Guest post: plan the end of your blog with the same care that you plan its beginning

It’s not the beginning of a blog you need to worry about, argues guest blogger Peter Moore, it’s how to end one that matters.

And just relax about closing it down. It may well give life to another, more vibrant project online.

You just need to know when to give a blog the red, amber or green light.

This is Peter’s second guest post for this blog. Peter blogs himself at My Digital Notebook.

In the beginning

At the time of writing this, the Internet is 27 years, two months, two weeks, four days, 10 hours and 26 minutes old, which is pretty much the same age that Kurt Cobain was when he shot himself, and more than old enough for us to start analysing some digital lifespans.

In this post I want to look at two things: firstly how long a blog (be it a personal one, a work one or of any other type) might last and, secondly, how long one should last.

Blogging (statistics)

In September 2008, Calson.com argued that ‘most blogs are abandoned soon after creation’  – with between 60% and 80% ‘abandoned within one month.’  Therefore it is fair to state that the majority have the lifespan of somewhere between that of an adult mayfly (one day) and a Greek Firefly (two months).

These figures are notoriously difficult to measure but they do give an impression of the speed at which new blogs are launched. And, if anything, their tiny lifespans reflect the ease with which one can be set up.

At the other end of the spectrum, only a very slender number of blogs have been going for around a decade and most of those which emerged as the most popular arrived on the shoulders of Web 2.0 in the five years that followed the Dot Com Crash in 2000.

A measured approach

This leaves us with a good few million blogs that are left in the middle: those that continue for more than just a few months but are unlikely to survive for, say, three or more years. With this in mind, a month or so ago I wrote that:

When it comes to blogs, it seems, far too many are launched with the assured expectation that they are going to roll gloriously onwards into infinity. Therefore many evolve to the same familiar rhythm – which often means beginning in an explosion of energy before generally trailing off into obscurity.

There is, of course, an alternative to this, and that is to plan the end of a blog with the same care that you plan its beginning. Better than being wedded to a single domain for evermore is having the freedom to progress from one digital project to the next: it helps to keep things fresh and to ensure that the content remains niche.

To demonstrate this, here are three of my old blogs: one stopped after five months, one paused after a year and a half and another, still rolling on.

Camervroom (September 2009 – January 2010)

For me, Camervroom is a good example of how a blog can be used to document an intense project over a short period of time. It lasted just five months and was comprised of around 80, often short, Posterous posts – all of which charted the preparation for, and the completion of, the Africa Rally at the end of last year.

A similar short term approach could be used for a business blog documenting a project, a journalist working on a particular story, a band on tour or for an academic journal. Always keep the end in sight.

El Villano (May 2008 – February 2010)

Many people will have something similar. El Villano was a first attempt that evolved in unexpected directions and served as my introduction to social media. In the end it became little more than an online home for magazine articles and now it is lying dormant like Mount Etna, with about the same chances of producing anything over the next couple of years.

My Digital Notebook (March 2010 – Present)

My Digital Notebook accompanies my job at a search agency in London and my role as a part time lecturer at City University. Good for recording new technologies, the occasional social media spat, ideas on the future (and observations on the past) of journalism and useful online tools.

Just like the two above, My Digital Notebook will run its course. And when the times comes, it will be just a matter of writing an explanatory post, gathering up my tools and going to try something a little different elsewhere.

POSTSCRIPT: Ourman in…
A great example of how a strong digital narrative and identity can be expertly constructed over time and across a number of different sites is with Steve Jackson.

He began blogging in 2004 with the Space Hardware Blog, before writing successive accounts of his travels (and subsequent settling down) in Hanoi, Nicaragua and Cameroon.

All told, these blogs form a cumulative digital autobiography that isn’t constrained by the boundaries of a single domain name or identity. For me it is a good example of where others might well get to as the Internet evolves and digital footprints become more vibrant and varied.

