Blogging - Express Writers

How to Add a Blog Feed to Create Meaningful Relationships with Your Readers

January 5, 2021October 7, 2015 by Adam Oakley

This post was updated in December 2019. Do you want to learn how to add a blog feed to your site? Maybe you have the best blog on the web. Your ideas are genius. With your writing, you compel readers to read to the very end of every post. You are relevant and interesting. Unique, even. But it isn’t enough to have the best blog on the web. Because what if visitors read a post, love it, and then never come back to your blog? With social media, instant messaging, and tons of other blogs vying for their attention, it’s even possible they’ll forget your blog. So how do you ensure they read the next thing you post? The answer is by adding a blog feed to your blog. In this post, I’ll show you how to add a blog feed to successfully boost your readership. How to Add a Blog Feed to Create Meaningful Relationships with Your Readers How Adding a Blog Feed Works to Boost Readership 1. Advantages for Blog Readers 2. Advantages for Bloggers How to Add a Blog Feed to Your Site 1. How to Add a Blog Feed to WordPress 2. How to Add a Blog Feed to Blogger [bctt tweet=”If you’ve been publishing for quite some time, you could have already gained fans. ‍♂️How do you keep them close? Add a blog feed to your site to keep them updated with the freshest. @JuliaEMcCoy shows how.” username=”ExpWriters”] How Adding a Blog Feed Works to Boost Readership Before we go into how to add a blog feed, let’s understand how blog feeds work. Blog feeds work using RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) technology. Therefore, a blog feed can also be called an RSS feed. RSS feeds were invented to give people ease and convenience when browsing the web. For example, imagine yourself browsing the web. You have a list of your favorite sites. These are blogs and news sites which have content relevant to you. But maybe you love more than 20 sites. How do you find enough time in a day to visit all 20 to check for new updates? The answer is RSS. With RSS, you can get the content of your favorite blogs and websites to come to you. All you need is to find the right RSS reader. When you create an account, you can subscribe to blogs and websites you like. Every time these blogs and websites post something new, it will come straight to your reader. RSS is as simple as that. 1. Advantages for Blog Readers For blog readers, RSS feeds save a lot of time. For instance, maybe you make it your habit to keep up with business trends. You also want a guide on investing and finances. If so, all you need to do is go to your RSS reader and subscribe to sites like Entrepreneur and Forbes. If you choose Feedly for your reader, your feed will look something like this. On the left side, you can view the sites you subscribed to. On the right, you can see all Entrepreneur’s and Forbes’ new posts. You can also search for something specific in your RSS reader. For instance, you can type the keyword ‘real estate’ into the search field provided on the left. Your reader will bring up all real estate-related articles from both Entrepreneur and Forbes. With blog feeds, you can stay updated without wasting time. 2. Advantages for Bloggers As the owner of a website or blog, adding a blog feed will keep your readers from forgetting about you. Once they click the subscribe button on your blog, they get your updates each time you post. Also, if they have their own blogs, they can share your content there. This gives you the chance to get exposure and even more subscribers. Finally, you can benefit from RSS as a blogger because it helps you avoid the email spam folder. While successful email content marketing is a good strategy, some of your emails may be filtered as spam. Having an RSS blog ensures that your content reaches the users who are interested in it. As can be seen, adding a blog feed is the answer to how you can make a mark in today’s vast sea of online content. So now you might be wondering “How to create an RSS feed for my blog?” Here’s your comprehensive guide to doing it yourself. How to Add a Blog Feed to Your Site The good news is you don’t need to be a techy person to add a blog feed to your site. Here’s how to add RSS to your blog on WordPress and Blogger. Need to learn how to craft great SEO content? Download our free guide to SEO content writing secrets here. How to Add a Blog Feed to WordPress The advantage of using WordPress for your blog is that it’s easy to add an RSS feed to it. Since WordPress already does contain RSS for both content and comments, all you need to do is to set things up so readers can easily click subscribe. Here’s how to do it. 1. Find the Location of Your RSS Feed First of all, you need to find where your RSS feed is located. To do this, you can use software like Feedburner. Since it’s owned by Google, you can access it with your Google account. Once you log in, this is what you’ll see. Type the URL of your blog into the given field. Feedburner will then locate your RSS feeds. Select one and click Next. This is what you’ll see. You’re now ready to burn your feed! Select Next on the bottom left of the box. What comes up next is this. In the red box marked above, you can find your feed URL. Copy this URL. 2. Add Your Feed to WordPress On the WordPress platform, select Customize from the left-side toolbar. From there, select Widgets. This will allow … Read more

What is The New Blogging Platform Ghost All About?

