The final part of a series looking into the realities of professional blogging for others. Check out part 1 and part 2 if you missed them!

The day-to-day life of a blogger can be a lonely one. Although you may be working as part of a large team, you don’t end up face to face with them on a daily basis; generally it’s you, your laptop and… that’s it. The very technologies that allow us to form large, multidisciplinary teleworking teams are also the same ones that cause us to be more isolated than ever.

Fortunately, loneworkers, writers, entrepreneurs and stay-at-home parents have all perfected the art of not going off your rocker while you’re alone with your thoughts and nowt else all day. Here are a few of the ’stay healthy, stay sane’ working and living habits I’ve picked up, both as an entrepreneur and blogger, with a slant towards the cheap ‘n’ cheerful — after all, blogging doesn’t pay that well!

Cabin fever

Being stuck indoors all day is a dream for some and a nightmare for others. I would go so far to say that if you really don’t like the idea of working from home, or know that you are undisciplined and prone to play computer games all day instead of get on with some work, you might want to reconsider your choice of career. However, there are a few things that can help, even if you fall into the latter group.

Treat the house as a workplace. Ideally, if you can, set up a dedicated ‘work’ area that you only use for.. well.. work. In terms of technology, maybe it isn’t feasible to have one ‘leisure’ PC and one ‘work’ PC, but blogging is a notoriously portable job; set up your laptop with work-centric stuff, and leave the games on your desktop. Even if it’s just your kitchen table, moving rooms and not having the distraction of a warm, fluffy bed to crawl into on bad days can make a big shift in your productivity. Open the curtains or blinds, especially in winter months: it’s amazing what sunlight can do to your mood.

As well as location, treat your day like a work day as well. Set up a little ritual to get your day started off and get you into the mindset of work. Mine used to be to brew up a fresh cafetiere, set up my laptop and read BBC News for a bit, almost exactly what I used to do at the start of the day in my previous job.

Out and About

Ideally, and I can’t stress this enough, leave the house. A morning coffee or newspaper run has the dual purpose of separating your day into ‘pre-work’ and ‘work time’, giving you a ritual and getting you some all-important fresh air to wake you up and start your brain and creative juices flowing. I can’t count how many times I spent a day totally inside and then went out the next day, feeling ten times more creative and productive.

If you’re lucky enough to live near a park or other pleasant place to walk, prescribe yourself a lunchtime or evening walk as well. Listen to a podcast or cram in a few errands if you hate ‘wasted’ time, but making outside a regular place to visit will do nothing but good for your work habits. I think this is what I regret the most about my time blogging; I lived in a house with an enormous garden, but would admire it from behind double glazing. I should have been in that garden every day working, as I miss it terribly now.

A trick that works well for me, even now, is to pop out for a coffee and take my laptop with me. (I’m writing this in Starbucks, in fact.) The pleasant buzz of background conversation combined with the kick from caffeine are definitely a jump-start for me; of course, your mileage may vary. On a blogger’s salary I wouldn’t do this every day, mind. Fortunately, there are free places you can work, depending on the local provision of wi-fi; libraries are great for when I need to get my head down and concentrate for a few hours.

Soylent Green is People

Maybe you chose the life of an Internet hermit because you hate people. Well, depending on the blog you write for, some of the comments might make you hate people even more (the more high profile the blog, the lower the quality of comments, unfortunately). Even so, humans like human contact and — as with the blindingly obvious ‘leave the house’ tip — ‘talk to other people’ is top of the list when it comes to not going insane working for and by yourself.

During the period when I worked pretty much non-stop as a blogger and site lead, I lived in the UK while the blogs I managed, and the staff, were based in the US. This meant two things: firstly, most of my day there was nobody awake to work with, which was probably a more productive arrangement than otherwise. Secondly, it also meant that — as a naturally nocturnal person — I was in real danger of my working and waking hours slipping into GMT-5.

What rescued me was the fact I lived with other people, and socialised regularly. It’s hard to be a sleepy hermit when you’re being woken up by others’ daily routine, urged to go to the pub, and so forth. I was nowhere near appreciative enough of these things when I had them. If you live with your partner, children or friends don’t fall into the trap of working all day long and leaving no time for them; use them, and their ‘normal’ schedules, to keep yourself on the straight and narrow.