Photos: “Traffic lights in peppers” by buddhiko, “Red light” by lorentey, “steady” by polandeze, “Go” by tristanf.

The top ten posts of 2009 from These Digital Times

Here are the top ten posts of 2009 from These Digital Times. Twitter and social media dominate – not at all surprising for a blog in this area.

• Six types of Tweets if you Twitter every day
• The ten questions I ask myself before I publish any blog post
• Five people to follow on Twitter in 2009
• A list of social media habits I am stopping immediately
• What should a well designed website look like: part 1
• About John Welsh
• Tennis player Andy Murray’s Twitter goes dead!
• Guest post: top ten tips on how to manage a Linkedin group
• A list of companies using social media to market themselves in the UK – take two
• A list of ten Google Reader Shared Items to which you can subscribe saving you time

So what does the traffic tell us?

1. The two blog posts about Twitter in the top ten make up just under 10 per cent of the entire year’s traffic.
2. The top five posts represent just over 25 per cent of the entire year’s traffic while
3. the top ten posts represent 40 per cent of the entire year’s traffic.
4. All but ten of the 238 posts on this blog were looked at during 2009 although
5. the least popular 20 posts only managed 30 views in all, the bottom nine posts only one view each.
6. Three of the posts (if you include “About John Welsh”) date back to 2008, hammering home the point that people’s use of the web is blind to date but keen on relevance.
7. Only two of the posts predate the moment when These Digital Times found its voice providing lists for those acquiring skills in social media, and even one of those (“What should a well design website look like”) can be seen as a list.
8. Only one post (Tennis player Andy Murray’s Twitter goes dead!”) dates back to a time when I just used this blog to comment on what else was around. Little surprise that it is a famous tennis player’s name that keeps this post there.
9. Look how high up “About John Welsh” is in the list. It reminds you not to neglect an often overlooked element of a blog.

So the traffic follows the classic Pareto Distribution, a phrase used in economics to describe the typical distribution of wealth. This suggests that the wealthiest person in any town or country is likely to be twice as wealthy as the second most wealthy person who, in turn, is likely to be twice as wealthy as the third most wealthy person and so on. Such distribution, plotted on a graph, is a steep curve away from the vertical axis then continuing almost parallel to the horizontal.

It is a distribution often seen in social media and digital. The activity of the most active member of any community, for example, is likely to be twice as much as the next most active and so on. And think also about something like Amazon where the most popular book is twice as popular as the second and so on.

I’m rather chuffed that These Digital Times follows this pattern.

A strategy for These Digital Times

First some apologies.

An apology to that colleague who recently said he had signed up to my blog. I did not have the heart to say that it had ground to a halt.

Another apology to those reading Jeremy Porter‘s list of “91 Journalism Blogs and Websites You Will Love” who have clicked through to These Digital Times, as recommended, only to find the blog so out of date.

And an apology to me for being tough on myself, first, for the months of work I put into this blog and, second, for the months of angst I gave myself when I didn’t.

Let me give you some background to see if it can help you. And if not you, help me to restart my efforts.

Early Days

The original masthead for These Digital Times - from launch July 2008 to April 2009

It was a casual conversation with another colleague at his leaving party that gave this blog a voice. He was going to have some time on his hands. I suggested he use the opportunity to get up to speed with social media. My email to him, listing some ideas, became “Six steps to get started in social media”. And a blog that rambled on about anything and everything for the seven months up to that point suddenly acquired a voice. These Digital Times, and the experience I gained through it, was a way to help my colleagues (pictured either side of me in the masthead) to acquire the knowledge and perhaps the skills necessary for new media. And the more I helped my colleagues in traditional media to understand new media, so These Digital Times became useful to all those grappling with similar issues.

As soon as I had established these two goals (OK, I know you are supposed to do that BEFORE you start a blog), I then worked out very quickly my strategies to deliver that goal – a highly optimised headline, an often abstract illustration from Flickr’s Creative Commons and a list. I then backed it up with my recently activated social media activity on Twitter and Linkedin. The more I learned in public, revealing all faults and blemishes, the more the traffic came. The more counterintuitive I could be, the more people came back regularly.

