Rose DesRochers interviews Lorelle VanFossen- that Woman on Wordpress

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Rose DesRochers

By Rose DesRochers

If you use WordPress as your blogging platform then you most likely already know who Lorelle VanFossen is. Lorelle VanFossen is no stranger to Wordpress. Lorelle is a popular and well-known blogger in the Wordpress community.

Her blog, Lorelle on WordPress is one of the best resources for anything relating to WordPress.

I recently was lucky enough to secure a few minutes with Lorelle via email where she allowed me the honor of interviewing her. Let us go to that interview now.

Lorelle, It truly is an honor to be doing this interview with you.

First off, Rose, thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts on blogging and WordPress with you. You set such an amazing example for all of us, especially the women of blogging. We’re out there, we’re just not as visible. Thank you for being one of the visible ones and blazing the path for the rest of us.

What got you into blogging?

I’ve been on the Internet almost since its conception. I started writing newsletters for business, commercial, and personal reasons via email early on and participating in various forums on CompuServe, eventually leading some of the earliest online workshops and seminars. When the first web pages were available on CompuServe, I was asked to be one of the early beta testers, discussing photography and travel. Wow, those were early days. Everything was hand coded and set in tables. Ick. Glad those days are gone.

My husband and I had long planned to take time off from the corporate world for a year and travel across North America. In anticipation of that, I started writing journals and posting them on our new website and sending them through email. When we hit the road in 1996, we had built up quite the audience through our emails, but the website didn’t fair as well – all websites were fairly new and people didn’t have much access to them like they do now. The website took a long time to build a following as web technology grew. Everyone was happy enough with emails.

I’d love to say the rest is history, but we’re still making history. Online journaling became weblogs, now known as blogging. Blogging is still in its infancy, as is the web. I expect to see a lot of changes in both over the next ten to twenty plus years.

What keeps you motivated to blog?

Our one year on the road turned into two, then three, four, five, took us overseas to the Middle East, around Europe, and now back to the United States in time for a ton of hurricanes to pound down our door. Just walk out your door or take a drive and you find plenty of stories to tell and share. Especially if the scene outside your door changes every week or so.

But that’s for our personal blog, Taking Your Camera on the Road. You want to know what keeps me blogging about WordPress and blogging on Lorelle on WordPress.

My WordPress blog features a very narrow niche: blogging and WordPress. I originally only wanted to concentrate on WordPress, but the two are inseparable.

I find new topics, ideas, and things to write about constantly. I get my input from my readers, other bloggers, walking into a store and watching how the business works and how the customers and business folks interact, through my clients, conferences, everywhere. Luckily for me, I’ve become known as a WordPress expert, so I’m constantly challenged with questions on how to use the program, which gives me endless material for my blog.

As for the motivation to sit at my keyboard day after day, it’s the sharing, teaching, and learning that energizes me. I’m constantly being challenged by my readers to think harder and longer about a subject. Every day is a new adventure. There is nothing boring here! Isn’t that how all work should be?

How do you go about building a loyal readership?

Very good question. There are two answers to this. There is how “Lorelle” builds a loyal readership and then how others typically build a loyal readership. I’ll do my best to describe my way.

Without being flippant, when I start a blog, I don’t give a rip who is reading it. It isn’t important to me. What’s most important is building the content. It’s about the stories, the articles, the information, creating the building blocks of information and resources in accordance with my plan and purpose.

I know the content is valuable. It’s what I’d want to know if I was learning this. Shoot, I learned this the hard way now I’m sharing my tips to help people learn it without the pain and suffering I went through.

So it’s all about the content. I write, research, write more, research more, learn, share that learning, and build a body of work.

Somewhere along the way I look up and realize that someone’s reading this. It’s a complete surprise to me. Every time. You think after all these years I would be calloused to that experience, but I’m so humbled by the fact that anyone reads my work, it’s startling.

While I’m flattered, I’m also worried. Recently, I summed it up this way:

If one person benefits from my blog, I’m a happy girl. If 10 people benefit form my blog, I’m thrilled. It’s working. If 1000 people benefit from my blog, I’m worried. I’m fearful. I now have to work harder to make sure I’m blogging for them and not for me as much. If 5000 people benefit from my blog, I’m a paranoid mess. How could anything little ole me says be of value to anyone else in any way?

I now have to write for the masses not me and my 10 friends. It’s a responsibility. I have to think through the content thoroughly, examining every word, to make sure I’m not offending anyone or saying something that isn’t right.

