Making a successful blog

For those new to my blog, the basic premise of the blog is to discuss topics brought up in the Enterprise 2.0 course I am enrolled in at Queensland University of Technology. (For more detail on the purpose and background to Enterprise 2.0 see the blog before this one)

This week I have been assigned the first activity:

The task for this week is to extend community knowledge on what makes a blog a success and to introduce your blogging strategy. 

To discuss the topic of successful blogs its probably best to look at successful blogs such as Freshome, This Song Is Sick and Digital Photography School. These blogs are great for their reader base because they deliver interesting posts, with consistent frequency that generate discussion. But there is a humble beginning to all blogs, and these blogs are no exception. They all started with one blogger posting what they thought was nothing more than a little interesting thing to share. Thus from this they grew in readership and in bloggers to form great sources of insight.

It doesn't take brilliant ideas to have a successful blog, it takes dedication to and understanding of your readers. Each of the three blogs listed have thousands of subscribers, and in the case of Digital Photography School over a million. Not every blogger can expect to get such numbers, but what is a new blog with out ambitions?

A key point to a successful blog is a good design. Nothing too complicated or distracting, but still interesting enough to catch the eye of prospective subscribers.

When I was younger I started a blog on (of all things) how to survive a zombie Apocalypse posting about 10 blog posts in a few hours. I was frustrated with the lack of views (hint: refreshing the page doesn't count), in my frustration I deleted the blog completely. Too much blind ambition met with reality can be very disheartening, a successful blogger should aim high, but be modest in their progress.

Blogger Ryan Biddulph posted an article on basicblogtips.com listing 12 steps to creating a successful blog, along with commitment, quality control and good flow Biddulph mentions setting the goal of your blog. I think this important an ambitious blogger, a blogger should write for more than money but as Biddulph puts it:

Think about providing a valuable service to people on the internet. Observe the awesome blog here, run by Ms. Ileane. She provides a valuable service to humanity by publishing valuable, in depth blog posts. Remember this each time you sit down to create a post and you cannot help but to inspire individuals.

For more tips that prospective bloggers should check out you can find a bunch of tips here, here and here.

Now for my blogging strategy, I plan on keeping my posts simple, informative, coherent and interesting. I am also open to connect with my readers, got any questions about me or my blog feel free to ask in the comments and I will try to get back to you with an informed response. Got any ideas for future blog posts and I may be able to squeeze one out on your topic.

How will I go about creating simple, informative, coherent and interesting posts you may ask? I will do my best to research the topics involved, review my work and add in anything that intrigues me during said research.

Obtaining readership is another matter, hopefully my posts are interesting and informative enough for a few readers to subscribe if it peaks their interest. Gaining readership is mainly reliant on self advertising to peers and people Google searching Enterprise 2.0. Of course there is the option of paying for advertising, but as a university student who isn't made of money I don't think this would be a wise option for an assignment.

And with that I don't have anything more to write about for now. I hope this post has gauged at least some interest, or given some ideas to prospective bloggers. Ill get back to you with blog post #3

An inspirational quote for those bloggers who might have lost faith in their blog:

Don't forget. Believe in yourself. Not in the you who believes in me. Not the me who believes in you. Believe in the you who believes in yourself. ~ Kamina

Introduction

This blog will be used for an assessment for INB346 at Queensland University of Technology. The weekly posts will be on the topic of Enterprise 2.0. To introduce the topic I quote a blog post from a fellow blogger Andrew McAfee,

'Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.' Andrew McAfee

Andrew McAfee 2012

The post in which he defines Enterprise 2.0 is ancient in terms of online technologies, the term being first coined by McAfee in 2006. So old in fact that link to the original proposal of the idea that is linked on his blog now redirects to a 404 error.

Enterprise 2.0 has been implemented through business through such means as internal and external corporate blogging, corporate wikis, internal corporate community platforms, internal idea generation (ideation) and expertise location. These common capabilities have been implemented within business models to attempt to improve unplanned collaboration amongst employees and to promote employee connections.

An important sub topic of Enterprise 2.0 is Enterprise social software, which is software that implements some of the common capabilities mentioned above in a focused software package. Mc Afee claimed that Enterprise social software must have the following features:

• Search: allowing users to search for other users or content

• Links: grouping similar users or content together

• Authoring: including blogs and wikis

• Tags: allowing users to tag content

• Extensions: recommendations of users; or content based on profile

• Signals: allowing people to subscribe to users or content with RSS feeds

Ref: McAfee, Andrew, P. "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration" (MIT Sloan Management Review), Spring 2006, Vol.47, No.3

These topics will be expanded on hopefully in the following blog posts.