Juiced On Writing

Continuing on from Part I, in this next instalment I’ll deal with my initial niche selection and some marketing thoughts in the planning stages of going forward with a new blog.

Step 2 : Niche Selection and Marketing Thoughts from the Start

1. Finding a Possible Niche

If you’ve worked your way through Part 1 of this series, you would have come to the same conclusion as I did initially – creating yet another Second Life blog was potentially doomed to failure, given the over-saturation of blogs in the niche. There are, statistically hundreds if not thousands of them.

Further proof of this came over the last week in another overly dramatic blogging war over a Blogger Appreciation Week run by one designer. Designing in Second Life is big business, and there are a lot of fashionista blogs out there – some get their fashion designs sent to them freely, for a review, others suggest to just be doing it for themselves (ie. they buy the stuff first). But there has been some problems over communications between the designers and bloggers. The Blogger Appreciation Week did not go off in any less dramatic fashion, but at least caused as much publicity for many as was expected – including some of the bloggers.

What came out of the dramas which have lately ensued was a piece of information, however. The person who ran the week made it known that the blogger group was over 280 bloggers by the end of the week. Two hundred and eighty blogs on fashion alone.

Those seem numbers nobody in their right mind would be looking at, and considering if it were time to get in on the act.

But then…I’m not going to just blog about fashion, am I?

So, what kind of blog could I possibly plan around, if not a basic review blog? What set some aside from the many others?

My conclusion was to lean towards the character-led blogs. But big women or caricaturised women wouldn’t allow me to be myself (my avatar self) within Second Life. Or would it?

My other thoughts led me down the route of my chicken growing experimentation inside Second Life. I have long been an animal lover within the virtual realm, as well as my real life. But in searching through the second life blogs, I rarely was supplied with information on anything other than prefab houses, or fashion, with the odd gimmicky accessory being catergorised as a fashion item also.

I had attempted previously to write about pets or animal retailers in Second Life, but that blog no longer seemed interested in that topic. But I still wanted a place to be able to write a glowing column about the quality of a virtual giraffe or whatever.

I then realised that if I were wanting to cover so much broad-range topics, I might need to consider a group blog. But I didn’t want to go down the rules I’d seen applied elsewhere for what is, in essence, an opinion. I wanted my writers, whomever they were, to have un-feckled passion for the topics, and for them to have the choice about what they blogged about, and when. And importantly, to have fun writing in a supportive – and hopefully fun environment.

Out of all of this sprung my niche or sub-niche. I wanted to develop a proper team environment, but one with choices, I wanted a family, and I wanted that family to feel sheltered enough from the drama outside to feel confident in blogging about whatever they pleased. And I wanted to blog about my chickens.

This week, The Chicken Diaries came into being. This is a family run blog, and will provide posts on anything and everything the authors wish. There are already two authors for it – myself (or SL personna) and the surprise addition of my Aunt. Aunty Audrie is coming to stay – she’s already made an elderly appearance at my weekly writing meeting, and has shocked a few people when encountering her out shopping also. There aren’t many elderly avatars in Second Life, but maybe we can trigger a pensioner renaissance.

Now that we have the first authors (and hope to find some more with volunteers), I now have to look at my initial setup and marketing from the start.

2. Thinking about Readership from the Start

No, I’m not talking about blatant advertising – that’s not my style. I don’t have the gumption to go out and put a comment on some other second life blog, just so that I can get my URL on there. Although I know I should.

2.1 Keywords and the Like

No, at the first steps I am going to simply deal with the in-house stuff – setting up meta keywords, choosing these for their likely search-ability – so that Google eventually will find me.

Before that I had to take a look at my theme and ability to enter such SEO terms etc. And I immediately encountered problems with scripting, host support for images, and all sorts of annoyances when using premium wordpress themes. I am currently running the much-talked-about Thesis theme on The Chicken Diaries, but it’s not as easy to use as I would have hoped for.

