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8 Powerful Ways To Add Value To Your Blog

by Yan

A “detour” is a “deviation from a direct course of action”. Given the perspective of this blog, providing value in and within each post is somewhing we strive for and given the nature of our personal life (medical internship/journalism), this is far from being a possible task. This is where I see many bloggers succumb to the universal blogger problem:

Value

Quality or Quantity?

When trying to settle for a compromise between quality and quantity, many bloggers miss the essentials of blogging. Blogging as it is, is a powerful, growing medium and the following ways will show you how to yield this power carefully.

1. Attribute Your Material

In copyright law, attribution is the requirement that an author be given credit for their work in any context in which it is used. It is required by most copyright and copyleft licenses, such as GNUFDL and CC-by.

[Wikipedia: Attribution]

In simple term, attribution is giving credit to one person’s work or idea. Often, I see bloggers quoting awesome statistics or work without providing any source or proof behind these alleged facts. As the web is evolving nowadays, knowledge too is evolving rapidly. It is therefore part of your duty as an authoritative blogger to inform your readers about the source of your material and clearly indicating recognized information quoted in your article.

Essential Points:

Where does the information come from (A http link is sufficient.)
Who wrote or disseminated this piece of information (Blogger/Author name suffice)
Plagiarism is a serious offense and is intricately linked to attributing your sources. You should be aware about rules governing copyright.

“Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally “the right to copy” an original creation. In most cases, these rights are of limited duration. The symbol for copyright is ©, and in some jurisdictions may alternatively be written as either (c) or (C).”

[Wikipedia: Copyright]

You will earn people’s respect by following these bloggers’ Rights and Duties.

Ignorance of the Law does not make one exempt from compliance thereof.
Make it easy to distinguish paid and editorial content.
You should ask author’s permission to translate his/her article.
You should not present stolen content.
You should use copyrighted material only if you have explicit permission from the author to do so

[Smashing Magazine : Copyright Explained]

2. Write Articles, Not Blog Posts

In no dictionary will you find a definitive meaning to the term “post” or “blog post”. A blog post can be a simple line, a rambling of several paragraphs, a picture or a well-written and carefully thought out piece of useful information whereas an article is a written composition in prose, usually nonfiction, on a specific topic, forming an independent part of a book or other publication, as a newspaper or magazine.

To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.

[UseIt : Write Articles, Not Blog Postings]

For a further indepth knowledge on why articles serve a far better purpose than blog postings, go and read this highly informative ARTICLE: UseIt : Write Articles, Not Blog Postings

3. Do Not Write News, Create News

The blogosphere is highly filled with “contagious posts” that starts somewhere and spreads itself everywhere, with many bloggers coughing it here and there.

This is of course malpractice for the blogger aiming to make a name in his or her niche. Voicing one’s opinion is one thing but having many people voicing their opinions on a certain subject at the same time devalue your blog. Why do people visit your blog? To learn something. So why will they bother to visit your blog if your blog is telling them the same thing which can be found easily in thousands of other blogs.

4. Post Frequency Myth

Every blog about blogging I have seen has been focusing and writing about the need to post frequently.

8.9 Posts Per Week - Too Many? Not Enough?

Why blog post frequency does not matter anymore

One obvious post frequency most bloggers use, is a post per day. Albeit this is a good technique for improving page impressions, I do not recommend this method. Unless you have a blog network with a team of talented writers like the newly created Freelance Switch, or you are a full-fledged problogger, I say post only when you have something useful to say. Credibility is a very thin line and you should walk this line carefully. Do NOT undermine the trust bloggers have put on you one day when you wrote a flagship content, only to let them down the next day when you tell them how your girlfriend dumped you. (I know this is not a very realistic example but I hope you get the idea! )

One of the most successful blog I’ve seen defying this myth is the North x East blog. Collis was posting every day but due to strenuous circumstances, he had to drop his posting frequency to only an article per week. But guess the result? His feed subscribers increased from around 400 to around 1161! This is a x3 growth. The only underlying reason behind this growth is the fact that the quality of the articles have increased as a result of posting less. Readers prefer high quality articles, even if they are spaced out in time to daily blurbs that teach them nothing.

5. Gain a Status

Your information must be authoritative. You must indicate your qualifications as a blogger. I consider that all information presented on your blog must be attributed and all training/qualification in the niche you are blogging must be mentioned. One interesting discussion I had with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits was the fact that he had no medical training and yet gave out health tips on his must subscribed blog.

But he had the courtesy of mentioning that he found his tips from more reliable sources and he doesn’t claim to judge their validity. He does attempt to make it known he is no specialist in 16 tips to triple your workout effectiveness where he says:

Disclaimer: First, I’m not a certified trainer. These are tips I’ve read elsewhere that work well for me. Second, you should always get a doctor’s approval of any new workout plan….

Thus, Leo as a blogger has gained my esteem, not only because of his well-written posts, but because he was honest to state that in certain
field, he had not the required qualification but he is doing his best to circumvent this “problem”.

6. Privacy

This principle is applicable to all sites , even if your site does not contain a blog.

You must describe how you treat confidential, private or semi-private information such as email addresses and the content of emails received from or sent to your visitors. You must inform your visitors whether their data will be recorded in your own database, who can access this database (others, only you, nobody), if this information is used for your own statistics (anonymous or not), or if these statistics are used by third party or other companies.

7. Advertising Policy

Clearly distinguish advertising from editorial content.

Advertising policy

Whether or not advertising is a financial ressource of the site, an advertising policy must be plainly stated. All advertisements and any promotional, commercial or information in the form of articles, or display advertisements (banners or logos), must be clearly indicated and easily indentifiable as such, and distinguished from other information.

Advertising indicator

All advertising (including, but not limited to, pop-up windows and banners) should be identified with the word “Advertising” or similar identifying clearly the sponsor.

If banners are served from a free web hosting service or ‘banner exchange’, the webmaster must clearly state that the advertising banners are from the free Web host and are not endorsed by the site editor.

8. Be Your Own Editor

Although this point has been hashed and rehashed by many bloggers already, I still consider many bloggers lacking in this respect. Improve your article by drafting them first, proof-reading them twice and doing thorough research on the subject beforehand. Of what use is spending two-hour writing an in-depth article which has already been covered extensively on other blogs.

For a further read: Make Your Blog More Powerful by Optimizing the Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Image: GemSuite