21 Ways to Build a Better Blogger
When we talk about ‘creating’ better blogs, there’s an underlying assumption that it’s only the blog that needs improving.
The reality is, us bloggers could use a huge kick up the ass once in a while as well. We get sloppy, we sometimes let our standards slide and worst of all, when it comes to making improvements we look at external factors, not ourselves.
Last month I started compiling a list of ‘strategies’ to improve my own blogging – I’m sharing that list here. We can’t become better bloggers overnight – it takes a lot of hard work, just like a blog – but like working on a blog, the best results are achieved when you stick to it and work at it for a long time.
1. Create a Commitment to your Blog – and then keep it
In simple terms: right now, someone else who is just as smart as you is working hard to get their blog to the top. They’re committed to the vision they’ve set for their blog, and they’re doing whatever it takes to make it a reality.
The big question is, why aren’t you?
Find that one target for your blog that you are willing to work the most for, and then get busy doing it.
2. Focus on the Conversation on your Blog
Blogging is a one-to-many medium, but smart bloggers know who to turn it into an active group conversation between the readers and themselves. This requires the ability to communicate effectively – and it’s something that us bloggers can train ourselves to do better.
If you want to engage your readers and improve the conversation on your blog, you have to a) be clear, b) refocus your attention towards the audience and c) become credible.
3. Don’t Settle For Being Good Enough
If you’re a good writer (and a good communicator), you should be able to talk the talk when it comes to blogging about a particular subject.
But can you walk the walk? For a blogger dealing with subjects that involve practical application (self help, any skills-based area (SEO, web design, wood-working, photography, fitness, self defense, etc), competence in your chosen field goes a long way in establishing your credibility.
4. Love Your Blog, Love Your Blogging
A blogger’s passion for his subject and his blog shines through his writing. If you have passion, your words will carry conviction, your ideas will be persuasive and you will come across as someone who cares about his work. Without passion it’s quite hard to maintain the drive and energy needed to work on a blog day in and day out (not all of us are blessed with god-like self-discipline).
And if you’ve lost your passion one day (it happens to the best of us), here’s how (and why) you can continue blogging without losing your step.
5. Be Positive and Trust Yourself
Blogging is a tough gig. It takes a lot of time and hard work to be successful and if that wasn’t enough to make you glum, there is always a snarky commenter or two (or hundreds) lurking around who have little else to do but send negative thoughts your way.
It’s easy to throw in the towel when the going gets tough, however if you approach blogging with the knowledge that a) it will be tough and b) your reaction to problems (and therefore the likelihood that those problems will be solved) will depend on your attitude, it becomes clear that you have to stay positive.
Successful people don’t get to where they are by accepting defeat when they get knocked down. Dust yourself off, get back up and go at it again. It sounds a bit cheesy, yes, but as long as you believe in what you’re doing and believe in your own ability to make your blog a success, you’ll do fine.
6. Problem Solving
There are two kinds of people – those who deal with their problems and those who use them as an excuse not to move ahead in their lives.
This doesn’t mean that you turn into a robot – in fact I would strongly recommend having channels / avenues through which you can vent about your problems. It helps to clear your head and to focus on the solutions instead of your emotional reaction to it.
However, if you’re not dealing with your blogging problems intelligently, you’re just holding yourself (and your blog) back from it’s true potential. Find a solution, outsource it if you have to but fix it if it’s important (and stop worrying if its not).
Part of the philosophy of giving a project your 100% every day is that you are always pushing for improvements. At one time or the other, this push will require you to take risks, and it is at this point in time that you will feel the most resistance, when you will find it most difficult to ‘bring your A-game’ to the table.
Look at your blog and your blogging efforts and pinpoint the risks that you’ve been avoiding for the last few weeks or even months. Pick one of these risks, discuss the options with your friends and family (or people who know your business) and if it’s the right thing, do it.
8. Learn the Art of Self-Promotion
Self-Promotion is something most of us are uncomfortable with – and it’s not just the prospect of ‘selling’ that turns us off, in reality its insecurity (cleverly dressed as modesty) that holds us back.
As a blogger – whether you want to promote your own services or you’re promoting your blog – you have to learn to blow your own horn. No one else will be doing that for you, so celebrate your success (small or big), talk up your achievements and put yourself firmly in the minds of your readers (and anyone else who wants to listen).
You’ve heard many bloggers talk about how you should ‘focus’ on a few key projects. Trouble is, not everyone intuitively knows exactly how to turn that ‘focus’ knob up to 100%, and even if you know how to do that, what do you focus on?
The two keys to having a clear focus in your blogging are ‘priorities’ and ‘concentration’. If you have priorities but no concentration (like me), you’ll know what to do but never get anything done because you’ll get distracted all the time. On the other hand, if you have concentration but no clear grasp of your priorities, you will be excellent in something but won’t make much progress (because you’ll be focusing on the wrong things).
10. Instill Character In Your Blog
Character in a blog means:
- Delivering on what you promise
- Doing what you do to the best of your ability
- Staying true to your purpose in face of adversity or success
You don’t build a successful blog by copying the top bloggers on what they’re doing right now – you look at what they did at the start, what type of ‘foundational work’ they did to reach this level.
Getting the foundations of your blog and removing the cracks in it should be your first and foremost responsibility – everything else flows from that.
11. Adopt Othermindedness to be more Charismatic
The four steps to being more charismatic on your blog:
- Be Passionate and Positive
- Expect the Best of People
- Give People Hope
- Share Yourself
When it comes to being charismatic, the bottom line is othermindedness.
If you’ve read “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini (highly recommended), you’ll know that ‘Reciprocity’ is one of the six key ways to influence people (the others are: Commitment / Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority and Scarcity). When you give first, you create a subconscious debt on the other person’s conscience which they will feel the need to repay or risk suffering from guilt. It’s how we are socially wired.
What we’re NOT socially wired to do is to give first and ask later – in fact, we’re selfish (like it or not) and do exactly the opposite. If you want to succeed as a blogger, want to grow your blog and want to do both of these things super-fast, bite the bullet and invest in your future. The relationships you build as a result, with your readers and your friends, will be the foundation for your rapid growth in the future.
13. Go For Broke
They say that “good things come to those who wait” – and while I value patience, it has its place and it is often a convenient rationalisation for people who are afraid to take risks. There are times when you have to grab the bull by the horns and attack an opportunity with full strength.
In simple terms…you can’t wait for opportunities to knock on your door. You have to put yourself out there, put your blog out there, and make sure that you’re first in line when any opportunity comes up. You’ll take risks. You’ll make mistakes. But you’ll be much better off at the end of it than when you started, which is where you would have stayed stuck if you hadn’t moved in the first place.
14. Learn the Art of Listening
As bloggers our job is to talk – we talk to our readers, we talk to advertisers, we talk to our employees, we talk smack with competitors – it’s pretty much a full-time talking job, blogging.
However, in all this talking we need to find the time to shut up and listen to the people around us – to learn what they want, to learn from their suggestions, criticisms and support, and to spot ideas in what they do and say. Listening to others (and more importantly, to the right people) gives you the kind of knowledge few people can hope to attain, and with that comes the ability to do make a genuine difference in your own life and that of others.
15. Build Relationships
We all know that it’s important to build relationships as bloggers but do you do it unconsciously or do you take out time each day to dedicate to networking?
Some of us are naturally better networkers than others. For the rest of us, it would be advisable to take out time every day and spend it on networking. Whether you do your relationship-building through forums, social networks or person to person, it’s important that you take out at least an hour a day for it.
Like almost everything else in blogging, it won’t pay off immediately but once you’ve been doing it for some time the results will bring in many blogging and money-making opportunities and you’ll start getting a lot of help in your blogging efforts.
16. Learn Your Trade
We’re not talking about being competent in your area of interest; learn your trade as a blogger. You don’t have to be a crack designer but you need to know basic design principles and understand aesthetics. You don’t have to be a WordPress guru but it pays to understand how themes and plugins work and how you could work with them in a cinch.
Monetization, SEO, networking – learn the skills and tools of your blogging trade, and you’ll invariably improve as a blogger.
17. Vision
A top blogger without vision is like a top athlete running at full speed backwards on the track. He may be the fastest (and you may be the best at what you do), but if he doesn’t know what his prime objective is, he’ll keep going in circles.
