Syndicate Your Content For Search Engine Domination How do YOU organize your blogging?
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This post is part of the guest blogger experiment.
So you have an A-List blog? You receive dozens, if not hundreds, of comments from new commenters each week as well as plenty of new subscribers to your influential blog every day. Don’t tell me you’ll never have time to email every one of those new commenters to tell them how much you appreciate them! You do have at least fifty posts ready to go at all times, don’t you? And I thought you were an A-Lister!! You should at least have twenty you are working on. If you don’t organize your blogging, you are headed for disaster. I’m going to give you some tips that will help you organize your blogging.
Computer folders and Microsoft Word documents are fine as blogging organizers. Every day I read at least 15 blogs in my niche, some days I read over fifty. In these blogs I have read posts about bloggers using folders and Word to store their blogging ideas. If it works for you, use it, but I have a better way, and the rest of the cows in the pasture should, too.
Get yourself a forum. Don’t go cheap, PHPBB forums are not secure. Stay the heck away from SMF. Get an Invision Power Board. It will cost you approximately $100-$120 per year. Set up your forums and subforums and develop your blog articles there. Once you have the post written, move it to your WordPress installation’s dashboard. You DO use WordPress, don’t you? WP is the very best blog platform ever developed. Once you have the post pasted inside your dashboard, add the pertinent links to your post. Check it and proofread it and don’t forget to check your spelling, nothing turns me off faster than a grossly misspelled blog article. Don’t bother to use spell check within IPB forums, if you can’t spell, don’t bother to blog. Don’t forget to check your link integrity.
Use your Blogging subforum. You’ll have a lot of material posted in your blogging forum. You can use different threads (topics) for different items. For example, you should develop and maintain a list of all your commenters. You should make a new list of all your new commenters. All of these visitors to your blog must be emailed with a thank you message. You must also comment at least ONCE on each of their blogs.
Differentiate your subforums. What I do is set up a separate subforum for each blogging concern, such as new commenters, commenters, backlinkers, guest bloggers, ideas for new blog posts, blog posts under development, and completed blog posts ready for deployment to your blog platform. You should also have subforums for blogs you read (and you’d better be reading at least 50 blogs per week!!!), blogs you’ve discovered and intend to read, social networks you have joined, social networks you are going to join, and blog authors’ contact information, among numerous other items of concern to a blogger. You should be developing descriptions of all the blogs you read on an ongoing basis. If you are asked for a review, you’d better be prepared, A-Lister. The ability to set subforums is one of the advantages of using an Invision Power Board. So you will have at least fifteen subforums within your main blogging forum for starters.
As you grow as a blogger, you’ll add to your blogging subforums. As you meet new bloggers you will develop relationships with, you’ll list their contact info and particulars in the appropriate subforum. Within that subforum you will open a page for each blog author. The same goes for your growing commenters’ base. There are many ways to develop an informational database using an IPB forum, but I am giving you a general overview.
Obtain another domain for your blogging organizer forum. Keep in mind that this is not a forum that you want people to join. You’ll generally used secured forums, but this will be a private forum, with no registration allowed. You can set the permissions so that no one can even view the unsecured forums. I have mine on an entirely different domain which is new and has not even been live long enough for search engines to index it. Use the default settings. You want this forum to be as bland and uninteresting as old buildings in certain third world countries.
Application: This is workable even for beginning bloggers, but as you grow, you are going to experience a crush of information as you network with other bloggers, and read many other blogs, and you will find that you have a ton of information to manage. Unless you have the capital outlay to invest in staff, you’ll need to be organized from the very beginning. This system is scalable over time, I use it to manage many other projects such as electronic store development and implementation and other information-intensive projects.
Full Disclosure: I am not receiving any income from my endorsement of Invision Power Forums. There are no affiliate links in this article.
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I’m not sure I really see the point. But I’m a bit slow sometimes.
We’re trying to decypher the secret message too.
I use a piece of paper and a pencil. Total outlay since 2006 for “organizational expenses” has been $1.20.
You’ll have to buy my e-book if you want to know how to use the “Paper & Pencil Technique To Profits” like a professional.
paper and pencil rock!
