Scott McClellan is the Editor of COLLIDE Magazine, which means that he spends most of his time reading, writing, and clicking. He blogs regularly about media, technology, and the Church on the COLLIDE blog, and he contributes not-so-regularly to AdoptiveDads.org. Scott lives in the Dallas area with his wife and daughter. Oh, and he’s the Director of Echo.
Design
- Content is king.
- Design is important, too.
- WordPress is versatile and has unlimited plugins that can help package your content with great design.
- Design presents content in a way that’s overlooked by a lot of bloggers.
- Design is what you show to the world and the way you invite people to engage with your content.
- Design is more than colors but how your content and information is organized and presented.
- Try to get inside the head of the person who’s coming to your blog.
- It’s easy to only see the admin panel.
- Michael Hyatt’s blog has a great welcome banner that introduces himself to new readers who may have found their way there via Facebook, twitter, etc.
- Blogs show what’s most recent, bypassing what’s in the past.
- When you’re designing and organizing, try to think of who is coming, how they are getting there and what might help them get a sense of context.
- Give them a frame for what they are reading/seeing.
- Providing context is incredibly important.
- Blogs can subliminally communicate that they are for “insiders.”
- How are you helping people make sense of your content?
- You only get one first impression.
- If your post is the continuation of a story, give people a chance to catch up.
Voice
- @Maurilio on productivity: On days when he’s tempted to occupy himself with busy work, he asks himself what are things that only he can do. It helps to focus and prioritize.
- We begin to discover our voice when we find out what only we can blog about.
- What can you blog about what you can only blog about?
- The things that we work on, conversations we are having and ways that other ideas come together in our context are the things that only we can blog about.
Rhythm
- Readers and writers benefit from rhythm.
- Consider your rhythm as a blogger.
- Rhythm helps to set expectations and get people into a groove.
- Rhythm creates an easy way for people to engage with your content as a part of a regular routine.
Read
- It’s great to have the drive to create.
- So often we are so focused on what we’re creating that we aren’t absorbing.
- A good blogger reads blogs.
- It may not be 100, but it will be some.
- The good blogger asks themselves a number of questions…
- What worked?
- What didn’t work?
- What moved me?
- What parts did I skip over?
- Why would I want to share this with someone?
- We can’t read our blogs like we can read someone else’s blog with fresh eyes.
Generosity
- In Linchpin, Seth Godin talks about the value of generous artists.
- Artists are people who create and who ship.
- They make something out of nothing.
- Generous artists use their art to give gifts.
- Their gifts don’t require repayment.
- In the exchange, there’s an affect on our relationship with the artists and the recipient.
- When we create a blog we’re oftentimes asking for something… people’s attention, time, etc.
- We often ask for things like affirmation, financial support, etc.
- Generosity is an amazing part of what makes a great blog.
- A great blogger creates art and shares it with others.
- It’s not a transaction.
- A great blog is generous.
- Jon Acuff built Stuff Christians Like, gained a significant following and asked his blogging audience to help build a school with Samaritan’s Purse. They raised $30K in less than a day.
- We should seek to cultivate relationships that are about giving, not earning.
Story
- Donald Miller says, “Stories are a way that God changes us.”
- We engage with stories.
- Facts and bullet points can try to transmit information but stories invite and engage people at a totally different level.
- The best blogs tell a story.
- There’s a story that should be taking shape as the blog develops.
- Little stories are great, too.
- Installments are another way to tell a larger narrative, painting a broader picture.
- Stories will connect more than the most striking statistics, funniest videos, etc.
- Stories will connect more with an audience.
- Blogging is inherently a multi-media platform.
- We still see it as text, but we can mix all kinds of media [embedded video, slideshows, audio, etc] to tell better stories.
- We have tools at our disposal to tell rich stories that aren’t text or bullet point driven. We’ve got Flip cams, podcasts, camera phones, etc. Those can add richness to our content.
- Don’t tell people facts or figures, tell a story!
Comments
- Comments used to be optional, now they are everywhere.
- Can we all really add to the conversation?
- Seth Godin doesn’t allow comments.
- Where and how do comments add value?
- Why do we provide a forum for people to say what they think about our content?
- What does it mean to facilitate and moderate comments?
- What categories of our posts would benefit from comments?
- Comments are becoming a huge part of most blogs.
- Maybe we need to reconsider our view of comments.
Intentionality
- The best blogs are written on purpose.
- The best blogs wreak of purpose and intentionality.
- The best blog posts we will read and write have been marinated on… researched, edited, proofed, reviewed, tweaked, etc.
- They aren’t accidents.
- Great ideas happen by accident, great art does not.
- Jon Acuff is three weeks ahead on his content.
- In The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield talks about the resistance… the forces dedicated to keeping us from doing anything worthwhile.
- Distractions come but we have to make the decision that we are writers and that we should write.
- We need to have a commitment for blogging on purpose.
Reflect
- What are we setting out to do?
- What do we want to accomplish?
- What do we want to deliver through our blog?
- Do we want to reach people?
- Participate in conversations?
- Make money, get famous?
- We need to write out the purpose statement of our blogs.
- We need to articulate what it is we are trying to do.
- The purpose we land on will serve as the filter for our content.
- It will be a frame or a lens to shape everything we will write.
- It’s not about limiting yourself to a niche but helping you discover what you are trying to do.
- If you don’t know what you are trying to do you won’t know if you’ve actually done it.
