Mack Collier, writing at The Viral Garden, has a very informative post about how to get the most out of the blogging “lull” in December:

Use December’s blogging lull to your advantage – The Viral Garden

Here’s five ways to make the most of December’s blogging lull:

1 – Re-evaluate everything. Go back and look at what your blogging results have been for 2009. How did traffic do? Subscribers? Comments? And how did these metrics tie back to your blogging goals? Put your blogging strategy for 2009 on trial, and then tweak it for 2010. Set goals for your blog. But make sure that those goals tie back into your larger focus for your blog.

This is always good advice. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”, right? Have you done your measurement? How do you track your traffic and how your readers navigate your site? I use a combination of Sitemeter (the free service)and Google analytics. Sitemeter is great for me because it is much closer to real-time than Google, and I like to keep an eye on my referral logs.

2 – Ramp up content. David Armano advises doing this, using the Holiday vacation to push out as much if not more content than usual, with the thinking being that since many other bloggers are slacking off, your content can more easily be seen. We are going to keep looking for content to share with our networks, and if you keep creating great content while everyone else slacks off, guess whose posts will be shared with my network? Use December to increase your blogging visibility.

This is a no-brainer, but time can be an issue. Like the old saying goes, the best time to plant an orchard is 10 years ago, the best time to prepare for the December lull is earlier in the year. How do you do that? Well, for one thing you can compile your posts on book reviews as you do them, creating an uber-list for gift-giving ideas. And use those Amazon links to generate a little extra money for your own holidays…

3 – Use December to get a blogging jumpstart on 2010. Hey we all want to spend time with friends and family during the Holidays. Work in all forms seems to take a backseat…But if nothing else, use that last week of December to get your content in order to hit the ground running in January. Most people won’t begin to get back into reading blogs regularly until Jan. 4th (a Monday), and this is when many bloggers will begin to get back to writing. Use December to have at least one week’s worth of posts already written for January, so that way first thing on Monday the 4th, you’ve already got fresh content waiting on readers, while many other bloggers are thinking about getting back to writing.

Again, get out your calendars right now and jot yourself some notes for August, September, and October 2010 to write some draft posts that you can complete for that first week of 2011. Getting a head start like this is a real motivator and can help you get a jump on your competition next year. And remember, in the US November 2010 is an election for the Congress, who knows what might happen. Uncertainty will likely be highin January 2011 – think about how your business can capitalize on that.

4 – Experiment. Every year I spend the final week of the year spending time with social sites/tools that I’ve been meaning to try out, but just haven’t had the chance. … December is a great time to examine different tools and see if they work for you to complement your blogging efforts.

If you have done your homework and prepared for your December/January content, then this is a great time to play around with all of those applications that you have been meaning to try. In addition, this is great new content! Blog about your experiments, and create conversations with your readers and social media network about what works and what doesn’t.

5 – Become a commenting superhero. Remember, traffic is going to come to a crawl on many blogs. … If many people aren’t commenting, this is your chance to get noticed. And not just with other readers, but by the bloggers themselves.

Commenting is definitely one of the best network- and traffic-building strategies. It is time-consuming and feels like real work sometimes, but it can also be fun and can pay off in increased traffic for your site, increased credibility and authority for yourself/your company and may even lead to guest-posting offers.

What is your December strategy? It’s not too late to do at least a couple of these activities this year.

One of the first questions that people ask when they are setting up a blog for their website is, “Where do I get content?” The answer is often right in front of their faces, in the form of their existing press releases, brochures, and other printed materials. Mequoda.com has published an excellent style article for turning this printed content into a blog post or page. I am going to elaborate on some of their points:

Titling, categorization and tagging rules for online publishing with Wordpress blogs

When publishers pull apart their archived content and start putting it up on their blog, they have a variety of style options to choose from when posting.

We recommend taking a little extra time to optimize your old articles (whether they are evergreen or not) in order to make that content as valuable to your blog (and audience) as possible.

The following style guide for unleashing your print archives into a blog is specific to Wordpress in terms of folksonomy, but can be applied to any type of blogging platform.

Rule #1: Include at least one primary or secondary keyword phrase in your blog titles and subhead.

Why? Because blog titles are so specific, you might choose to use a secondary keyword in your title (like “repurposed content” in the case of this article) and a primary in your subhead (like “online publishing”). If you want to get ranked on a keyword in search engines (and you do), this is your prime real estate to display them.

Keywords are very important, and the search engines parse your posts looking for the most important words in the text. It is important to highlight them. Which leads to:

Rule #2: Make sure your blog is set up to define your title and subhead in H tags.

Why? H1, H2 and H3 are highly regarded by Google as defining what a page is “about”.

In your “writing page” in WordPress there is a button in the menu bar titled “Paragraph”. In the drop-down menu you will see Heading 2 and Heading 3. I recommend that you use Heading 2 no more than once per page, and Heading 3 for your sub-headings. Edit your CSS to make these headings “pop”.

NOTE: Never use H1 in your content! That tag is reserved for the title of the page and you will be penalized by the search engines.