Even if you live alone (or, as I do now, with flatmates you hardly know) there are plenty of opportunities for bloggers and loneworkers to socialise in the flesh. Almost every city seems to have some sort of regular meetup for us, whether it’s London’s Tuttle or Edinburgh’s Friday Coffee Morning (an event that I have yet to wake up early enough for). The Internet is great at facilitating the creation of arbitrary social groups, but you have to get out there and meet them!

Switch Off

This piece of advice is one I would do well to learn; I find it very hard to simply switch off and walk away from work, as I’ve been embroiled in academic and freelance cultures for far too long. Still, if you can manage it, let me know how. The concept is that — as with switching on at the start of the day — you turn your work off when you’re done. Don’t check your blog’s email account, don’t hunt for new stories, sign off your work IM account. Everythign can wait until tomorrow.

Of course, the downside is you may miss urgent problems and breaking news, but that’s why the blog has more than one member on staff, right? I personally never got the hang of ‘quota done, switch off for the rest of the day’, but I can see it being valuable — especially if you have a partner, family or other commitments that won’t appreciate you checking your email every five minutes.

You Are What You Eat

Much as we abhor skeletal crow Gillian McKeith telling us to eat sprouted beans and seeds, she did at least get the basic principle right. One of the great underrated advantages to working for yourself is you get to control what you eat, when you eat, and you generally have a lot of flexibility when it comes to cooking something complicated (you can write a post while it’s in the oven!).

That said, it’s also really easy to just slip into the habit of spending far too long in front of a screen and only stopping to consume the odd bit of junk food. I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking at nutrition as well as rebuilding the way I eat, and although this isn’t the place for a long diatribe on the evils of carbs, if I could go back in time and give the pro-blogger version of myself a couple of bits of advice, they’d be: Less caffeine, more vegetables, a lot more protein, cut the snacks by the PC.

You are what you eat, and especially if you spend a lot of time indoors, fruit and veg are really important to get you those oh-so-important vitamins. Do you want to turn into a greasy pizza? Exactly.

For the blogger without a budget

If you’re fortunate enough to not have financial concerns, there are a few extra things you might want to do for health, happiness and sanity. My first choice would be to join a gym (and, money no object, get a personal trainer). Not only does it get you outside regularly, it gets you some great thinking time and the ability to meet people — not that anyone in my gym ever seemed to speak to anyone else.

Secondly, although even top blogs like TechCrunch have gone very far operating out of someone’s house, renting a desk or office allows you to truly separate work and play. The upside: You might be able to get desk space very cheaply right now, especially since many companies are hunting for ways to make ends meet. The downside? Blogging becomes more and more like the 9-5 job you left behind.

Keeping a pet can also be a great addition to your life, although if you’re a young renting professional you may not be able to get your landlord to agree. Pets do require a lot of care and attention, but can help with cabin fever, force you to go outside to walk them, and even make you new friends.

Travelling is also a nice way to either take a complete break from work (leave your laptop at home) or to find new inspiration away from familiar surroundings. If you’re feeling claustrophobic or afflicted with writer’s block, why not go away for a bit and see if you feel renewed. As well as travelling, luxury breaks such as spa or golfing days can help reinvigorate you. You might also be able to travel and meet up with fellow bloggers from the site, putting names to faces at last!

Don’t forget to keep yourself rewarded as you go; if you create a particularly popular post, make the front page of Digg or Techmeme, or even get a pay raise, why not treat yourself? Nobody else will! Whether it’s a manicure, haircut or new gadget, keep yourself happy. After all, looking after yourself is the core of how to stay sane while working alone.

Following on from last week’s post about finding sources, today I’m looking at the rest of the professional blogger’s daily pipeline.

Once you’ve found something to write about, it’s time to sit back, relax and let your blogger instincts do the rest. Right? Perhaps. Once you get into the habit of posting multiple times a day on the same site, a lot of the following stages in a post’s lifecycle do become second nature, but when you’re starting out it’s useful to run through the checklist in your head.

