Some of us here at SacBloggers HQ have been playing around with Excel pie charts, so I (Margaret), thought I would share some interesting information about our community that you may or may not be aware of.

Local Blogging Niches

Did you know that Sacramento Bloggers is officially more than 300 members strong today? And that over 200 of you self identify as PR-Friendly?

And that 21% of you are “Food Bloggers”, our largest blogging category? (this is where the Excel pie chart playing comes in.)

SacBlogger Pie Chart

“Lifestyle” bloggers come in second at 17%.

Are Banner & Display Ads Dead?

picture of advertising

According to Smart Insights, online display ads are both intrusive and invisible. They are intrusive because they are in the way of content the reader is trying to read. They are invisible because eye-tracking studies have shown that readers completely ignore them 998 out of 1000 times.

If you are trying to advertise this way, look for another way. If you are trying to make money displaying them on your blog, you won’t get very far. If you completely disagree with this, let me know in the comments.

How to Maximize Your Blog Using Your Own Images

Better Blogging book cover - Schrandt

Fellow SacBlogger Terri Webster Schrandt (Blog: Second Wind Leisure Perspectives) has recently published an e-book (available on Kindle).

What will you get out of this guide? In each chapter Terri gives easy but important tips for maximizing the use of images on your blog’s website and within each blog post.

Seven informative chapters walk you through:

  • the importance of using images
  • the real dangers of using others’ copyrighted images
  • easy ways to edit your images using free programs and apps
  • building unending inspiration and content around your own images
  • attracting readers with images used in quotations, blog link-ups, and other tools
  • how social media sites link your images, and why you need them
  • a list of image resources available.

After reading this short guidebook, you will want to grab your smart phone or inexpensive digital camera and start taking photos! See this book on Amazon.

 

Starting a WordPress Self-Hosted Blog?

If you want to create a self-hosted WordPress blog but aren’t sure where to start here’s a helpful How-To article from Sticky Readers called,  How to Start a Blog or Website Using Bluehost and WordPress.

wordpress, bluehost

Glossary of Blogger Terms

PR-Friendly

When a blogger is “PR-Friendly”, he or she is open to public relations opportunities, such as attending VIP events and writing about them on his or her blog. Or writing sponsored posts.

Self-Hosted Blog

A self-hosted blog is a blog that you host yourself, meaning you pay for your own piece of internet space on which to host your blog. As opposed to a hosted blog where you do not pay anything to host your blog. Blogger is an example of a hosted blog because it is free.

Sponsored Post

A sponsored post is a blog post that promotes a company or product that you are paid to write and publish on your own blog. Whenever you are paid to write something on your blog, you must disclose that fact.

Local Blog Niches. And Other Blogging News
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6 thoughts on “Local Blog Niches. And Other Blogging News

  • October 8, 2016 at 7:01 am
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    @Terri, I haven’t been to the Sac Bloggers blog since 2014 and only recently checked the email for the account associated with Sac Bloggers. All that to say, I just read a review of your book yesterday via Blogger’s Pit Stop and here I find you’re a local blogger. ^_^ Small world.

  • December 4, 2016 at 8:13 am
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    We run a non-profit up in Newcastle, and we’ve thought about having a blog page so that we can reach out to more people. Is this something worth doing even though were not as ‘sexy’ as a food blog?

    • January 4, 2018 at 4:40 pm
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      Hi Cynthia!
      Nonprofits can absolutely do well with blogging as part of their communication plan and marketing efforts! I work for a nonprofit and se all kinds of benefit from it! We can talk more about it offline if you like!
      -Margaret

  • December 9, 2016 at 7:59 am
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    I work for a wedding venue up in Auburn and I’ve been hounding our management to take our blog page more seriously. They’re not as easy as food blogs but they can be so beautiful if you update them with real weddings and pics. Hopefully they listen but in the meantime thanks for sharing!

    • January 4, 2018 at 4:40 pm
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      I completely agree, Liz! It’s a great way to engage with your readers.

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