January 6, 2024September 21, 2015 by Adam Oakley

For people who want a simple, elegant blogging platform that doesn’t require them to sell their souls or become wasted apparitions of what they once were – Ghost might be for you. (Just kidding with the deathly references there.) What is Ghost All About? John O’Nolan – a designer, world-class developer and a former head of WordPress’s UX team, developed ghost in 2012. The concept was for an elegant, simple, original blogging platform that allowed users to create everything from blogs to weekly newspapers. He called the platform Ghost and it quickly made ripples across the WordPress community and the web at large. The platform was touted as a “WordPress Killer” and, in the months following the development of the idea, O’Nolan and his team took to Kickstarter to make it a reality. The campaign raised upwards of $250,000 and the platform was born. Although the buzz over the new platform had begun to die out during its development, Ghost began to rock the boat once more when people began calling it things like “the new direction of blogging” and “the first exciting thing to happen to blogging in years.” Although those were large shoes to fill, Ghost seems to have done it in many ways. When O’Nolan developed the concept for Ghost, the idea was to provide users with a user-friendly interface that, unlike WordPress, focused on blogging as a priority. Like many, O’Nolan was frustrated by clunky blogging platforms filled with difficult-to-use widgets that weren’t exactly applicable to the everyday blogger so, he decided to change the tides. Although WordPress is currently the largest blog provider on the web, it’s not difficult to imagine that changing in the near future. It bears mentioning that, of the $250K that O’Nolan raised during his Kickstarter campaign, a large portion of that was provided by frustrated former WordPress users. So, supposedly, this is where Ghost comes in – to fill some pretty big shoes, I must say. Testing The Ghost Out: The Pros and Cons To test this new “blogging platform” out, I set up an account. It took me roughly all of 10 seconds. Enter username, password, email. I picked a name for my blog, and it showed me the URL I would have: copywriting.ghost.io . But, as soon as I got to my dashboard, I saw a big “Trial Account – Upgrade Now”. As it turns out, the free Ghost platform is very limited. As a free user, you technically have no active subscription through the service. You can, however, download the Ghost software and install it to your own web server without passing over any cash. This requires you to manage all of your own codes and updates, although you do have access to the community support discussions in the Ghost forums, in case you get confused managing it all on your own. If you want a little less DIY and a little more built-in convenience, however, you can upgrade to Ghost Pro, which offer a variety of different account options. The “Personal” account, for example, is $10 a month and offers hosting for one blog and up to 25,000 views each month. The “Advanced” plan is $30 a month and provides hosting for three blogs and up to 100,000 views a month. From there it goes to the “Team” plan ($100 per month, 10 blogs and 350,000 views a month) and “Business” ($250 each month, unlimited blogs and a million views a month). Obviously, Ghost is unlike many other blogging platforms that don’t charge for their services and, as such, many bloggers are wondering what the heck Ghost is charging for. The answer, it turns out, is a little complex. Depending upon which version of Ghost Pro you update to, you’re paying for unlimited storage and transfer options, automatic updates and content backups, unlimited theme and app choices, security protection or priority support and migration options, although the latter two are only available on Ghost Pro’s two most expensive options – “Team” and “Business.” In the future, Ghost Pro plans to offer perks like 3rd party apps, analytics and tools for developers to its paying users. Although the platform offers blogger-focused facilities, it also makes would-be bloggers jump through quite a few hoops to gain access to the same services that other blogging platforms offer for free. The Pros of Ghost 1. Ghost Is Only For Blogging. (This could be a pro, or not.) The most obvious difference between Ghost and WordPress is that Ghost is dedicated only to blogging. No web operating systems, no CMS….just blogging. In addition, Ghost uses an MIT open source license, which, in their words “Our mission is to create the best open source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world, and have a real impact on the future of online media.” WordPress, on the other hand, uses a GNU open-source license. This license has caused some friction within the WordPress community and as a general rule, people don’t like it. 2. Ghost Is Set In Simpler Code. Another difference between WordPress and Ghost is that WordPress was written in PHP. While many tout this coding language as being a great one to use for hacking or prototyping, it’s difficult to use on a blogging platform due to it’s propensity toward change and copious semantic errors. Because O’Nolan had been involved with WordPress, he understood this frustration and set out to make Ghost different, which he did by writing the site in Node.js. 3. UX Is Different Than WordPress. When it comes to user experience, there are some unique differences between Ghost and WordPress. While WordPress’s admin center can be excessively difficult for new users, advanced users love it and tout it as being a great platform to develop high-level blogs and websites. Ghost, on the other hand, sought to remove the bells and whistles and incorporate important blogging functions like social sharing and SEO into the core of the blogging platform. This means that users of Ghost have total control over content … Read more

