Crossed 10k blog views - a blog about how to make your blog better(reflecting back on my blogging experiences - part 3).

Greetings everyone,

This is my last post(part 3) as part of the series - "Crossed 10k blog views - reflecting back on the experiences of being a blogger". You can read the blogs on part 1 - Why you should consider blogging and part 2 - a blog on how to blog of the series as well. I've been wanting to talk about the third part for a while now and I'm happy that I finally was able to roll it out. I know this post was expected to be published sometime earlier but somehow it just got postponed, I'm sorry for the delay from my end. Below are my two cents on how could one make their blogpost better and thereby be a better blogger.

In no particular order, here goes nothing -

1. The title of your post matters. Choose wisely here as this is the first thing that any reader would see when they visit your blog. Also, please note this is the first thing your blog subscribers would see in the subject wrt the new mails they receive(this is for those readers who've subscribed to your blogs via email updates), Keeping it concise is great and when you find that doing so is hard, try to see if you can choose alternate words to help keep your blogpost title short.

2. Read others blog and see what you find nice about their blog and the way they've gone about writing it. Next time around you might want to embrace that one nice thing you saw in somebody else's blog to give your blog a unique flavor. Talking about flavor reminds me of food :). People make Yummy food by trying different combinations ;) . Just make sure you make an informed decision on this and don't simply go out the way when experimenting new things as part of a new blog. Take in the new ideas one at a time and see how each new addition is responded to by your valuable readers.

3. Break things down

In the body section of your blog it'd be nice if you'd break each of the things you want to talk about in smaller paragraphs instead of talking about all of them in one huge para. A body can easily form 3-5 small paras(or more, just quoting an e.g., here) and that would look any day more neater than say 2 huge paras.

4. Label(or in other words tag) your blog appropriately so that people could search(if the blogging platform that you use supports that feature) for the blog post via keywords they'd enter in the search bar once they visit your blog site.

5. Choose a blogging platform wisely where you think you'd like to regularly blog from. Personally for me, Blogger as a platform serves many of my needs very well. Below are some reasons why I think so -
a. It allows me label my posts and folks can easily search from the posts that I've written so far by using appropriate labels in the search bar.
b. Through their stats feature that they provide I get a better idea of which posts people like and it also helps me better understand what was good about this post when compared to say a previous one and that way I can learn by filling in some missing gaps(helping me overcome some of the mistakes I've been making in my earlier posts) instead of simply repeating the same mistake again.

c. It allows me to easily integrate certain built in widgets as well some custom widgets. An e.g., widget that I use is 'Follow by Email'.

6. Highlight things in bold wherever you think it's important. This really helps to give your readers a quick summary of important takeaways from your post.

7. Less is more - yes and no

As a blogger, for quite a while I wasn't sure if my blog should be of a specific length. IMHO there's no fixed rule to this, may be it just depends on what's the topic of your post. Some posts might need more information and thereby might call for them to be longer, whereas in other cases a shorter post could be just right.

I'll just give you an e.g., of how I went about deciding this for two blogposts that I've written a while ago.

Blog 1(The longer blog) - Newspaper Collection Drive at Cognizant for a Cause - An Experience till the Journey's End

Blog 2(The shorter one) - What are the employability skills required for an entry level engineer in an IT Industry(atleast in India)?

8. A picture is worth a thousand words - use them. I recently was listening to an audiobook on 'Your Brain at Work' by David Rock and there he very nicely throws light on how a picture talks not only about the multiple entities that come as part of the capture, but also about the relationships among those entities. For e.g., take a picture of somebody's graduation pic you could see a lot of things like - the graduating student, happiness, the university, other folks in the pic(like the parents or a partner etc.,). Now think about this, do you see how wonderfully these entities are connected by just one picture :). Personally, this came as a wonderful insight to me from the book.

9. Use appropriate widgets in the blog to let readers get to know more about you(like the LinkedIn widget, Stackoverflow widget etc.,) and contact you(I've provided my email in the 'About' section of my blog) as a follow up on your blogpost, if they might want to. One thing about being a blogger is that you need to stay connected with your viewers, the folks who comment on your blog etc., These folks are your readers so it's a good thing if you provide them your contact in case they'd want to reach out to you urgently(This can really help if your blog has technical articles too). In the past I've contacted some bloggers through their email wherever I had a follow up question on their original post and wanted a prompt response.

I would like to also add, most recently I've added this widget called 'Pocket' and my readers can very easily save a link to each of my blog posts through this cool widget. It really helps when one say for e.g., has figured out a post towards EOD and has say a bus to catch for the journey back home. That person can simply save a link to my blog via this handy widget and revisit the post anytime in the future. These days, even Twitter has added this to help save a link to each of the tweets that one might find handy. Convenient, isn't it :) .

