Blogging may seem easy, especially to writers who are naturally gifted at creating content.

But blogging it its own science – a mix of content, marketing, and community which can be a tough nut to crack.

Fortunately, Judy Dunn of CatsEyeWriter has a great guest post at StoryFix which shows you how to use a blog to build your brand, rather than scare people away.

When I teach blogging workshops to aspiring authors, eyes always glaze over when I get to the part about building an author brand. My students think of consumer brainwashing, of taglines and commercials— Coke (“refreshing”) and Apple (“Think different”).

“I don’t need a brand,” they say. “I’m not a ‘product.’”

Don’t confuse branding with advertising slogans.

Branding is simply the feeling you want your readers to experience when they see your name—the emotional connection you want them to feel with you as an author.

And a blog is a perfect stage upon which to build your author’s brand.

This is a must-read blog for any writer with a blog. Read the whole post at StoryFix.

Joel Friedlander has another excellent post at The Book Designer outlining some great tips for any writer who is starting a blog. Longtime writers with crappy blogs should also pay attention. Joel captures the keys to blogging success not just for writers, but for anyone looking to make a splash on the internet.

Content Focus—I don’t think there’s anything more important, or more challenging, than to keep your content focused on the subject matter and the goals you have for your blog. The deeper you dive into your subject area, the more you create community of the people who want to go deep with you. This is really critical to your success.

Read all of Joel’s post here.

Don’t.

Let’s talk a bit about Jimmy Fallon.

For those that don’t know who Jimmy Fallon is, he’s the 34-year old former Saturday Night Live actor who landed the cushy gig at NBC’s Late Night show after Conan O’Brien inherited Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show. Fallon’s show started this spring with a lot going for it.

NBC pumped tons of money into Late Night and promoted it like crazy. Fallon stuck closely with the irreverent formula created by Conan O’Brien. The production value is top-notch and the guests are among some of today’s hottest actors and musicians. His house band is The Roots, which must have cost NBC some major cash and also ups the coolness ante.

By all reasonable expectations, Fallon should be owning the slot.

Yet, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon is unwatchable.

The problem is the way that Jimmy Fallon comes off onscreen. His delivery is awful, he is entirely too self conscious and he’s not very funny. Which, for a comedian, is kind of a bad thing. Watching Fallon is like watching the last third of hit and miss sketches on Saturday Night Live. Sometimes, it’s good and other times, you hate yourself in the morning.

In short, Fallon, in attempt to mimic Conan’s great show, has created a pale imitation at best.

Despite the big budget, the great lead-in (though that has slipped recently) and despite being the “it show”, Fallon is routinely beaten by CBS’s The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Ferguson, (47) isn’t hip, he doesn’t have eight zillion Twitter followers (hell, he seems to loathe much of the web culture), his budget at CBS is woeful at best – he has no house band and guests are not usually of the top shelf variety. Yet, night after night, he delivers some of the best late night television around.

Why?

Because Ferguson brings something to the table that Fallon, with all NBC’s money and buzz machinery can’t create – genuineness.

You can’t help but like Ferguson, even when his jokes fall flat or his sketches are corny. Why? Because he is original and funny in a way that isn‘t forced or awkward like Fallon’s. He is a natural comedian and at ease with himself, the show and his guests.

Things you can learn from Craig Ferguson to make your blog better

1) Be yourself. Ferguson is by far, the most comfortable talk show host I’ve ever seen on TV. His interviews aren’t filled with the standard formulaic questions that you see on every other show. When he is talking with a guest, it seems more like a genuine conversation, filled with stream-of-thought questions and playful banter. Take for instance, this two-part interview below with actress Zooey Deschanel.Write your posts with an authentic voice, let your personality through.

2) Throw out the cards. Ferguson starts every interview by ripping up his interview cards. Sure, it’s a gimmick, as he could easily have questions on a teleprompter. However, given the questions he asks, he could very well be improvising. Don’t be afraid to change the rules when blogging, deliver the content that other blogs aren’t giving their readers.