Yeah, I’ll get to doodle at the same time ^_^
WOW very good post,I never imagined that a blogger uses this type of forum to secure and manage stuffs…but Its a bit costly for me though
What’s wrong with Outlook Contacts combined with a favourites folder in Firefox? If you want to over complicate knock up a quick Access database if you like , but using paid forum software is a bit mental IMHO.
I find the forum addition a nice feature but I fail to see the purpose of making it a necessity and that is what it sounds like the guest author is trying to imply… at least that it will help tremendously. I also fail to see paying for a forum service up front when you haven’t gotten any traffic to being with. Especially at those prices. Forums are difficult to monetize and especially hard to drive traffic to if you are new compare to a blog.
Maybe something to do with having archives and maybe as a place to store potential future posts?
I can’t really see the point either
I normally make mental notes and use my memory. My services are available for hire too. I accept Paypal.
LOL, I am particularly good with MS Word and Excel if you want to hire me too LOL
One tool we use to archive our posts is Ecto. It can download all your posts from your blog, comes with an editor and has a one button upload solution.
Very nice
I don’t agree with you that phpBB is insecure. phpBB3 is secure. Recently phpBB3 RC4 was released.
I know previous versions of phpBB were prone to attacks and getting hacked into. Well have to definitely check out this newer version. I know not too long ago their own website was down, not sure if it was really a server failure that wiped out everything or was it that their site got attacked. In any event, because of all the stories I read online about phpBB (even though I have used their forum before), I swapped over to SMF for my blog forum.
Although SMF is also prone to getting hacked, it seemed the occurrence was minimal compare to all the stories circulating around the internet on phpBB (ie reviews). I would definitely have to check back on this new phpBB3, although I want to note that no matter how secure something may seem, there is always a leak.
It’s positively bonkers.
You know, the way you engage your audience is really good. hmm, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that you are john chow’s second blog. the one he talked of as bulding as a nobody. j/k. but really, i use smf now, and nobody has registered i think it is a good idea to get IPB, since noone likes to register, i can create such settings. I am un upcoming alist vlog. look out johncow.cheers!
I read a lot of blogs every day, easily 100+
A tip I picked up early on was to use different folders in Firefox and have them organized across the firefox toolbar, (got this idea from http://www.problogger.net.)
I have everything organized into about 10 folders,it is really useful to be able to click on one and open 50 websites at once in tabs.
Everytime I find a new site, it goes in one of the folders, and I know where to find it next time.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who thought this was a bit over the top. Granted I am not, nor will I ever be an A-list anything but recognizing our shortcomings is the first step right? Anyway, I can see the need for a way to organize such data online, since I often access from a variety of locations, but I am not sure this is the way to go. Besides the prices in the post are wrong. I just checked the Invision Power Services site and they offer a $149 and a $299 package. Unless I am totally missing something.
Long winded (typed) way of saying I like the idea, just not sure this is the right way to go about it.
I would like to apologize to John Cow’s readership for this article that I wrote. I would also like to apologize to John Cow for this article and the way I presented it. It was way over the top. I was condescending and I was way out of line. I really should have written about another blogging topic, or not at all here at John Cow dot com.
I have a lot to learn about blogging and humility, and I am sure no a-list blogger.
I am open to all your comments, both here and at my own blog. I am open to all of your constructive criticism and advice.
I am also interested in how you organize your blogging.
It’s obvious I could learn a lot from other readers and bloggers.
Never apologize for something you write. It means you’re apologizing for who you are. Nobody should have to say they’re sorry for who they are!
At least you stepped up and shared your thoughts with us! Thank you.
Yeah bro, it’s all good. Don’t sweat it. I once wrote an article for a magazine that got me lynched by a bunch of feminists. Now that is pain.
I agree. Keep in mind that the big beef himself said negative comments are a good thing. They allow you to reflect on things and adjust accordingly.
Oh wait I hope my comment wasn’t taken as a slam, that was not my intention. I thought it was a great article, and to be honest since I read it I have been thinking about a better way to organize my blogging. I simply meant that it seemed to be overkill for my needs, not that it was a totally insane idea. Gee sometimes my apologies cut worse than my original comments. Anyway, I think you get my meaning.
I think if you want to create a forum, you should attach it to another domain. If your website is MyBlog.com you should create, MyBlogForum.com
Forums are more time consuming to manage and promote than a blog. There are enough blogging forums out there now, creating another wouldn’t be worth it unless you have something unique