However, Thesis, and an add-in plugin called All in One SEO does provide enough options, on the entire blog, and individual posts, to change title tags, add keywords and add-in some other good googly-loved stuff.

What keywords should I use, then?

Well, the most obvious ones for my topic are “second life” and the recognised abbreviation, “SL”. And the best (and easiest) place to put those would have been into the blog title itself. Because the blog title is published on every page, it’s a given that headings of items would have been more easily found with a search for “second life”.

I went and broke that particular rule immediately in my choice of title for the blog. Although the title is related to a partial topic within the blog, it won’t stand out as a blog on a virtual world at all to any passer by (or person actually looking for information on chickens for that matter).

However, I chose the title, ‘The Chicken Diaries’ for another reason – it’s memorable. And the blog was developing into not only a character-led blog, but a family of characters-led blog, and the starter blog entries have quickly developed into a story. If somebody reads the entries from the start, they will start to see a small family story happen through the blog. Although this initially was not the concept, it seems to be moving quite naturally into a showpiece of both a virtual fiction, and review / magazine type blog.

This both will make it more fascinating for me to maintain as the primary author, but along with the title, hopefully capture a different audience than that found on the fashion blogs.

But I still needed to think about how to find a new audience who were simply looking for “second life” as a search. If not in the title, I had to turn to using keywords elsewhere in the blog – in the description, meta-tags, in the entries, categories and tags.

My plugins within Wordpress, and the Thesis pro-theme I have chosen allow me a lot of capability in inserting such keywords, but at this point I have not covered all those bases properly, and have to go back to re-assess some of those functional points to ensure my categories etc do hold as many of the second life links as possible.

As an author of posts, I also have to be mindful of highlighting appropriate Second Life words within posts and sub-headings. This is one area where I am pretty much rubbish at, as the writing genie takes over and doesn’t want to bother over keywords for search engines.

Now I have to work on what that blog description is saying about the blog, and what more likely searches there may be, to find the blog. My most basic keywords are ‘Second Life’ and ‘SL’  but after this I can add in, as appropriate the words – ‘fashion’, ‘shopping’, ‘review’, ‘animals’, ‘prefab’, ‘editorial’ etc.

I also had to think of an appropriate tagline or two. Thinking of this tagline is also important when getting to registering the blog with external parties (see below with blog databases). It was the taglline which would not only mention the topic – “Second Life” but if punchy enough, would also draw a few readers in just with curiosity.

2.2 Links to My Blog

Google likes links. To get onto google (allow it to find the new blog) the quickest way is to get a  backlink from an already established blog. The very best way to do this (with more grunt power) is not through a list of your URL in somebody’s long blogroll on the sidebar, or a link on a comment of yours, but to have the owner actually mention and link to your blog within a post. That’s why once you have an established blog in your ’space’ you often find offers of products to be sent to you for free, simpy to put up a review of them. In reviewing products, you are providing information, and a link to that product. Second Life blogs operate very much in that vein, with around 99% of all blog posts being a review.

Another way to get a quality backlink is to create a discussion between blogs. If you see a topic you are interested in on somebody else’s blog, then instead of providing a huge comment on it, take your thoughts and blog about it, mentioning and linking to the original blog. They, as blog owners, should be notified of your reference to their blog, and with a bit of luck, may look into your own.

Discussions as a form of linking are well used in Second Life blogs also, but in a slightly negative manner. Very few blogs simply link out to friend’s blogs (the fashion blogs, are, afterall, in competition to each other) but I’ve seen it used over and over again by those into creating and running the dramatic subjects. They will quite happily link out to other’s blogs with a critical blog post, with the much expected outcome. The victim of the post will follow through to add comments, will possibly blog about it, using the drama blog’s link, and all the united friends of both bloggers will add their own comments, and posts, with backlinks, to support the debate.

