How Do I Know What To Write and Where to Publish It?
Jan 07
image credit: dbdbrobot
We are currently working on adding content to our new niche blogs, however, if you followed along with the how to squidoo series you know there’s going to be writing in many more places before this project is done.
I decided on this post today because of a conversation I had with a friend yesterday. I don’t know if you know, but I have an “accountability partner”. Each morning I get on the phone with her and we talk about what we got done yesterday. What went right, what was maybe not quite right, and what we plan to accomplish today. This call is relatively short, and some days we get involved in a conversation and it goes a little long. (This call is immensely valuable for me in so many ways ~ if anyone else wants to get an accountability partner maybe we can set up a discussion on the fan page so you can have a way to contact one another)
Yesterday we were talking about the 100 articles in 100 days challenge and got to talking about how you know what to put on your blog, or what to write for an article.
This is such an important point ~ there are so many places we are going to need to put content. Content that will build links, drive traffic, build the content of our blog ~ how do you know what should go where?
There’s no right or wrong way to do this.
Let me just say that right off the bat. You can create unique content anywhere and you can put whichever piece you want, wherever you want it, as long as you keep producing content you’re looking at a win/win situation.
There are some ways however, you can set things up to let your content work better and harder while you do a little less. 
we like that right?
So here’s the situation. My partner @Mary K recently started this parenting blog. (I’ve been begging her to do this for years, just so I could read it!!). It is quickly becoming my go to resource for downstream parenting information. (just FYI). She is participating in the 100 article challenge, and wants to do a series on a topic. She’s wondering if she should put the series on her blog or break things down and use them for articles.
Either one would work. But here’s what I had to say (because you know I always have something to say… right?)
I asked a few questions:
1. Are you going to go in depth in these articles?
2. Are you giving tips in the articles or is it just explanation/information?
3. Is there possibly concrete examples you could give that relate to the topic?
She told me she had planned the series to be an indepth look at 6 different elements of something, and then she wants to relate those things back to how our kids show us each one. (I can’t wait to read this series for sure!). She said at this point she was mostly looking at explanation type content, but there COULD be some concrete examples.
My suggestion:
Keep the series on your blog. Here’s why. It’s gonna be GREAT content. You don’t want to “waste” that on EZA ~ you also don’t really want someone posting your BEST content on their blog, word for word, which is the point of EZA.
Create the series on your blog, create a whole category for it, link the posts together so people can easily navigate through the series.
This does a few things:
It makes your blog “sticky” (people reading more than one post at a time). It gives you internal linking which the search engines will love. It gives you AWESOME content that your readers (and the search engines) will love, and will keep them coming back.
So what about EZA? I still need 6 more articles?
Take each post from your blog, and come up with a few concrete examples of something related to that topic, or specific examples of how you can handle what you’re talking about in the post. Then create a quick list post and use those for your EZA articles.
What this does:
This gives you shorter articles, easier to write, better to share. (people really seem to like to share shorter, list type posts). It gives you the perfect tie in for your resource box ~ if you found this interesting read the more indepth version and the entire series on my blog (link). Quality, actionable content will always do well on EZA, it will increase your click throughs (either to a product or to your site) the great content you’ve saved for your blog will help convert them into long term readers ~ or help them make the decision to buy.
Knowing what to write, and where to put it can definitely be a stumbling block. It can go so far as to completely halt progress ~ if you get to a point where you don’t know where stuff goes, or what writing goes where it can easily lead to just doing nothing instead of doing something “wrong”.
Please remember there is almost no way you can get this niche blog thing wrong (unless you quit taking action). If you try something and it doesn’t work out as you planned ~ ok, it’s one thing ~ now you know to try something else next time. If she had put her whole series on EZA it might have gotten her traffic ~ it might have really gotten people hooked on her and her writing style, her parenting ideas, which in turn could have brought them to her blog ~ where there would have undoubtedly been great content to keep them there.
So it could have worked either way ~ you just don’t know until you try. If it didn’t “work” meaning she didn’t get a lot of views, or traffic from EZA she could have chalked it up to experiment and tried something different the next time. She still would have had all those great articles on EZA working for her day after day.
I do understand all this content creation stuff can get confusing ~ I do ~ so if you are confused about what to write, or where to put it ~ please, let’s talk about it. Don’t just hole up and quit taking action. We can work through it together and get you on your way again!! Ask in the comment section or else start a discussion over at the fan page. If you want some one on one help, just shoot me an email and we’ll work something out. OK?!? DO NOT LET THIS GET YOU STUCK.
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Other Posts That Might Help:
It will depend on how your theme is set up ~ pages are not set up to be easy to see. They are usually found in the nav bar along the top. Although you can create links in the sidebar to each of the pages.
