less information to compare your content with that of another blogger’s. If you have been blogging about coffee and you only have titles on your RSS, what are the chances that a reader would pick your blog entry instead of another blogger’s?

What is more important to you as a blogger? That your readers would have access to your material or that you are protecting yourself from the sploggers and such people? Trying to strike a balance is quite difficult and if you have any such suggestions, they are very much welcome.

Some blog networks want you to be an exclusive blogger for them. Some people are fine with this arrangement. If you think that you would grow in such a network, why not? Or maybe if it’s just for a limited time only anyway, why not go for it? Maybe you could risk it if it’s just for a few months. I have seen some fellow bloggers who are under some exclusive contract and because they are compensated well for it, it was a pretty good arrangement for them.

Some other points to consider before signing up for a blog network:

• Work from home? Or is there going to be an office of sorts?
  There are bloggers who work in an office. You probably find it hard to believe but… it happens. What is the more suitable arrangement for you? If you are someone who doesn’t like working in an office environment, it’s definitely not your thing.
• Output
  How much work do you have to do? Can you choose your topics or are they assigned to you? Would it be 500 word-long blog entries everyday? Or maybe 100-word long blog entries each time you post? Maybe three posts a day? There are blog networks that ask you to post at least one entry each day. It really depends…
• Compensation
  How much would they be paying you for your output? If you think that they are asking you for too many blog entries and they are not going to pay you well enough, considering your knowledge and skills, it would probably not worth it. Aside from that, consider if it’s a fixed salary or will you share the revenues or is it flexible enough for you to choose whichever you find more to your liking or if it’s a win-win situation for you and the blog network.
• What happens to your blog entries?
  Here’s a tricky one. Will all your works be exclusively available only on the blog network’s site or could you re-publish them on your personal blog? What would you choose to happen to your blog entries? Take them down from the blog once your stint with the network is done? Or if you have been blogging prior to joining a network, would you like your previous entries to be excluded from the network’s newly acquired blog (or soon to be acquired, whatever the case is).

Think about everything before you say “yes” — you wouldn’t want your blogging career to be shot immediately. Oh and before you proceed to really thinking about problogging, read what Mosey has to say about finding quality writers.

]]> http://www.pro-blogging.com/blog-basics/on-joining-blog-networks-be-careful-what-you-sign-up-for/feed/ 0 http://www.pro-blogging.com/blog-basics/problogging-for-excellence/ http://www.pro-blogging.com/blog-basics/problogging-for-excellence/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:20:08 +0000 scoop http://www.pro-blogging.com/blog-basics/problogging-for-excellence/ If there is one thing that probloggers are after, it is that of prestige and upholding the quality of blogs that they would want their readers to continuously patronize once they have been officially posted on their blog site. If there is one thing that differentiates a certified problogger from the unreliable blogger seeking pay for his work.

The level of classifying probloggers from bloggers on the rise may sometimes be hard to distinguish. Practically anyone who has the knack for writing or blogging for that matter can assume the role of a certified problogger who has made such a practice part of their everyday lives.

The only difference though may be in the area of quality and what problogging is all about such as focusing on the most sougt after topics and producing the necessary information and content to adhere towards such demands. Payment for such expertise are secondary for them since it is more about getting the job done as often as possible.

But taking it in this aspect brings out the social talents that bloggers have. Blog entries are actually conversation igniters wherein a topic is being opened for discussion through the primary insights of a blogger. Such can be compared to actual life conversations where people who are not interested would simply ignore the topic at hand.

On the other hand, people who always make it a point to stress their own opinion and views will most likely be the starting point for a good exchange of ideas and opinion.

It is not easy to produce quality blog entries by using a keyword over and over again. Some may classify the entry as a spam blog thus losing interest in checking out the other related posts that may be of interest to them.

Being exposed to the web, a blogger would know the word or words that would normally be searched for and used. A broad used word such as business, technology and real estate may not necessarily catapult a site to the top of the rankings hence the need to be more specific in the use of keywords related to the actual search query entry.

Information consistency and relevance is what is expected from probloggers. Jumbling words to form paragraphs and blog entries is not their immediate tag. Probloggers are expected to deliver authentic and reliable content and this is something that the experts have been doing. Half-baked bloggers are existent in the world and most of them fail to flourish. This is because people have become wiser in easily spotting spoiled content over relevant ones.

• Misspelled words. When drafting your blog entries, make sure that you have your spellchecker on. If not, do a spell check right after you write your draft. Sometimes you might be typing too quickly and you end up with misspelled words.
• Run-on sentences. Imagine this: you have a very long sentence and the clauses are only separated by punctuation marks. Sometimes it would even look like one entire paragraph. When you have such a sentence, it might be better to re-write it. If you think that the length of your sentence is still reasonable, try reading it aloud. It would help you see if there is a need for pauses and stops.
• Dangling modifiers. An example in The Essential Writer’s Companion:
  

  On returning home, the door slammed shut.

  That looks funny, doesn’t it? The door slammed shut on returning home? The problem with dangling modifiers is that they do not have subjects of their own.

When you blog, you communicate with others. (It’s not just about monetizing your blog, folks! It’s about sharing your views!) If people do not understand you because of these little things you forget to check, it might be difficult for you to come across as credible. You don’t really have to be a word geek to communicate clearly. You just have to be careful.

Making a career out of blogging has become so popular these days. It?s a fact that more people, especially the younger generation and those who are into the information technology, have developed an interest in blogging. ?Blogging? is all about writing your thoughts, creating your sites and sharing your knowledge and ideas with other people online.

But how does one become an effective blogger should he or she decide to make this hobby into serious work? Professional bloggers say it?s best to be your natural self and to be more organized in your thoughts as this is very important in making write-ups, more so if you?re blogging for a certain company or network. Don?t be too serious with the topics you write about as this might bore your readers and don?t try to be too funny as well.

Sustaining the volume of your readers should be of utmost importance to a professional blogger. You can do this by regularly updating your blogs, adding more posts of varied interesting topics, making your pages more attractive but eye-friendly and responding to queries as immediate as possible, no matter how minor they are. You wouldn?t want your regular readers to go look for other blogs, would you?

One more thing a blogger should always keep in mind is to be well-researched on his or her subjects. The more sources you have for your articles, the better and you will even be greatly appreciated if you provide the right information to your readers.