“11 Blog Proofreading Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore” plus 3 more

11 Blog Proofreading Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore
Boost Your Blog #1: Create a Product
Take Vacation Time From Your Blogging Business
My Best Product, My Best Launch, My Best Month – Ninjafied

11 Blog Proofreading Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 01:00 PM PDT

This guest post is by Luke Palder of ProofreadingServices.Us.

It should come as no surprise that writing for a blog is different from writing for other types of media. Blogs are free to read and there are tons of them, so people tend to decide very quickly if they’d like to move on to the next one. Only great content will cause a new visitor to read beyond the first paragraph of one of your posts, but there are many ways to scare a new reader away. Publishing content with glaring errors is one of them.

Git my pointe? (Don’t run away just yet. Instead, find out how easy blog proofreading can be.)

The aim of blog proofreading is to build credibility with new readers as quickly as possible so that they stick around, share your content and maybe even throw you a link or two. Below are 11 actionable proofreading tips for bloggers that are going to help you polish your posts quickly and effectively.

1. Walk away

Bloggers usually write a post and then immediately publish it. Don’t. Wait instead. When you’ve stared for too long at the same draft, any proofreading you undertake will be ineffective. Step away from your keyboard for half an hour or an entire day (gasp!) if you can and then check your work. This way, you’ll spot more errors.

2. Ask a friend for help

No matter how sharp you are at spotting errors, your eyes naturally skip over errors in your own work. Enlisting a friend’s help to read a draft post and point out your mistakes can help you correct them.

3. Use a spell-checker

You might be a flawless speller, but everyone includes a typo here and there, especially when hurriedly typing, which is the modus operandi of many of my blogging brethren. Always run your blog posts through a spell-checker or use a browser that detects spelling errors. This is one of the quickest proofreading tips you can implement, and there’s no reason not to use a tool that’s so widely available.

4. Use a grammar-checker

Like spell-checkers, grammar-checkers are immeasurably useful, but only if you actually use them (for many word processing programs, this means you’ll actually have to click “start”). A grammar-checker will scan your post for issues such as parallel structure errors, comma splices and run-on sentences, all of which are easy to miss when rushing to publish. Grammar-checkers aren’t perfect, but they’ll point out sentences that may need more work.

5. Read your post backward

Scan your blog post in reverse to spot spelling errors that your spell-checker didn’t catch. Going backward lets you concentrate on individual words, so you can focus your attention on finding elusive spelling errors without getting distracted by other writing issues.

6. Proofread multiple times

Reading your post through to catch major errors is a good first step, but once is not enough. It’s best to go through your draft several times and to look for a specific type of error each time. For example, you might look for run-on sentences in one scan, and check for proper spelling after that.

7. Ensure you’ve been inclusive

If you write for geneticists, then using terms like “genotype” and “phenotype” without defining them is okay; however, if you’re writing a post for the general public, cut down on jargon and find inclusive ways to communicate. Write out abbreviations and acronyms unless they’re common like “IRS” or “CBS.” While you don’t have to strip your writing of personality, use specialized terminology sparingly. Your blog about anime and manga might describe a new character as “kawaii,” but avoid writing half of your blog in romaji Japanese so your less experienced readers can follow along easily.

8. Print it out

What your eyes miss on the screen, they’ll see on a printed page. Print your draft out and read it on paper to find elusive errors.

9. Choose a different font

Just as printing your post will force you to examine it differently, so will changing fonts during the proofreading process. Select a new font that’s easy to read, and see how your post looks in Times New Roman or Courier instead of your usual Arial.

10. Triple-check proper nouns

If you want your blog to have a chance of becoming lucrative linkbait, you must spell the names of people, products and companies correctly. Correct spellings attract search engines’ notice and will make you trustworthy in your readers’ eyes. Spell-checkers do a great job in general, but they’re terrible with proper nouns, so pay extra attention to how names are spelled.

Pro tip: Enclose proper nouns you’re unsure about within quotation marks and Google them. Google sometimes suggests an alternative spelling based on what is searched most often. Sometimes you might even know that the spelling you have is correct, but that it’s not the most popular version (e.g. how many ways are there to spell Muammar Gaddafi?). When you’re trying to spell a proper noun that doesn’t have a universally agreed upon correct spelling in your language, this quotation mark technique is a great way to compare the number of Google results that different correct spellings of a proper noun yield. It’s that easy.

11. Read it out loud

Saving one of the most effective blog proofreading tips for last, read your post out loud, especially if you’re in a rush. Blog posts typically take on a conversational tone, and how better to proofread the quality of that tone than to read your draft out loud? Reading out loud also helps you find subject-verb agreement errors and other awkward phrases with great ease.

These 11 proofreading tips will help you build instant credibility with your readers. What didn’t I include? I think we can make a much longer list.

Luke Palder is the founder of ProofreadingServices.Us, a San Francisco-based proofreading service. ProofreadingServices.Us provides online proofreading, manuscript proofreading and other proofreading services.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

11 Blog Proofreading Tips You Can't Afford to Ignore

Boost Your Blog #1: Create a Product

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 10:00 AM PDT

Yesterday I gave an example of something I’d been putting off doing to improve my blog—even though I knew it would have long-term benefits.

Today I want to continue on that theme and being to suggest a number of areas that bloggers could be investing time into today—and enjoying payoffs from in the future. Some of them will lead to financial benefits while others are just going to improve the effectiveness of a blog.