Writing the post

The first step in writing most posts is to devise a headline. Headline writing is definitely an art form, and the easiest way to get it right is to check out other headlines on the site. (If you’re devising your own professional blog from scratch this might prove tricky!). Things to look for: Capitalisation, Consistency and Keywords. How does your blog capitalise long headlines? How do you deal with regular features and multipart posts? Where do you generally find the keywords in a headline — are they SEO-optimised or does the site favour pithy, snarky one-liners to draw readers in?

If you’re unsure where to begin with a catchy headline, Google for some tips and don’t forget your editor or blog lead as a very useful source of help.

The basic tips I can offer with writing the post body are: get used to writing fast, get used to communicating fairly tersely (although not so terse as to contain zero information), and — unless you have supreme confidence in your writing ability — spellcheck, or at least use an editor that will flag up obvious mistakes. Even if you’re the most accurate typist in the world, one will slip through sooner or later, and the last thing you need is to look sloppy.

The rest of the writing part is down to you. Obviously check out your house style and follow any relevant naming and stylistic conventions; italicise, capitalise, embolden, emdash, etc. Soon this will become second nature. Don’t waffle — you’re not (usually) getting paid by the word, and readers will tune out.

Add appropriate images

Many blogs require, as part of their house style, an eye-catching image to start off the post (or sit alongside it). Despite the generally lax approach to image reuse on the Internet, you have to be careful once things start getting commercial; beware of images that explicitly forbid copying, attribute where attributions are due, and if in doubt, check for Creative Commons-licenced content. You may well have access to a bank of images that have already been used on the site, which can be especially useful.

If you’re feeling particularly lazy, search the blog for previous posts on the same topic and reuse an image from an old post — this can work well if you are on the move without access to a decent image editor, too. However, original is best; if you can come up with an original shot, especially if you’re covering a live event, use it. It adds value to your post and might even get distributed elsewhere if it’s good.

Metadata ahoy

Professional blogs love visitors, and especially love visitors who stay and look around the site, as well as those who regularly drop by. Plus, there’s always the beloved SEO — optimising your blog for search doesn’t work if none of the posts ever come up on Google.

The metadata you add to a post has multiple uses. By adding tags, attributions, source links, categories and keywords, you enable better discovery through search and pingbacks, as well as making it easier to find your post in future if another is written on the same topic. Again, house style and consistency are important here — do you use spaces in tags, no spaces, or dashes? Do you use British or American spelling? What tag do you use for a specific event or company?

Blogs and the web are intricately hyperlinked; adding both internal and external links throughout your post is extremely valuable, letting readers discover other parts of the blog related to your content, as well as other posts on the Internet. Third parties are always happy to be linked by major professional blogs, but be careful not to shill a specific site, especially if it’s your own. Don’t link every single keyword to the appropriate category on your site; you want people to treat the blog like Wikipedia, diving in for pleasure, rather than a hyperlinked advertisement.

Of course, you can add your own element of style here. On particularly pithy posts, I remember linking to a cartoon or amusing cat picture more than once. As long as it’s safe for work, it doesn’t always have to be about self-promotion.

Schedule

Setting a post to go live at a certain time is probably the least tricky of all the stages in its lifecycle. There are still things to consider, though! Firstly, check the day’s planned coverage and attempt to fill in any gaps. If you’re posting a feature with a regular timeslot, you obviously want to stick to it, but otherwise you can post whenever you like. House rules might require you to schedule only on-the-hour or similar, but that’s easy enough to figure out; obviously, if it’s breaking news, this goes right out of the window.

Once you’ve scheduled your post, step away from it for a few minutes. Walk the dog, make a coffee, dash to the supermarket. Then check the site to see what it will look like when published. By scheduling it, you’ve effectively signed it off as-is; a fresh read will easily pick up any glaring typos, awkward sentences and missing tags. You also get a chance to see it in the page layout rather than the page editor, so you can check things like image dimensions versus length of the first paragraph, whether your post is too long and should have a ‘read more’ link, etc.

