How to Find People to Follow on Twitter

We’ve all heard of how awesome Twitter is for social media marketing, but you may not know how to get started. One of the most important and basic things for Twitter marketing is finding people to follow.

Here are a couple ways to do that, so you can start networking with active people in your industry.

1. Search Twellow.

With the popularity of Twitter, Twitter profile directories have started popping up. Twellow is my favorite one. It’s pretty easy to use. Just enter the name of your niche in the search box and you’ll get a list of profiles that are interested in your niche. The profiles will be ordered by followers so you can easily follow the most popular ones.

2. Search Twitter itself.

You can use Twitter’s search function to see which people are currently talking about your industry. Simply search for the name of your industry or other related keywords. Then, check out the profiles and see how often they actually tweet about your niche. The ones that are big fans of your industry are great candidates to follow.

3. Check out bloggers.

Check the active blogs in your niche to see if they have a Twitter feed or a link to a Twitter account. Many bloggers have become active on Twitter, so this method is an easy way to find people to follow.

4. Find out who other people follow.

Once you’ve found some quality Twitter profiles, browse through their friends and see who they follow. I’ve found great people through this technique. Oftentimes, there are quality Twitterers that are under the radar because they don’t follow a lot of people. However, you can find out about them with this technique since many people usually follow them.

If someone follows a lot of people and you don’t want to wade through all their friends, you can ask them for the top 10 people they like to follow.

Over to You

How have you found people to follow on Twitter?

This is a guest post from TwitQA.com, a twitter tool where you can ask and answer questions.

Jump Start Your Traffic With Paid Ads

Most of the talk about blog advertising seems to be from the side of seller. But have you ever thought of the other side? Have you thought of buying advertising to promote your blog?

If you understand the value of time, then buying advertising may not be such a bad idea.

Let’s face it. To increase your traffic especially for new bloggers, you need to spend a lot of time and effort. But if you buy advertising strategically, you could save yourself some time. You could then use that time to focus on creating quality content instead of traffic building.

Here are two common ways to drive traffic through paid advertising.

1. AdWords

Let’s do some clarifying. AdSense is for the publisher while AdWords is for the advertiser.

With AdWords, you can target certain keywords and have your ad show up on Google’s search engine.

However, did you know that you can target specific sites? Let’s say you find a blog that totally relates to your blog. You’re pretty sure the readers would also like your blog. If that blog is running AdSense, you should start an AdWords campaign on that blog.

2. Blog Ad Networks

Blogs are great distribution points for promoting your site. Ad networks like PerformancingAds and Blogads are great places to find blogs for your ads. Yes, you should email bloggers directly, but the advantage of buying ads is that you keep your blog in front of readers for a longer period of time.

For example, a blogger may write a post about your blog. However, after some time, that post will leave the front page. On the other hand, you can buy an ad on the front page and above the fold. This ad will expose your blog to a higher number of readers than just one blog post.

Don’t Just Advertise Your Front Page

You might get more bang for your buck if you advertise specific pages on your blog.

Of course, you can point to your product page if you have a product.

Also, try advertising your best content. Many people will not subscribe to a blog unless they read exceptional content. Just remember to put a call to action for them to subscribe at the end of the content.

If you’re building an email list, you can advertise a free offer (like an ebook) in exchange for their email address. Old school internet marketers have been using this technique for years to build their big email lists.

Feedback

Have you ever bought advertising? How did it work out for you?

How to Increase Your Words Per Hour Without Sacrificing Quality

Here is my favorite method for increasing your writing speed without sacrificing quality. In fact, this method may actually help you create higher quality, more organized, better flowing posts.

Many bloggers don’t realize writing is a two step process.

1. Creating
2. Editing

Both are needed to create a quality piece of content. However, if you try to do both at the same time, you’ll get bogged down. Your mind is less efficient when it’s multitasking.

If you think about it, creating and editing are quite different tasks.

The creating process is where you come up with raw ideas. This often happens in the weirdest moments. You could be eating, driving, or taking a shower when you think of a blog post you think your audience would love.

In this step, the most important thing to aim for is quantity not quality. All the ideas you think of may not be that great. If you’ve ever thought of a good idea and then started writing and realized it wasn’t so good, you know what I’m talking about. Therefore, come up with a lot of ideas for your post before moving on.

You’ll evaluate and organize your ideas during the editing stage. For now, you just want a lot of raw content to work with. The more content, the better.

The editing process is where you prune, organize, and reword your ideas to create a quality post.

In this step, delete ideas that don’t support your main point. Prune sentences with unnecessary words. Rephrase unclear sentences. Spell and grammar check. Add other ideas as they come to mind. And organize the post so it flows logically.

