Guest Posting

You're writing posts on your own blog, happily spewing out content for your own little crowd, and you're trying the best you can to get some traffic in.

But what about writing posts for other peoples blog and trying to funnel some of their audience into your blog?

That is the power (I hope?) of guest blogging.

I have started dipping my toes into the world of guest blogging and I'm looking forward to seeing the effect on my blog.

Shortly after creating www.lightspeed-gaming.com I was lucky enough to get contacted by a guy from one of the gaming forums that I visit, who was in the process of starting up his own game specific blog.

He complimented me on my writing and asked if I wanted to maybe write some posts for him on this new blog.

And so started my career as guest poster on the Shalesey Cast Blog.

I have actually made quite a few posts on that blog by now, though most of them are not "true" guest posts, in the sense that they are posts that I also have on my own blog, so they are not unique content for this blog.

How do you get users to interact with your blog?

This is not a how-to post, but an actual question..

Light Speed Gaming is now just over a month old.

In that time I've had more than 10.000 visits, which as far as I can gather is actually a pretty decent amount for a brand new blog.

All these 10k visits have left me with less than 20 comments from readers. Probably the number is closer to 10 if you subtract my own comments and a few comments left by people I know.

What I really want to try to do is build a sense of community and user interaction.

I have tried encouraging people to leave comments, provide feedback on the content of my blog or tell me what they'd like to see next, but none of this has been met with more than 1-2 comments.

Getting more quality blog publicity

We already talked a bit about how to get traffic on your blog but I have picked up a couple of new "tricks" recently that I thought I'd share.

If you're blogging about a particular interest that you also explore online, then you probably know some resource sites for that interest.

In my case, where my subject matter is primarily video games, I use the gaming news site Blue's News all the time.
After I created my post based on game developer feedback, as discussed in my previous post, I thought that this might actually be a post that was worthy of being mentioned on Blue's News.

So, again without any hope of success really, I sent a mail off to Blue's News submission address and let them know I had made this post and included the link.

Creating content for your blog - Don't act like the small guy

As I was making posts for my blog I had the mindset that I am just some random nerd sitting in my apartment blogging about my hobby.

Why should anyone pay any attention to the stuff I write or be interested in helping me create content?

Then a couple of weeks ago I was reading up on some game developer sites and I thought to myself that it would be really cool if I could make a post that was actually based on real interaction between me and a game developer, and not just me ranting monologue style.

So with no hope of getting a reply at all, I set about writing to a few game companies, sending out mails with a few relevant questions for their games and asking them if they could possibly take some time out to answer me.

Much to my surprise I actually got a response back the very next day from the "Orcs Must Die!" game developer "Robot Entertainment", where they answered my questions perfectly.

Interconnecting your blog with other social media sites

Once you make a blog you have a platform for expressing yourself.

You'll want to let the world know in as many ways as possible that your blog is out there, for example by using the various methods that I discussed in my post about getting traffic.

Besides this direct promotion to get traffic there are also the more indirect methods, such as setting up a Twitter account, Facebook page or Youtube channel.

None of these outlets will necessarily bring in more readers by themselves, but it gives you presence in social media sites that millions of people visit every day.

Digg it - you're doing it wrong?

While I have had great success with Reddit as a means of driving traffic to my blog, I have had nothing but complete and utter failure with Digg.

Digg seems to be a lot more about creating a network with other users and having followers if you want any chance at all of having your stuff displayed for the general public.

Got Traffic? Get traffic! - Getting traffic to your blog

If you make a post on your blog and no one is there to read it, does it actually exist?

The answer is yes. Stop being silly.

But, it sure as heck will not feel very satisfying spending hours on a blog post, only to stare at that view counter staying stubbornly at "0".

Trust me, this is first hand experience.

You made a blog, so I am going to assume that you actually would like people to read what you write, otherwise you might as well just be writing in a diary in your drawer (and knowing how nosy kids/siblings/jealous spouses are that will probably actually get more pageviews than a new blog).

I found a lot of advice about getting traffic to your blog out there on the interweb.

Google Analytics and Feedburner - Just set it up

If you want to run a blog with any degree of seriousness higher than simply plopping down your thoughts and sending it out the the ethereal world of the internet (which is basically how I'm going to run this blog), then you'll want to know about the viewers of your blog.

Blogger does offer some data analyzing capabilities of who is viewing your blog, when and what they are seeing.
That's a good start, but you'll also want to know stuff like, how long do people stay, how many visits are from people coming back to your blog and how many pages does my average visitor look at?

All these questions can be answered by Google Analytics.

Making a logo for your blog

Very quickly I decided that I wanted to do something to make my blog seem just a little less "bog standard Blogger template by clueless guy" (which it was/is to be fair).

I decided that a good way of doing this was to change the name of my blog from the standard fonts into something of my own creation.

This would also give me a chance to give my blog a better sense of identity.

Of course, having no artistic talent of my own whatsoever, I decided that, as always, the solution must be somewhere on the internet.

And lo, the internet did not let me down!

Naming your Blog

Obviously one of the very first things that you are going to do when creating a blog is choosing a name.

That is a lot harder than one might think (or perhaps it is exactly as hard as one might think!).

A couple of factors that I took into consideration when I choose the name for my blog (Light Speed Gaming).

First of all, I wanted the name to be the same as my domain name, so I started by typing in different ideas in the domain name registration of Blogger to see what was even available.

I also wanted my name to be short enough that people would remember it and of course it had to be relevant to the stuff that I was going to be blogging about.

Finally I wanted the name to reflect the tone of my writing.

Choosing a blogging outlet (Wordpress or Blogger)

So I wanted to start a blog.

That was the easy part.
Next came the decision on where and how my blog should end up on the internet.

There are a lot of blog providers out there, but I already knew the "big two" Wordpress and Blogger, and figured that if I was eventually going to need support or plug-ins for my blog, then going with one of the two big blogging providers seemed like a smart choice (and I was pretty sure that I would need lots and lots of help about setting up my blog!).

Reading up on the two online it seems that it is largely a matter of preference if you go with one or the other.
The biggest difference is that you can download a Wordpress "kit", which you can use to create your own blog on a domain name and host of your own choosing (if you pay for that), thus removing you from the whims of the blogging providers (potentially a good idea if you want to make a "controversial" blog dealing with sex or gambling).

Welcome to Blog Building in the Dark

Hi there

A few weeks ago I finally decided to pop my blogging cherry.

I started my science fiction and video game blog Light Speed Gaming.

This meant jumping off a cliff and diving into the scary world of blogging, which includes such fun things as choosing a blogging outlet, deciding on your template, trying to find out how to attract traffic and lots of other fun terrifying stuff!

Of course I turned to the wonders of the internet for some good old fashioned how-to advice on blog matters.