A Guide To Compounding Blog Posts: Increase Your Blog Traffic Month after Month

December 31, 2020September 17, 2015 by Josh McCoy

What if you could write a post that people loved so much, they kept sharing it month after month? You could take a vacation; give your blogging fingers a break for a while. Heck, you might even be able to go outside for a minute. Can you imagine how much traffic a blog like that would create? Unfortunately, some things are just too good to be true, right? Wrong. It’s entirely possible to produce blog posts like this. There’s even a name for them: compounding blog posts. Designed to produce perennial traffic, compounding blog posts are capable of generating the same amount of interaction and attention as six so-called “decaying” posts. Fortunately, creating these posts isn’t even as difficult as it seems. Read on to learn more. The Difference Between Compounding Posts and Decaying Posts Compounding posts are like fine wine and decaying posts are like a three-day old cheeseburger: one is a lot more appealing than the other. Additionally, one gets better with time and the other doesn’t. Compounding blog posts command more attention as they age. They produce more visits and generally include authoritative words that reflect common search terms. If you needed more convincing, compounding posts are responsible for producing a whopping 38% of overall blog traffic. Decaying posts, on the other hand, glean less traffic as they age. They are far more common, however, and make up roughly 9 out of every 10 blog posts. Unlike their more glamorous cousin, decaying posts don’t add value to your site and may even drive readers away based on poor content or sub-par execution. Obviously, the smart content marketer wants to stay away from that three-day old cheeseburger and grab a glass of fine wine instead, right? Right. How to Create Compounding Blog Posts: The 4 Pillars of Great Posts Fortunately, writing compounding blog posts is not as difficult as it may seem. Like most things in content marketing, compounding blog posts follow a somewhat predictable outline and, in order to write a compounding blog post, the smart content marketer simply needs to know what that outline looks like. Generally, a compounding blog post needs 4 things: 1) A Great Topic: When it comes to creating compounding blog posts, you want your topic to be broad. This is because narrowly focused posts lose attention over time and decline in value – except for a small category of niche individuals who may display continued interest. Broad topics, on the other hand, are interesting for a wide variety of audiences and are capable of drawing attention for a long period of time. Although narrowly focused blogs have their place in the blogosphere, they generally aren’t the go-to type of content for compounding posts. In addition to boasting a broad topic, compounding blog posts also need to offer tactical advice. This means that they should help readers make decisions, solve problems or learn new things. Examples of content like this include product reviews, instructions and how-to articles. These posts should be authoritative and welcoming all at once and should be thoroughly researched and fact-checked, so as to avoid disseminating improper information. 2) A Smart Title: When creating compounding blog posts, a great title is essential. Ideally, this title should reflect common search terms and seek to answer customer questions. People are most likely to click on the search engine result that best match their queries, so think about how people ask questions when it comes time to head to Google. When people are looking for answers, their Google searches generally begin with “how do I….” or “what to do when….”. When they’re looking for information, on the other hand, queries generally resemble “the best X, Y, Z” or “Highest-selling __________________.” That said, the titles of compounding blog posts generally contain the words “How,” “Why,” “What” and “Best.” Considering common search terms while writing your blog titles is an effective way to incorporate common SEO practices into your content. Keep in mind, also, that marketers have found that compounding blog posts often have 6-13 words in their titles. 3) Great Content Structure: It’s unlikely that clunky, difficult-to-read content is ever going to become a compounding post, so keep that in mind as you devise your content structure. The piece should be easy to scan and laid out in a user-friendly fashion, with headers and subheaders to break up content and separate ideas. Additionally, the post should make ample use of visuals, headlines marked out in bold, bullets, lists and high-quality links. These are all ingredients of great content and serve to make the piece more valuable and useful for your customers. Additionally, great content should be tailored to your target audience’s preferred word count. Most research suggests that the ideal word count for a blog post is roughly 1,600 words. This takes a reader about 7 minutes to complete and is short enough to maintain attention while also being long enough to cover the topic at hand. 4) Unique Information: In order to stand out and become compounding content, your blog post needs to present information in a decidedly useful and helpful way. This means that your post should help customers learn new things and solve problems. Additionally, it should drive awareness and be formatted in such a way that people want to share it. Learning from the Best: HubSpot’s Compound Post Analysis HubSpot is a popular inbound marketing and information platform for content marketers around the world. Although it may seem like successful organizations such as this are immune from worrying about compounding or decaying content that simply isn’t true. When HubSpot began to see the term “compounding blog post” popping up around the web, they did a bit of research into their own content. Over the next several months, they learned that content above 1,000 words receive the most social attention on their site and that posts with 2,000 words or more generated more social shares. According to the results, HubSpot devised a plan to fill in the gaps … Read more