I reached a peak of what WordPress calls over 700 “views” in one day in February with such classics as “Six types of Tweets if you Tweet every day” (1970 views since posting in January),  “A list of 10 social media habits I am stopping immediately” (808 views in February 2009 with 343 of them in one day alone) or “A list of eight answers to the most commonly used excuses for not using the web” (18 views yesterday SIX months after it first appeared). Posts bookmarked on StumbleUpon had the longest shelf life  -  75% of my traffic or thereabouts, comes from StumbleUpon these days. Indeed the power of the bookmarker is so long-lasting that it makes Tweeting out a link to a blog post seem a short-term gain.

For the truth is that a traditional journalist like me still finds it astonishing that the web has no concept of breaking news or shelf-life. If people are interested in a subject, and they appear to do so on my blog, then they will find this stuff whenever they wish –  days, weeks or months after its appearance. (Only last week, someone kindly Tweeted out a link to one of my blog posts nine months after I had posted it and only this morning someone else Tweeted out a link to a 14 month old blog post.) And if the content helps people to acquire new skills, then there will always be those who know less than you, even if you once knew less than them. I call this phenomena the Knowledge-Time Continuum.

What came next?

The next masthead - from April 2009 to December 2009

So what happened next? Well first was my ability to extend my network, discovering and, in the process, learning from social media and new media experts. The overlay of practical experience  (actually writing the blog, commenting on others, putting in links) with the knowledge and wisdom generated by so many people made me a fast learner. It changed not only how I thought, literally rewiring my brain, but also what I looked like. The transformation was such it brought about the first change in masthead for this blog – see “On being John Welsh – why you need to change your social media identity to remain authentic”. Indeed I now look at the masthead for These Digital Times from that period (above)  and I see something that I had never seen in myself before. The photo (taken by Hollis Thomases in San Francisco) and the art work (by Claudia Moeller) suggests someone pretty much at ease in the world of social media.

From a personal perspective, the masthead was spot on – I had acquired skills and moved on from those early days in social media. But from a professional perspective, the masthead had already become out of date. My job is much wider than just social media. Once I had acquired some of the skills of social media, it was time to assimilate those learnings, assessing social media merely as one of several types of strategies available to achieve digital goals. Social media was certainly not a goal in itself. My learning in public came to an end and silence ensued.

And now?

The new masthead for These Digital Times

If lists about social media activity can be of use to so many people, it also hammers home the interest in the subject by so many companies concerned to catch up. How much more useful I might be if I can find a way to discuss other digital activities within a company like United Business Media. I felt relaxed to learn about social media in public without divulging anything sensitive about the business. Can I feel as comfortable discussing data, SEO and monitoring?

Let’s see.

Guest post: how cult YouTube directors can interest a young demographic in the issue of climate change

Who better to write this blog post on Blog Action Day 2009 than my sister Cheryl Campbell?

Cheryl is the executive director of tve, a charity that has been making films and documentaries about the environment for 25 years. Here she writes of her sons’ fascination for the cult YouTube videos of Eddsworld and Ted Crusty which  inspired her to work with the very same directors inviting them to give their take on climate change. What better way to appeal to a youngYouTube generation than to work with the stars of the medium.

I like the subject of this post written for this blog on this day of all days.

Blog Action Day 2009 focuses on climate change. These Digital Times is a blog dedicated to observing and supporting all our journeys from traditional to digital media. tve, a traditional maker of films about climate change,  launches something completely different using the tools of new media to get its message across. Cheryl’s post neatly brings all these elements together.

Read what she has to say. Watch the videos.  And send a message to world leaders about climate change.

Eighteen months ago I asked my young son to show me on YouTube what it was that (with all parental filters in place, of course!) was keeping him and his mates so fascinated, what it was that, when they got together as a group, made the computer more interesting than television or the XBOX.