The same goes for you as a blogger. Define your vision, understand it and integrate it in your life – you need to know where you are going, and you need to keep it in mind whenever you work on your blog.
18. Know When to Stick or Fold
Sticking to your guns (self-confidence) and working hard on a project when the going gets tough are admirable traits, and worth cultivating. However, as a blogger you must also know when to cut your losses and move on.
Your decision may be based on your financial situation, the amount of time you have available, new opportunities knocking on the door, etc. Whatever you base your decisions on, don’t base them on your emotional attachment to a blog, or your ego which tells you that you can do everything at same time.
19. Stop Controlling Everything
If you’re really good at what you do (writing, monetization, design, SEO, etc), you might get stuck in a pattern of trying to do everything yourself.
As a pro blogger, you don’t have the time to handle all the writing, the design, the research, the promotion and administration of your blog yourself. Outsource as much as you can (you can always outsource your blogging chores for free), hire help so you can get more work done.
20. Patience
What you’re working on now will not pay off tomorrow but in a few months. What you accomplish this month will pay you back 10x in one year.
The effect of cumulative growth is stunning, but to reap the full benefits you have to be (you guessed it) patient.
This doesn’t mean that you should sit back and wait – no, patience here means being patient with results, not with your efforts (you should still be going for broke).
21. Have Fun
The good thing about self employment is that you can choose to have fun on your own time, on your own terms. Take time off from your blog (not too much time!), change the pace on your blog (write something light hearted once in a while) and most importantly, if you find yourself thinking that your blogging is a chore, step back and re-evaluate what you are doing.
Bonus #1: Self Discipline
You’re not going to last a day as a professional blogger if you cannot discipline yourself to practice new habits and improve your blogging consistently.
Bonus #2: Balance
Blogging is fun and games sometimes but that doesn’t mean that you throw away all that you’ve earned and accomplished in the name of fun.
Find balance in your blogging – from varying the depth of your articles to dividing time between blogging and promoting to finding some personal time in all the blogging mayhem (take Sundays off, for example).
You’re not going to read this list and become a better blogger overnight – it takes time and commitment, and it works best if you take one strategy at a time and apply it purposefully in your life until you have mastered it.
How To Make Your Boring Website Popular on Digg
As social media marketers, one of the most common questions we get about linkbaiting and social media promotion is this:
My niche is boring and / or non-technical – how do I turn it into something popular and linkable?
Last week I stumbled across a Wikipedia article that was, despite its dry (and boring) subject matter, doing quite well on Digg.
The article in question is this introductory piece on Montessori. You might want to take a few minutes to go through the article and figure out any angle that would make it interesting to the average Digg user. My best idea (and this was after reading the Digg link) was about how the Montessori system was a cover for brainwashing little children and sapping their creativity.
Paranoid delusions apart, I strongly doubt that my spin would have done better than this take:
Monetessori Method, the educational system of Google founders.
It is, for lack of a better term, f’n brilliant.
Instead of forcefully making a boring topic appear interesting, this digg user took something that would guarantee attention (Google founders) and related it to a quite uninteresting topic. The result is a Digg headline that probably got enough *blind diggs* to make it popular and it ended up getting 562 diggs (as of writing this article).
I have to admit, when I saw this headline I was in a hurry as well and gave a blind digg before I had time to read the page itself.
The only problem with this linkbait (although to be fair it was just a test) was that it could have been done much better (in terms of optimizing the landing page and in attracting links, if the digger had set up a page on their own site instead).
If you want to do some linkbaiting for your website but are having trouble making your content *interesting*, stop forcing the issue. Instead, follow this simple 3 step process:
1. Find something interesting that appeals to the largest possible audience – it could be anything, Google, grave health risks, global warming, the war in iraq, etc.
For more in this, learn how to attract attention from mainstream media.
2. Find a common thread between the *interesting* and your *boring* content. The most important component is the title (see Michael Gray’s post on title bait) but you also need quality content to back it up.
3. Prep your linkbait for social media goodness. Make it easy for your readers (and especially readers from social media sites) to share your article, make it visually appealing (these two posts on formatting blog posts are good, standard advice for linkbait formatting as well).
Once you can master the art of making uninteresting content interesting using this process of association, the rest of the social promotion stuff is relatively easy to implement. Then, all you need are friends to digg your linkbait…
10 Ways To Get More Done In Less Time
Web entrepreneurs, especially those who work outside the confines of the traditional workspace, often have trouble managing their time.
This article proves 10 time-tested methods to get more work done than before AND free up the time we tend to ‘borrow’ from outside our work schedule.
These suggestions are work well for bloggers, entrepreneurs and especially anyone whose work routine needs to be flexible because of their family / social circumstances. The key is to integrate these habits into your daily routine, otherwise it’s not going to bring you any results.
General Tips
These are general habits that set the foundation for increasing productivity and using your time effectively.
1. Time & Task Chunking
There are two things you must start doing right now:
- Think of the time available to you in ‘chunks’ or ‘blocks’.
- Group related tasks together, and assign them time chunks.
Working on related tasks in the same time chunk makes it possible for you to get through those tasks faster than you would otherwise as your mind becomes attuned to doing a specific type of task. You might have heard the tip on writing your blog posts for the week / day in one go – this works because once your writing juices get flowing, it’s easier for you to write that second and third article for the day / week,
Why time chunks? I’ve discussed in detail later, but in essence the idea is to a) break down your work day into manageable time periods (input, output or just processing) and b) help you concentrate better on your work.
2. Smarter Email Management
Ideally you should be checking email just once a day – however in practice this is a difficult habit to adopt from the start, so I recommend restricting yourself to 2 checks – once in the morning to deal with the urgent stuff and once in the evening to answer emails, etc.
Daniel has more on effective email management. A great tip from the article is to NOT read your emails unless you’re ready to deal with them (reply, take an action based on it, etc). Usually what happens is that we tend to read an email once and then don’t take action on it for a few hours (or days). That leaves an open loop in our work cycle – either you’ll keep being reminded of unfinished business by looking at that unattended email or you’ll have it floating around in your head.
Only read an email if you’re ready to take immediate action on it. This is why I suggest splitting your email checking time into two steps – urgent and regular processing. Scan email headlines to pick out urgent matters and discipline yourself to leave the rest for later, when you can go through each email and deal with it there and then.
A last word on email – learn to write emails that deal with such simple follow-up questions as ‘what if this happens?’ or ‘how do I do that?’. Close possible loops by discussing alternative scenarios and solutions, as well as providing references in advance in case someone needs to know how to do a particular task.
3. Say No To Feed Abuse
Earlier this year I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal on why you should dump 90% of the feeds you read. At that time, I was spending 2-4 hours every day just browsing through feeds, and at the end of it I’d have so much in my head that I would find it difficult to sift through the unimportant stuff and focus my thoughts on the important, bloggable material.
Since then, I’ve dumped my feed reader altogether. I now rely on 2 types of news sources – editorially-aggregated news (a good example of this is the Search Engine Land’s SearchCap) and my network of contacts who end up emailing / IMing me the the hottest news. I wouldn’t make a living as a news blogger this way but in terms of ‘winning back’ time that can be invested elsewhere, this approach is an absolute must.
You don’t have to dump your feed reader, but cut down to reading aggregated roundups of your niche (and if there isn’t anyone doing that currently, that’s a perfect opening for you in that niche).
4. Downtime = Networking
Schedule some downtime for your self during the day – afternoon is a good slot, so is late night after you’re done with everything else (including planning for the next day). By downtime I’m not talking about taking a break, I’m talking about indulging yourself in IMing and random web browsing – putting aside time for IMing is one way to get the most out of the exercise, especially because the short time forces you to do the important things first (including networking, of course).
Some people will disagree with this approach, and I admit that I’m quite often online all day, if only because these days me and Ryan are coordinating a few Perf projects. In such cases I’m only available to chat for one or two people and with everyone else, I’ll have to wait till the important stuff gets done first. It’s hard but it’s the only way to eliminate the distractions that get in our way and stop us from getting work done.
5. ‘Heavy Lifting’
Set aside time daily for some heavy lifting – i.e. intensive work. You don’t have to do this at the same time every day (although in terms of building your rhythm and improving productivity that surely helps) but you should allocate the same amount of hours to it every day.