50 Weak Words and Phrases To Cut Out Of Your Blogging

December 31, 2020September 7, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Could a few extra, unnecessary words in your blogs be costing you readers? We’ve all heard the commands “show, don’t tell” and “write what you know.” While these conventions are great advice for the everyday blogger, they don’t exactly address how you can go about making small tweaks that strengthen our writing and increase reader engagement. While its great to use descriptive words and write whatever pulls you into it, the easiest way to strengthen writing and blogging skills is to begin cutting out those weak words and phrases. Words and phrases that don’t add to the overall meaning of the writing only serve to clutter it up and make it difficult for readers to understand. Fortunately, this easy guide will help you learn which words and phrases should be cut from writing. Disclaimer: Some of these phrases may be essential to certain sentences or phrases of speech; if so, leave intact! My approach is more to show you which “overused” words and phrases could use a good shave to make your blogs tighter, more readable, and better. So, don’t throw these words in your sentences just to fill a word count, or to elongate a sentence: use as necessary only. Let’s dive in! 50 Words and Phrases That You Should Cut From Your Blogging (Now) 1) About: “About” is a vague, weak word and it’s wise to cut it out when discussing quantities. Get more specific by using the word “approximately” or giving readers a specific range, as in “15-20 cows got loose.” 2) Accordingly: Accordingly is a chunky word and it can make your text difficult to read. If you must use it, replace it with a simpler word, like “so.” 3) Actual Facts: Saying that something is an “Actual fact” is a little bit like saying something is a “new invention.” It’s redundant and clunky and you simply don’t need it. Remove “Actual” and stick to the facts. 4) Almost: Excess use of the word “almost” can spell a quick death for a blogger. Vague terms like this leave readers hungry for specificity and you’ll make your writing stronger instantly when you get rid of “almost” and replace it with specific terms. 5) All Throughout: “All throughout” is another one of those redundant phrases that can spell clunky, flabby writing for writers. Omit the word “all” and get to the point. 6) Amazing: Although “amazing” has some value as a descriptive term, it needs to be used sparsely if at all. Qualify your use of this word by specifying what, exactly, makes it amazing. 7) Better: How much better? Why is it better? “Better” is a vague and subjective appraisal unless you back it up with analyzed and summarized data. For example, “Susie was doing better” vs. “Susie was doing better after she began using an Asthma inhaler.” 8) Maybe: Do you know or don’t you? This is especially important when it comes to opinion pieces and authoritative writing. People are reading your words in order to learn something from you and use of the word “maybe” makes it seem like you’re really not that sure at all. 9) Perhaps: Unless you’re using this word to explore alternate endings on unknown topics (as in “Perhaps Amelia Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel and crashed”) then it’s time to get rid of it. It makes your writing seem unsure and nobody wants to listen to rambling musings for very long. Be confident in your writing and answer reader’s questions without beating around the bush. 10) Just: “Just” is a minimizing word and seldom adds value to a sentence. Get rid of it and streamline your thought process. 11) Literally: If something is literal, your readers should know it without you needing to use this word to clarify it. More often than not, the word “literally” makes writing sound flabby and juvenile, which is probably not what you’re going for. 12) Big: Once more, readers hate it when you’re vague and unclear adjectives like “big” only leave them asking “how big?” Instead of saying the horse was big, say it stood 5’6″ at the shoulder and weighed 2,000 lbs. This will give your readers a clearer picture and more satisfaction. 13) Really: Although you might use the word “Really” when you speak, you don’t want to use it when you write. It doesn’t translate into text and phrases like “really hard” only make writing seem half-finished. If the word “really” isn’t adding distinct specificity, cut it out and don’t look back. 14) Very: In the same boat as “really,” “very” is a word that offers little, if any value. “Very” is subjective, weak and best left out of your writing. 15) Stuff: Unless you’re aiming for an informal piece, stay far away from the word “stuff.” The bane of professional writing near and far, this word makes your writing seem informal and half-baked. In order to avoid this, be more specific about what the “stuff” is. Instead of saying “he grabbed his stuff” say “he grabbed his baseball bat and mitt.” 16) Things: Vague as can be, “things” leaves readers wondering. Instead of saying “10 Things You Can do to Get Better at Math” shoot for something like “10 Strategies for Acing Math This Year.” 17) That: This is a big one. Open a word doc on your computer and read through it once. Now read through it again without the word “that.” Did it detract from the meaning? Most likely, the answer is no. “That” is generally a filler word that adds no value to sentences and can easily be eliminated, especially when referring to people. 18) Went: “Went” is a vague word that describes only the action and not the method. Instead of saying “I went to class,” consider saying “I trudged to class through a howling blizzard.” Replacing “went” with more descriptive terms will do wonders for your writing and help your words pop off the page. 19) Always: Nothing is always true and nothing … Read more