This is the last post of 2009, and before I go any farther, I want to thank all of you personally for sticking around with us here at Slyvisions.  It’s been a great and highly informative ride, and thanks to all of you who kicked in with comments.  Remember to keep asking the tough questions to help make ALL our blogs better.

So today we’re going to address what might well be the greatest of all generalities, but a point that needs to be said nonetheless.

ABOVE ALL ELSE, BE CLEAR.

Be CLEAR, folks.  You think it’s bad now, when you put out a great blog nobody reads except your mother and a few of your buddies, imagine how bad it is when none of them even understands what you’re trying to say.

So when you walk into 2010, do it with your head held high and your fingers on the keys.

There’s a world out there that desperately needs to know more about what you’re talking about, and if you don’t tell them, well, someone else might.  You want someone else taking your traffic? No!  HELL no, more specifically!  Don’t be afraid of what other people think.  Walk in, say what you mean to say and get out.  Stop staring at the word counter like a dog staring at a tray of cupcakes.  Stop obsessing over spelling and blog layout and all the little trappings!  Sure, the devil may be in the details, but if the message isn’t there it doesn’t matter HOW pretty it is!

So this year, make the commitment to your blog.  Get in there and get said what you need said.

I read some of your blogs myself.  You link us to them when you post comments, and naturally I follow you back.  You’ve got a lot of great and interesting things to say.  So carry on.

And may 2010 be the year you hit it big…or at least big enough to quit your day job.

Folks, there comes a time in every blogger’s life where he looks at his traffic and his flagging adsense revenue and has to ask, is it ME?  You go out, and promote, and promote some more, and you’re posting at a pretty good clip and at regular times of the day, and by all accounts, you’re doing the right things.  Your posts have plenty of keywords but they’re not link bait.  You’re drawing attention with your headlines but not ignoring the SEO possibilities.  You read Problogger and Slyvisions EVERY DAY to try and catch new ideas (okay, so maybe I’m getting a bit grandiose there, but still).

And your blog just still isn’t going anywhere.

So like I said…you have to ask the toughest question of all.  Am I any good at blogging?

This isn’t a question people want to ask.  No one wants to hear they have no talent.  That’s why most people would rather WATCH American Idol than go ON American Idol.  They want to hear how badly OTHER people suck, not how bad THEY suck!  But you can find out.  Talk to your friends, any of your blogging contemporaries.  Send out links to your blog.  Specifically request they not spare your feelings as you want to improve, and MEAN it.

Then, see what’s wrong, and try to fix it.

There’s only one way to be a better writer, folks, and that is TO WRITE.  It’s the very definition of “writer”.

Writer. Noun. One who writes.

But if you’re willing to practice, to turn in the work even if no one’s watching, keep up the promotion and everything else, chances are you can become a good writer…even if you aren’t right now.

Here’s a nice little trick I learned from one of my high school English teachers:

Write an article. Make it the best you possibly can and feel confident that it’s ready for publication. Then, don’t publish it. Save it as a draft and leave it alone. Go along with your daily life as if you’ve never written the article. Come back to the draft a few days later and read it. Chances are there is a lot of room for improvement. Adjust the article to your liking, and you’ll notice a huge difference in your writing quality.

The reason why this works is due to our constantly growing minds. We learn new things every day, so it’s bound to think a little differently one day than another. New developments, life changing events, etc. are all part of the human experience. Give this technique a go if you’re looking to give your blog that charm it deserves.

There’s no such thing as a right way to write; everyone has their own unique writing style. However, it is important to pay attention to your intended audience and cater to them appropriately. Making the right decision on to maintain a style that reaches out to your demographic ensures that you attract that same user base, and keep bringing them back for more.

By using website data statistics, you can easily track what type of people read your blog. Whether it be 6-14 year old males, or 18-24 year old females, it’s important to consider these as the deciding factors on how to change your perspective on blogging.

Suppose you had an audience that is pretty young. You will want to have a much more casual approach to your blog, avoiding expository writing to some degree. Give the reader something they can laugh about and relate to. If you have an audience that is a specific gender, you will want to have bloggers that are the same gender, and appeal to them accordingly.

One of the biggest mistakes blogs make is when multiple writers don’t have a consensus on what their writing style is. For example, one of the writers will write in a completely narrative mode, while the next will immediately shift to an argumentation style. This causes confusion to the reader, and the flow of the blog is constantly at risk.

There are certain sites in which a very solid news style of writing is necessary, however, blogs in general don’t qualify for that route most of the time. It is up to you as the blogger to make the right decisions on how to modify your writing style for your audience. If you need more tips on how to structure your writing, reading up on High School Journalism never hurt anybody. The fundamentals are what brings success to any blog.

If your blog has been lacking posts for a while you might consider it is dead. Once a few weeks have gone past and your stats show that you are losing readers in droves it will probably occur to you to that its time to shut it down and walk away.

Before you pull the plug you might want to consider some other options that you have. Shutting it down is definitely not the only option and in fact might be the worse thing you could do especially if you are planning to write another later.

Over the next couple of days we will be sharing some thoughts on how you can achieve a blog resurrection.

Stay tuned.

In response to a comment on one of yesterdays posts, I thought I would share my thoughts on developing your craft as a writer and how that will help you increase the amount you write without increasing the time it takes.

Writing is like any other skill, it stakes practice. Some have a natural talent, but, even with a natural talent, practice will make that natural ability shine. Think of athletes, even if they have a seemingly natural gift, they still have to practice for hours to try and perfect it, when they don’t practice as much their ability is never quite enough to keep them at the top.

Writing multiple posts a day seems beyond many bloggers, but again its really just a matter of practice. I write twice a day here, but I also write in several other places too. I write for businesses, as well as for my own business. I write strategy documents, I write Social Media plans, and sometimes I write just for fun. I write online and I write offline with pen and paper.

By writing in different formats, in different mediums, it makes your brain develop the sense of writing as a natural occurance instead of something that has to be forced. By writing in different ways you develop a depth and a character to your writing that will differentiate you from other writers.

What different forms of writing do you do?

Your post titles are the first thing that your readers and potential readers see. Its the link in the search results and it is what most readers base their decision on when deciding to read the rest of your post.

So why do you spend so little time on them? Perhaps because it is just that one liner at the top of the page, after all it doesnt take up as much space as the post itself so it can’t be that important can it?

Here are 3 things that will make your Titles bad:

1. Writing them before you write the post - we all do it, thinking that it will define what we write, but actually it doesn’t. Write your post first then write the title to make sure it fits.
2. Trying to be clever - Catchy titles are great if you can really pull them off, the problem with them is that they often don’t contain keywords, so they work well for your readers, but only if they can find the post in the first place. Leave the clever writing for the body.
3. Being too cautious - Take a position with your titles, be controversial, ask a question, make a statement. When potential readers are scanning those first ten results on page one of google you need to jump off the page at them.

What do you do to make your titles stand out?

Think about how you read your favorite blogs, do you scan them quickly looking for the really important pieces of information? Do you judge the content by the headline and the paragraph headers?  Do you look at the image to see how it relates to the post?

Thinking about what appeals to you as a reader is a great way to define what you should include in your writing. Try writing a post, then instead of publishing it, use the “Preview This Post” button and try reading it as your readers will.

What is appealing about the post ? Does it flow? Is it scanable? Would you read it all the way through? Do you need to know the subject well?

I’m not suggesting you do this with every post, unless of course you have a lot of spare time, but doing so every now and then and certainly after every 5 posts or so will help you keep your readers in mind with both your content and the layout of your content.

Does your reading affect the way you write?