The ideal solution for me is to have two ‘heavy lifting’ chunks – one in early / late morning and the other either late afternoon or early evening (never at night). This allows me to start the day off by getting a good chunk of my work complete, and before the day is over I’ve done everything for that day, giving me time to enjoy the rest of the day and obviously plan for the next day ahead of time as well.
6. Input / Output / Processing
I’ve started thinking of a typical work cycle as 3 distinct phases.
- Input: Any task that involves the intake of information. Browsing, feed-reading, etc are input-oriented activities.
- Output: Any task that involves you producing something – blogging, programming, designing, etc.
- Processing: When you’re dealing with ideas, knocking off action items, planning for the next day or evaluating progress.
In practice, you want to limit your inputs to the ‘absolutely necessary’ and maximise your output. Most of the time we spend our day the other way around – reading a lot and doing / writing very little. In terms of achieving your goals, that’s a brain-dead approach – why would take up any habit where you’re deliberately limiting the amount of work you can get done?
Sometimes people don’t segregate processing from their input / output states. I disagree – it’s vital that you set aside time for processing your inputs as well as for planning what needs to be done in the future. The processing phase is key to giving your perspective on what you’ve done, what you want to do next and how to get that done.
Like the concepts earlier, thinking of your work cycle in terms of these 3 phases will help you focus on why you’re doing certain tasks and therefore help you get the most out of your time.
When Working / Heavy Lifting
The 6 tips mentioned above concern basic habits. From #1 and #5, you’ll remember the concepts of time chunking and heavy lifting. The rest of this article concerns tips on how to make the most out of your working time, especially the time when you need to be 110% productive.
7. Stay Offline
Turn off your browser, your IMs, etc. If you’re blogging and need access to feeds, open all the required web pages in your browser and then disconnect.
There are two major problems when you’re online and blogging / writing / programming / strategising at the same time: one, you have the option of distracting yourself, and two, you’re leaving yourself open to the possibility of being distracted by someone / something else (a news item popping up in your feed reader, an email).
I can hear you saying – ‘what if its important?’ Sure, it probably is, but you’re smart enough to know that the work you’re supposed to be doing is certainly important, while something that you might miss in those 3-4 hours is most likely not important. You’re most likely not missing much by going offline, but you’re definitely losing a lot by dividing your attention.
Of course, there are obvious exceptions. However for 95% of us, those exceptions are just theoretical (we’re not as special, essential or important as we like to think).
8. Turn Off Your Phone
I don’t know about you, but phone interruptions are the worst when I’m blogging. Whether it’s a message or a call, even the one minute it takes to shift focus from one thing to the other and then bringing it back can have you lose your momentum, pushing you back by 5-10 minutes or more.
Turn your phone off, or at least on silent and train yourself to ignore the phone. When blogging, check your phone between blog posts if you absolutely must, not during.
What if it’s an emergency? Like I said earlier, our imagination paints the world far worse than it really is. In case of an emergency and especially if there is a real need for you, the person looking for you will find a way to contact you. In any case, keeping two numbers (one for social and professional contacts, one for close friends and family) allows you to turn one off and then you can decide to ignore the second one. This only works if implement it properly and make it clear that the second number is only for emergency use. Drastic, yes, but since you’re only going to be doing this for a few hours each day, it’s worth it.
At the end of the day, us ADD-affected entrepreneurs need every little bit of help they can get.
9. Be Alone While Working
Admittedly this is more of a personal issue – I feel that I cannot work at my best, with full concentration, if someone else is around in the room. From getting distracted by what they’re doing to feeling the urge to strike up pointless conversation, I tend to get very little done when there are people around.
To get the most work done, find a quite spot where you can be alone. If that’s not possible, try ensuring that your immediate physical area is clear and free of distractions.
If all else fails, chain yourself to the desk and lock yourself in the room until you get work done.
10. Deadlines
When faced with a project, nothing ruins it more than having a deadline far into the future. Break your projects down into smaller, bite-sized tasks and set impossibly short deadlines for getting them done. You’ll find that not only do you psychologically motivate yourself into getting things done quicker, you’re probably doing less work than you would if you approached it as a large chunk and set aside weeks or months to get it done.
Process each project, break it down, and get it done as quickly as possible.
(Bonus) 11. One Thing At A Time
This part is especially for those people who claim to be multi-taskers. I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as multi-tasking.
- If you plan your work in advance, you’ll never be rushed enough that you need to do 2 things at the same time.
- And if you concentrate on one thing and get it done before moving to the second, you’ll get both of them done faster than if you tried to ‘multi-task’.
If you’ve lived all your life multi-tasking, it’s possible that you’ve achieved some success because of that approach. Unfortunately, multi-tasking is an emergency, short-term response to a failure of planning and a product of panic. It slows you down, and as a long-term strategy it’s just stopping you from planning your tasks properly.
Multi-tasking forces you to be inefficient and unproductive. Don’t fall into / stay in this trap.
Summing It Up
I hope you found the above tips useful. Following any one of these tips will immediately boost your productivity, but when you start applying several of them together is when you will see the real benefits – these tips were far better in tandem than they do on their own.
Comments are welcome.
Also read: 10 Tips for Razor Sharp Concentration.
Quality v Success: What Is More Important For You?
On one hand, you have the burning desire to create something remarkable, memorable, and of sheer quality. It takes time, love and hard work, and you run the risk that it will go unappreciated, for after all you are pandering to your own notion of what needs to be said and done. After all, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, you don’t do art to make money, you do art to make your soul grow.
On the other hand, there’s the real, gut-wrenching need to make money (or any other metric of success – search rankings, pageviews, awards, booty). This is the drive to optimize, to tap into market consciousness, measure what works (and what doesn’t), and to ruthlessly churn out content (or products – define your own output) according to your scientific formula of success (usually translates into PageViews = Money).
We know that quality and success CAN go hand in hand – it’s just that success is easier without if you don’t have to worry about quality and it’s the execution of an idea that makes the real difference, not how good it is.
As a professional blogger and entrepreneur, I face the quality v success challenge every day. There are thousands of blogs in dozens of niches that are doing spectacularly well by following the PageViews = Money formula and are quite successful ventures for their owners, although at their core the product is decidedly third-rate. Reading these blogs angers me because I expect better from the top bloggers, but at the same time there’s an admiration for their unwavering commitment to doing what works and continued amazement at how we overestimate the intelligence of our readers (selfishly, I might add).
So….what’s more important for you – creating quality or creating success?
Best of Performancing
There is a wealth of knowledge in the Performancing archives, which a lot of the new readers are probably not aware off.
To rectify that, I started digging through the Perf archives to get the best articles, dust off the proverbial cobwebs and showcase them on the site.
Here’s a list of the best Performancing has to offer:
- Blog Content / Writing Advice
- Blog Strategy
- Blog Promotion
- Blog Design
- Blog Monetization
- Blog Software
- Blog Launch
- Blog Flipping
- Blog Networks
- WordPress
- Blog SEO
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the list.
- 10 Killer Post Ideas – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
The whole article – go read it, print it out and then refer to it every day.
- How to write Quotable Blog Posts – Philipp LenssenTakeaway:
With your blog you are part of an ongoing larger discussion. And — depending on your content — you will be quoted, and linked to. Now there are several approaches to make it easier and more likely for others to quote you.
- 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Not every post needs to get a ton of comments but if your blog hardly ever gets a single comment then it will look unpopular and start a downward spiral. Hopefully using some of these tips you will turn it the other way and create a positive community snowball affect.
- Guide to blogging Sports Events – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
One of the easiest niches to get into is sports – it’s a market with the perfect ingredients for a blog, and this article shows you how to dominate it.
- How to turn link posts into linkbait – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
If you regularly link out to other sites, this article is an excellent primer in how to deliver value in your ‘link’ posts.
- How to Beat the Blank Page of Doom – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Everyone has moments when they know what to say but struggle to say it. This list suggests several techniques to get those creative juices flowing again.
- Tips for Avoiding Summer Blog Death – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
Every summer, comments and participation tend to drop off on most community sites but now is not the time to slack off on posting, on providing value to the users who aren’t out having fun in the sun. The folks who are still commenting represent the core of your audience, the absolute die-hard, passionate, and above all loyal, cream of the crop.
