Steinar Knutsen » blogging methods

Start a new blog on a shoestring

Steinar — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:09:08 +0000

Blogs are a great way to share your ideas and content online, maintain control over that content, and network with others within your niche. The good news is there are several ways to start a new blog on a shoestring.

The thought of setting up and managing your own blog may at first seem overwhelming and even unnecessary to some, but the truth is it’s quite simple.

If you’re looking for a free solution check out Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr or Weebly. These platforms have tons of great features and you can literally be up and running in minutes. The downside is you won’t have complete control over every aspect of the site, including the URL (which you can personalize for a fee).

Two great paid solutions include WordPress and TypePad. WordPress is the most popular mainly because of the plugins and support community. Both are specifically designed for blogging, so the admin capabilities cater to ease of use and it’s very easy to add new content on a regular basis.

If you choose to download and install WordPress on your own server or domain, you’ll need a hosting package. I use Bluehost, but several other options exist. You’ll also need an FTP client such as CyberDuck, which allows you to easilly upload files, images, themes, etc.

Again, most of the functionality and features to get started are built in, but for those of you that want a more customized approach, WordPress is probably your best bet.

Any other good options you recommend to start a new blog on a shoestring?

Focusing Your Blog on a Specific Niche to Organize Your Thoughts and Improve the Process of Creating Original Content

Steinar — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:28:38 +0000

Blogging is a geat way to share information and connect with people within your industry or area of interest, but without focus it will be difficult to generate content and for others to follow along. Focusing on a specific niche will help organize your thoughts and improve the process of creating original content.

What is a niche exactly? According to the dictionary:

A niche in the market is a specific area of marketing which has its own particular requirements, customers, and products.

For example, in the bicycle market, “mountain biking” might be considered a niche. There are sub-niches as well, such as “mountain bike equipment,” “mountain bike training” and “mountain bike vacations.” Each one of the sub-niches has a unique set of customers, products, and requirements to which you could speak.

What niche are you interested in? Are there sub-niches that speak more directly to your intended audience?

Take 20 minutes to brainstorm your target market and the potential niches that exist.
Now spend another 20 minutes brainstorming general topics to blog about that are of interest to these niches.
Next, craft the actual blog post titles to specifically identify what you’ll write about in your blog.
Finally, Put the results in a blogging editorial calendar as a roadmap.

In about an hour, you’ve successfully identified a target niche and outlined a series of blog posts. For inspiration, reflect on your own personal experience or find other articles on your sub-niche. This will make the blogging process more efficient, effective and rewarding.

What do you think? Will focusing on a specific niche help organize your thoughts and improve the process of creating original content for your blog?

Improve Productivity with the iPad – More Focus, Less Multi-Tasking

Steinar — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:33:08 +0000

With the upcoming iPad release, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how exactly I could use the new device in my daily routine. I already have an iMac, MacBook Pro and iPhone, so the questions for me as a business owner is will the iPad help improve productivity?

Many have criticized the iPad for its lack of Adobe Flash and inability to run multiple application simultaneously, unlike Windows or Mac OSX which allow you to multi-task and easily share your desktop among several apps at once.

I actually see the single app iPad limitation as an advantageous feature to help me focus on a single task and ultimately help drive productivity in some situations. Of course, there are exceptions, but with the right iPad apps, I believe this will be a good thing.

“When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer — often double the time or more — to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially.” — David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition, and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan

via 4 Steps for Managing Social Media Attention.

A good example is writing blog posts. Many times, we spend a disproportionate amount of time researching a new entry rather than actually writing. It’s not that the inspiration is difficult to find, it’s that we easily get distracted during our research by tangential subtopics, comments, and related posts from source material … I’m sure you can all relate.

On the iPad, however, I’ll be forced to stick to one app to write my post – at least the initial draft. Without the distraction of Twitter, email, and the web looming off to the side, I can spend some serious quality time focusing on my writing.

And yes, I have a few wireless Mac keyboards handy, so the physical typing part will be easy and familiar.

Of course, this sounds good in theory, but I won’t really know until I have the iPad in my hands.

What do you think? Will the iPad improve productivity? Is the lack of multi-tasking across apps a limitation or feature?

Can You Avoid Copywriting Problems with Audio Blog Posts? (Audio)

Steinar — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:48:32 +0000

In this audio post I discuss how audio blogging can be more direct, simple, and straightforward versus text-based blogging.

005-avoid-copywriting-problems-with-audio-blog-posts.mp3

What are your thoughts? Is audio an effective method for blogging. Should you mix audio and text posts?