Promote

It’s always in your best interests to get more people reading your stuff. On an advertising-funded blog, more pageviews means more revenue means, eventually, more pay for you (probably). On other blogs, more visitors means more potential customers. Some sites leave post promotion entirely up to the writer, others have editors actively looking to cross-pollinate anything they can, so it helps to figure out which yours is.

Self-promotion on the Internet is a complicated game, but my main concern — based on past experience — is to say please, please, make sure what you have is worth promoting before you spam it everywhere. Submitting every single story you write to Digg won’t increase the chances of the one awesome story you write making the front page. Although there are many automated news ranking systems, plenty of promotion submissions do go past human eyes and becoming known as a spammer who tries to game the system won’t make you friends.

Of course, I may be too conservative on this front. The best posts I ever made got promoted by other people (usually my site lead) and filtered around the Internet thanks to coverage on Digg and other sites, so it definitely works. I just believe there’s enough noise to signal out there already that the ratio doesn’t need to be increased.

Babysitting

Once you’re done with the post, you’re done, right? No more work. On to the next!

Nope.

In the majority of cases you don’t need to do much after you’ve scheduled and let your baby go. Housekeeping on every post usually consists of keeping comments in check — deleting spam and applying house rules (whether you moderate flamewars or let them reign unchecked). Here’s where the reality of being a blogger in the spotlight really hits: comments will, sooner or later, be hurtful and personal. Unless you’re writing about the tamest of subject matter (and probably not even then), people will dislike what you say and use the power of the Internet to tell you this with as much vitriol as they can muster.

How you deal with this is down to you, but always remember you’re the one being paid to write about stuff, and they’re not. That’s not to say you should totally ignore criticism — factual errors should be corrected as soon as noticed, and well-worded disagreement can even spark off new posts.

If the subject of your post changes after it’s gone live, you also need to keep the post up to date to maintain accuracy and credibility. Editing a post because something changes isn’t bad, but editing a post because you were too sloppy to notice a typo is, especially if your house rules require you to flag all updates.

You’re likely working as part of a team, and their eyes and feedback might pick up on errors you missed; similarly you might spot their typos and inaccuracies. It’s usually polite to let the original author maintain their own post, or failing that, defer to the editor; obviously this varies from site to site. However, you wouldn’t like a co-writer randomly editing one of your posts, so don’t do the same to them!

Babysitting a post might seem like hard work for zero reward, since you already wrote the thing and got paid for it. However, a little effort keeping your writing up to date and accurate will pay off in the long run.

Conclusion

Many of the stages of blogging are done almost reflexively by most writers, but making the leap from musings on Blogspot to standing in the spotlight and being paid for it can be a tough transition. By thinking like a professional, using all the resources at hand and working with your blogging team, it’ll all soon be second nature.

Part three of this series (next week) will look beyond the blog, at healthy working habits for the solo writer.

It’s a nice dream, that of the aspiring problogger. Address a fascinated Internet audience daily about a topic you – and they – love, while earning money? Too good to be true!

If you work as part of a blogging team for a large site, chances are you will be tasked to come up with multiple daily posts on the blog’s topic. While inspiration and introspection can get you so far, the job of keeping content fresh and covering breaking news means you need to establish good work habits, particularly if you’ve only blogged as a hobby before.

Blogging breaks down into handy steps:

• Find something interesting to write about
• Write about it
• Add appropriate images
• Add metadata: internal and external links, tags, etc
• Schedule
• (Optional) Promote
• Babysit – Edit, update, monitor comments

Find something interesting to write about

This might sound like the easy part, but on slow news days and slow inspiration days it can seem nearly impossible to pull 5 or more posts out of thin air.

RSS is your friend. You’re probably already subscribed to relevant feeds, but did you spend a couple of hours daily combing them? Learn which feeds have interesting commentary, which are fastest to break news, and which are your competitors. Expand your reading – you can often get inspired by posts that aren’t directly related to your subject. Maybe your co-bloggers can recommend some new subscriptions for you, or there might even be a team OPML file.

When you find something interesting on the RSS wires, you have a choice. Write about it immediately or file it away. The former is pretty self-evident; if it’s an amazing post, or breaking news, jump on it! Double check to make sure nobody else is working on the same story, though; bloggers often overlap, and there’s nothing worse than wasting your time.

