Blog Profiles: Blogs to Help You With Your Blogging

Welcome to Blog Profiles! Each week, PR Newswire media relations manager Christine Cube selects an industry or subject and a handful of sites that do a good job with promoting, contributing, and blogging about the space. Do you have a blog that deserves recognition? Tell Christine why on PR Newswire for Bloggers.

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard of NaNoWriMo and/or NaBloPoMo. Both are in November.

For the uninitiated, WordPress breaks it down: “NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo are short for ‘National Novel Writing Month’ and ‘National Blog Posting Month,’ respectively. In the first, writers commit to writing a 50,000-word novel between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30; in the second, to posting every single day in November.”

Several entities are honoring these campaigns.

BlogHer has an entire section dedicated to NaBloPoMo. WordPress is running a NaMo campaign this month. And, if you’d like to participate in NaNoWriMo, sign up on the official site.

Want to blog and can’t figure out what to say each day? WordPress spells some of it out for you, including creating “your own manageable posting strategy for the month. Posting every day doesn’t have to mean writing 1,000 words a day.”

Blogging can be as simple as posting a photo, list, sketch, haiku, or observation.

So in the spirit of blogging and writing, I dug up some great blogs that help bloggers do their craft.

ProBlogger was created by Darren Rowse, a full-time blogger who stumbled on an article about “blogging” in 2002.

“I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life,” Rowse says, on ProBlogger.

Today, ProBlogger offers a variety of blog tips categories, including blogging for dollars, advertising, blog design, blog networks, affiliate programs, SEO, blog promotion, and business blogging, to name a few.

This is an incredibly full site with plenty of content to help bloggers.

Some of my favorite posts include 15 Quick and Easy Productivity Super-Hacks for Busy Bloggers, 3 Ways to Define What Your Blog is About (Rowse advises bloggers to start with figuring out a niche), and A Social Media Etiquette Guide You Might Find Useful.

Follow @problogger on Twitter.

Copyblogger has been teaching folks how to create “killer online content” since Jan. 2006.

Founder Brian Clark has been “building businesses with online content marketing since 1998,” and Copyblogger started out as a one-man blog.

The Copyblogger content is incredibly real, accessible, and helpful to writers.

One of my favorite posts is 35 Blogging Tips to Woo Readers and Win Business. In it, blogger Henneke Duistermaat breaks down how to streamline your content creation. Some tips? Commit to a publishing schedule, keep a list of blog ideas, outline your posts, and use a kitchen timer. (Use a kitchen timer! I kind of love this suggestion. I may have to try this one.)

Other really awesome posts on Copyblogger include The Surprising Spooky Secret to Enduring Success Habits, Never Fear Google Again: The Smart Person’s Guide to Guest Blogging, and How to Write Damn Good Sentences.

Follow @copyblogger on Twitter.

DailyBlogTips focuses on the “pro” side of blogging – “either blogging to support your business, or building a blog with the aim of making money.”

DailyBlogTips was started by Daniel Scocco. The content is deep and far-reaching and includes categories like blog design, link tips, promotion, SEO, software, blog projects, domain names, and internet marketing, to name a few.

Some interesting blog posts on DailyBlogTips include How to Get an Average of 10 Comments for Every Blog Post You Write, How to be Hated: A Blogger’s Guide to Zero Readers, and 20 SEO Terms You Should Know.

Follow @danielscocco on Twitter.

The Blog Herald is a news source of “information, tips and commentary on blogs, the blogging industry and bloggers worldwide.” It was founded by Duncan Riley in March 2003.

The Blog Herald reminds me of a news site in layout and voice.

It features some interesting posts about blogging, including How Bloggers Can Better Organize Activities & Targets by Using a Dashboard Tool.

In this post, blogger Robyn-Dale Samuda discusses how a blogger’s visualization of targets, plotting of action plans, and executing tasks “will lay the foundation for success in all ventures.”

“Organization is key and spending time digesting and acting only on the most relevant data while investing time and effort on proven tactics are what will guarantee fruitful success,” Samuda says.

Other interesting posts include How to Monetize a Personal Blog, and 5 Effective Strategies to Increase Email Open Rates.

Follow @blogherald on Twitter.

Heidi Cohen’s Actionable Marketing Guide may be geared more toward marketing types, but it has some valuable blogging tips.

Case in point: Cohen’s Halloween post on 31 Advanced Blogging Tricks. In her post, Cohen pointed to a figure by Curata that notes more than 50 percent of businesses who have blogged for five-plus years don’t leverage the full power of their blogs to generate measurable success. (Curata defines success as 10,000 pageviews per month.)

So Cohen offers some of these advanced blogging tricks:

• Set measurable goals.
• Know your audience.
• Invest in your blog.
• Keep your blog post ideas flowing.

Other posts I enjoyed on Cohen’s site include Blogging: What I Wish I Knew When I Started and How to Dominate LinkedIn Publishing.

Follow @heidicohen on Twitter.

P.S. Ever wonder how we come up with ideas for our blog profiles? Our handy list of industries and subjects on PR Newswire for Journalists stays top of mind. If you’re a blogger or journalist looking for blogging or publishing news, let us know. We’re happy to customize that feed for you on PR Newswire for Journalists.

Christine Cube is a media relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. Follow her @cpcube.