The other thing if you’re only going to have a few posts is to write them and then change the dates they publish ~ that way you can put them in the order you want them in. I’ve done that a couple times.
Or you could just put all the information in one post ~ so it is all there when they get to your site.
Just some ideas and options.
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That is the nature of a blog ~ giving newest content first.
How many articles do you plan to use for your site?
I don’t know what you’re trying to do with your site, but if you’re creating a blog you would probably just do it like a blog.
Jackie
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
The site I am creating is for a specific affiliate program and the information is limited. Maybe I should not use posts but use the pages feature instead?
Michele
Follow me @Lovebostons on Twitter!
Hi Jackie,
When setting up a blog on wordpress I see that it seems to only put the latest post first and push the introduction to the blog down each time. I there a way to have the blog posts go in sequence. In other words I want people to see the begining and then flow down through all my other posts.
Or should I just not use the post feature but make pages?
Thanks,
Michele
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However you want to do it. You could do
Part 2. Title (make it a link) or just as you’ve described it. There is NO right or wrong way to do this stuff. You just want people to easily be able to navigate where you want them to go.
Here’s a good example of linking through a series. http://ittybiz.com/goal-setting-accountability/
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Thanks Jackie
Here’s a rather dumb question: when you say a link to next in the series of articles, what sort of link? Something like ”Learn more about (theme subject) in my next Post (title of Post).?
RUSSELL
Follow me @kimbarra on Twitter!
Russell, It sounds like you’re in a similar situation as my friend.
I would take the “series” articles and put them in you blog, make sure you provide a link at the bottom of each article to the next in the series.
an 800 word article is pretty long for an article directory ~ you might want to use that one for a squidoo lens ~you can break up the sections/paragraphs into different text modules.
Like I said, you can’t get it wrong. I always think about in terms of my “best” content ~ I try to put my best on my blog since that is my “money” site. Your other work can be divided between other uses.
hope that helps.
Jackie
Follow me @momtohanna on Twitter!
Hi Jackie
I hope this is not a repeat. I just did a Comment, hit ‘Submit’ & itcame up with Error, put in Name and Email, which I HAD done. I hit the Back button and found I’d lost all that I’d written! I’ll now try to recall just what I said.
Your Post was very timely for me as I’ve written a dozen or so articles and have been trying to decide whether to use some of them for a Squidoo Lens, my 1st Niche Blog, EZA or UAW. The articles range from around 350 to 800 words. The 800 is basically an umbrella in terms of theme and subject matter for the others. Having read your Post I feel I’d be best to use this as my 1st Blog and the others progressively as ‘subsidiary’ Blog Posts. I could use variations to the articles for EZA and UAW. Do you think that this would be my best strategy?
I should mention that 2 0r 3 of the articles are in 3 or 4 Parts and, in effect, flow from one to the next. How should I connect these? Should I actually say ‘Part 1″ in the heading?
My next question may sound a bit odd, and you may have already covered it somewhere – if so I’ve missed it. For my 1st Niche Blog I’ve downloaded my Theme, complete with heading which includes myK/W. It has both left and right columns (couldn’t find one with just a right column). In these columns is an amount of copy with such things as ‘Categories’ and ‘Our Sponsors’, etc. How do I get rid of this? When I download my 1st Blog, will they just go? Do I need try to remove what’s there and replace it? If so, how?
Sorry to be so long-winded! Regards …
RUSSELL
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you have to get the whole bit of code to get it to disappear ~ sometimes it takes a few tries playing around with it until you get it right. (at least it did me in the beginning).
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Ok well that has been a giant waste of time! I went to the single post section (single.php) and removed the code and nothing changed!
I put the code back in just to be safe but I can’t seem to figure this out so at this point I may just leave it in there and be done with it but if you do get a chance can you check out this page http://www.toilettrainingseat.net/privacy-policy and let me know if perhaps it is not the single post I should be editing.
At first I liked this theme now I am not too sure!
Chad
go to the single post section and then look for something like this: http://screencast.com/t/Y2E5OGI5OG
Make sure you delete the < at the beginning and the end. I would save it all to a text doc before you start deleting that way if it gets messed up you can just put it back in.
good luck!
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Hi Jackie,
Yep I did create a page so I will go into the theme and see if I can figure out how to change that code.
Thanks
Chad
@Chad ~ did you use a page to do your disclosure policy? You should use a page. If your pages are showing the date you will need to go into your theme and change the code to make it disappear.
@Olivia ~ glad you found it helpful. I have changed the wording in the keywordluv directions, hopefully that will help.
@Frank ~ thanks man. *blush*
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You are ON FIRE my friend!
Superb, informative, highly useful stuff.
THIS is why I look forward to your emails each day.
