Keep the ideas coming by understanding your mission, knowing your audience and knowing your strengths as a content creator and the breadth of content formats.

2. Feeding the
Blog Monster
A PRESENTATION BY JUDITH GOTWALD

3. My background.
Judith Gotwald
• Journalism-University of Pittsburgh
• Magazine News Editor
• Stringer-Somerset Daily American
• Publications Manager-Nonprofit
• Self-Employed In Publishing since 1978
• GotwaldCreation
• Blog (personal) 2x2virtualchurch.com
• Content editor for several companies

4. What is a blog?
A COMBINATION OF THE WORDS “WEB” AND “LOG”

5. Sharing

6. Why Individuals Share?
• The Joy of Expression
• To Find the Like-Minded
• To Breathe Life into Ideas
• To Spark Change
• To Build A Structure for Action
• To Make Money

7. Why
Corporations
Share?
• To Establish Authority
• Create Visibility
• Extend Reach
• To Enlist Support
• To Establish Relationships
• To Build A Structure for Action
• To Make Money
• To Save Money

8. BENEFITS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Inexpensive
Control of Message
Ownership
Power of Serendipity
Forces You to Think
Forces You to See Big Picture
Discipline

9. BLOGGING
STATS

10. Majority of bloggers are women.

11. Search Engines find blogs
before web sites.
85% of searchers find blogs
before websites.
They may never know it!

12. 7 million blogs
13 million microblogs
Twitter/Facebook

13. 7 million blogs
13 million microblogs
Twitter/Facebook
SocialMediaToday

14. SocialMediaToday

15. ANATOMY OF BLOGGING

16. Why we run out of ideas?
FAILURE
to realize that blogs are not about us.
They are about how we relate to others.
The world is a big place.
Focus on it—not yourself.

17. Why we run out of ideas?
FAILURE
to understand audience.
Your readers are great sources of ideas!

18. Why we run out of ideas?
FAILURE
to understand that we are all colleagues.
Old thinking has us trained to view the
world as competition.

19. Twitter
FB
WEB
SITE
BLOG IS
HUB
Pinterest
SlideShare
YouTube

20. 8 TYPES OF CONTENT
VISIONARY
HOW-TO
PERSUASIVE
ANALYTICAL
COMMENTARY
STORIES
NEWS
REVIEWS
CURATED

21. VISIONARY
Are you a dreamer?
Write about how you’d like
to see the world/your
field/your family, etc.
BLOG SAMPLES
Seth Godin: Krypton Community Colle ge

22. HOW-TO
Are you a teacher?
How to articles are among the most
popular blogs. They tend to attract
traffic.
BLOG SAMPLES
Seth Godin, Social Media Examiner, Hubspot,
2x2

23. PERSUASIVE
Do you have a cause?
Hammer it home.
Blogs can be influential in
changing the course of history.
BLOG SAMPLES
Any nonprofit
12 - 12 - 2012

24. ANALYTICAL
Do you like statistics?
People turn to the web for
up-to-date statitsics.
BLOG SAMPLES
Kissmetics.com, StatsBlogs.com

25. COMMENTARY
Do you just
want to be heard?
Blogging is the only
social media
Platform that you control.
Huffington post,
indivdual journalists,
Leaders in any given field

26. STORIES/NEWS
Are you a
story-teller?
A blog is a modern campfire.
BLOG SAMPLES
venturegalleries.com
2x2virtualchurch.com
features a story each week

27. REPORTER
Do you like
to be first to share
ideas/knowledge?
Start blogging!
Mashable, socialmediaexaminer

28. CURATED
Do you like to collect
and juggle all kinds
of information?
A blog is a modern campfire.
BLOG SAMPLES
Firepolemarketing,
socialmediaexaminer

29. UNDERSTANDING THE
BLOG MONSTER’S DIET

32. • Different formats
• Different platforms
• Ezines, white papers
THINK EVERGREEN
PRESENTATION TITLE AND COMPANY
12 - 12 - 2012

33. INGREDIENTS

34. STORYTELLING

35. A good story has the
power to move
mountains.
Know your
audience. There
may be more than
one!

36. PERSONAS
✴ Choose one to three personas.
✴ Describe them. Give them a name.
✴ Find a photo to represent them.
✴ Names, vital statistics, work, hobbies, friends, dreams.
✴ Why should they read your blog?

37. HEADLINE
✴ About 80 Characters
✴ Key words
✴ Use Numbers, (9 Ways to Edit Your Blog)
✴ Why or How to

38. LEAD PARAGRAPH
✴ Who, What, When and Where
✴ Key words (again)
✴ Get
to the So What Factor
(Why should they keep reading)

39. IMAGE
✴ Search for an Image or from a free stock service
such as photopin.com (include a link), pixabay.com,
morguefile.com
✴ Key words (again—this time in the tagging section
of the photo)
✴ Edit photos in Photoshop or picmonkey.com

40. WORD COUNT
✴ OLD ADVICE is 250 to 500 words
✴ CURRENT ADVICE: Google likes longer, meatier
posts and rewards good writing.
✴ WRITE to be helpful

41. BREAKING UP TEXT
✴ Subheads
✴ Bulleted Lists
✴ Quotes
✴ Indents

42. LINKS
✴ Review for your copy for potential
links.
✴ Don’t be afraid to credit other
bloggers or websites.
✴ Blogs are fueled by connection.

46. DON’T GET OVERWHELMED

51. EDITORIAL
CALENDAR
✴ Write 50 topic ideas
✴ Decide how to address each of the 50
topic ideas on each platform.
(Study the tabloids—they are good at this!)
✴ Start to lay them out on a calendar grid.
You may never look at this after the first week,
but it will be there when you’re stuck.

52. HOMEWORK
✴ Write or review your mission.
✴ Develop your personas.
You’ll introduce them to us next week.
✴ Write 50 topics ideas or headlines.
✴ Consider your keywords.
✴ Choose your platforms.
✴ Next week: Editorial Calendars

53. HELPFUL LINKS
✴ socialmediaexaminer.com
Great up-to-date articles, community, training
✴ hubspot.com (helpful how-to books),
topsy.com (analyzes your field)
google key word analytics
✴ James Wedmore for video help
Amy Porterfield, Mari Smith for Facebook help
Mark Schaefer for Twitter and marketing
Seth Godin for marketing and fun thinking
Joe Pulizzi for content marketing strategy
(and me! Judith Gotwald)

54. THANK YOU!
Hope you enjoyed this presentation.
Judy Gotwald
creation@dca.net
@jigotwald.com
Gotwaldcreation.com
2x2virtualchurch.com

55. PHOTO CREDITS
Brainstorm
photo credit:
neilslorance
via
Cartoon
photopin cc
Dear
Diary
photo credit: incurable_hippie via photopin cc
Anatomy
(brain
cross
section)
photo credit: Patrick J. Lynch via photopin cc
frog
photo credit: Jess*Lo via photopin cc