Last night, as a result of that fascinating tour of YouTube channels, tve launched A Million Views on Copenhagen, a series of short, quirky irreverent climate change videos produced by  – and for – the YouTube generation.

tve, which is a UK based charity, has been making films and documentaries about the key environment and development challenges of our time for 25 years. Last year our films reached at least 300 million homes via global television broadcast and many more viewers via broadcasts on nearly 90 national and regional television channels. As you would expect, we are busy making films both long and short in the lead up to the crucial UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

But how to connect with that younger “hard to reach” audience? Some of these cult YouTube producers have vast followings of on-line fans, including Eddsworld, Ted Crusty and Custard Productions. We decided to invite them to produce a series for us, to give us their individual takes on climate change in the run up to the conference in Copenhagen in December. They’re joined by Alisha Tuladhar, a 16 year old schoolgirl from Nepal, and Mike-Steve Adeleye, an award-winning Namibian animator.

And we’ve been delighted with the results. Their films are exciting, innovative and engaging: a polar bear falling from the sky, plastic trees and a Lego campaigner against carbon tax are just some of the ways these members of the YouTube generation deliver their takes on climate change. It has been great to work with all the filmmakers: Edd Gould and Tom Ridgewell of Eddsworld, Mike Tapscott (Ted Crusty), Keshen Matus of Custard Productions, Mike-Steve Adeleye and Alisha Tuladhar. We thank them for sharing their creativity with us.

And so far, from the comments mounting up on our YouTube channel, it looks as we are achieving what we as a charity set out to do – inspiring change – with plenty of entertainment mixed in. “That’s it! I’m plugging out my particle accelerator!” “Woot! Another hilarious eddsworld movie and this time it has a meaning” “haha loved it it made the message bout global warming clear in a funny way” “I better go turn off a light switch now” – let’s keep those comments coming!

tve is not a campaigning organisation. But we often have most impact where we work closely with an organisation who knows how to take the interest and awareness we generate with viewers (be that through television or online) and turn it into action. In this our 25th year we’ve been delighted to partner with one of our founders, WWF, to give viewers of the series  that opportunity  ahead of Copenhagen. Viewers will be invited to Vote Earth and send a message to world leaders by clicking here and joining the call for a global deal on climate change at Copenhagen.

We’re hoping to attract a million views to the series by December so please do click through to tve on YouTube , watch the films. And finally, none of this would have been possible without the support of the Artemis Charitable Foundation. I am hugely grateful to the Foundation for enabling us to reach new audiences with such an exciting and cutting edge series.

Other UBM colleagues who have written for Blog Action Day 2009 are Anthony Hildebrand, Brian Sims, Ron Alallouf, Phil Clark, Grahame Morrison, Rob Enslin and Ed Sexton.

Here is a link to my contribution to Blog Action Day 2008.

These Digital Times is one year old today!

The Knowledge-time Continuum

When I kicked off this blog almost a year ago, I found it really easy to think of topics about which to write. I was new to social media and what I discovered, I wrote about, as I learnt, I explained how to. There was a sort of innocence in the approach and subject matter as if it was the first time anyone had noticed this stuff. That’s probably why it was so popular. Those even newer to the subject than me did not feel intimidated!

Don’t get me wrong. I went in to blogging the right way round, listening to the conversation before tapping out my posts. If that were not enough, my links alone showed that I was aware of what had been written before. But you could not keep me down. The sheer thrill of those early months made me so excited I just had to add my pennyworth to the blogosphere. The strange thing is that, however unoriginal my subject matter might have been, people found my blog and read it in increasing numbers.  

One year on

But that period has come to an end. Today I am in the midst of “blogger’s block”, a period when the ideas for new posts has deserted me. It is more unsettling than I imagined though very much more rationale. For the simple fact is that having learnt so much, I have stopped coming across facets of social media that are new to me. My source of posts, therefore, has dried up. New subject material is going to have to come from a much more original source within me. Or will it?