Examples:

This is H2/Heading 2

This is H3/Heading 3

Rule #4: Assign posts to a single category.

Why? From testing, it’s become abundantly clear that assigning single categories to articles boosts ranking on the category title. Hopefully your categories (or topics) are named as keywords that you want to be ranked on. This can also avoid duplicate content.

You should also keep in mind that your blog should have a few, very focused categories. If you write about cars, for example,you might use categories like Sedan, Coupe, Convertible, then use Tags for more specific topics like Corvette, BMW, and so on.

This is really great information for people that are looking to optimize their online content, and for more information like this, including audio and video with step-by-step instructions and real-life examples, see Writing for the Web, Inside and Out, by myself and Brad Shorr.

Let me start with this: I met these gentlemen in May of 2008 at SOBCon and they are two of the most knowledgeable and sincere people that I have encountered. I really didn’t know who they were or what they did, but I have sure learned a lot from them since then.

In fact, I have spent about 3 years learning about what is in this book:

You need to go to Amazon and order this book right now. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

This book is a complete course in how to do business online in today’s world. There is quite a bit of buzz about this book, it is a NY Times best-seller after all. But that is not why I want you to go out and buy it, or why I gush a little about how cool Chris and Julien are. No, the reason is that you can save yourself a lot of time and effort learning the things that I learned the hard way – reading lots and lots of blog posts and e-books and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Trust Agents – Find out what Social Media is really all about

Chris and Julien have put together a reference book and instruction manual for gaining the background and skills that you need to bring your business into the world of Web 2.0 and beyond. To quote from the introduction:

“Trust Agents is the answer to the question,”What do I do now?” It is full of actionable information, supported by research and strategies, studies, and an explanation of the thought process behind what we do on the web. We love all the great “idea” books out there, and we do have lots of ideas packed in here as starting points. In addition to these, we give you actionable tasks that you can execute.”

Ideas and actionable tasks for business

The book starts off with a couple of stories about building trust, social capital, and the state of media today (and this will probably be the only business book you read this year that has stories about mobsters and student loans). Basic Social Media Literacy, followed by an in-depth explanation of what they call the six principles of trust agents.

Now, since this is a review and not a summary, I am just going to tell you about one of these principles:

The Archimedes Effect

This is my favorite, primarily because it is about leverage, a word that lots of marketing people hate to use. Which is too bad, because – even though it may be badly overused, it is the best word to describe the effect.

“Everyone uses leverage every day: Business owners hire employees so that their business can do more; people use technology such as cars to help them get to work faster; companies have systems that allow them to be more efficient. Yet millions use the Web every day and ignore how best to use the tools at their disposal to bring the greatest benefit.”

This chapter has page after page of examples on using leverage to increase the power of your online (and offline) efforts:

• Build on one success to fuel another
• Arbitrage and Pay Per Click advertising
• Applying these principles for online gaming and business
• Building your network and strengthening relationships
• Create your own niche
• Using your time effectively – delegate
• Get creative with your business marketing, be bold
• Protect your community

If you can’t find something in this chapter to apply to your business, well, it’s likely that one of your competitors will. Guess what happens then?

Buy Trust Agents at Amazon, now.

My friend Dawud Miracle has put together something pretty special for small businesses and service providers. I would not normally promote something like this (it’s a kind of competition for my own business) but I know Dawud personally. Dawud knows what he is doing and what he is talking about.

I know, why am I shilling for some product? Because the economy is tough and everyone needs something to help build their business. Well, I coach people on how to do this for themselves and what kind of coach would I be if I didn’t point to excellent resources that are available. Seriously, even thought it’s not my own product I can recommend it with confidence. This service can help your business grow, and as you see next, it helps me a little bit too. (Please read to the end for a special offer from me)

NOTE: There is an affiliate program, so I get a little piece of the purchase – but you can too! Click here and follow the link to the affiliate program.

You simply can’t go wrong with this offer!

Small Business Owners & Service Providers:

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((( BEGINS – THURSDAY, AUGUST 27th at NOON EASTERN )))

Sounds too good to be true? Well, it’s not – at least until Sunday! No tricks, no games, no gimmicks and no bait-and-switch.

You see, I’m celebrating. Not only is this price to celebrate the long-awaited birth of my turn-key business-ready website design service (The Website Habitat), but in a few weeks my wife will give birth to our fourth child. So I’m just giddy.

If you have been thinking about getting (or upgrading) a website for your small business, church, home business (or whatever), click this link to The Website Habitat and see just what Dawud has to offer. For example, the first 5 people to order a website get a free membership to Chris Garrett’s Authority Blogger online course. (Authority Blogger provides you with in depth, detailed strategies on how can be using your blog to marketing and promote your business, the course retails for $397. Just this course is worth the purchase!)

To make this deal even better, I am going to give anyone who buys a website from Dawud using my affiliate link a $50 discount from my own Writing for the Web Training Course. All you have to do is send me a copy of your confirmation e-mail (take out any personal/confidential info, of course!) and I will send you a discount code! You can use the contact form.