The article gives you several ideas on how to keep the blog going.
- 11 Reasons to Write When You’ve Misplaced Your Passion – Liz StraussTakeaway:
There are days when the passion for blogging just doesn’t show up. This articles gives you the motivation (seriously) to get back up and start writing again.
- 3 Ways to Engineer Good Content – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
First, discover what people want, respond to, and get excited by and then give it to them.
Don’t fall for the illusion of self-projection. Most of the world is dumber than you, and most of the world has different tastes. Give them what they want, not what you want. Then, as they say, you’re golden.
- Want to be a better Blogger? Tell Funny Stories! – Ahmed BilalTakeway:
If your writing doesn’t get your message across, if it doesn’t have an emotional impact on your readers and if it’s not in sync with what you aim to do with your blog, you’re wasting your time, etc etc.
How to get these three skills nailed down to the exact centimeter?
Tell Funny Stories.
- 3 Steps for Writing Good Blog Posts – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
Like all good 3 step lists, this one is a model of simplicity:
1. Define what ‘good’ is – use concrete measurements instead of an arbitrary feel-good factor
2. Learn how to achieve the results defined above
3. Execute (and then some).If it was as easy as writing it above, no blog consultant would have a job. As things stand, there’s a lot more to it under the surface although as discussed in the article, once you internalise this formula (or you start writing for a blog that gets tons of traffic) it becomes effortless.
back to the top.
- Finding the time to blog – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
- Prioritize your feed reading and blogging
- Delegate tasks
- Negotiate for time in your personal life - Co-blogging, Finding your Blog Buddy – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Blogging need not be a lonely profession. Perhaps you would get more fulfilment, and produce a better blog, if you found a writing partner?
- 10 Business Models for Bloggers – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
Whether you’re blogging full or part-time, if you expect to make money, you need to have a clear business model. It’s no good just posting and expecting the cheques to roll in, you need to plan for how that cash will start flowing.
- Top 10 Blog Disasters and How To Deal With Them – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
When we start out blogging professionally we dream of a steady flow of cash. It’s very easy to get used to that income. What will you do if disaster strikes? What can you do to prevent it happening?
Phew, what a depressing topic! But you know what they say..
Failure to plan is planning to fail
If you don’t plan for these eventualities then they might well come up one day and bite you on the assets.
- 10 Key Ingredients of a Great Blog – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Most of us can spot a stinker of a blog at 100 paces but can you recognise the properties that separate the lame from the great in your own blog? There are 10 qualities your blog must have to succeed.
- The Blog Loyalty Ladder – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
The theory is that your audience can be grouped based on their level of awareness of your blog and their loyalty to it. Your very best people are at the top of the ladder.
While you aim to get as many people from the bottom to the top realise that a minority will get there but they are to be cherished and nurtured. It is another case where the 80-20% rule works, these top 20% (or “quintile” as it is called in the trade) are pure gold.
- Self Sustaining Blogs – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
Wouldn’t it be nice if your blog ran itself? No, I’m not talking about “splogs”, I’m talking about letting your members run the show, and just sitting back and watching the ad money roll/trickle in.
- Knowing when to Stick and when to Fold – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Don’t quit too soon, you might be just round the corner from a breakthrough. Every blog has a tipping point, that one post or event that takes it to the next level. Read, digest and act on the advice here first.
- Positioning your Blog – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Once you have settled on your own differentiated niche you need to articulate this difference. Your blog needs to project and exude this difference in the content, the design, the tone of voice, your marketing, everything. The visitor needs to always be aware that yours is the _____ blog and take away your unique properties.
- 10 Step Plan to a Profitable Blog – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
We’ve talked a lot about how to make money from blogging – this is a hands-on checklist for executing your plans.
- 3 Problems Business Bloggers Face – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
If you are business blogger (or a blogger chasing the dream of a high-paying business blogging gig), here are a few problems that you probably face (or will face) and some suggestions on dealing with them.
- What Kind Of Blog Do You Have? – Raj DashTakeaway:
Knowing and understanding your audience can help you blog better.
- 10 Traits Of Blog Readers – Liz StraussTakeaway:
Know how your blog audience acts and tailor your blogging habits to cater for them.
- How to Launch a Forum on your Blog – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
Forums (or community-style content blogs based on Drupal – think ThreadWatch) are a natural extension of blogs. Once your blog has a regular following and traction in your niche, forums (reader-generated content) offer the best solution for growing your brand and the community around it.
- 2007 – The Year of Branding and Consolidation – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
2007 is turning out to be the year of branding and consolidation. Not that branding and consolidation haven’t been important in the past. But I’m seeing clear signs this year from several independent corners of the web that the dynamics of the web (probably thanks to a combination of information saturation and Google’s push to measure quality indicators) have put pressure on web publishers to consolidate content and build brands. This is a real world observation.
- Why Your Blog Archives are (mostly) Useless – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
90% Content is packaged for short-term gratification, not long-term value (for the reader).
- Why Software is more Useful Than Books – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
To apply what you learn, you need a system – whether a how-to, step-by-step guide or a software – that helps you apply what you have read and understood.
- Outsource your Blogging Chores – for free – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
I would strongly suggest that you do that (start off small, by inviting guest bloggers, for example, and then move on to assigning them topics and then asking one or two people to take on the role of editor) and see what happens. If you’re clear from the start that it is a voluntary position for which the person will get credit but not payment, you will STILL get a decent response.
Before you go out and hire a second blogger / editor to take over your chores, find out first if your readers are willing to help you out, for free. Chances are that they will, and they’ll be happier for it.
- 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (at least once) – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
I have about twenty bloggers working for me at any given time. Many new bloggers are often not familiar with the details of blogging software (e.g. the screwy video embed issue with WP) or they don’t know much about the art of blogging (other than writing about the blog’s topic).
Over time I’ve developed a list of ten articles that I send to all my new bloggers as part of their initiation. Today I’ve decided to make one version of that list public in the hopes that new bloggers everywhere can benefit, and maybe we can turn the comment section into a “you forgot this one” list.
Many of these posts overlap in theme, and some even cover the same topic. But reinforcement never hurt anyone.
- 41 Reasons Why Your Blog Probably Sucks – Common Blogging Mistakes – Raj DashTakeaway:
No blogger makes all of these mistakes, of course, but the list serves to help those of you who are still establishing your name in the blogosphere, and to remind you that you’re not alone.
- 21 Ways To Build A Better Blogger – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
When we talk about ‘creating’ better blogs, there’s an underlying assumption that it’s only the blog that needs improving.
The reality is, us bloggers could use a huge kick up the ass once in a while as well. We get sloppy, we sometimes let our standards slide and worst of all, when it comes to making improvements we look at external factors, not ourselves.
- 27 Tips for Building a Kick-Ass Blog – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
If you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably have certain blogging ‘habits’ and tips that you swear by. This article is a collection of such tips, designed to help you build a better blog.
- How Do You Pay Your Bloggers? – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
What’s important to remember is that while not everyone blogs for money, money IS a driving force for most people and if someone feels that they are not getting what they deserve for their efforts, then there will be disagreements between them and you and eventually you will lose them. The takeaway is to ensure that a) bloggers know what the benefits are and b) those benefits should make the cost of moving away from the network quite heavy.
Or at least you should get your bloggers to think that way.
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- The Art of Linkbaiting – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
Ever found it hard to get other bloggers to link to a new blog? Sure you have, it’s not easy sometimes. Even established blogs need to expand their traffic and influence on a regular basis, and linkbaiting is one way to do it. It’s not without potential perils, but the time honored tradition of being contrary, in order to get attention is well proved, and done right, it’s a killer way to break into a new area. There are also safer ways of linkbaitng, they’re just less fun
- How To Make Your Blog Sticky – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
One of the areas I feel most blogs fail at, is the concept of community. I know that’s an odd statement, as blogs are all about conversation, but most blogs seem to entirely miss the point of the “on site” community.
Sure you link to other blogs, and talk to other bloggers in your niche, sure you have comments enabled — in fact, in terms of distributed community blogs work really, really well. In terms of on site community however, they fail miserably for the most part. And it’s largely down to the blogger himself.