That kind of drama link-mongering won’t happen on my own blog, as far as I can administer it. But I will quite happily mention and link out to many good blogs out there, not only in the hope to find some blogging supporters, but because I geniunely want to support them also.

After all this, I’ve managed some rubbish backlinks via a couple of methods -

1. I have linked to my new blog on this one (twice)
2. I happen to have access onto a very popular (although on hiatus) Second Life blog where I can add the link onto that blogroll. I hope the owner doesn’t mind, but hey – I’m still writing for him.
3. I also have access onto the SL blog, I heartSL – which basically allows anybody to blog their stuff there, and link out to the full article. It’s mainly full of fashion blog posts, however, and therefore editorial or different posts can be lost easily in the stream, but even so – I’ll post some of my really relevant first posts up there, and link back to the full article on my new blog, and that definitely counts as a quality backlink.

I will then start working the trade of blogs (and communities) – the IheartSL gives a very good marketing route back to the blog for those interested, and other comments and additions will slowly build up that readership over time. This will be my major draw technique to find readers.

But before I ever consider doing that, I need to ensure the blog is presentable and ready to go, with all the pages it needs, so that when people do arrive, they will see a blog with some interesting content, that looks ‘out of construction’ and want to stick around.

What starter content and pages should I have on-hand? See Part III for this one, the final in this brief series.

More Marketing Techniques for the Blog

Backlinks for me, are prime. And I happen to have a couple of good outlets to introduce the new blog on. But for any topic there are also specific community techniques to look into, just as there is for Second Life. Here are the specifics for Second Life, which can be used for marketing or slowly introducing your new blog to potential readers  -