3) Turn your limitations into a strength. In addition to working with a limited budget, Ferguson’s hands were further tied in 2008, when producers required him to start each show with a cold open, a two minute segment prior to the monologue. This was done in order to compete with ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel. Rather than complain about having to find a way to fill two minutes, Ferguson has created what might be the best two minutes on television. When a viewer tunes in, they never know what they will get at the start of the show – a silly dance sketch featuring Ferguson and a leather-clad staffer, a monologue with puppets (yes, puppets) or interactions with the studio audience. We all have constraints, find a creative way to make the most of them.

4) Don’t take yourself too seriously. Perhaps one of the most endearing things about Ferguson is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Self effacing humor, done right, allows comedians to poke fun at others all the more convincingly. Don’t let your ego prevent you from being human, making and admitting to mistakes.

5) But know when to be serious. While other late-night talk show hosts were bashing Britney Spears a couple of years ago, Ferguson took the high road and said that he wasn’t comfortable doing comedy which attacked the vulnerable. He then addressed his own alcoholism and thoughts of suicide in a powerful monologue that cuts to the bone.

6) Don’t be afraid to take a position. While Ferguson keeps his politics close to vest, he isn’t afraid to skewer the bullshit surrounding the political process in America and to alienate his audience by delivering the truth – many people are idiots. Blogs that don’t say something offensive (to someone) run the risk of saying nothing.

7) Most importantly, have something to say. When you watch Ferguson, you don’t just get jokes, you get something more meaningful. Take for example his recent monologue in which he attacked our culture which deifies youth. Even though he toned the commentary down with laughs, it still rings true. There’s no reason you can’t deliver content which not only tastes good but also sustains.

So even if you aren’t one of the Big Bloggers, you can still succeed by being yourself, playing to your strengths (and weaknesses) and by being creative. Best of luck!

What blogging tips have you picked up from unlikely sources?

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I spent afternoons filling pages for a novel I was shocked to be writing. I wrote every day until four months had passed and I found myself with a finished book and quickly evolving identity.

Those days of discovery have passed, new exploration has taken their place and my love for the art of writing has moved from playful hobby to serious career. The days of verbal doodling have taken a necessary reprieve, but I know there is much I can do to keep the embers hot. Since my heart first began to beat with the blood of a writer, I have longed to bloom words into worlds. Conversation with my muse has never been difficult, it is the time I need to fully engage her when faced with the necessary jobs that see me writing SEO copy about auto insurance, lawnmowers and little league.

Though I have kept a journal intermittently throughout my life, it was only after suffering the loss of unbridled daily creativity when I knew I had to do something to satiate the desire to deposit my ideas. Now I am neither novice or veteran, but I’m quite sure there is no ritual better for a writer than daily pages. A few hundred syllables or a few hundred words, it is the routine that is necessary.

My schedule over the last six months has been haphazard at best; swollen with constant transition. I can’t pretend I’ve kept to my routine with religion, or written words in my journal without fail. I do solemnly swear however, that those times when I’ve ignored my daily pages are also those days when my writing starts to suffer. Even when my pages are filled with nothing but scribbles or rants and ramblings, they are a vessel to harbor the engagement in my mind.

Every river must eventually spill into a sea.

Daily Pages are an excellent avenue for the pent up emotions of a well worn life, those things that bog you down like an iron ball snaked around your ankles. If you maintain your daily drain, then those moments when it’s just you and the bright white of an empty page will be more likely to find you in the throws of a passionate affair with your muse, rather than the cold silence of a slowly dying love.

Methods do not matter. Everyone journals differently. I happen to use whatever is on hand. Sometimes it’s a ten cent notebook or the back of an envelope I transfer to the hard drive later. My favorite place to store my thoughts is in a little desktop app called MacJournal. This journal allows me to stash anything I want and in any format. This is golden for a writer, as we are all pack rats of thought. Whether I birth an idea for a post, a letter for my wife, an poem for my children, or the full outline for a future best seller, I can stuff the journal and feel a creator’s high knowing my muse has been fed and is lying in wait.