- 3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
There is no magic wand, mystical powers or Search engine hoo joo to be had anymore, it’s all down to 3 things:
1. Copywriting
2. Links and
3. NetworkingThat’s not to say those tasks don’t require skill, but it really is that simple.
- 10 Reasons why Blogging for PR and Marketing works – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
An excellent roundup of the various reasons why blogs are remarkably effective marketing tools.
- 5 Surefire Steps to Increase Readership by 300% or more – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
As they say in dieting, these should be lifestyle changes; not just short-term quick-fixes.
If you’re like the average blogger then you live in a bubble. You are content to just write posts on a consistent basis and you feel as if the world is watching your every move. Think again. Chances are that you’re being ignored. So how can you change this state of affairs?
In this article I list five surefire steps that will get you noticed, get you traffic, and ultimately make you some money. These aren’t easy to implement, and if you’re lazy like me, they probably seem daunting. But just like there’s no easy way to lose weight, there’s just no easy way to get and keep readers for your blog. Make a lifestyle change now, and the benefits will start compounding like a snowball rolling down a hill.
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- With Navigation, Less is More – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
The state of navigational links on blogs is getting out of hand. If you’re blog’s purpose is to make money, why do we insist on distracting our readers with hundreds of useless links?
Your blog should guide your reader to where she wants to go, or to allow her to discover where she wants to go. By placing huge lists of links in side navigation, or cramming the bottom of your posts with social bookmarking javascript links, you only make it harder for her complete her task.
- Sweating the details – Andy HagansTakeway:
Going the extra mile on your design and even your content is the mark of a professional, quality product.
- Photoshop Tutorial – Performancing Banner – Wayde ChristieTakeaway:
An excellent step-by-step tutorial by Wayde on how he made the original Perf FF banner.
- How To: Bug Check Your Blog – John T UngerTakeaway:
Sometimes it can be really difficult to track down bugs that cause your blog to display improperly? especially when the issue is not something you did in your template, but a mistake or typo in an actual post.
That’s why it’s a good idea not only to view your blog in all the major browsers, but to periodically run your site through an HTML validator. Here’s a list of resources you can use to make sure that your blog will display properly on all platforms and in all browsers.
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- How to create Intelligent Blog Ads – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
If you want to squeeze every last drop of revenue potential out of your blog without annoying your loyal visitors then you need to be a bit clever about the way you display advertising.
- How to create Intelligent Blog Ads – Part 2 – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
What can we do about recognising first-time readers versus regular readers? The idea is a first timer is more likely to click ads and less likely to sign up, while a regular reader is more likely to subscribe to your feed and also more likely to get annoyed by over the top advertising.
- How to add E-Commerce to your blog – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
So you want to sell products directly from your blog? We have already decided it could be a great idea for creating revenue, let’s take a look at how exactly we add ecommerce capability to your blog.
- Monetizing through packaged content – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Aside from the community aspects of blogs one thing blogs generate is a lot of content. While most bloggers will at least consider advertising to generate revenue, are you missing a trick by not packaging and selling your information as a product?
- Make money blogging via paid subscriptions – Andy HagansTakeaway:
Yes, you can make money by charging for some of your content.
- Monetizing your Blog Archives – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
Using time-sensitive advertising to profit from blog archives.
- Affiliate Tips for Bloggers – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
10 excellent tips to get you started on affiliate marketing.
- Supplement your blogging income with e-reports – Raj DashTakeaway:
If your topics are timeless, over 3-10 years you may earn some nice returns for 10-20 hours of work per month. So in the second year, you’ll have sales of new reports and older reports. In a couple of years, you could very well commit full-time and not have to rely on contextual advertising.
- How To: Create Intelligent Amazon Associates Ads – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Using a bit of PHP programming, geo-targeting and creative solutions, you can maximize your affiliate earnings.
- How To Squeeze More Income Out Of Your Blog – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
The basic way to monetize your site is through a couple of ads on it, but if you plan things ahead and think in terms of monetizable ‘regions’ and ‘sections’ instead of one ‘blog’, it will change things completely.
- Make Money from Projects You Don’t Have Time For – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
For most ideas, if you don’t have time today you won’t have time tomorrow either. Few things make you stand up and say that Yes, this is what I want to do more than anything else. If a project doesn’t appeal to you in that way and you’re ready to shelve it, take a couple of days out and work on it, maybe you’ll be able profit from it AND help others benefit from your ideas as well.
- Affiliate Marketing Q&A (Part One) – David WilkinsonTakeaway:
When it comes to making money on the Internet, or more specifically with a blog, there are simply so many options out there, it can be a little overwhelming for someone starting out, trying to earn a living through blogging or through creating a website community. One of the highest paying and easiest to use ways to make money is with affiliate programs. Affiliate Marketing is a lot simpler than the blogging and marketing ‘gurus’ would like you to think, and I whipped up a questions and answers blog post, highlighting a conversation I had with a client a few weeks back.
- The AdSense Placement Thread – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
A thread giving site-specific adsense placement advice to Performancing members.
- How to Show Ads Between Posts on your Blog – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
This article will show you how to place AdSense code (or any other ads) between posts on your WordPress blog’s main page – the same approach can be used to place ad blocks in your archive pages (including category and author archives).
- $100 / day on AdSense – 7 things I’ve learned – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
A simple, easy-to-follow formula for making $100 / day in Google AdSense.
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- Professional Blog Software Reviews – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Chris looks at a bunch of different blogging software packages and grades them – each review gets a full article of its own. In the end, Chris shares his findings.
- Blog Stats Software Reviews – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
A detailed look at the top blog stats packages available.
- Choosing a Niche – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Choosing a niche is an important first task in starting a professional blog, it impacts everything else you do and is a very important factor in whether you are a success or not.
- Qualifying your Niche – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Once you have a good list of topics to choose from (using the previous article), it’s time to evaluate their potential. Chris gives an exhaustive overview of how to do this.
- Blogging Mistakes: Launching an Empty Shell – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
Announcing a new blog, when that blog has little or no content, has got to be one of the most moronic things I see in the blogosphere.
At the end of the day, it’s all about trust, and perception of value. If i see a one liner announcing a new blog, and find an empty shell when i get there, am i going to invest in an RSS subscription?
The hell I am…
Not Shakespeare, but perhaps one of the the best pieces of advice on blog launches that you will find
- How To: Launch a New Blog the Easy Way – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
The key is to stick at it. You might not know when you are near your blog tipping point. It could be a milestone like the 1000 post mark, it could be the 6 months mark. It usually takes a good few weeks to just get into Google’s index properly, sometimes longer to rank depending on your niche.
- Planning a New Blog Venture – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
Before you run headlong into posting lots of lovely content to your blog it is useful to take a step back and think about how you are going to organise one or two things. Some small adjustments now could make a world of difference later.
- Planning a new blog? Get Started Already! – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
Get things out of the door fast and start applying your ideas, and as a result you’ll solve those pesky unforeseen problems early, and overall, get things done today as opposed to think about doing them tomorrow.
- 7 Steps to Launching a Great Blog – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
You don’t need to have thousands of dollars to make a big splash with your new blog – the alternative, a momentum-building bootstrapping approach, is just as effective.
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The practicing of buying and selling blogs, for fun and for profit.
- 3 Keys to Buying A Blog – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
You need to focus on Time, Money and the Exits. If you don’t have the time, don’t jump in. If the site isn’t making money, don’t pay that much for it.
And if you don’t have an exit strategy – good lord, what the hell are you going to do when you have to cash in?
- How to Sell Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
Selling a blog may seem a daunting task, but it doesn’t need to be so difficult or stressing. Perhaps what you need is the right system to assist you in selling your blog.
- The Blog Valuation Manual – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
A discussion on which factors to consider when putting a price on any blog.
- 7 Steps to a Profitable Blog Exit Strategy – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
The beauty of preparing for exit is that once it focuses you to develop a business model that is efficient, has optimal monetization and is capable of running without you being involved in day-to-day decisions.
While preparing for your exit, you’ll also have built a hands-off, self-reliant, stable and automated business.
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- A better structure for blog networks – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
One thing strikes me every time I look at a network: There is room for much improvement in structure.