Practical Ways of Separating the Two Steps

Write a sh**ty first draft. Here’s mine for this blog post. Read this classic essay by Anne Lamott. She destroys the myth that world class writers create perfect first drafts. She writes:

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really sh**ty first drafts.

Separate yourself into two identities, one is the idea generator and one is the editor. Every time you feel like editing during the creating step, tell the editor not to interrupt the idea generator until he’s finished generating ideas.

Don’t hit the backspace or delete key until you write at least 400 words.

Close your eyes or cover the screen while you type. It’s hard to edit when you can’t see the words

Write your blog post in list format. It doesn’t even need to have complete sentences. Just a list. Once you’ve got a lot of list items, then start fleshing out complete sentences and editing.

Brainstorm. Get a pen and paper and write down anything that comes to mind about your post – phrases, sentences, bullet points. Fill at least half the page before editing.

Why This Method Works

As with many things, the most important thing is to get started.

By putting the editing process off until you have some raw content, you force yourself to take that small step of writing the first couple of words. You may not even use those words but those words will give you momentum to write more words. And then, those words lead to more words.

Soon, you’re in the zone and the words are flowing more naturally. Most importantly, you’ll have enough content to make the editing step worthwhile.

Want To Add Life To Your Blog? Try Networking and Marketing Offline

A couple weeks ago, on a whim, I went to my local comic book store to play in a tournament. The blog I’m trying to build up is a gaming blog about a collectible card game. I thought it might be a good idea to meet people in my niche face to face.

The card game can be played online. I usually play online to save gas and time. However, I gained a lot from going to that tournament. Here are some benefits that I experienced from doing offline networking and marketing.

I discovered fresh topics to write about.

During the tournament, people conversed. Since I was new, I went there mostly to listen. As I listened to the conversations, I heard many topics being discussed. Many of these topics were things I had not thought about. I took a couple mental notes, which I’ll use as the basis of future blog posts.

I realized the potential of future blog posts.

I had two things I wanted to write about before I came to the tournament. Yet I wondered if my audience would be interested in them.

During lulls in the tournament, I brought up both topics. Based on the players’ reactions, I could tell that the first topic was not something they were interested in. However, the second topic generated a bunch of questions and they wanted to learn more about it.

Based on this information, I can tell the first topic probably won’t generate much traffic and interest if I write about it. However, the second topic should be a hit.

I made new friends and some turned into readers.

I met some great people including people that live closer to my place. We exchanged numbers, instant messaging info, and email addresses. I emailed them about my blog and some of them have started reading it. I’ve setup an appointment to practice with one of them. After our practice sessions, I have more to write about on my blog. I even sold cards to some of my new friends.

I had a lot of fun.

If you’re anything like many bloggers, you started blogging in your chosen niche because you love your niche. And nothing really beats the personal, face to face interaction with other people who also love your niche.

As humans, we are social creatures. Sure, we want to earn money through the internet. But nothing adds enjoyment to our experience as real life conversation with other people. It’s why people go to conventions and conferences on their own dime. Yes, they go to learn information, but most convention goers will tell you that the most enjoyable parts were networking and meeting other people.

Feedback

Have you ever tried networking and marketing offline? How was your experience?

Stay Focused on Your Blogging To Do List With NowDoThis.com

I recently ran across this simple but effective web program: NowDoThis.com (found via Zen Habits). It’s increased my productivity by helping me stay focused on my to do list tasks.

To use this program, follow these steps:

Click “edit list”.

Enter your to do list with the most important activities on top.

Click “save”.

Your top to do list item will show up.

Start working on it. Once you’ve finished it, click “done” and then the next item will show up.

Once you finish the to do list, you’ll get the reward of seeing the “All done” screen

Why This Web App Works

The reason I like this web app is it only shows you one thing on your to do list. This helps you stay focused until you complete that task.

NowDoThis goes through your to do list in a certain order. This forces you to figure out which activities are the most important. You can also look at your activities in terms of return on investment, or ROI. (Read here and here for a discussion on ROI of different blogging activities.)

Part of my problem with to do lists is oftentimes I had a lot of things on my list. Glancing at the list would be intimidating. I would think “Wow, I have a lot of stuff to do. How will I finish it all?” But the important thing with productivity is just gettiing started. NowDoThis helps me get started without worrying about the other tasks on the list.

By the way, if you’re like me and you open a lot of tabs while browsing the web, I would keep NowDoThis in a separate window by itself without other tabs. This technique helps me stay focused. When I didn’t keep NowDoThis in a separate window, I would often forget about the task at hand. I would get distracted by all the tabs I had opened.