1. 1. Second Life Communities –
      1. some topics have large forums discussing the topic, and these are a ready-made source for advertising your blog, often under the rug, so to speak. Provided the board rules allow you to link out to your new blog, actually participating actively on those forums gives you the chance to both build your profile or authority, and point readers to your new blog for further expounded information on the subject. That’s the only way I would credit doing it, not a hey – ‘I agree’ post, with a blog link on the bottom. Make your posts on forums as informational as possible, and those readers may want to read more of you on the blog. Many forums don’t allow linking on signatures etc, or expect advertising fees for when you want to mention your blog, so be aware of this before deciding on this as one part of your strategy.
      2. Regarding Second Life, the forums for Second Life – at least on the ones which sit on the SL website, are very regimented towards not allowing links in signatures etc. This is because SL is a registered trademark of Linden Labs, who hold control over the forums accordingly. There is one board setup for resident-run websites where new blogs and the like can be advertised in a post, although I wonder how effective these posts may or may not be. There are a couple of other thriving community forums out there to look into, however. Those too, like the blogs, can contain some quite dramatic posts, however.
   2. SL Related Social Networks – the next one up is social networks. Most subjects or interests have these, and Second Life residents also has their own external social networking likes and dislikes. Although effectively SL is its own social network also (residents can IM and email each other, there is voice, and numerous other functions available to keep residents connected), many of the residents also use several other more standard networks to communicate across.
      1. There is one dedicated to SL completely called SL Social Network, where users can put up job adverts, pictures taken, post message, or create small blogs. I am already a user of that network, so enhancing my user profile there with some links to the blog will be an easy matter. I can also potentially advertise for more writers for the blog, if I wish this in the future.
      2. Although there are SL users on Twitter, by far the best loved micro-blogging facility for Second Life appears to be Plurk, which even allows a new plurk user to register their country of origin as Second Life. However, Plurk is also full of drama as are other SL blogs, so using it also needs some handling skills. I already am registered with Plurk, although as a new user it’s difficult to pick up new friends on there. Plurks (identical to Twitter microblogs) also can be put into the sidebar of the blog as a widget, as can Twitter for that matter.
      3. Twitter, on the other hand, has associated tools which allows a Twitter account to be notified whenever a new blog post has been published. This is a huge bonus in finding new readers who may be searching Twitter for those @topics, and your new @topics blogpost pops up in front of them. So I won’t dismiss creating a specific Twitter account for the blog, to make use of this excellent marketing opportunity, and to also connect with more second lifers. However, to keep my main twitter account (and this blog) separate from the Second Life avatar and blog, it will necessitate creating a new Twitter identity.
      4. Facebook and Myspace are other outlets for social networking profiles. And although there are some second life groups on sites like Facebook, I would need to assess the benefits of having to create a new identity for there. This is because Second Life is unique in many people trying to maintain a divide between their real life selves and their second life personas, and my blog choice, to go with a character-led blog also denotes that I don’t want people delving into the real life networks not associated with that Second Life side of things for the writers of the blog. There is currently a tale out there of Facebook shutting down an account for a second life avatar, which technically goes against the policies where true life details should be available to people. So this would need to be assessed also.
      5. To take up many of the external social networking opportunities, I would likely need to create a virtual profile for my avatar, and therefore a virtual fictional social networking effort. This creates more work requirements to support the blog itself, so each would need to be assessed correctly towards the benefits gained in doing that.
   3. Blog Databases and Groups – websites such as Technorati allow you to register the blog under a keyword description, and may find some more readers. One which has been successful for me is MyBlogLog, but I would need to assess the amount of blogs on such databases for second life. Additionally, an analysis of some of the more popular second life blogs out there may find me some other groups, blog-rings etc, worth joining up with.
   4. Advertising – Internally (within the world) and Externally.
      1. Externally, there are a few blogs out there akin enough to be looking for some advertising on their blogs. Although advertising a blog on another blog is not an option (or I would hope that other blogs don’t consider it an option to allow potential competition to their readership to advertise on their own blogs), some of the bigger group blogs / magazines etc which support in-world magazines and newspapers may not have such reservations in taking some money to put up a banner linking through to my new blog.
      2. Internally, although there is a classified function, normally used to advertise stores and the like, a user’s profile offers one other way to best advertise an external website – the website picks tab under profile. There, you can enter in the URL of your website and even request a small browser page to be shown of the homepage of your site.  This requires users to scan your profile when they encounter you, and to also open up that website tab. There are other internal ways to advertise. You can create notecards to give out to people, perhaps listing your resume (particularly helpful, as I’m a writer, so can list the new blog as a body of work) or even just introducing the blog, should they ask.

What to Do for the Reader? Analytics and Feeds

Firstly, I’ve inserted some plug-ins to give me the analytics I want. I’m not a great analytic-watcher, to be honest. But at least it’s there if I feel the need. I use Google Analytics – it’s free if you have a Google account, and gives good trends reports over time. There are others out there, of course, but I’m not overly expecting to out-race any of the competing blogs out there, nor will worry over how many minutes a person stays on site for a while.

Athough more commonly known as a blogger tool (and I can admit to sitting looking at trend-bars for ages on analytics previously), I think that analytic report tools are better thought of as a reader tool. If you can locate the pages on the blog with the most page views, you can get a handle of the type of content your readers are interested in. Your most popular posts can also be drawn out into a series, or enhanced with further posts. More on creating content in Part III of this series.

The second thing is to look at a feedreader or feed. Wordpress sets up one, of course, but everybody preaches over Feedburner. So, The Chicken Diaries now has a Feedburner feed available, although there are problems with the image scripting in posts not displaying images in the feed. I have researched some ways around this, but it’s certainly not easy blogging.Feedburner does provide a bonus. You can send the feed through to Twitter.So, I can subscribe, and have the blog posts twittered about also.

At a later date there are other tools that you can consider providing for the reader – from an e-book made up of your most popular posts, to a free poll-plugin or insert asking the readers their own opinions on matters, perhaps even a newsletter. But that’s well enough for me to be going on with at this early start of the blog. Read on to Part III about creating content to see how a new blog can be setup and be up and running for that first reader.

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