My presentation at Institute of Journalism on Effective Blogging Tools and Techniques

1. Tools and Techniques for
Effective Blogging
Hammad Siddiqui
http://hammadsiddiquiblog.com
http://twitter.com/hammads

2. • Importance of Blogging
• How to blog
• How to market Blog
• How to customize your blog

3. • Why Blog?
• Challenges before you start.
• How to find your niche.
• Which platform to chose from (blogger vs
wordpress)
• Watch trends.
• How to write quality content?
• Challenges as a blogger.
• Reaching out to readership.
• Key success factors.

4. Online is the Media for Today and
Tomorrow.
• People are watching more television, reading more news, playing more
video games, spending more time updating their social networking
profiles and using more video on demand services than they were six
months ago, according to a new survey published today, but their actual
spending has plunged as increasingly consumers expect free access.
• Spending on 'traditional' media such as newspapers and magazines has
dropped almost 20% in the last six months, while spending on digital
media has almost halved.
• Online, social networking and blogging remains the most popular
pastime with half of all respondents doing it compared with 47% six
months ago. The big jump in usage most recently has been among 45 to
54 year olds, increasing from 37% to 45%.
Source: KPMG Report

5. Why Blog?
Improves
creativity
Recognition
Writing
skills
Opportunity
Opportunity
to interact
to express
with large
views
community

6. Challenges Before U Start!
How to get
What are quick and Choosing a Finding your
the trends? crisp platform niche
information?

7. Finding Your Niche
Personal Blogging
Corporate Blogging
Informational Blogging
Controversial Blogging

8. How to get quick and crisp information
• READ READ READ
–Newspapers
–Blogs
–Books
–USE Google Alerts

9. Choosing a platform
Blogger Wordpress TypePad
Online
Tumblr
newspapers

10. Which Platform?
•Blogger vs Wordpress
•Serious blogging – host
at your domain

11. Design Counts
http://jongordon.com/blog
http://hammadsiddiquiblog.com
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
http://t.co/IuoG4RYh
http://www.humorcarbons.com/
http://wisdomfrombooks.com/

12. http://farihamunirshahtimes.blogspot.com/
1. Title - Too big and not SEO Friendly (Keep it short and focus on key words such as
Women Chamber, Multan etc - Its tricky stuff but check youtube videos on this
topic)
2. Background design - Too clumsy (remove all those colorful stuff)
3. Font - too small (you need to build 1.5 line spacing)
4. Picture quality - Poor, you need relatively higher quality pics. AND Must be
captioned - You have used captions in some previous posts
5. Missing Tags, keywords, labels (in blogger these are called Labels) - Labels help in
improving search on google.

13. Another thing
that counts
http://fahdhusain.blogspot.com
http://naumanadil.blogspot.com

14. Trends
• http://www.blogpulse.com/
• http://www.ysearchblog.com/
• http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
• http://blogherald.com

15. Content is the King!
Simple yet
Read, liked
correct 400 words
and goes viral
language
Personal Professional References
touch approach and hyperlinks
Pictures and
videos

16. Quick and crisp information?
Print media (news and Op/Eds)
Articles
TV
Social Media / other blogs
Interviews
Exhibitions/conferences/seminars
Google alerts

17. Challenges for Bloggers
Maintaining
Respecting
Keep the interest
Scheduling reader’s
writing from
comments
readership

18. Reaching out to readership
– Facebook (join groups, increase friend’s
circle) 800 million
– Twitter (use #tags) 100 million active users
– Google+ over 100 million
– Linkedin Groups 140 million users
• Most traffic comes from facebook
– Tag with keywords
– Backlinks
– Tweet (and retweet)
– Request

19. Be Creative

21. Making Money Through Blogging
Amazon Corporate
AdSence
Affiliates Blogging
Ghost
Backlinks
Blogging

22. Success Factors
YOU and Your Commitment
Content:
• Short, specific, thought provoking, informational
Appearance:
• font, color scheme, spellings, grammar, title, pictures
Professionalism:
• Facts, references, tags, google alerts, Social media
postings, research

23. Basic SEO
- Keywords
- Title
- SEO tools
- Bold Fonts
- Youtube Videos
- Slideshare
- Effective Backlinking
- Commenting on other blogs

24. • Google Analytics
• Feedjit
• XML sitemap

26. Happy Blogging!
hammadlinks@gmail.com
http://hammadsiddiquiblog.com
Twiter: @hammads