If you want to increase your productivity when you’re on the computer, give this program a try. Also, please leave a comment and let me know how it works out for you.

Authority Blog vs. Hub Blog

In this post, I’m using the terms “authority blog” and “hub blog” in this manner:

Authority blog

• Filled with conceptually unique content
• Posts are longer than the average blog post
• Doesn’t link out very often
• More likely to link internally than to other blogs
• Posting frequency is not as important as post quality

Hub blog

• Multiple, short daily posts
• Links out liberally
• Most posts are talking about content on another website
• Posting quality takes a backseat to posting frequency

Or as SEO Book says:

An authority is a site that is linked to by many sites and pages covering that topic. A hub links to many relevant topical sites. It is said that a good authority has links from many good hubs, and good hubs link to many good authorities. (page 203)

This discussion is not to pit both blogs against each other. Both types of blogs work well. You have authority blogs like Zen Habits, which has over 60,000 RSS subscribers. And then you have hub blogs like Gizmodo, which is in the Alexa top 1,000.

Also, I realize that many blogs are hybrids. They have authority blog elements as well as hub blog elements. Hybrid blogs can definitely have success too. My goal in writing this is to teach you about these type of blogs so that you can structure your blog in the best way possible.

Pros and Cons of Authority Blogs

Pros:

Usually the content on authority blogs is more linkworthy than the content on hub blogs. Because the content is more in-depth, you can build your brand quickly. Check out Chris Pearson’s: How Can 10 Simple Articles Change Your Life? (via)

Cons:

However, it is harder to produce longer pieces of conceptually new content. You really have to know your niche and have a passion for it to continue in the long term. And for many niches, you have to be an expert to gain credibility and trust. Also, you’re writing less posts than hub blogs so you won’t have as much search engine fodder, or indexed pages on the search engines.

Pros and Cons of Hub Blogs

Pros:

Many bloggers start off their blogs as hub blogs because it’s relatively easy to create the content. They love their niche and can easily find stuff to link to and talk about. Because your posts are shorter, you can create more of them, which gives you a lot of pages for the search engines to index.

Because you link out a lot, your blog can be the one-stop destination for people who don’t have time to check out all the authority blogs in your niche. As you build your hub blog’s brand, you may get breaking news first because companies respect your coverage of the niche.

Cons:

However, your content won’t be as linkworthy as authority blogs. Oftentimes, it takes time to build your brand as a hub blogger because your posts are not as in-depth.

Consider the Niche

In many saturated niches, there are many hub blogs. This makes it harder for a hub blog to gain traction because of all the competition. However, in other niches, there are many authority blogs, but not many hub blogs. This often happens because authority blogs and commercial sites don’t like to link to each other.

If you setup a hub blog, you can become a top destination site for your niche because the sites in your space are not linking out. Every niche can definitely use a couple good hub blogs.

Hub blogs work better in niches that experience a lot of change and therefore have a lot of news. For example, the entertainment and tech niche is especially ripe for good hub blogs. To avoid all the competition, you should focus on a sub niche like movies or mobile products.

Authority blogs work in any niche but for some niches, you have to be an expert. A classic example are the make money online bloggers who haven’t made money online. These guys won’t succeed. Gaining expert status can be a huge barrier to entry because it can take some time to become an expert.

Consider Your Strengths

Do you see yourself more as a reporter or writer?

Do you like writing longer pieces of content or short blog posts?

Are you good a finding cool stuff in your niche (including under the radar but quality blogs)?

Are you good at covering the news in your niche in a timely manner?

Are you an expert in anything?

Feedback

How would you categorize your blog? More of an authority blog or a hub blog? Why did you choose that format?

Also, what kind of blogs do you follow?

Screencast: Here is an Easy 4 Step Formula to Create Linkworthy Content

Here is a video about creating linkworthy content. Check out the whole post to get the links and notes of the video.

[If you're using an RSS reader, please click on the permalink to see the video.]

Notes:

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to create linkworthy content.

1) Create a magnetic headline.

I got the phrase “magnetic headline” from Brian Clark at Copyblogger.

Sample headline templates
22 World Class Headline Templates

I aggregated the above headline templates from three of Brian’s posts.

For more information about writing magnetic headlines, check out this page: How to Write Magnetic Headlines.

2) Write something longer than the average blog post.

The average blog post is around 200-500 words.

Try to aim for 1000 words. This shows your commitment to be comprehensive about a topic.

1300 words
50 Ways to Increase Your Productivity

You can write less words if you have a lot of pictures and/or videos.