I spent over 20 years in traditional print journalism and a year in the blogosphere. You’ve heard it said many times that old media had a monopoly on content – if you did not like the local paper you read or B2B magazine, you did not really have much choice to go elsewhere. But what old media also had was a monopoly on the timeliness and longevity of that content – a story did not exist until the editor published it and the same story remained active only as long as the editor chose to do so. 

The blogosphere has changed all that.

Content no longer belongs to one medium. And the timeliness and longevity of content has now stretched to be as long as anyone person is interested in it. And people are interested in subjects at very different times from each other depending on their experience and exposure. So if you had only stumbled upon the blogosphere within the last year, you would find many of the posts in this blog essential reading. But if you had been blogging for anything more, you would probably find many of the posts in this blog somewhat familiar. ”A list of Google Reader Shared Items,” you might say. “Are people only just discovering them?”Or ”Six types of Tweets if you Twitter everyday. Mmmm, does Twitter really need such analysis?”

The Law of the Blogativity

Just like Space-time Continuum, the Law of Physics that describes time being relative to an object’s speed, so Knowledge-time Continuum is the Law of the Blogosphere which describes this phenomenon. In essence, it states that:

however many people are in front of you in knowledge or understanding of social media, there will be some, if not more, people behind you relative to your knowledge.  

And:

since the number of people within social media is only every going to grow, there will always be more people needing to read what you write.  

So for some, what you write will always be tiresomely unoriginal. But for others, those who are only starting to make a step into the future, you will always be dashingly and seductively interesting.

Indeed Knowledge-time Continuum is not just a law relating to blogs but one also for social media. Take this example. You start following really useful people on Twitter who introduce you to new ideas and teach you what to do. The faster you learn, the more followers you attract who are a week, a month a year behind you. And if the people you once followed on Twitter are not learning as fast as you and continue to Tweet out links to the ABC, then you find yourself looking for fresh Twitterers. 

How do I prove all this? Follow the analytics on your blog. My most popular posts (Five people to follow on Twitter in 2009, Six types of Tweets if you Twitter everyday and A list of 10 social media habits that I am stopping immediately) become not just more visited but visited by more people more frequently as time goes by. It is not that the posts get any better or my arguments any more intelligent (far from it, I wince a little on rereading them!). But rather the longer life they have, the more Google shoves them up the search engines and more people find them. Indeed the more people discover just how much they don’t know about social media (and remember a lot more people than that don’t even know what they don’t know), the more people will end up on my blog.

Which type are you?

Indeed I would go so far as to posit three types of people within the blogosphere.

• The latecomers (0-12 months). They’ve just discovered how much they don’t know. 
• The late early adopters (1-3 yrs). They’re already hardened by a few knocks but they’ve stayed the game.
• The early adopters (4-10 yrs). Way out front with great analysis of what’s happening to us all.

All three overlap- the linked in, connected blogosphere could do nothing else – but I would go further. All three are like cogs, one pushing the other on, and sometimes pulling it back. But none operating without the other.

Of course none of this helps my blogger’s block! But I have come up with a list of ideas for my next posts. They are not going to be about the actual kit of social media, as I have done in the past, but rather how you can measure and assess its success.

Photo credit: As you said

On Being John Welsh: why you need to change your social media identity to remain authentic

I’ve done it. I’ve changed the design of my blog. Out has gone the masthead that has loyally followed me for the first tempestuous 11 months in the blogosphere. And in comes a new one by Claudia Moeller (who Tweets @ludg8cre8ive).

Why did I do it? 

I loved my original social media identity, used on my blog’s masthead (above) and as an avatar. The photograph that I used was taken during UBM Live’s first ever Digital Achievement Day.  I got a call to go down to another floor of our office and everyone (I mean everyone!) was wearing a paper mask of my face. I am the digital director so it showed that “we are all digital now”.