It’s much harder work when you write for the statistics, so in order to maintain my sanity and the style of my writing (and my mental and physical health), I gave up statistics a long time ago.

When I say that your blog and blogging experience changes when you monetize your blog, this is what I’m talking about. Emphasize something other than original intent and passion, and things change. It’s not “fun” any more. It’s a job. You have to treat it accordingly.

What do you feel keeps readers coming back to your blog?

Hmm, another good question. I know what keeps me coming back to other blogs. Honesty, sincerity, authenticity, and consistency in content and subject matter. And they have what I want and need. I assume that’s why so many keep coming back to my blog. I give them what they want.

However, let me make it very clear that I do not think Lorelle on WordPress is a blog people should follow. I don’t do “serial” stuff and my content isn’t an evolving story line. It’s just a big mass of educational and how-to information about WordPress and blogging. It’s designed for people to dig into and find what they want and need, then go away.

This is why I’m stunned I have consistent readers. I must still be giving them the information and tools they need to improve their blogging or they would be off reading other blogs.

As for some of my other blogs, I do have a “story line” concept which can keep a reader interested, but Lorelle on WordPress is like a kind of encyclopedia, a garage sale of WordPress and blogging tips. You got to dig in to find the gems.

What is your opinion on WordPress as a blogging platform?

Brilliant. Freakin’ brilliant.

I am not an employee of WordPress…though it would be loverly. I’m just one of their biggest fans. I’ve been working with it since WordPress 1.2. I loved it so much back then but was totally frustrated with the lack of quality documentation. I volunteered to help edit what they had and…well, the rest of that story is almost history. I’m very proud of what we accomplished, and continue to do so, on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.

The WordPress Lessons section was my baby. I fought very hard to get that section developed against a lot of naysayers. I knew it was critical that people got some serious hand holding to take them step-by-step through the process of using WordPress. My mission statement for that section continues today: “Make the reader feel like a WordPress Support Volunteer is sitting right next to them, walking them through each step along the way to the end.” It’s a more personal approach to the clinical documentation. And a nice complement.

All these years later, my opinion has not varied. I still think it’s brilliant, and better than ever before. And getting better all the time.

And the people! The WordPress Community is amazing. Some of the most brilliant minds in the world. And some of the most caring folks. I adore them. I worship the ground they float over. I’m so humbled and honored to be in their midst. Honestly. I know it sounds hokey, but I just love WordPress folks.

Have there been any negative aspects of blogging for you?

Negative. Sure, there are trolls and flame throwers everywhere. You have to have a thick skin if you want your blog to become popular. So many people want blogging fame but it comes with a very high price.

But that’s not why I blog. I blog for the sharing. I blog for the learning. My readers benefit from what I learn because I share it with them. I blog for me. So I take the lessons learned and keep going.

I’ve been doing this for over 13 years on the web, and many before that via emails. I’ve made all the mistakes. I’ve been blasted by all the flame throwers over time. For me, it’s about the benefits blogging brings, not the negatives. And I haven’t yet run out of things to write about. I’ve got a “waiting list” of story ideas for the next three or four years! And it’s still fun, that’s most important.

What are some of the challenges that you think bloggers face?

The trolls and flame throwers are the downside that comes with blogging.

For the challenges, it depends upon the person and their content and writing style.

Time is the biggest challenge for most bloggers. They start off strong but then things get a little hard or repetitive. It’s not as much fun as it was at first. Instead of finding time in every moment of the day to blog, they have to schedule time. Life gets in the way of everything, even blogging. And when blogging becomes work, finding time to blog gets harder.

Monetization is another challenge bloggers face. While people keep telling me that their blog won’t change by adding ads, it does. Their blogging time is now put into researching what makes money. It’s about how to arrange and places the ads so they get clicked and noticed. It’s about writing content that attracts more visitors, thus driving up ad rates and values. It’s about checking the blog stats and income to make sure enough is coming in.

But few stop and think about the loss to their blog with this preoccupation on money and advertising. It takes a while for people to figure out the monetization process and then to ignore it, putting the focus back on the content and the reason they started blogging in the first place. It’s very hard.

Social bloggers have no problem commenting on other blogs and writing about other bloggers, but the majority of those who blog aren’t quite as social as many people think. They will read tons of blogs but it takes a lot to comment on a blog, even though they live for comments on their own. I think that this interaction is a little scary and challenging for a lot of bloggers.

Semi-weekly, I offer Blog Challenges and in one of them I challenged my readers to comment on 10 blogs and blog about what happens. It was a huge eye opener for so many who had commented occasionally but were nervous or uncertain about commenting. The response was wonderful.

