Blogging Comes of Age

There were five basic lessons I learned at the Blogword 2007 conference in Las Vegas last week, the fabulous and seminal Las Vegas trade show hosted by the redoubtable Dave Taylor. Here are lessons one through three:

1. Blogging has gone beyond pastime and into prime time.
How else to explain the hundreds of participants, speakers and exhibitors willing to pay top dollar to hob-nob with their fellow bloggerati? How else to explain the star-studded line-up? A few years ago, who would have thought that A-listers like radio talk show hosts Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, or Dallas Mavericks owner and dot-com billionaire Mark Cuban, would have lined up to schmooze with a bunch of “little bloggers” like us? Well, it appears that the long tail is finally beginning to wag the dog.

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2. The first rule of blogging is to develop your audience.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? Who cares? No one heard it, so it doesn’t matter. Sure, you may want to keep an online diary just for friends and family. It saves on stamps. But chances are you’re blogging for dollars, which is why you’re reading this. A small audience means little opportunity for revenue. Begin developing your audience by finding your niche, and make sure that that niche is monetizable (i.e., that there’s gear or other goods or services involved that advertisers and merchants can offer through your blog).

3. The other first rule of blogging is to concentrate on your content.
This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many bloggers think they can throw just anything up, slap a few contextual ads on it, and the money will come pouring in. You can’t hope to build an audience if you don’t offer compelling, targeted content that offers information or entertainment that users are unlikely to find elsewhere. This applies to your headlines, as well. Write snappy headlines that explain what an article is about. Most of your new users will come to you via some kind of search or other. By offering concise headlines, you increase the chance of a searcher clicking on you in search results. And remember, people like lists, like “Five Things I Learned at BlogWorld.” Lastly, when writing headers, people tend to search for problems (i.e., “leaky faucet”) not solutions (”fix my faucet”).

Stay tuned for lessons four and five—the 7 1/2 ways to monetize and why it’s wise to analyze.

—Michael Mattis, Blogster-in-Chief