Very On Being John Malkovich.

I loved that photo. My reason for plunging into the social web in the first place was to find out what our company needed to know and work with my colleagues to make the social web fun and profitable. The photo made me feel that my colleagues were holding my hand in what was, at first a pretty, lonely place.

Then a month ago, I attended the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. It was the first time I had had the opportunity to transform many online relationships into face-to-face. One of the people I met up with was Hollis Thomases (who Tweets @hollisthomases) who just could not see the similarity between my social media identity and myself in person. Peter Kim has recently given this phenomenon a name and a definition:

Headfake, noun.  A situation in which you are familiar with a person’s avatar picture, which gives you an inaccurate idea of how that person appears in real life.

Luckily Hollis grabbed her iPhone, took a picture and my new social media identity was formed. My social media avatars now look like me and, finally, so does the masthead of this blog.

The strange this is, I should have worked this out for myself. I have spent 14 years as an editor of three different B2B magazines. Each one bore a photo of myself as editor. Every time I attended an industry event people would come up and start speaking as if they had known me for years. In a way, they did know me. For, just like social media, the repetition of my photo and my weekly or monthly leader plus personable, if not personal, words made them own a little of me. 

So why should you change your design? Not because it might attract more readers (they probably read you in RSS). Certainly not for vanity. But for what we are all looking for on the social web – authenticity.

I must just make sure I do not have a haircut anytime soon.

Guest post: ask your readers – what are the key five principles of blogging?

Phil Clark started  the blog Zerochampion in February 2007 and focuses on one one particular community – that of sustainability. He also cultivates a Twitter following with his sometimes ironic Tweets  (disclosure: and is a colleague).  Here he has asked his readers to answer the question, what are the key five principles of blogging?

I’ve been blogging for just over two years now at Zerochampionand while the tool is essentially one that offers you freedom there are a few principles I think that are crucial to establishing yourself both as a trusted voice and to building a loyal and growing audience. This is especially true if your blog is one that is not just personal but plays a part in your role as a practitioner, professional or journalist.

In order to cement the five principles I’ve worked up I put the question out to my audience and got some fascinating results. While the commenters picked up on different aspects about blogging I think there were core messages that came across. So here goes:

1 It’s journalism but not quite as you know it -There are key skills that transfer to blogging from journalism (writing style, grasp of subject, interpretation and analysis etc,) but there are other qualities you need to possess, such as

• a greater openness with your audience,
• more honesty in admitting the limits of your knowledge in writing and
• an eagerness to engage more directly with your audience.

Here’s a perspective from one of my readers William Shaw:

Journalists make the mistake of thinking they’re like a rolling op-ed page… that they’re writing the last thought on something, whereas really a blog is about your third or fourth pass at an idea.

2 Be passionate - You need a real passion for the subject of your blog – Without I think you’ll struggle for two reasons,

• I’m not sure the audience will really believe in what you’re writing or connect with you,
• and secondly I think you’ll struggle to keep the enthusiasm going to keep it fresh and updated.

3 Be patient- Nothing online is overnight as I discovered when starting to focus my attentions on online. You’re not going to get a string of comments days after you start. It takes effort, but the rewards are fantastic. I have developed relationships that are as strong as any than I have made as a journalist through more traditional means such as face to face meetings.

4  Experiment– Your blog doesn’t have to be flat prose. There’s a freedom to blogging that’s liberating. Try things out few quick examples — use audio-visual material or style your posts differently. Why not try a poem, a bit of satire, a conversation or just ask series of questions? William Shaw again:

A blog is a try-out of a half-formed thought. That’s why it’s such a wonderful form.

5 Blog first time– I find that holding on to ideas is more often than not fatal for blogs. Wait for even a day or so and the inspiration wanes. If you let an idea fester it does just that – fester and wane. Get it down as soon as the inspiration takes you.

Picture credit: sideshowbarker

What you should do if you think your blog post has been reproduced without adequate credit or links

It was a Tweet that alerted me.