1. Create a Product

Every time I talk about monetizing blogs by selling a product of your own, I get comments from bloggers telling me that they’re thinking of, planning to, or wondering if they should launch a product of their own.

Yes there’s significant work in creating your own product, but there are also many many tangible benefits of doing it.

Have you created a product of your own?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Boost Your Blog #1: Create a Product

Take Vacation Time From Your Blogging Business

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 08:07 AM PDT

This guest post is by Stephanie Foster of Home With the Kids.

I did something recently I haven’t done in a long time. I took a vacation from my blogging business just about entirely. For once on vacation, I didn’t spend the evenings making up for lost time. I didn’t write blog posts. No tweeting, no blog commenting, none of that stuff, for an entire week.

Sure, I still used my computer for fun. I brought it along and I even had internet access most days. I just didn’t use it for work, and did relatively little leisure stuff on it. I was too busy at the beach, the zoo, places like that to bother with my computer.

Taking a vacation from my blogging business is something I do too little of. My laptop always travels with me, and most times I spend my evenings working. The only problem with that is that I don’t give my mind enough of a break from business, so eventually I get tired and even head toward being burnt out on the whole deal.

Many home business owners do the same. It’s all to easy to work long hours and rarely take a break to refresh your body and mind, even for a few minutes during the day, never mind a whole week away. Yet it’s necessary.

Getting ready for a vacation

Taking a vacation from your blogging business isn’t something you can just do on a whim. Well, you could, I suppose, but most times it’s not that great an idea. You need to figure out how things are going to go without you.

What about email? Cleaning out spam blog or forum comments if you have those on your site? What if your site goes down or gets hacked?

You need to figure out how much stuff you can drop from your business for a week or so, how much you can handle in a few minutes each day while you’re on vacation, and what should be handed over to a virtual assistant or trusted friend or family member while you’re gone.

The great thing about many home businesses, especially if they’re online, is that you often can drop quite a bit of what you’re doing to take a vacation. Many things will wait. Others won’t.

You can schedule blog posts to run in your absence. I always like to do this, even though it means extra work while preparing for a vacation. It keeps things running just a little bit and then I don’t have to feel rushed to prepare blog posts when I get back because I’ve been gone a week and there aren’t any posts ready for the next week either. I can take a little time and ease back into my work with only a small gap in my posting, or even none at all if I get so far ahead that I can schedule some for just after I get back.

Use self-control while on vacation

It’s not always easy to leave your home business alone once you’re on vacation, especially if you love what you do. There’s always that temptation to do just a little work during your downtime.

Don’t do it. Find some other way to enjoy your downtime. Read a book for pleasure. Play with your kids if you have some. Go out with your spouse, significant other, some friends or just on your own. Keep your mind off your business. It will still be there when you get back.

If you must check on your business, try to keep it to just a few minutes a day, maybe first thing in the morning so the rest of your day is clear. If you’re having to get too involved in things, maybe you didn’t plan well enough for your break and need to rethink how you can get away for a time.

The benefits of taking a vacation

I feel great now that I’m back from my vacation. It was wonderful not thinking about that next blog post for a time. When you don’t take real breaks, all the stuff you know you should be doing is more like clutter in your head. It’s there and you really can’t deal with it effectively. A vacation gives you time to sort it out, even if you aren’t actively thinking about it at the time.

A vacation can also freshen up your ideas. Work too long on a project, and you get stuck with certain sorts of ideas. A vacation gives you time away from all that, and you might find new ideas come more easily after, even if it’s only a new perspective on the same things you were working on before.

You should also be more relaxed after a vacation. It’s a time when you shouldn’t be focusing on whatever stresses are in your life. Most of the things that cause stress in your life can wait that week too.

Taking a vacation from your blogging business isn’t always the simplest thing to do, but it can be a great idea. You don’t have to bring your business along every time you go on vacation. Sometimes it’s best to leave it all behind.

Stephanie Foster runs Home With the Kids, a resource for work at home moms and dads. She writes about running her home business, work at home scams and being an at home mom on her blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Take Vacation Time From Your Blogging Business

My Best Product, My Best Launch, My Best Month – Ninjafied

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 06:26 AM PDT

Last week the mysterious Web Marketing Ninja released a free PDF mind map here on ProBlogger (with accompanying video) that walked readers through his in depth strategies for turning a Blog into a Business.

The feedback from that MindMap and video were great and I had a steady flow of thank you emails over the weekend from readers working through it.

Among the feedback from readers was some people feeling a little overwhelmed – so the Ninja has put together a second shorter video with some practical case study examples of how we’ve implemented some of the strategies in the Mind Map on my own blogs – yep, the Ninja is picking on me today!

See the video here

The 3 case studies are:

A/B testing – how we significantly increased the revenue from a product launch through split testing emails (and how we could have done even better had we done more testing).
Product Development Made Easy – the back story behind my biggest selling ProBlogger eBook
The Art of the Campaign – the story behind my biggest earning month ever

Our hope is that these practical examples will not only bring the Mind Map to life but that they might also give some practical ideas on how you can transition your blog into a business.

See the video here (along with the previous video and the Mind Map).

Also be watching out for a brand new ProBlogger Resource created by the Ninja in the coming days.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

My Best Product, My Best Launch, My Best Month – Ninjafied

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