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p.s. keyword luv is great! But maybe the directions could be clearer. Below it has it all one word, which is what I did. I wondered why no one else’s looked like that and the site shows spaces between kws. Thanks again, Jackie
Great post! Finding topics to write about is always my challenge.
Hey Jackie,
I was not sure where to post this so since I just finished reading this one I will ask it here. Where in WordPress can you edit the option of whether or not your want a date on your post?
When I created the Disclosure/Privacy Policy it shows the date I did the page like it is a post but I don’t want the date showing on this page.
Thanks
Chad
I finished an article this morning (600+ words) and coincidently I was trying to figure out where to put it this morning. I just made a blog post linking to goarticles and the merchant’s product. Although it may have had too many words for a blog post.
Whether or not it was right or wrong, I just did it. Your post confirmed I made the right decision by getting it published.
PS. I’m not quite sure what to think of Twitter although I did notice a backlink to one of my lenses from Twitter.
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well you have no control over that so don’t worry about it.
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No, it is not on EZA. It is on “Best Christmas Gifts For Dad”. One of the sites that UAW submitted my article to.
Thanks!
Cindy
Follow me @casurette on Twitter!
is this article on EZA? If you can delete it I would.
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Hi Jackie!
I have an off topic question… I just received a comment on one of my articles and in this comment the guy links to his own site. “Hi Everyone! Your site is great! I found another site for reviews of home theater equipment. Check it out: http://kochtech.netu.net/hometheater/index.html” So, my question is should I leave this on my article or should I delete it?
Thanks!
Cindy
Follow me @casurette on Twitter!
Jolene,
I would link to your blog FROM your squidoo lens ~ they can both rank and it will be fine. Plus the link from squidoo will help your site do better as well, and yes, you can leave the RSS module as well. I wouldn’t link to your lens from THIS blog, but you can link to it from other free blogs you may have created for that purpose.
the smiley faces is in the settings section of our wp dashboard. It may be in the general section ~ talks about emoticons show them as images or not.
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Here’s a silly question…how do you get smiley faces to appear on your blog? I alway like adding those but all I get are the symbols of the colon and parenthesis.
Follow me @santaslitlelper on Twitter!
Jackie,
In reference to adding links, I actually started my product idea out as a Squidoo lens. Now I’m building a WordPress blog. Should I only link my Squidoo lens to the feed on my blog? Or, should I put my Squidoo lens as a link on my blog? Thanks.
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Thanks so much Jackie for the response: your help is greatly appreciated!! (And am enjoying the FB page as well! Hoping the Discussion section begins to grow
)
Follow me @affordablemouse on Twitter!
You will still have to write the first 10 articles, then get approved for the next level ~ even if you are participating in the 100 article challenge. Just the way they work. Every article is read by a human being ~ even mine as a platinum member. It’s the way they keep the content quality high for their site.
There’s no reason though, why you can’t write the articles and get them approved. You may find that getting them approved takes a bit longer in the beginning, but it’s worth using them.
If you choose not to use EZA try using articlebase.com you may find your articles get posted quicker/easier. It’s not the platform you use that’s important here, it’s the consistent action.
thanks for the kind words.
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You know Hanna is becoming a popular kid as whenever we come to your blog we see her photo first. It is like a model is promoting your site. Whenever your name comes in mind, Hanna’s face too comes in my mind.
Hi Jackie,
I have decided to start a blog on a affiliate product. I will be adding its review, features, advantage, disadvantge in different posts. Hope this will work for a start.
One question I have in my mind is, EZA says they will monitor first 10 posts. I do not want to be kicked out by EZA. so I never really started posting to EZA. But now I want to as they are offering a certificate if i can send 100 articles.
Any thing in particular that I should take care? And do you feel, my grammer is ok for EZA?
Have a nice Day.
If you are using UAW you could easily use the feature that allows you to change your resource box to have it change up which post it links to. If you write an article that is general to your topic it can be used for links to all the posts. (that would probably be the most effective use of your time)
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Hey Jackie,
Once again, thanks for another timely post.
This really helped crystalize in mind how to better plan the writing that we do. Which then leads me to a question…that kind of ties into the post you did a while back “If you only have 2 hours a day”…
Being one of those folks that works full time, I have to make the most of my time. The “2 hours” post talked about doing 5 blog posts in a day, and then starting the promotion the next day with an article (emphasis on the singular?). In thinking about this, should this be 5 articles, 1 for each post? Or can I do one article about all 5 posts, linking then directly to the blog?
I get that the more the better, but again, I need to make the most of my time. I use UAW to send out any articles I write.
Sorry for the length. I just need to plan my time carefully over these next months in order to keep on target…and still get the results.
Thanks so much!
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