A post from this blog appeared to have been reproduced on another blog without adequate credit or links. Within 24 hours, I had resolved the issue but, in the process, reassessed some of my core values.

So what happened?

The post had been replicated on another blog (Blog A) – same headline, text and photo. A short sentence between the headline and the text indicated a link back to my original post.

Blog A offered neither comment functionality nor a contact email. 

My first response?

I went straight to bed pretty upset. I don’t make money from this blog but, after seven months, it’s my blog.

I Tweeted the news to my community just before turning off the lights.

By morning, it had to get worse before getting better

Another blog, Blog B, had picked up on Blog A, presumed it was the original, and linked to it, not me. But my Tweet had done its magic. I received advice from Peter Moore, who also writes a blog, that I visit Copyscape.

He was right.

What does Copyscape do?

You type in the URL of your blog and Copyscape supplies you with a list of sites carrying the same text as yours. Copyscape highlights those bits of the text that have been replicated. It even counts the words. Mine was 100%.

Next steps: read its rules 

Copyscape suggests six steps.

First,  find out who owns the site or hosts it – Copyscape provides this information after inputting the site’s URL. Next, write an email asking the blog to reduce the amount of text used and credit fully.

The most important point was about tone. Do not be aggressive. It might all be a misunderstanding.

Practical steps

I sent emails to both blogs. 

By mid-afternoon, I had received a very polite message from Blog A apologising. My post was now cut to a headline and the first paragraph with very obvious links back to my blog. Blog B also emailed, correcting its mistake by linking to my blog.

What lessons had I learnt?

I have met nothing but politeness and civility in the second generation web. It has taught me a different approach from my former days in “broadcast” journalism where I would have sent off an assertive email first and asked questions second.

Could it be that it had all been a genuine misunderstanding?

So it got me thinking. 

When I was a “broadcast” journalist, how many of my arguments were justified and how many led to problems generated by my attitude?

Photo credit: Boocal

The 10 questions I ask myself before I publish any blog post

I used to publish my blog posts immediately after writing them.

Now I write, save, reconsider, save, rewrite, save, sleep, wake…oh, and then publish. The more time I build in before publishing a post, the more visitors I get to this blog.

Ask yourself these questions.

1 Do you have the space and time to reflect deeply on your post?

Tip: Make notes of ideas during the week. If blogging is not your full time job, write only during the weekend.

2 Is your post easy to read or daunting to a first time reader?

Tip: Try organising your posts in different ways. I started this post with bullet points, then experimented with numbers and have ended up with questions/tips.

3 Are all those words or even sentences necessary?

Tip: Reread your post and ask whether you can cut out a word or whole sentences. Go back and cut out more. And more.

4 What combination of typography makes it easier to read?

Tip: Even with a basic blog platform like this I can use bold, normal or italic, bullet points or numbers, quotations and pictures. Experiment until it is easier to read.

5 What will the post actually look like when published?

Tip: Click on preview. Have a really close look at what your post looks like down to how the text fits round the picture.

6 Are you the only person in the world with perfect spelling?

Tip: Use the spell check. I have no doubt that someone can find spelling and grammar mistakes in this post. But, without spell check, you’re doomed.

7 Does this post need to be published right now?

Tip: If it is a breaking story, get on with it. But if there is no good answer to this question, literally sleep on it.

8 Have you thought of the implication of every word you have written?

Tip: You really need to be sensitive to every type of reader. You want opinionated commenters but not those who are outraged by a misunderstanding.

9 Do you know how to publish a post using your blog’s timer?

Tip: This post was published just as the traffic to this blog takes off. As important, I can leave the blog’s timer to take care of the post while I get to work.

10 Do you see your post as a one-off or part of that week’s schedule?

Tip: Even if it is a one-off in content, think of your post as part of a weekly programme. How does it fit in?

What questions do you ask yourself before publishing a post?

If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!

Photo credit: Xurble