I’m often asked how long it takes me to write a blog post or web article. My answer is: until it’s done.

Some blog posts take only a few minutes from idea to finished product. A few minutes to edit and clean it up, making sure I’ve got all the bits and pieces in the right places before hitting the publish button.

Other blog posts were started in 1994 and I haven’t finished them yet. The ideas are good, the research is fine, but it’s just not ready for publishing. Something isn’t right. When it’s ready, I’ll publish it. Until then, if the idea isn’t out-of-date, it sits and ferments, waiting to ripen into a fine wine in the future.

Those are two dramatic extremes, but why are people asking the question?

They want to know how much time and effort goes into the work of blogging.

Do you have an answer for them?
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Liz Strauss released her new ebook, The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog — The Insider’s Guide to the Conversation That’s Changing How Business Works, this weekend to rave reviews.

Based upon the lessons she learned on her own blogs, Successful and Outstanding Bloggers and Liz Strauss, as a long time writer for the Blog Herald, and the work she continues in the popular annual Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon), Liz reveals the keys she used to turn her blog into one of the most successful and social blogs on the web.

Divided into two sections, the 68-page ebook asks two important questionss: “Can You Hear the Internet?” and “Can the Internet Hear You?” If you aren’t listening to your customers and readers, you are missing the blogging boat. Accordingly, if you aren’t writing to be heard, who is listening to you?
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Chances are, you’ve been reading products designed or redesigned by Garcia Media more often than you’d believe. The firm, lead by dr. Mario R. Garcia, has worked with publications like The Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, La Tribune, and more. Add print and mobile areas to that, not seldom connected to products within the big media houses, and you’ll understand their weight.

Now they’ve got a blog, just two posts for now, but it could actually be a good read for designers. I like the thoughts on subheads, for instance. Check it out if you’re into media, design, or just curious.

Answer honestly. Do you have what it takes to run background research, fact check, spell check, grammar check, objectivity check. Wait a moment, wasn’t blogging supposed to be about opinion and voice? Yes it was, and so was journalism. You are allowed to feel, witness (experience), and document what you see through your human filter.

Christiane Amanpour thinks that “there are some situations that one simply cannot be neutral about. Objectivity does not mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.” Herein lies the first lesson in running a publication for bloggers - it is about being balanced in recognizing differing points of view.

Another journalist I have tremendous respect for, John Timpane of the Editorial Board at The Philadelphia Inquirer - former Shakespearian English teacher and poet - calls it skepticism. This means requiring the official reality to explain itself. Not to be confused with another sentiment, which is often overused: cynicism. A cynic is not open to discovery, he is set in his ways. A skeptic, on the other hand, is open to receiving. In other words, they are listening while exercising critical thinking.

Now that you are listening, you can pass the biggest test.

The Biggest Test

The biggest test you can take after you honor the proper grammar and form is that of the attribution. Being objective means being honest with yourself, and with the other - both sides. Can you do that?

Then you are well on your way. All the other things - finding news, analyzing it, doing background and fact checks, even finding a sponsor or an ad network for your publication is easier.

The hardest part is always that of objectivity. Asking, even requiring reality to explain itself is harder than it seems. Yet the rewards are oh so much greater. With the recent news of Ars Technica being bought by Conde’ Nast we learned a very important piece of information: the community that forms around an online publication can be a powerful story.

Compelling at the tune of millions of dollars. The content is key to forming that, of course, as is the integrity and passion of the reporting - with objectivity. What side of the conversation are you not giving a hearing to?

Last weekend at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam I spoke with Anton Johansson and CEO Martin Källström from the new blog search engine Twingly. They present themselves as a new spam-free blog search engine with a strong focus on the conversational nature of the blogosphere.

Lorelle VanFossen recently addressed the issue of spam in blog search engines and keeping their index spam free is one of the main objectives of Twingly. On top of that they focus on conversational search in the blogosphere by partnering with traditional media. They have closed several deals with major newspapers in Europe which provide links to the blogs that reference them. This is another step in showing the two-way links between blogs and online newspapers. Their main competitor in this area is of course Sphere but Twingly focuses on different markets. Read all about their ideas to start another blog search engine in the following interview and grab a special Blog Herald beta invite code while you can!

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Excerpt reprinted with permission from the book, “Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging”, by Lorelle VanFossen

Writing a series of articles is a great way to connect related content together. It is also a great attention-getter, encouraging readers to return for the next installment.

On a blog, an article series must be planned in order to maximize its effectiveness. There must be enough advance time to spread the word of the upcoming series.
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Now that’s a nice contract! The blogger behind Stuff White People Like, Christian Lander, is said to have gotten a $300,000 advance from publisher Random House. That’s a lot of money, and not only for a book spawned by a blog.

This and more in an interesting piece over at the New York Times. It is worth a read to get your hopes up. Via.

Amazon’s got a new policy for POD, short for print-on-demand, publishers: Get with the BookSurge program, or the buy button goes. BookSurge is basically Amazon’s own POD operation, so they want all publishers to move over there.

This is quite a story, complicated and somewhat crazy. It’s about a company using its monopoly to make more money.

If you’re the least interested in publishing, head over to the excellent WritersWeekly and read the full story. Then check out Amazon’s reply, and the WSJ story that started it all (requires login).

Amber of Lamb and Frog is covering Monday Mayhem, specifically the mayhem that erupts when a commenter cross the lines.

I’m not sure how many of these commenters have ever written anything for public consumption other than their inane comments. A blog? A magazine article? Anything that you actually got paid for? Do you know anything about writing at all? Let me fill you in…

Blogs are public documents. The best bloggers with the most popular blogs know this. They choose and edit the material they post to reflect their blog’s message or style. That doesn’t mean that the content can’t be personal, it just means that it rarely reflects the entirety of the blogger’s existence. Why? Because even if your daily life is freakishly entertaining (what…now you’re Paris Hilton?) hearing nothing but unedited lists of exploits day after day makes for boring reading in short order.

She cites some recent blog posts by friends who are frustrated with stupid and ignorant commenters, including:
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Many bloggers dream about getting a recurring guest blogging position. Whether paid or unpaid, many bloggers toil in relative obscurity for years before being offered a chance to write for a large site.

However, the excitement of being offered a new writing position often causes bloggers, as well as other writers, to make serious mistakes. When they receive their first contract, they either do not read the document carefully or, in a desperate bid to please their new employers, sign the contract with little regard to the rights that they surrender.

However, when you sign your name to a contract, you are bound to it and signing a bad contract can have long-term consequences that can both limit the rights to your own work and the scope of your future projects.

No matter how good of a deal the contract seems to be, it is worth taking a moment to read through it and watch out for the rights that you may be giving away.

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