There are many challenges facing bloggers, and probably the one that is the least talked about but very important is the problem of thinking too much about what others think and not writing enough about what you are thinking. I call the time period we are in with blogging the pre-teen or teen years. This is true technologically speaking, but also relates to our blog content.

Just as peer pressure influenced us so much as teens, we spend a lot of time thinking about what others will think when they read what we write, or not enough time thinking about the value and intent of our words when we hit the publish button.

A blogger has a responsibility to his or herself first, the truth second, and the readers third. When you hit publish, your blog post better speak well for you and you better be willing to stand by it. Thus, making it as truthful as possible is critical to your personal integrity and sincerity in your subject matter. That publish button means you are making a commitment to your content. Writing to make sure you don’t offend your readers, confuse them, or lead them astray is important for building their trust. If they trust you, they are more likely to return for more.

And if you choose to offend, do it well. Do it with all your might. A good rant, especially a good offensive rant, attracts a lot of readers. But remember, be sincere and truthful in your ranting.

What makes a blog stand out from the crowd?

My friend, Liz Strauss, can answer that better than I can. She is always on the look out for outstanding blogs and bloggers. She finds the most amazing blogs and bloggers.

For me, it’s one that is simple and easy to read. It has no or few ads, putting the emphasis on the content. In fact, it’s ALL about the content. Navigation is simple and easy and each page looks like the previous one so the navigation features remain constant.

It has a very specific and clear set of categories, telling me in a moment what the blog’s content represents. The rest of the blog also screams out its intent, matching it with content.

Other than that, it’s all about the content. If the blog has the information I want and need, I’m thrilled. To make me return for more, it had better be easy to read in language and in form, get to the point and not ramble around the bush, corner, over the parked Honda, through the next door neighbor’s house, and out through the back door before finding the point somewhere in the street.

I like a blog that surprises me. Gives me that little something that I didn’t expect. Not shock me. Delight me. Give me the information I need, and then one in a while, give me something more. Not just a funny or change of subject. A notch up in content. A guest blogger who really knows their stuff. Tackling a subject that needs tackling but others are avoiding it. A perspective on an old subject that makes me sit up and notice. A turn of a phrase that gets me laughing or nodding my head with total agreement. Give me the joy of discovery. Write something that adds to their body of work but catches me off guard with its brilliance.

That’s hard to do, but it’s magic when it happens.

What are some SEO strategies that you’ve found to be successful in bringing traffic to your site?

As I said, I’m not into bringing traffic to my blog. Not important to me.

Yet, when I’m researching story ideas, why is it my blog ends up at the top of the search results?

Keywords

WordPress blogs are now fairly SEO friendly. It’s rare when something borks enough to block a search engine through a WordPress blog. In fact, people are always surprised when their stuff is indexed within minutes of their first post. It’s that SEO friendly. You really don’t have to do much to it under the hood.

So what’s left? Content. Keyword-rich content.

If you aren’t writing with search terms, keywords people use to search for the content on your blog, you won’t get found, and you certainly won’t make it to the top of any search results.

Because it’s important that my technical articles get found as they help bloggers and WordPress users blog better, I write with a lot of very friendly, searchable search terms and keywords. Thus, my blog is found.

Other than that, I don’t do anything at all. It’s a WordPress.com blog. I can’t use Plugins, Javascripts, nor anything else to tweak or force something to happen under the hood. I don’t submit it anywhere. I don’t do anything but write my stuff. So far, it appears to be working.

We put too much time into tweaking and fussing under the hood of our blogs. Too many people spend too much time under the hood instead of driving the car. Drive the damn car for a while.

Do you think Alexa is a reliable measure of traffic?

No clue. Don’t pay attention to it. Never have. Again, stats aren’t important to me. My content is. Helping my readers is. The numbers come and go, but the content stays.

Do you have to be a great writer to be a great blogger?

Ah, Rose, brilliant question. I should be asking you that one!

You do not have to be a great writer, but it helps to be a good writer. Whatever your language, it helps to write it in a form and format that is most easily read by the majority of your readers. Using slang, jargon, and cutesy babble works for those types of blogs with those blog readers, which means you need to match your writing style with your audience.

However, in general, there can be nothing more jarring than reading along and finding a major misspelling or poor phrasing. Most are forgivable, but there are some that make me scream. I read one yesterday that ruined an otherwise nice article for me. They mentioned something was a “major enfluence”. That totally threw me off. I wanted to dig into the screen and fix it.

