Comments on: How to Write Home Run Posts

By: Glen

Glen — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:39:14 +0000

This was a really great post. I am new to blogging an coming to blogs like yours is really helping me become a better blogger. I am already taking your advice about the points system. This is my first comment on a blog. If you get a chance please checkout my blog and if you see some errors please let me know http://www.thegnrgroup.com/blog .
P.S I don’t usually allow comments on my blog but will start.

By: Dhane

Dhane — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:39:56 +0000

Writing in sessions is definite a good thing to do. I am new to blogging and I will write somethings, and then come back to it later and see something totally different. Write, read, review, read and revise.

By: Ron Patiro

Ron Patiro — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:07:50 +0000

Thanks for the tips. I’ll have to read more of your posts!

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:45:19 +0000

Did you proof read your post before hitting the “Publish worthless BS to the web for mindless zombies to flutter over like daft drugged up butterflies” button? Are you sure? You better check again. You better use a blog without the ability to publish just to make sure and run it on your home network for your family to pretend to read and tell you “yes its great honey”. Then after ten years of hard deliberation you can finally throw it away without ever publishing it and no one will care less because there are billions of people and billions of articles to read and you are just one ant standing in front of an ant eater thinking about pressing a button when in reality you are milliseconds away from being sucked up into its stomach where you will die a painful death in burning stomach acid and no one will ever remember your name.

By: Dana

Dana — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:48:44 +0000

I think it is also important to recognize its potential, if possible. Twice now I have written a post that for whatever reason got a lot of attention. They were posted in forums, linked on several blogs and emailed around. It is interesting to get your own post forwarded to you on an e-list! But both times, I had little idea of what potential those posts might have had, and followed them with several days of nothing special. That probably lost a few potential readers!

By: LifesPerspective

LifesPerspective — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:47:51 +0000

Think homerun posts must really happen at the right time and at the right moment. Sometimes, even the best written article with lots of content and value may not even get a sniff of frontpage if the buzz does not happen at the right time. While we know that all these factors will help increase your chances, I can’t help but feel that there is an element of luck and personal hardwork involved in getting friends to spread the news of your article via digging and stumbling. Without the manual effort part, I noticed that most of the articles do not see the light of day especially from non-established blogs.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:55:15 +0000

Thanks for the great advise. Especially the added value one is very important to me. I’m in a niche with many passionate bloggers, so to be a good pure-news blog I have to be really fast and dedicate a lot of time to organising and finding good stories before they break out. But for big news I can only be “6 hours better” or so because the big ones will receive the news eventually.

Today I wrote my first – more or less – personal experience related to this niche (sustainability) and I haven’t had this many diggs in any of my previous news posts (well, I’ve only been blogging for about 10 days). So in the future I will add more added value and personal experiences to my posts. It works!

By: Surrogate Pimp

Surrogate Pimp — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:35:20 +0000

I’m not hitting any home runs. I’m mostly getting hit by pitch.

By: K

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 03:32:21 +0000

Question:
If the home run post is 700-1000 words long,
and your regular posts are shorter,
won’t there be a disconnect between the home run post reader
and your regular readers?

How would a blogger handle that?

By: Bowrag

Bowrag — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 22:38:47 +0000

Great advise. I am trying desperately to get my blog off the ground and I frequently catch myself listening to the advice you share.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 22:16:43 +0000

This makes sense, but lately I am seeing more and more “very good” posts show up in del.icio.us as opposed to the home runs. It appears that blogs that already have zillions of readers can relax a bit when it comes to truly outstanding writing.

By: Wild Bill

Wild Bill — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:59:10 +0000

I’ve hit a few home runs in my time, but lately I’ve been doing many of the tips you suggested and I truly believe my content is getting much better. I’m hitting some base hits, however I have a feeling it won’t be long before I am hitting Home Runs on a more regular basis. Great tips thanks.

By: Alex Ion

Alex Ion — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:42:50 +0000

Man I can find you in hundreds and hundreds of bloggers.

What a great article if you ask me. It’s so different than the guest posts I’ve seen around lately.

As related with the home run posts, it’s the viral in them that actually makes them airborne. It may not be a top-blogger to write about you, but those little ones as well. It only matters to be of interest …

By: Bryan Eisenberg

Bryan Eisenberg — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:15:33 +0000

The biggest problem with content management systems (ie blogging software) is that they work. In other words it is all to easy to actually publish something. Anything. But words are extremely powerful. Words have caused wars. Most people take language; words for granted. The other challenge people face is they hate being edited. Asking a writer what they think of an editor is like asking a fire hydrant what they think of a dog. But I thank our blog editor Robert Gorell anyway ;-)

The point: get at least one other person to read your post before you hit the publish button.

By: nika

nika — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:37:06 +0000

Been thinking about social networking and how it impacts my site. I have never been dug but I have been stumbled … my traffic went from 1k/day to 6k that day. BUT, and this is my point here, it wasnt just one day, that stumble led to another stumble and before I knew it, like 10 different posts were stumbled AND, most germane to this comment, they CONTINUE to be hit on a daily basis.

So, thanks to stumbleupon, I have certain pages that I know get a lot of hits and that they will in the future. What I have not done is capitalize on it after those few early days. I had not thought too much about it really. At the time of the stumble I put up ads but even with 6k actual hits VERY few ads were hit (maybe 3?) so I took them down.

Ads (banner and text) simply do not pay on my site, even in the face of massive hits. They were context/related ads too.

I continue to scratch the brain for ideas on how to make those stumbled pages work for me but it will have to be beyond the ad concept.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:35:51 +0000

Solid advice. I find that long posts do well at social sites as well. But it’s kind of balanced with the medium to short sized posts in that you’ll still get search engine traffic from them and they don’t take as long to write. I think all sizes of posts are good.

By: Teft

Teft — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:34:35 +0000

Definitely useful tips. I’m new to blogging, so I’ll be trying the “multi-session” post next and see what happens. I can already attest to content being king … when I make a post that strikes a user who’s popular on stumbleupon, traffic spike!

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:02:43 +0000

Great tips! My first goal as a blogger is to write quality posts. Although I must say that I usually don’t save a post, then go back to edit before publishing. Maybe I will now. After losing a lengthy post because I pushed a wrong button, I’m doing more and more of my writing on MS Word so I don’t lose anything again. But that’s besides the point.

Thanks for the good post!!!!

By: Hamlet Batista

Hamlet Batista — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:59:56 +0000

I have to agree with this post. I’ve been blogging for 4 weeks now, and I am glad to say that I hit my first home run post.

I posted it in the user generated content section of Seomoz, called Youmoz. That section only has 266 RSS subscribers.

The thing is that if they really like your post, they promote it to the main blog, where close to 13,000 subscribers read it. My post was promoted :-)

This was just my second post to that section and I was totally unknown 4 weeks ago.

Seomoz is one of the most respected sites in my niche (SEO).

In my case, I chose a very bad title/headline but I was lucky enough that a reader point that out and I requested a title change.

I would add to Darren’s list: 5) Provide authoritative references that support your claims. This is especially useful if you topics are technical.

By: DanielthePoet

DanielthePoet — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:56:15 +0000

Busted! You got me, John! I’m one of those single draft bloggers. Guess it all goes back to my days of single draft college research papers.

I realize that I miss out on some valuable opportunities by not revising, but I don’t have the time to spend on blogging right now. If you would visit CultureFeast.com and shoot me a couple suggestions as to why the content isn’t up to snuff, I’ll consider writing fewer posts so I can devote more time to the content.

Thanks again!