- Do you have what it takes to be a Blog Overlord? – Andy HagansTakeaway:
Are you good at this stuff, but just don’t have the will to write every day for the next year? Then maybe you need to skip the blogging itself — perhaps you’re cut out to be a blog overlord.
- Time for Team Blogging – Chris GarrettTakeaway:
This says to me that as professional blogging matures there will be more and more team blogs. Blogs will become more akin to online magazines than online diaries. Note I say “team blogs” rather than “multi-author” blogs. While these blogs might well have multiple authors, the distinction I make is there will be essential team members who do not post.
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- Optimal Meta Description Tag Code for WordPress – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
Meta descriptions are important for page differentiation and improving CTR from SERPs. Here’s how to get them right in WordPress.
- Optimal Title Tag Code for WordPress – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
HTML title tags are, arguably, the single most important SEO ranking factor. Here’s how to get them right in WordPress.
- 10 Things You Must Know About WordPress Themes – Nathan RiceTakeaway:
Looking back at the code of my first attempt at a WordPress theme, I can easily see that without a proper understanding of WordPress theme template files and template tags, it can be a frustrating project to undertake. And although I am a HUGE fan of learning as you go, I wanted to share a few secrets that might save you a headache or two along the way.
- What Makes A WordPress Theme Great – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
Designing a general-purpose theme is hard than one focused towards a specific audience. It’s easier to plan the layout of a theme for a photoblog or a car blog than it is to plan the layout of a theme that could be used in a thousand different ways. You have to allow for the design to be immensely flexible and at the same time include the basic elements that would be needed by and be useful to everyone who takes your theme for a spin.
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- Why Bloggers Don’t Need SEO – Nick WilsonTakeaway:
For the most part, bloggers just shouldn’t be worrying about SEO.
That doesn’t mean that your pages shouldn’t be Search engine friendly, or that you shouldn’t use good anchor-text when linking out. It doesn’t mean that actively promoting your blog to other blogs in your topic area isn’t a good idea. What it does mean, is that bloggers shouldn’t be worrying about shitty directory listings, useless reciprocal link schemes or any of these “snake oil” ranking recipes.
- Why Bloggers Need SEO – Ahmed BilalTakeaway:
Bloggers need SEO because it offers a single system for managing your blog’s marketing. It’s a set of guidelines and tools that will push to be a better marketer, a better writer and a better webmaster.
- The Only SEO Graph That Matters – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
I thought I’d try to refocus all the SEOs out there on the only thing that truly matters in SEO: search referral growth. It’s plain and simple. The ultimate goal of SEO should be to increase search referrals. This is often lost on those who focus their SEO efforts completely on building PageRank.
- 7 Quick Observations About Linkage – Ryan CaldwellTakeaway:
A recipe for quick linkbuilding success (in terms of SERPS not PageRank) consists of getting about 10 main page links (within fresh content…not old, retrofitted content), 20 deep-links, and participating in the comments section of 5-10 thematically related blogs.
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Last updated: Sunday 2nd September 2007
3 Steps For Writing Good Blog Posts
Thord (he of Swedish descent and bearing a reputation for ‘crack’ design skills) writes about the two most important skills a blogger can have.
#2 is knowing how to blow your own horn (‘toot’ is so politically correct it gives me a shiver). Thord discusses it in some detail, and I like this part best:
Some of us have some kind of roadblock built in that stops us from promoting ourselves. Get over it. Or get run over.
The #1 skill Thord talks about is knowing how to write good blog posts. Seeing as how T left the door open there, here’s my two (or three) cents on how one may go about writing ‘good’ blog posts.
Like all good 3 step lists, this one is a model of simplicity:
- Define what ‘good’ is – use concrete measurements instead of an arbitrary feel-good factor
- Learn how to achieve the results defined above
- Execute (and then some).
If it was as easy as writing it above, no blog consultant would have a job. As things stand, there’s a lot more to it under the surface although as I’ve discussed below, once you internalise this formula (or you start writing for a blog that gets tons of traffic) it becomes effortless.
So let’s get started with step 1 – defining what a ‘good’ blog post is.
Step 1: Set Standards for ‘Good’ Blog Posts
‘Good’ is an arbitrary, unclear objective. One man’s ‘good’ is another man’s masterpiece, while the rest of the population may consider it absolutely crap. You need a precise measurement of what a good blog post is, and for this you will need to know your blog’s key objectives (and your role in achieving them).
Different blogs measure success in different ways. An established celeb gossip blogger would judge success in terms of sheer traffic / long-term search rankings a post brings. A budding car blogger could measure success in terms of the links a post gets. Someone writing on a sports blog geared towards building a strong community could measure success in terms of the # of comments each article generates.
And while we’re at it, there’s also a difference in scale – Seth Godin receives a minimum of 10-20 links for each post that he writes. His baseline for a ‘good’ post would be far higher than for the owner of a newly-launched blog who’d consider 5 links to be a home run.
If you own your blog, then you’re likely to have several different objectives that define success. Comments, Traffic / Pageviews, Links, RSS Subscriptions and Search Rankings are the most common, but you may have something different based on your specific situation. It’s a good thing to have different objectives – it gives you space to write different types of posts and be successful as opposed to doing the same thing over and over again.
If you are blogging for hire / guest blogging, you will most likely have a brief or some instructions on what the blog owner wants from you (you should ask if you’re not told). For example, for one of my blogs I tell my writers that they have to meet one of 3 objectives with each post – get X number of comments, Y amount of traffic or Z number of links.
Set out your stall in terms of the objectives you want to reach, and then attach concrete values on them. You can get a good idea for what values to use if you look at your blog’s recent history and pick out the most successful posts (according to different objectives). For a new blog, you’ll probably have to set a conservative number and then readjust as you go along.
Step 2: Learn How To Achieve Each Objective
Do you know how to get more comments to your posts? Do you know how to write posts that attract links?
This step is perhaps the easiest of all 3. There is tons and TONS of blogging advice on the Internet (the fastest way to get started is to head over to the Best of Performancing page), it’s only a matter of finding the right information and using it.
Want more RSS subscribers? Got them here and here. Want better search engine rankings? Got that too.
For any objective that you set yourself in Step 1, you’re likely to find quality, executable advice for achieving that objective on the Internet. And here’s an open offer – if you don’t find it on the Best of Performancing page or by searching through Google, drop a line in the comments and I’ll hunt it down (or write it up) for you.
Step 3: Follow the Formula
In Step 1, you defined your goals. In Step 2, you figured out how to get there. Now all you have to do is connect the dots. It’s as easy as it sounds, but there are a few things you should be aware of at the start:
- A good blog post is mediocre on a poor blog, fabulous on a good blog. Learn how to build a kick-ass blog.
- You’ll probably need to revise the targets set in Step 1 soon after starting on this path. That’s ok, don’t fret – if you’re going in the right direction, you’ll only be revising them upwards.
- Being a good blogger means building a skill-set. Build your skills, and you’ll have less difficulty in writing good blog posts.
- You’ll probably fail miserably in the beginning, or hit a home run and then tank. Whenever you hit your first ‘valley’, don’t give up – that valley is designed by nature to weed out 90% of the ‘cant-hack-it’ folks from the mix. Once you’re able to push through and rise again, you’ll not only be a better blogger but you’ll also be better than most (90%+) other bloggers out there.
- Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to follow the rules. In this case, following the formula works for a reason. Innovate if you have room for error, play it safe when you don’t (unless you’re feeling lucky )
So there you have it. Three simple steps to write ‘good’ blog posts. These require some work at the start but once you’ve internalised Step 2 (through practice, experience, research and judicious use of bookmarks), it’s simply a matter of picking a target and applying the formula.
At this stage, you might say:
“Ok, so I know how to do all this, but what do I write about?”
Well, I’ve got you covered there as well.
What Do I Write About?
Here are a list of posts that I feel can solve any and all of your blogger’s block problems. Seriously.
- 10 Killer Post Ideas
- Finding and Writing Fresh Blog Content
- Blog Pulling Power – Create Flagship Content
- How to Beat the Blank Page of Doom
- How to Turn Link Posts into Linkbait
- 11 Reasons to Write When You’ve Misplaced Your Passion
- 3 Ways to Engineer Good Content
- 12 Tips for Battling Blogger’s Block
- 100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write
And since we’re talking about setting objectives and meeting them, I’d appreciate it if you guys could bookmark this post in del.icio.us or give it a good Stumble. Thank you.
