Our contribution to Project Blogger is helping Michael Daly use his Hamptons Real Estate Blog to satisfy his particular needs (expressed to us during pre-school)—primarily to build his brand and his brokerage business.
Our Course Outline: BEEP
B: Build your brand. Everything should impress the reader that this is YOUR blog, YOUR brand. And that your brand provides value.
E: Establish your expertise. Your knowledge, experience, advice. Your WISDOM.
E: Engage your readers. Spur the conversation or debate. Respond to comments, ask questions. Heck, you may learn something from your readers (we certainly have).
P: Present useful content. This has 2 components: one visual, one visceral.
Visual: Generally speaking, a reader on the net is different than a reader offline. Net readers are scanners—you know the expression—surfing the web—surfing is movement, speed. Readers haven’t the time to waste. Get to the point. Give them a good headline that meets a need —then deliver the goods. So, in that vein, generally speaking, lean toward the shorter posts, use images (a pic is worth a thousand words anyway), use lists (they work), use bullets, break up your text, use sub-headlines, quotes, whatever will cause the scanner to stop and smell the roses.
Visceral: This is where the magic happens. It’s how you communicate. This is Personality. Passion. We don’t teach this. We would never attempt to teach it. This component ALONE can trump all the others combined and put you on the top of any blogging heap. It is beyond measure. If we failed at every piece of advice and Michael put forth his unique voice with passion, he would succeed, despite us. Besides, we don’t know it all anyway. We are still students ourselves.
So that’s Orientation and the Course Outline. Time for recess.
Technorati Tags: Project Blogger, blogging, Micheal Daly, Hamptons, Sellsius
That is an absolutely hilarious photoshop of the Principia Mathematica.
Newton is one of our heroes.
Love this post. My blog works well. These days it works too well. I just don’t get why. I learn something new every day. my readers email me or call and sometimes leave comments. I ask my reader/teachers a lot of questions and am always adding links and articles because someone was looking for some thing and didn’t find it on my blog.
Teresa, when I think of St. Paul, I think of you.
I haven’t found a way to teach PASSION either. I do think, though, that even though passion will win out over technique, that passion with technique should outpull passion without technique.
Agreed.