Fear NOT the Publish button but preview and review first
Blogging can be a race, he who posts first wins when it comes to news. Too often that race sadly takes precedence over content. Ben Trombly at Frogstr wrote a thoughtful post on the need to publish with caution. He stresses the need to preview and review your post and I heartly agree. Even news posts can benefit from
- Previewing your post in your theme to make sure that it is legible, attractive and well formed
- Previewing your post to make sure that it is scannable, that your reader can quickly scan your post to identify its key themes and ideas
- Review your post for spelling and grammatical errors
- Review your post for clarity and comprehension
- Review your post for intent, did you end up saying what you intended to say?
- Review your headline to ensure that it captures the attention of your intended audience and the theme of your post
- Review your post to make sure that you will have no regrets tomorrow over what you post today
Since I work with students, I also sometimes see too much fear about the publish button. In Carol’s blog post, she talks about her blogging fears outside the publish button. Her post, however, reminded me of all of my students who are afraid of publishing their thoughts, ideas and experiences. Sometimes this fear is rooted in a lack of confidence about their writing skills or expertise. Most often this fear comes from the belief that they have nothing to offer. Blogging can be a great outlet for self expression, even if the intended audience is just yourself. If you don’t feel confident about your post, keep it private or keep it as a draft, but keep writing. You might be surprised what you come up with practice and patience.
Tags: Writing
Thank you for the pingback Bean.
Carol
Thank you for the article and pointing me to the Frogster article
I fear that I fear the Publish button too little!
Not that I don’t review what I have written many times before I publish. But then I review many times after publishing too. Sometimes so often that I hardly dare look at the ‘times amended’ list!
What I wonder is – does Wordpress resubmit the page to the search engines and directories each time I amend and republish a post? If so, am I in danger of being spurned by the likes of Google for submitting too often? I would dearly like to know.
That’s a good question Valerie. I didn’t think to ask it but am guilty of the same thing sometimes – tweaking little stuff.
WordPress pings when you save a post a published post, http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services
Pinging is different technology then what Google uses. Google and search engines spider your blog, they come to you. Pinging is more for directories where you send the information to them. Updating a page is usually viewed as a good thing by Google but Google changes the rules pretty frequently. Where blogs get in trouble with Google sometimes is duplicate content. It “sees” your same blog post under archives, categories, tags etc. That is why the SEO plugin is handy, it can limit the different ways your pages are spidered so the same content doesn’t show up 4 or more times.
Hi Bean,
I am registered for your Blogging Basics Course and cannot get into the classroom. Please help! Thanks.
Stephanie, I have notified the school and they will fix the problem.