3 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Networking Skills
Promoting websites online, just like in the offline world, is about finding the right people with the right resources and having them help you get the word out. By yourself, you are nowhere near as effective as when you have a network of contacts and friends working together to help you promote your new venture.
How do we do this? There are three key steps:
- Building the network
- Making the right contacts
- Leveraging the network
This article discusses the above topics and shows you how to build a network of contacts you can use to get more traffic to your website. That’s not the only purpose of such a network – you can use a network in various ways – community intelligence, resource pool, business opportunities, and much more.
In short, if you want to learn how to build your social network of contacts, this article is for you. Read on…
The Big Networking Secret: It’s Easy
Now before we get to the list (I don’t mind if you scroll down, but this next bit sets the foundation for it), let me explain what I mean by “it’s easy“: using your personal social network to promote your website is quite difficult if you don’t have many contacts / the right contacts – saying that social networking doesn’t work because you don’t have influential people on your list is a cop-out. Similarly, you cannot expect to build a list of A-list contacts overnight – building a network of useful contacts takes time; relationships are cultivated and trust is built through reciprocal actions over time.
So what’s easy about it? If you remove the unrealistic expectations and instead focus on the basic principles that can help you build large, influential social networks over time, you’ll find that it’s a relatively simple and straightforward process.
Networking is as easy as making new friends. If you can make new friends, then you can network. But making new friends does take work. So it’s not magic.
At any time, you’ll find successful entrepreneurs using the help of their contacts and friends to launch ventures with brilliant success – there is a method behind this ‘magical’ approach, and you don’t need to buy a $999 course to teach you this method.
The right advice (say, something like this article you’re reading), some common sense (use your own judgment or just ask for help) and concentrated action and commitment will get you more than what an expensive course can teach you.
Alright then – with that out of the way, it’s time to get to the list.
1. Make New Friends By Helping Others
The basis of an effective social network is a steady stream of new contacts – a network doesn’t have any impact unless there are enough people to make a difference.
The habit of making new friends and helping others out without asking for anything upfront is one that takes time to cultivate and your adoption of this habit depends on how you treat others. If you’re naturally outgoing, you’ll find it easier to get in touch with and contact new people. If you don’t have any hangups towards helping others for free, then you’ll be one step ahead when it comes to sowing the seeds of a new relationship.
Find New Friends
This step will stump you but in fact it’s the easiest of them all – simply flock to those places where people of similar interests are hanging out, and make a point to participate in the general discussion. An example of such a place is Performancing, where I and many others have flocked to over the years, gradually become a part of the community and now find new opportunities each day.
The leading blogs in your niche are a good way to get started. Forums (for networking) are a personal favourite because of the amazing returns although they require more commitment and personal involvement to make it work.
Also, remember that in such new communities you’ll find avenues towards other communities as well – it pays to pick and choose those communities where you can find the right balance between value, investment and fun (it doesn’t HAVE to be a chore, you know).
Help Others
Make it a point to provide helpful information / advice / support to at least one person each day. This is a major stumbling block for people because of the personal investment this requires but once you realise multiplier effect that’s attached to each ‘effort’ of yours, you’ll be surprised at why more people aren’t doing this.
Just help others. Quite often you’ll hear people voicing their problems / concerns in public forums / communities that you’ll be frequenting – if it takes a few minutes of your time to point them in the right direction, do it right there and then.
Invest in others. As they grow and build up their resources and their own networks, your own network will be growing as well thanks to their efforts.
It’s also worth pointing out that extra attention (bordering on stalking / invasion of personal privacy) will freak people out, so if you just *love* to help people, you might want to tone things down a bit.
2. Selective Networking: Kiss Ass
Ryan explains this far better than I can in his article, so let’s listen to what he has to say:
I call it selective (back)networking and here’s the idea: the internet is just like any other human network. There are hierarchies of authority. If you want to be successful, you need to move up the hierarchy.
…
The key to building a (back)network is to intentionally and selectively seek out people who 1) have power and leverage 2) are smart and capable and 3) are fair in their online relationships. By building up a social “backbone” of good friends in high-places, you’ll be able to execute your plans a lot faster, realize profit a lot quicker, and avoid burn-out a lot easier (ten shoulders are better than one).
“But Ryan Caldwell, you’re already successful. What about those of us who are just getting started?”
Suck up and kiss ass.
That’s it. That’s how you get into my good graces. Start doing me favors and I’ll send some love your way. Ask me to do you a favor before you’ve proven your worthiness to me, and I’ll ignore you. Completely and utterly ignore you. But if you’ve got something to offer me, something that I truly benefit from…then you’ve got a friend.
This isn’t easy advice to follow – especially if you’ve skipped step 1, where you adopt the mindset of making new friends and helping people. On the other hand, once you realise the value that networking brings to you, the natural progression is to go after the right contacts.
Identify Powerful Contacts
Why do you think people bend over backwards when it comes to internet celebrities like John Chow and Matt Cutts? These people have an influential, authoritative voice in the blogosphere. When they talk, people listen. When they point, people follow.
Your end game is to have people like these on your side, so that they point to you and people (and traffic and revenue) start flowing in your direction.
Identify the powerful contacts in your niche (and in niches related to it) – then figure out how to get in their good books.
Make Yourself Valuable First
As Ryan says, you have to prove your own value to people who are vastly more influential than you – this translates into building your own online worth by playing with the smaller fish first. It’s a step-by-step process – you won’t shoot for Darren Rowse if you can’t get into Deb‘s good books, so work your way up the ladder by gathering momentum.
Chris Garrett’s excellent article on ‘Positioning‘ is a good intro into how to make yourself and your website more valuable.
3. Learn and Practice the Art of Following Up
It’s one of those things that you learn from experience, although recently a friend (and new influential contact) Steve Amoia drove this point home when we were talking about building a network of contacts in the footballing world.
The basic idea is this: every time you ask your network (or a contact) for their help, follow up by thanking them for their input, giving them as much credit as possible and by reciprocating the favor when asked for. If you want to by cynical about it, then consider that people don’t mind helping as long as they see a benefit in it – whether it’s the other person stoking their ego or a reciprocation of that favor or even a monetary benefit.
Learn what your contacts value and when following up, reciprocate in a way that they will appreciate the most.
And to borrow from Nick’s excellent “increase search engine traffic” article:
Be generous – if you respect your network, and work hard to be part of the community surrounding your topic, the rewards can really pay off — never abuse it, it tends to backfire in all kinds of horrible ways.
Wrapping Up
Online marketing is about people and long-term results, not about algorithms or short-term gains. If you start investing in your social network now, you’ll reap the benefits many times over in the future.
Have You Weaned Your Blog From AdSense Yet?
Chris, along with many other bloggers, are strongly against AdSense. To be fair to Google (and staying away from some silly reasons to hate AdSense), it’s not so much AdSense that’s a problem rather than the way you need to use it to get maximum revenue from it.
If you, like Chris, do not want to turn your blog into an ad clicking machine, then you’ve probably explored alternatives to Google AdSense. At this point, 2 things happen to 99% of the people looking for alternatives to AdSense:
One, they find out that the alternatives don’t pay as much in their niche.
Two, they realise that the alternatives are not as easy to implement – whether because of more work required on your part (affiliate / own products) or because of ad network requirements (minimum monthly pageviews, etc).
While Google AdSense has been a good friend to me on Soccerlens, In the last few months I’ve made a move away from it. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- CPM ad deals push you to aiming for pageviews / new visitors – which, in some niches, means that people spam news aggregators and social media sites (not to mention search engines) in an effort to build their pageviews count. In the football niche, it’s NewsNow that bears the brunt of this spam.
In my view, this just replaces the need to grab clicks with the need to boost your pageviews – in both cases, there is space for abuse.
- Affiliate products work best on a product-oriented blog – it is best to setup a separate blog for affiliate products if your main interest in news or how-to stuff.
- Paid reviews and text links are a good, short-term way for increasing revenue, but they can hurt you in Google. Once again, going after this stream of revenue forces you to run after Page Rank, which is a whole different can of worms.
