When  big story breaks, say Google Blog Search, everybody blogs it. And I do mean everybody.  So what do you do?  Blog it?  Skip it?  How do you get your voice above the clutter?  I had the same discussion with myself this morning.  Google Blog Search breaks.  Sure, we were tipped off last night, but still, this morning it broke.  I started reading posts.   I felt the overwhelming urge to drop everything and blog it.  Oh yeah, wait, work.  So I didn't, then.  I did later this afternoon.  What's the lesson here?  First one is wait.  Yes, wait.  Sometimes, it really helps to just wait.  Read and absorb what other people are writing about it.  The chances of getting a scoop are pretty slim.  Yes, we get lucky sometimes, but don't bet on it.  So sometimes there's no rush in getting your post out.  Everyone thinks its a rush and so they just blast stuff off.  Try to hold off.

 

This leads to the next thing.  Write your own opinion.  After you've read everyone else, think, and go with your gut.  You don't have to agree with the masses.  The best thing you can do is write what you have to say.

See the secret to getting noticed and people linking to your articles is to be authentic, to write what you have to say, not just quote and link to Scoble and others.

 

Until next time ...

 

Technorati Tags : Google, search+engines, blogging

 

We're starting a new series here on the Qumana blog, "Ask Qumana ...".  This series will be a la Dave Taylor's tech support blog—Tech Support and Business Questions? Ask Dave Taylor—but focused on blogs and blogging.  It is primarily geared towards the new or intermediate blogger.  If you have a question e-mail us at askqumana AT qumana DOT com and one of the bloggers here at Qumana will try to answer it for you.  We might not be able to answer all of your questions, and we might meld several similar questions into one post, but we will get back to you if you e-mail.

 

So our first question comes from a friend of ours who is just starting out blogging and asks one of the core questions" "How do I engage my audience?".  Wow, this is a tough one.  Sometimes I wonder why some posts that I think are really good don't get any comments, and others get lots.  I certainly don't get anywhere near the number of comments Darren gets on his posts (oh am I jealous).  Why?  Partially it is a numbers game.  More readers increases the number of people who will potentially comment.  But on engaging your audience, how?  One of the tried and true methods is simple, ask.  Yep, ask for comments.  It works pretty often.

 

Also, contrary to what you might think, blogging about the hot topic of the day, won't engage your audience unless you have a unique perspective to add.  Engaging your audience comes down finding out what your audience is most interested in and try to write about that.  Sure, you don't want to do that all the time, but it will help to build your audience.

 

How do you find out what's popular?  Use the stats from Typepad, Blogware, and/or FeedBurner .  See what is getting read the most, trackbacked, and linked to the most.  Work from there and that's a great start.

 

Next topic ... that's up to you.  The e-mail lines are open.

 

 

Technorati Tags : Ask+Qumana, blogs, blogging