800 words
7 Funniest Green LOLCats

If you’re really ambitious, create a list of 101 things.

3000 words!
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website

The length of your content makes it stand out from the average 200-500 word blog post.

3) Add non-text elements like images and videos.

Images and a graph
Why Building One Site is Better Than Building Multiple Sites

Videos and images
Top 7 Reasons to Watch Heroes Season 2

Another one with videos and images
Top 10 Most Dangerous Aircraft Landings in the World

4) Format your content in an easy-to-digest manner.

• Easy to read
• List format
• Bullet or numbered points
• Images and video to break up the text
• Short paragraphs

My sister’s post
School Style for the Professional: Create a Teacher Wardrobe You Can be Proud of with 3 Timeless Looks

One of the best formatted posts I’ve seen in awhile
21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky

PerfCast: How to Choose a Social Media Site That Fits Your Blog

I just recorded a podcast about choosing a social media site to participate on.

Check it out. It’s complete with notes.

I would love your feedback on social media sites that have worked or not worked for you. I think this will help others choose the right social media sites for their blogs.

Does Your Marketing Workflow Contain High ROI Activities?

Yesterday I wrote about the ROI of some content creation activities. Make sure to check out the comment section on that post for a discussion on how to measure blogging ROI.

Today I’ll go over some marketing activities.

Blog commenting (medium ROI)

Blog commenting is the bread and butter marketing method for many bloggers. Your ROI goes up if you’re one of the first commenters and you comment on a popular blog. Also, blogs without the nofollow tag increase your ROI.

It works well because you get traffic to your site and you also get on a blogger’s radar. If you comment enough, they may check out your site and comment back or even give you a link. Just remember to add value in your comments instead of only writing, “Great post. Thanks!”

However, don’t expect too much from blog commenting unless you do it consistently for a long period of time. Many bloggers use this method so your ROI is diminished because of the competition.

Social voting marketing (low to high)

Marketing on social voting sites like Digg and StumbleUpon is either a hit or miss for many bloggers. Here are a couple questions you need to ask before spending a lot of time on these sites.

Does your target audience hang out at the social voting site you’re using?

If not, it’s probably not worth it to use the social voting site. I have a blog that targets the collectible card game, Magic the Gathering. This game is pretty popular worldwide. However, most of the players don’t know about social voting sites. Therefore, it would not make sense for me to try to market the blog on a social voting site.

Do you have a large enough network to get enough votes so your content will go popular or viral?

Social voting works if you’re willing to commit to the site for a couple of months. This allows you to build a good reputation. That reputation will lead to friends on the site that can vote for your content.

Until you get to that point, unless your content is exceptional, you won’t get much traffic.

Is your monetization model based on page views or conversions?

Unless your monetization model is based on page views, the traffic from social voting sites may not be worth it for the work you have to put in. Social voting traffic is usually lower quality than other types of traffic like search or link referrals. The users from social voting sites have a high bounce rate and don’t usually come back to visit your site. This is a problem for blogs looking to sell stuff or build an email list.

Social voting users are looking for cool, useful, or entertaining stuff. They are not really looking to purchase anything or sign up for an offer.

Here are two links to check out especially if your monetizaton model is based on product or affiliate sales.

• Not All Traffic Is Created Equal
• SEO vs SMO – Traffic Quality Put To The Test

Do you have viral content?

To get the most out of social voting sites, you need to create viral content – content that people will naturally vote on and pass along to their friends.

Asking webmasters directly for links (high)

The reason this method is a high ROI activity is because many bloggers don’t contact webmasters directly. I occasionally do freelance SEO for an internet marketing firm. My client has great content, but so do our competitors. However, our competitors don’t get the links we’re getting. I’m pretty sure it’s because we email webmasters and ask for links while our competitors don’t.

As long as your have linkworthy content, you should definitely do this activity. If you’re not sure how to word your email messages, check out this sample email template.

Also, links from quality sites are the main currency on the web. If you have links, you’ll get direct traffic from the link and indirectly your links will increase your search traffic.

Forum marketing (low to medium)

If your monetization model is purely based on traffic volume, then I would stay away from forums. They just don’t drive enough traffic.

However, if your model is based on conversions, then forum marketing is worth it because forum traffic is high quality traffic. Forum users are invested in your niche. They are willing to join a forum and converse with other niche fans. These users are much more likely to convert to a sale, lead, or email list.

To make forum marketing work, choose a popular, active forum in your niche that allows links on your forum signature.

Your Turn

What marketing activities occupy your blogging workflow?

Is the Blog You’re Focusing on the Most in the Internet Marketing Niche?