Strategies and Tactics for Women by Dr. Shannon Reece

Do you ever wonder how effective your blogging strategy is?  Do you have a strategy?  This week, I’ve been reading the opinions of bloggers on what it takes to be effective, “eye-catching,” and read-worthy.  This information is just the tip of the iceberg.  You’ll see some great advice and variety of thought on what makes blog posts great.

This weekly wrap up was designed to share the blogs, websites and/or businesswomen that I found particularly helpful this week.  So without further delay, here are my top picks on the subject of blogging.  I hope you find them as helpful and interesting as I did.

Top Blog Posts

6 Eye-Catching Content Ideas for Your Business Blog

Driving traffic to your blog is more than building links.  After researching HubSpot’s most popular blogs since 2006, Lily Zhu presents the 6 types of articles that emerged, and shares her thoughts on what sets them apart.  The six examples include best practices, famous professionals, data-driven analyses, how-to guides, comprehensive tech guides, and useful information presented in an enjoyable manner.  Ms. Zhu states that this list is certainly not exhaustive, but I found her research eye-opening.

Top 15 Blogging Best Practices

In a blog about making your blog better, Laura-Lee Walker presents her top 15 strategies to make your blog standout in the crowd.  There’s no fluff here, just straight forward tips.  Point #6 presents a common question in the blog world about length.  Although Laura-Lee recommends brevity, she does a nice job of framing her opinion by including suggestions on how to keep longer posts appealing too.  Find out more about Lauralee on Twitter @lauraleewalker.

Blog Post Writing Tips: Short Blog Posts Hold the Interest of Readers

There are differing views in the world of blogging on length, because according to many, size does matter if you are trying to keep the interest of your readers.  Although there is no hard and fast rule regarding length, best practices suggest 250-500 words.  Ghazal Alvi offers 7 great benefits to keeping the length of your blog under control.  My take-away is to consider alternative ways of making important points with as few, but powerful words as I can, since I have a tendency to go long.  If you would like to connect with Ghazal, you can find her @GhazalAlvi on Twitter

Bloggers: This is How Long Your Posts Should Be

Also on the subject of appropriate blog length, but in favor of longer posts, Glen Allsopp, of ViperChill, conducted an analysis of the most tweeted blogs.  He discovered that the length of top posts ranged between 1100-1600 words, which is longer than the average.  Taking things a step further to answer the question of whether niche has anything to do with length and popularity, Glen analyzed some of the top sites in a variety of niches and presents his results.  Posts about gadgets or gossip where among the shortest.  The longest award goes to personal development niches.  So should you be a lemur and just do what the biggies are doing?  Check out Glen’s recommendations, I think they’re good.  To find Glen on Twitter go to @ViperChill.

Featured Site

This week’s shout out goes to Launch Her, a company dedicated to providing “…the boost that women owned brands need by featuring new and fresh companies as well as providing professional public relations, branding, business development and positioning tools to start-ups.”  Run by the dynamic duo of Sallisha Armour and Kara Jensen Zitnick, LaunchHer and LaunchHerLaw are giving women a hand up and solid advice to make their dreams a reality.  Follow them on Twitter @LaunchHer and @LaunchHerLaw, subscribe to the blog and be inspired by these amazing women with big hearts for the wanna-be entrepreneurs around the globe.


Woman of Excellence Award

This week’s Woman of Excellence Award goes to Natalie MacNeil, Founder and Editor in Chief of the award-winning business and lifestyle blog, She Takes on the World.  Last week in the Big Apple, She Takes on the World won the Stevie Award for Blog of the Year.  Congratulations Natalie!!

I’ve been following Natalie’s tweets (@NatalieMacNeil) and posts for some time and love the diversity of rich content she provides.  Last week, one of her contributors (Lucy Beer) wrote a great post on “What You Need to Know Before You Start Blogging,” — the five things you should prepare for to keep your blogging successful and enjoyable.  As with everything you get from She Takes on the World, this is another example of straight forward, well-organized, valuable tips to keep women moving onward and upward with their businesses.  Thanks, Natalie for providing such a great resource that empowers women entrepreneurs.


In case you were wondering, I have no affiliate relationship with anyone I call to your attention on this blog.  This is simply my way of spreading the news about information and individuals I have found particularly helpful.

That wraps up this post.  Until next week, keep reading, keep learning, keep growing!