Sometimes people sell reviews / links based on their blog’s search rankings – once again, this *may* cause problems if not done discreetly.
- Consulting is an excellent way to make money off your blog (directly / indirectly), although it takes time to build up your reputation.
Tip: If you’re running a successful niche blog, you can offer consulting in that niche to other businesses looking to set up websites / blogs.
Currently Soccerlens has 5-6 different income streams, I’ll list them here in order of revenue:
1) Google AdSense
2) YardBarker (CPM-based sports ad network)
3) Direct Ads
4) Affiliate Programs
5) Vibrant Media
6) Adconion
AdSense, YardBarker and direct ads bring in 90% of the site’s income, and bring in roughly the same amount of money each.
If I had been relying on just one ad network, I would have been earning roughly 1/3rd of what I’m earning now. So, lesson #1, diversify your income.
Also, I spend only a couple of hours a day on the site at this point, partially because I’ve outsourced a lot of work and also because of the work I’ve put in building search rankings and courting guest bloggers in the last 18 months or so.
If I was using just one income stream, be it direct ads, a CPM network or AdSense, I’d have to put a lot more time / money into the site to make the same amount of money. For example, I’d need 3 times my current monthly pageviews to earn the same via CPM ads.
Soccerlens is not AdSense-free, but neither is it living solely off AdSense. Through diversification, I’ve not only made more money from the site but I’ve also managed to reduce the time spent working on the site.
So, have you weaned you blog from AdSense yet? What alternatives are you using, and what lessons have you learned?
Blog Networking Plugin for WordPress
The BlogNetworking plugin combines two simple but necessary components of any blog network: the ability to automatically create a blogroll in the sidebar and to show the latest headlines from across the blog network.
You can see the BlogNetworking plugin live in action at the bottom of the Soccerlens.com sidebar (under ‘Network Headlines’).
The plugin uses a central feed of network sites to pull headlines and display them on your site. The easiest way to do this is to use the blogroll opml of any one site in your network (http://yourblog.com/wp-links-opml.php) ideally the network hub (remember to add the RSS feed link for each site in the blogroll).
There’s a lot that can be done with this plugin, and I’d be interested in hearing your suggestions for improving it.
Much thanks to Damian for putting this plugin together (and Chris for the inspiration) – you can catch the installation instructions on his blog here.
10 Networking Tips For Non-US Bloggers
As a blogger residing in a third world country, networking opportunities are limited for me. Logistical problems mean that it is bloody hard to hop over to the US for conferences – and in many cases, us non-US bloggers are at a disadvantage in terms of real networking opportunities.
However, if you’re a non-US blogger (or a non-US/UK blogger), there are several other networking opportunities available for you. Let’s start with the easiest, managing online networking.
It goes without saying that for maximum success, you need to set goals, figure out the best way to achieve them and then get busy moving from point A to point B. It’s the same with networking.
A. Online Networking
Harness the power of email, instant messaging, forums, blogging, Skype, LinkedIn and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Embrace the online medium and learn how everything works and how you can use it to your benefit.
Some tips:
1. Write Effective Emails
There’s great advice on this subject by Merlin Mann, Guy Kawasaki and the Seton Hill University.
While you should practice the Tim Ferriss formula for dealing with email, it also helps that when you actually do read and reply to your email you do it in a manner that gleans maximum results AND doesn’t require you to go back and forth like you would in an informal IM session.
2. Treat IM conversations as ‘Deadline’ Meetings
Set an agenda before you start, deal with all issues and come out with a plan of action by the end of the conversation. In fact, you should adopt this mindset for every business-related discussion you have, not just IMs.
Like I’ve said earlier, there are times when IM becomes a necessity. However in 99% of the cases, IM is a means to an end. When you’re networking, you have limited time and more importantly you want to deliver value, not just waste the other person’s time.
There is one exception – beyond initial contact, there is always a time when you need to build a good rapport with your contacts, and sometimes the least time-consuming method to do so is IM (I can hold 6 conversations on IM at the same time, I can’t do that on the phone).
3. Master Online Social Networks
The rewards are amazing (and I’m not talking about being a Digg power user). The contacts and relationships you build by participating in forums and social networks are invaluable plus the sheer speed of the social web makes it possible for you to find out about breaking news in real time (if your work depends on being first with the news or acting quickly on new information, this is again critical).
4. Online is NOT Everything
Despite our reliance on the Internet, nothing beats a face-to-face meet or a talk on the phone in terms of building trust. I remember how I had introduced myself to Liz at the beginning and she refused to help me until we’d talked and she could confirm that I was a real person (I think the charming voice helped as well ).
The point is, contact and relationship building is incomplete without the human element. In the absence of a physical meeting, use Skype or Google Talk to talk to your contacts and build strong relationships.
B. Develop A Local Network
Living online is a major obstacle if you want to build a network of business contacts in the real world where you live. Most people will still prefer doing business face-to-face if they can make it happen, and that leaves you with no excuse to not pursue building a local network of contacts in your city / country.
Some suggestions:
5. Use Online Networks To Find Local Contacts
I’ve used my blogging, forums and LinkedIn to attract local business and contacts, and I wasn’t even trying to do that at the time.
Use LinkedIn, Facebook, the blogging interweb and forums (as well as any / all contacts you have) to discover local contacts. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.
6. Meet Recruiters
Recently I had the opportunity to meet a local recruiter. Usually I’d shun such contacts at first thought, because the last thing on my mind is to work for a ‘boss’. However, recruiting companies also offer you the chance to build your assets – that is, acquire access to a resource pool that you can later use as leverage for your own projects or any outsourcing project that you happen to snag as a consultant.
Yesterday I was talking to an entrepreneur who wants to take over the world (not literally) and he asked me if I knew any good programmers – I told him I had access to a recruiting company and his eyes lit up (I’m assuming, of course, since he was sitting in the US).
Don’t pass up opportunities to build your assets. Not only will they help you in your projects in the future but they will also make you more valuable as a contact, which will eventually mean that people will come to you instead of the other way around.
7. Meet Local Reps
Have you met folks working for Google in your country? I suggest you seek them out and do so at the first opportunity. While the setup is different depending on which country you’re living in, chances are that you’ll be able to network with people from Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / etc etc at local conferences, seminars and trade shows.
From my (very limited) experience, local reps are almost always evangelists and as a result have a vast array of contacts and opportunities themselves. Get in, make yourself useful and nurture the relationship.
C. The Art of Successful Networking
For all the tips and advice, the important bits are foundational and have little to do with networking itself – I’m not here to preach how you should conduct yourself, on the other hand these traits will amplify your networking efforts.
8. Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Have you ever met a person who talks a big game but at the end of the day they rarely have anything to show for it? Would you recommend such a person as a business contact to your network?
Talking a good game is important, but it’s even more important to have the track record to back you up.
9. Be Open and Available
The Internet is a blessing and a curse – it gives us instant access to everything but it also makes us anonymous (some might say that’s a blessing in disguise). It also hits your social life quite hard, so you’ll have to make an extra effort to get your butt out of your chair and move out of your house to meet people.
When it comes to networking, especially when you’re starting out, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you and be ready to meet / talk to new people whenever the opportunity arises. It’s more of a mindset than a habit.
Of course, there’s the obvious exception – if you’re as busy as Matt Cutts or Brad Callen and you’re getting more than 5 emails a minute, you probably need several filters (read: assistants) in between you and people wanting to talk to you (with the odd IM / separate email account for ‘urgent / private’ stuff).
10. Understand How People Tick
You’re in the peoples’ business, so you need to know how people think, act and react and modify your approach accordingly. This is one of those cases where reading that self-help stuff works (make friends, influence people and all that). Learn it, practice it and use this knowledge to your advantage.
So there you have it – solid, actionable advice to improve your networking even if you can’t attend those cool conferences that all the big boys seem to be going to. If you’re looking for a shortcut, here’s the best bet (even better than attending local meets, which was so obvious that I refuse to mention it in the 10 points above): hitch a ride as a consultant with a local firm who will send you to such a conference. Alternatively, sign up as a consultant / contractor to a US-based firm who would (cross your fingers) eventually call you to a meet / training seminar / etc.
What is your #1 networking tip?