10. The Learning goes on, ask people and read books on how to blog better if you have may be detailed questions on how to blog better about specific topics. If you're techie, this book on Technical Blogging might be of interest to you.

11. Spreading the word.

Yes, you heard it right, you should spread the word about your post and trust me there is isn't any shame whatsoever in doing it. It's your wall on Facebook or your account on Twitter, you're free to talk about anything appropriate, so simply do it(reminds me of Nike's slogan - 'Just Do It' :)).

The idea is pretty simple, the folks who know what you are as an individual(although the extent they know can vary from person to person) would visit your post and some might like/retweet/favorite your post and the rule is simple, anything with more likes/retweets/favorites automatically draws the attention to other viewers of your twitter feed/ facebook wall.

Do this even on professional platforms like LinkedIn. I think this is very handy especially when you talk about blogposts related to your area of work. In my case for e.g., I sometimes go to the the extent of not only posting my technical blog on Linkedin but also post them in relevant technical groups within the Linkedin platform, narrowing down to what I may believe would be the ideal audience of my post.

12. What should I blog about? Many folks have this question. I've had this question in the past too. From somebody I learnt that one way to figure out what to write about is by simply thinking about something that you wish you could easily find out in the internet but wasn't that easily available unless you actually searched by spending more time than what you'd usually do in general.

13.  Add some humor to your posts. Variety is the spice of life, adding some genuine humor in the way you interact with your audience through your post is just a nice way to connect with your audience and it makes writing even more joyful as you can may be live the thought that yeah, my post actually could get someone to smile :). I also see that speakers do this in the conference talks and audiences enjoy such talks with an element of light humor.

14. Timing of your blog is crucial as well. I kinda relate more to this point from the perspective of the profession I'm in and you might thus find this point subjective in a way. I'm basically a developer and in the software world the technology that I use for development gets updated from time to time and as a result any tech blog that might be applicable now, might just not be that applicable if you delay posting the same blog a month later in case there is some enhancement/new feature added to that technology that helps one get the job done in a better way. Trying to push yourself to roll out tech blogs as early as you could before they lose it's relevance is really worth the effort.

15. Give credits to others where appropriate. If a part of your blog uses something that isn't originally yours, giving credit to the original owner of that specific asset which makes your blog even more complete is probably the least you could do to appreciate their effort especially since it's adding more value to your blog.

Lastly, I believe I still have more things to learn(as mentioned in one of the points above) along the journey of how to be a better blogger. I hope to update this blog as and when I learn more ways to be a better blogger along the way.

Hope the above points help you become a better blogger. In case they did, I'd be happy to hear from you :)

Thanks.

Photo credits - 

1. http://shadowxomega5.deviantart.com/art/A-Picture-Is-Worth-A-Thousand-Words-303482041

Crossed 10,000 blog views - Reflecting back on the experiences I've had along the journey of being a blogger(part 1)

Today is just not another day for me, looking back at my journey of being a blogger(which is one of the multiple hats that many people wear as part of their lives), today is a special day. I'm thankful to all the viewers who've visited my blog as if it wouldn't be for them I wouldn't have crossed the 10,000 views mark. Today, I would like to talk about blogging and how it has helped me till date in many ways  both personally and professionally and also what I've learnt along the journey so far in my attempts to be a better blogger.

People generally would like to know why they should do something(part 1 - here I will attempt to share experiences of how blogging has benefited me) before they would want to know how it is done better(part 2 - I will share my two cents of learnings of what might possibly help you to be a better blogger from my experience) so I will talk about things in that order in a series of posts starting from this one.

The BIG question(for some may be), How has blogging personally and professionally impacted my life -

1. The first thing I can think of from the top of my mind is that it's the freedom of speech where I talk about anything(anything which is generally considered 'appropriate' in the blogging sense or in the blogging world is what I'm basically referring to here - in case you're already thinking otherwise :)) under the sky.

2. It has given me more confidence that people find the information I've shared to be useful or else why would people revisit a blog time and again. This in itself I feel has many related benefits.

• It kinda gives me the sense of feeling that somewhere I can connect with people(the extent is not what really matters here, but just being able to connect is in itself a fulfilling feeling in many ways :))
• Somewhere it tells me, that what I'm facing in terms of a problem and may be whose solution I'm blogging about, is something that others like me are seeking out too :). So this makes me reflect that , yeah, it's okay to face problems and try to figure out solutions to them via blogs. One needn't really have to consider themselves to be inferior in anyway when they face such problems. It's just you try finding a solution yourself first before you head out for seeking solutions from the world around. 

3. It has given me joy. This joy, for me is the joy of sharing, the joy of giving back to the community whose blogs I've referred to when I had faced some roadblocks. Joy of the feeling, yeah, that by doing my bit(it's very little compared to the number of bloggers out there in the world today who religiously blog more often then I do), I can may be tell myself that yeah, I'm atleast a drop in the mighty ocean of the community of such people around me.