These kinds of errors break concentration and spoil an otherwise great read. Anything that distracts from your content rather than pulls your reader into and through your content hurts you and your blog.

So make your writing style make a good impression. You can’t speak for your blog directly, so make sure your blog speaks well for you.

When you first started out blogging, did you ever think that you would be as successful as you are today?

Define successful? I’m happy doing what I do. And I am thrilled that I can keep doing it. If that is a definition of success, then I’m thrilled.

If it’s defined by great gobs of income, property, a six bedroom house, glamorous clothing, and a high flying lifestyle, then I’m a loser. I’m happy. I do what I love. What’s more to life than that? I can’t take the money, property, house, clothing, or stuff with me when I go into the after-blogosphere. But if I can take anything, it will be memories. So I’m working on making as many as I can before I go. If I go out with a ton of memories, I’m a success.

When I started blogging, it was a method of communication, sharing information and tales of our life on the road. It was about sharing the highs, lows, misery, pain, joy, discoveries, “wish you were here”, and “you had to be there” stories. They were a form of letters home, packed with technical information but also about our experiences.

It wasn’t a matter of expecting success. I considered us successful when we made a connection to the Internet across 150 feet of telephone line strung through a campground, up and over trailers and motor homes, and hooked to an acoustic coupler to a pay phone at 300-1200 BAUD. If we got to borrow a telephone line directly and connected at 4800 BAUD, I’d do the touchdown dance with the joy of success.

It wasn’t about working my way to success. It was about communicating.

Today, it’s no different. I’m thrilled when someone in a neighborhood or area I’m traveling in leaves open their WIFI Internet connection so I can connect to the Internet. I do the same touchdown dance with joy.

I don’t think I’m successful. I’m just me. Doing what I do. Other people put that label on what I do. They call me successful. That’s their interpretation. Mine is finding the next available WIFI so I can once again communicate. Ah, the joys of success.

What is the secret of your success?

Finding that WIFI connection.

Honestly.

If I were to start thinking I was a success, I’d hate living with myself. And since I don’t know how you define success, I can’t answer that.

What do you see happening with your blog in the next few years?

On my blog? It will grow and change with the evolution of blogging. That’s its job. Where do I see blogging going? Oh, I see so many things, Rose, my fingers can barely keep up with my imagination.

The system of blog comments has to change. As they stand now, they suck. Blogs are all about the comments and they must become easier to monitor (administratively as well as by the commenters). The process of commenting must improve on all accounts. Jumping through hoops to avoid being identified as comment spam is beginning with the advances in Akismet, but even that has to do better.

Comment spammers and copyright thieves must be nipped in the bud faster and easier. We must get to the root of comment spammers and splogs and make their lives miserable through a loss in income and lack of reward for doing evil. When we don’t have to worry about our content being stolen or comment spam hammering our blogs and databases, blogging will become more enjoyable.

I see voice blogging rising quickly. There are several competing companies bringing voices to blogs through microphones on computers, land lines, and cell phones. With the iPhone, I see this increasing in popularity and well as technology. I see comments with voices also coming.

I’m not a fan of this, as it doesn’t meet accessibility standards, but I see a combination of voice and voice recognition software to type what the speaker says making this a really powerful way to communicate with our blogs.

I see barriers dropping all over the world with increased translation capabilities. I want to read a blog written in Swahili, German, French, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, and read it in my own language with instant translation. I want to be able to search search engines and get information from all these different countries. I want people in other countries to get the same instant translation feature. I want to know what they say, how they live, what they think, what they think of us, and what they think of the world around them. I want no more language barriers.

Ah, you hit a favorite topic of mine, didn’t you, Rose. I could go on and on, but that’s where I see blogging going, and my blog will be right there with the changes.

Any final words on blogging?

Be a blogger who cares. Care about what you blog about. Care about your audience. Care about how you blog, what you say and the words you choose to say it. Care about other bloggers. Share them with your readers. Care how you comment on other blogs. And care about your readers enough to clean up their comments, comment spam, and remove nasty comments from your blog so your readers aren’t assaulted with useless, time wasting crap.

Care about your blogging subject. Be like a child, discovering it from every angle so you share it completely with your readers. Care about others who write on similar topics, sharing your knowledge with them and them with your readers.

If you care, you will enjoy the blogging experience so much more.

Then blog your passion and keep blogging.

Thank you, Rose, for allowing me to share a few of my thoughts with you and your readers. I’m a big fan! You are definitely living and blogging your passion. Thank you for that gift.

Follow Lorelle on Twitter.

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