Having my all my references in English the post was written in English to preserve authenticity.
How to enhance web content
A Response for
'Les nouveaux
créateurs de réalité : le cas de blogues' Written by Henry Sahyoun
The post talked about
the blog phenomenon, and how to choose a blog in regards the technology of
blog, its technical components, its structure, and this structure’s characteristics.
What about the content? Here I’m shedding the light on this topic.
In order to have a successful Blog, its content should reflect the
following:
Attribution
This not only helps
visitors to your site find the original work, but it also provides
SEO benefits for the creator of the content and guards against
your site being mistaken by the search engines as the original work.
Blog as Hub
Let your blog served
as the communication hub for an organization.
Comments
People can interact
when they have something to say and they become active members of what you’re
building, thus promoting interaction (you can always put a close that URL with
insults will be shut).
Editing
Editing is a feature
that I always miss when I’m in a hurry, or after a long night of overwork while
I’m feeling sleepy, etc.
This feature states
the following:
- Print your page. Reading a printout is a great tactic for
spotting errors.
- Wait. You’ll start to see
what it actually says, not what it’s supposed to say.
- Ask someone else to read your copy. Having a second reader is one of the best
ways to clarify and correct your copy.
- Read backward. Great for proofreading numbers and useful
when you need to make sure that a piece of text is perfect.
- Read out loud. Reading out loud, or using screen-reading
software, will make you take in the words differently. This is also a good
way to check the “voice” of your piece and whether the text flows
smoothly.
- Read line-by-line, word-by-word. Use a
spell-checker.
- Change the look; e.g., font size, background color or text
color.
Grabbing Attention
Grab attention with great copy, memorable images and inspiring videos.
Headings
Heading attract audience to the web content, and
enhance its search ability by the web engine.
Infographics
They are graphic enhancing visual representations of information,
data or knowledge.
Juxtaposition
Show similarities, differences and third
unique viewpoint about the topics.
Keywords
Using keywords in blog posts helps the post to be
picked up and ranked by search engines.
Links
Attribution, links are the currency of the web. In
addition to linking to posts you’ve referenced, you can also refer
to and link back to one of your own related posts, which will also help your blog’s Search
engine optimization (SEO). That’s what I’m doing now.
Numbers in Titles
“When a title contains a number, it gets more
attention.”, for example, 26 Tips, anyone?
Optimizing Blog Posts
Using keywords and tags helps with a blog’s overall
SEO.
Pain Points
Rich Brooks writes in his post, “How to Develop a Social
Media Content Strategy,” that knowing your audience’s pain points will help you tap into conversations that may otherwise pass you by. Begin by finding key phrases and narrowing them down
further so you can determine what’s most important to your audience. (I myself
try it as much as possible. But I cannot camouflage or deform hard facts and
history, so excuse me if anyone found these facts painful, I’m just writing...)
Question
Ask readers questions at the end of the post, which gives people something
specific to respond to. (That is what also happened to me and I was at the
edge of losing my whole grade!)
Readability
People come to your blog to read articles, and the
easier they are to read, the better.
(That’s what I also
miss in somnolence as I mentioned before, and that’s
another reason to lose my grade!).
Style Guide
Blogs require a consistent style guide so that anyone
who writes and edits posts will be able to adhere to the same rules.
Templates
Choosing the rights templates and needed feature will
enhance its effectiveness and representation.
Updates
Rather than starting a new post from scratch, you can
go back to the original post and update
it with the information you’d like to add.
Voice
Georgina Laidlaw suggests that Pace,
rhythm, turns of phrase, idioms—even the way you use punctuation—all contribute
to the voice of your blog.
Heidi Cohen suggests that
personality, tells a story, is contextually relevant, listens and interacts,
sounds like a real person, has a point of view and avoids sanitized
corporate-speak (but I think not to the point of being impudent
or shameless) are points that enhance your blog.
Write for the World
Your audience is not homogenous; its members almost
certainly vary in age, race, gender, physical abilities, nationality, culture,
sexual orientation, and so on.
Determine whether a group-specific reference is
relevant, be exact, beware of false generalizations... watch out for bias
inherent in slang and other figures of speech, and don’t overcompensate.
Expert Interviews
Conducting expert interviews is a good content source
for blogs to consider. Name recognition of someone in your field in whom your
audience is interested has a good chance of increasing the post’s readership.
Multimedia (Video and Audio, youtubes, vimeo, etc)
As YouTube says, “Video is much more engaging than
text. It draws more users and keeps them on your site for longer…
Zigzags and Leaps
Barbara Hurd offers a chapter entitled “Zigzags and
Leaps.” She writes, “So the question becomes: how to make the mind move, how to
make our thinking zigzag and swerve, plunge and leap as we search for the right
direction? [1]
In addition, I found an amazing article written by Rand Fishkin [2] dealing with this topic, and stating the following
“Participate in the Communities Where Your
Audience Already Gathers.
Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your
Posts & Find New Connections.
Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the
Results.
Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like
Reddit + StumbleUpon.
Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of
Others).
Interact on Other Blogs' Comments.
Participate in Q+A sites.
Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track
them!).
Attend and Host Events.
Use Your Email Connections (friends, co-workers,
family, etc) to promote Your Blog.
Survey Your Readers (so you can know the pros
and cons)
Aggregate the Best of Your Niche
Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your
Blog
Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and
Nab 'em!)”
Among other, I found these few tips written by Pamela Vaughan [3] from many redundant or worthless tips, those are helpful:
Use Your Introduction Wisely.
Use Fun, Hypothetical Examples. (Sometimes in torturing issues there’s no fun, in my
opinion!) .
Hijack a Meme (not me-got you, kidding...a meme is quite simply a concept, behaviour, or idea
that spreads, usually via the internet (like Spam, you already know the story! If Not read the
post in this blog)
Crack a Joke (Here is one :
“A rabbit hops into a shop and says: have you got any
cabbages?
The employee says that
he doesn't sell cabbages and the rabbit hops off. The next day the same rabbit
hops into the same employee and says, "Have you got any cabbages?"
The employee, getting
annoyed, says "look I told you yesterday - I'm a butcher, I don't sell
cabbages, now go away!"
The rabbit hops off.
But the next day it hops into the employee again and again asks "have you
got any cabbages?"
The employee, really
annoyed now, snaps "No I haven't got any damn cabbages! If you come in here
again asking for cabbages I will nail your ears to the floor!"
The rabbit is scared
by this and quickly hops out the door.
The next day it hops
into the butchers and asks "have you got any nails?"
The employee replies
angrily, "NO"
"Ok," says
the rabbit with a grin, "what about cabbages?") [4]
This is not a joke; and this is not Bugs Bunny, this is the link for the joke.
I hope that’s will do zigzag your attention to these important content
suggestions beyond the technicalities issues.
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