Sometimes paradox begets productivity. By emptying your mind into your pages, you are also refilling the well of ideas. Creativity is rarely born in the clutter of one’s mind, though film and legend might try to convince us othewise. Images, scents and sounds will coalesce to burn new ideas into your mind’s eye. Getting truly lost in your pages, even if it’s only for a moment, might be all you need to thicken your thoughts.

This is tired advice, but only because it has had to work so hard. To be your best writer, you must write. I cannot count the number of words I’ve written in the last year, but it’s somewhere well over a million. Some were born from a freelance job where I tried to turn bullet points to brilliance. Others came from deep inside me and are like portraits lining my hallway wall. The common denominator has been my pages, the daily record of who I was, who I am, and who I will someday be.

We can never know for sure where life has taken us, but it is an amazing thing to keep a record of where we’ve been before.

Collective Inkwell Community Question: Do you keep a journal or write daily pages? Could you see the value in doing so?

Sean

Though I love reading blogs, I sometimes read them from behind the eyes of someone who makes their living with language. Writing great copy is important, and much like a special effects artist who has a difficult time losing themselves in a film, it is sometimes hard for me to ignore the nagging little details that keep a writer’s words from speaking as clearly as their author intended.

It isn’t punctuation or lack of mechanics that bother me. I’m a writer, but even I think English is a bit confounding, carrying more exceptions than rules. Yet there is, I believe, an essential truth to blogging. Blogging is about communication. Effective communication is reliant upon clear ideas and lucid delivery.

A writer must situate their words in a way that makes the reader feel like they are adjacent to the writer, listening to every word while never once wanting to interrupt. These seven steps can help you take your copy from crusty to clean.

1) Be willing to ramble before you can wrangle. Your thoughts might lie in a tangled mess, but you must get them out of your head and onto the screen before you can start sorting. The first draft is not a time to measure perfection, it is a time to write. Editing comes next. If you can construct your thoughts with perfection the first time through, then perhaps that is an indication the value of your content isn’t quite as high it could be. Revision while writing is a pillow on the face of pure thought.

2) Edit your words as though someone else wrote them. Every word isn’t golden and word count doesn’t matter. It is the density of ideas that will make your writing remarkable. 250 or 1250, make every word count. I promise you, there is fat in your first draft. Cut it.

3) Not just lean, but strong as well. You’re off the treadmill, now head to the weight room where a few key changes can pack a bit of power in your prose. Stay far from weak words, opt instead for vocabulary with muscle. Us, are, were, it – these words cast with abandon will cause your copy to grow timid. Strong words are the scaffolding to a strong voice. Own the action. Use active language rather than passive.  For some examples of correct passive versus active language, check out this page.

4) Don’t attempt to sound smarter than you are. I would guess every beginning writer does this. I know I did, but I drank from a bottle when I was a baby too. My general rule, never use words I wouldn’t use in regular conversation. Stephen King has a law I rather like. “If you had to use a thesaurus to find it, you’re using the wrong word.” Artfully arranged and long winded are not the same thing.

5) Read out loud. I don’t publish a word on any of my blogs until I’ve read the copy out loud. I read my highest profile stuff to my wife, but I’ve no qualms about splitting the silence of an empty room in exchange for incredible copy. Invariably, my mouth catches much of the minutia my mind’s inclined to miss.

6) Print it out. My writing partner, David prints his stories while editing, a trick he learned in the newsroom. Reading on the computer screen can become tiresome and many of us tend to gloss over mistakes that would stick out in print. Print your copy, mark it up, then dip in for one last online edit.

7) Stay True. Be yourself. Like it or not, everyone else is spoken for. If you try to write for an audience of everyone, you will be lucky to be writing for an audience of anyone. Writing to please a fickle public is a slippery slope with jagged teeth of slate at the bottom.

Collective Inkwell Community Question: Do any of these seven steps ring true to you? What steps would you suggest for getting your copy squeaky clean?

Sean Platt is a ghostwriter and father, who believes life’s better with the right words.

Writing wisdom is for wee ones too! Are you happy with your child’s writing? Sign up for early information on Writer Dad’s upcoming Writer’s Workshop, and learn how you can help give your child a limitless life.