4. People around get to better understand you as a person through your blog. They get to know what you care about and what you are passionate about. All this through your thoughts in your blog.

5. On a professional front, it has given me many things like -

• The blog has helped me get a better job offer as people get to know me better as a person before I get interviewed by any of them. How?
• It separates out any such candidate who has a blog from those who may not have one
• People have looked at the technical blogs I've written and checked for things they'd look for when generally interviewing potential candidates for a relevant job opening
• I don't know what exactly that is that such interviews look out for, but it could be some useful things that are unique about you on the technical lines or may be it's just the fact that you believe in the spirit of giving back to something for what you've used from that thing(in my case it's open source technologies like Ruby on rails), that one can find out through your blog.
• People in the professional world have recognized me my blog(to a very small extent so far, but this is still one true thing that has happened with me)
• It has helped me be a better writer. I still remember one of my very senior office colleagues told me that I should even consider freelance writing. 
• On one of my blogs which was in an internal hosted platform for a company I worked for previously had a comment from one of the readers who said 'I could visualize the series of events with respect to what you've written in your blog'. I still very well remember this comment and today it just makes me believe more on my potential. Just think about it, how nice would you feel if you get such a comment. This is the only reason why I'm reiterating what that person told me via the comment to that post back then. Just a word of appreciation can do so much to boost one's confidence if we humans actually go to see :).
• Others began to appreciate what I blogged about. It just simply felt nice as one generally does if you get a pat on your back for you work, don't you?. One of my blogs was listed on paper.li . This post and the picture below say it all 

• The above made me realize I have decent writing skills too :). I could write more confidently in other forms of professional written communication(like emails etc.,) because of the practice or the learnings I had with writing things like blogs
• My vocabulary got better and I could even speak more confidently . I could even comprehend things better when others spoke about stuff as some of the words they used sounded more familiar.
• Blogging, I humbly believe now has come to be one of my strengths. It helps me know myself better as a person and it kinda gives me more confidence as to something I can definitely categorize under the bucket of strengths. I believe this will add to anybody's unique selling proposition(USP) as a potential candidate for an appropriate suitable position which may require one to use writing skills to an extent where you could influence people by your words. This makes me remember the quote, 'The pen is mightier than the sword".

6. Why am I writing about all this you may ask. Here's the answer -

I don't think this is actually a big deal that I have crossed 10,000 views, but this is just a nice feeling and I just want to live it and share it, that's basically why I'm writing this. Looking back, I kinda now feel, if somebody would have told me all of this earlier or may be even something else about blogging which I'm yet to discover :)(who knows, I'm sure there are more people out there who have experienced and learned more with blogging than I have), I would have written even more articles than what I've written up to now.

Also, I'm not saying all this to boast, I'm just sharing what motivates me to keep blogging and why may be you, a patient reader who has actually read what I've written so far should also consider doing this. You've read this far in itself probably shows you somewhere care about something and you're trying to find out what that thing is. Blogging may give you an audience where you could be more expressive or simply find more people who share similar interests and even talk about them through blogs :)(Hope you see the connection blogging can may be make for you by now :)) 

What I've said in the above kinda reminds me of Steve Jobs inspirational speech at the Stanford graduation ceremony where he says a couple of things which I feel I can now better relate to. Will list them below -

1. One can connect the dots only looking backwards. How true, I didn't realize I would learn so much about myself via blogging. But I can simply say I'm happy now to know learn some more about myself and I'm still exploring to know more :)

2. Quoting Steve Jobs - "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." 

- For me what I found out was that I personally enjoy blogging, it took a while to figure it out but I'm glad I did eventually :). But overall, journey of self exploration still goes on for me :)

Lastly,  I can think of one person today on the top of my mind who had encouraged me to blog more when I first started blogging few years back. His name his Deepak Prabhu Matti and I'm really thankful to him for this. I'm also grateful again to my viewers and all my friends who've told me 'Hey, nice blog!' or things on those lines, I wouldn't be here without you all. Please forgive me if I've missed mentioning somebody. Lastly, I can definitely without any doubt say that, I'm grateful to Google and the folks who've built the Blogger platform because without their stats, platform I wouldn't really know today where I stand in the blogging world(I do realise I still have a long way to go).

All in all, I can say what goes around comes around to may be summarize many things around this post :)

There's a part 2 of this post that I'll be writing sometime soon about what I've learnt to help me be a better blogger. Stay tuned if you'd like to read about that..

Thank you.

Embedding a gist in blogger - an experiment that finally worked

Hi

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In case you want to see how I was able to embed the gist in my blog, you can have a look at the stackoverflow question that I posted here on the same when I had initially faced issues to get this to work for me. Credits to the original blogger's post.