I can’t stress enough the importance of a good filing, or notebook, system. Whether you use a web product such as Evernote, delicious, pbWiki, or many others – or simply star things in your RSS reader, or save URLs to Notepad – you’ll find it invaluable, I promise. Try out different systems and see what works for you; I found I prefer a combination of simplicity (I just want to press one button) with tagging (to remind me why), so something like delicious and flagging/clipping in NetNewsWire worked well for me. Not every link comes in through RSS, hence the dual system.

Say you’ve set up a delicious account; bookmark interesting posts that you’re not ready to jump on right now, and tag them (“to-post”, “commentary”, “news”, “totally-wrong”, “controversial”, “nintendo”). Then when you’re done crawling and ready to write, you have a set of links right there, with reminders why you bookmarked them. Most importantly, stuff that doesn’t make it into today’s posts is still there tomorrow and you can start the day by talking about something that’s still fresh. You can also highlight posts you might want to refute, or elaborate on – I’d occasionally find a really interesting academic post and muse on the topic for a more mainstream audience, for example.

RSS isn’t the centre of the world, mind you. Other sources for interesting stuff to blog about include Twitter, a goldmine for things people are finding cool right now. Twitturly and to a lesser extent popaculous show you just the URLs being tweeted about, though following a ton of interesting people in your subject area is a more personal approach, especially since you can contribute to the conversation. However, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because something’s popular on Twitter, it’s going to be popular with your readers: filter everything before you post.

As well as Twitter you can use services such as TechMeme, Digg, reddit and so on. You should be aiming to get coverage on these sites, rather than use them as a news source, but sometimes you can find an interesting story you hadn’t stumbled across before it hits the front page.

Don’t underestimate the power of press releases, either. Get on some mailing lists and sign up for press sites; even in this day and age, there are times when the first you’ll hear of something is the press release. Based in the UK, I used to scour GamesPress and GamesIndustry.biz daily to jump on new press alerts before the Americans woke up. However, again, you need a filter between the release and your readers. Simply spouting off the release adds zero value to the site, but adding some unique insights, an interview, reader polls, sarcastic commentary or humour reminds your readers why they read your site and not the press releases directly.

Your readers are also a source of inspiration and links. Perhaps a comment left on a recent post is worthy of a full article; perhaps they have written in with some news you haven’t even seen yet. (Having a tip line, if you obviously use it – thank readers in your posts – is a great way to ensure you wake up to Stuff To Write About). Maybe one of them is interview material, maybe you find their comments interesting enough to ask them a daily question (we started this with WoW Insider’s Breakfast Topics and it’s been a hit).

The team of people you work with on the blog can also be very helpful. Discussions can throw up post material, they can pass on subjects to you they don’t have the time or expertise to cover, and perhaps you can trade off skills: if one person really enjoys trawling RSS for cool stuff, and you hate it, why not team up? Coming up with regular feature ideas as part of the team is also really useful; if you’re posting a different regular feature each day, they can almost write themselves (or you publish and answer a reader question – easy!) and it keeps the blog content nice and varied.

Finally don’t forget the subject matter as a source. For example, on WoW Insider many post ideas surface just from playing the game and noting down interesting things you observe, the issues that worry your guild mates (and by extension your readers), funny bugs you’ve found, annoying habits people have, etc. This isn’t as easy in most other subject areas, but if, say, you’re writing on nutrition then why not write about the things you cook and eat as well as looking abroad for inspiration? Fitness blogger? Try a new regime and write about it. Or you could talk about blogging itself, of course.

Between all these tips, a daily quota seems like nothing. You start the day’s work with two interesting stories from yesterday, a tip mailbox with three great possibilities, five popular links from Twitter, a regular feature to write, a reader comment you’ve been meaning to follow up, an idea you had while at the gym this morning and a press release that nobody seems to have torn apart yet. Of course, now the fun part is prioritising and figuring out which to cover and which to drop… or which can wait until tomorrow.

In part two, I’ll cover the rest of the problogging pipeline, and look at healthy work habits in part three.