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4 Ways to Write Several Blog Posts at Once

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We already know that list posts and bullet points are two techniques that resonate well with blog readers.

But that’s not why I choose to embrace the style.

I lean on these two writing techniques frequently because they allow me, as a writer, to work on multiple articles at once – and that’s a productivity score!

Here are several ways you can write several blog posts concurrently.

– If you get stuck on a post, start writing another post. The key is to not stop. Give each blog a fresh page or document, that way, when it’s time to start writing it again, it’s clear where you left off. Start a log of incomplete blog posts. (I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve started a post, forgotten I did, and ended up rewriting it!)

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Why Bloggers Should Ditch the List Format

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I know what you’re thinking. The list is a mainstay of blog writing. You see it on nearly every blog in existence. Heck, some blogs ONLY use the list format. And to demonstrate how firmly entrenched the list formatted blog entry is in the blogosphere, I myself was about to title this post “5 Reasons Why Bloggers Should Ditch the List Format” before I realized the irony. But if lists are so popular, why would any blogger in their right minds advise against it?

Well for starters, there are millions upon millions of blogs out there, each vying for their own plot of readers. In fact, a Blog Herald article noted recently that the task of counting how many blogs are out there is virtually impossible. [Read more…] about Why Bloggers Should Ditch the List Format

Importance of Credibility in Blogging

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Have you ever thought why you are not able to generate any sales from your affiliate campaigns, whereas the other marketer (blogger) is generating thousands of dollars by promoting same products? How your competitor blogger is able to earn much more with same amount of traffic? Well, these are the common questions that arise in the mind of every blogger who wants to monetize his blog.

The most important thing (quality) one needs to be successful online and sadly which most of the bloggers don’t have is credibility. You must have to establish yourself as a credible source in your niche to be successful, either online or in the real world. And, in the current scenario, when thousands of blogs are being created every day and internet is filled with scams and poor quality products, having credibility in the online world becomes lot more important than ever before. [Read more…] about Importance of Credibility in Blogging

The Right and Wrong Way to Use Social Media Marketing for Blog Growth

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Earlier this week, I wrote a post that explained the differences between social media marketing and content marketing.  Bloggers can use both methods of marketing their blogs in order to drive traffic to them.  In fact, you’re probably already doing social media marketing and content marketing activities.

But what are the right and wrong ways to market your blog on the social web?

My new book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, will be released any day now (you can check out a free bonus chapter here), and one of the things I talk about in the book is the difference between social media marketing success and failure.  There are three primary “rights and wrongs” that you need to be aware of as you venture into the world of the social web to promote your blog, grow your audience, and reach your goals.

I call these “rights and wrongs” the 3 Cs of Social Media Marketing Success or Failure, and the chart below can help you understand what these 3 Cs are all about.

Bloggers, just like businesses, who allow the online conversation to flow and let their audience take control of that conversation and experience that content in their own ways will achieve social media marketing and content marketing success.  However, those bloggers, just like businesses, who try to control the conversation and limit the flow of content across the social web will fail.  I clarify this concept in my book by explaining,

“There’s a fine line between behaving on the social web in ways that help you build bridges and acting in ways that cause those bridges to collapse (taking your messages along with them).”

Only you can decide whether you want to fully leverage the power, reach, and influence of the social web by giving up control and releasing your content into the virtual world.  You’ve already started by publishing a blog.  The rest is the easy part.

If you remember nothing else from my posts here on Performancing.com, remember this:

There is no bigger opportunity for businesses of any size (including bloggers and online publishers) to level the playing field, build their brands, and reach their goals than the social web.  You’re already there.  Let it work for you.

So what are you waiting for?  Get out there and publish amazing, shareworthy content and let the compounding effect of blogging deliver long-term, organic and sustainable growth for your blog!

20 Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog Across the Social Web

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One of the key points I explain in my book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, is that for a business to succeed in building a brand and growing, it needs to surround consumers with branded online experiences, so those consumers can self-select how they want to engage with the brand.  The same theory holds true for bloggers who want to grow their own blog brands and audiences across the social web.

Following are 20 easy things you can do to promote your blog across the social web.  You’ll notice that many of the suggestions listed below require a one-time set-up and you’re done.  Some of the suggestions don’t even happen online!  Others require you to do a bit more work, but the end result is worth it in terms of directly and indirectly promoting your blog to a wider audience.  Take a look and try to implement as many of the suggestions listed below as possible to jump-start your blog promotion efforts.

  1. Feed your blog content to your Twitter profile, Facebook profile and page, LinkedIn profile, and so on.  Use tools like Twitterfeed and the tools incorporated into social networking accounts to do this.
  2. Publish eye-catching social media icons in a visible location on your blog’s sidebar, so visitors can easily connect with you on your other social media profiles.
  3. Make sure your various social networking and other online profiles include current links to your full spectrum of online profiles, blogs, and so on.
  4. Feed your blog content to any LinkedIn groups that you belong to that allow you to do so using the News feature in LinkedIn.
  5. Include the URL to your blog, Twitter profile, and so on in your offline correspondence.
  6. Include links to your various online profiles and blog in your email signature.
  7. Make sure links to your key online profiles and blog are included in the signature line in any forums you participate in.
  8. At the very least, the URL for your blog and Twitter profile should be on your business card.
  9. Make sure your blog content gets in front of as many people as possible by syndicating your content through services like Demand Media Blog Distribution Network and Newstex.
  10. Use widgets and social tools offered by Twitter and Facebook (such as the Facebook Like button) to publish your other social web activities on your blog.
  11. Continually publish comments on other blogs and link back to your own using the same keyword phrase in the name box every time.
  12. Hold a blog contest and be sure to promote it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on.
  13. Make sure you offer sharing links on your blog and other online content using tools like the TweetMeme Retweet button.
  14. Write guest blog posts for other blogs in your niche and be sure to include links back to you blog, Twitter profile, and so on.
  15. Hold a tweet chat or tweetup with people attending the same events or conferences that you plan to attend.
  16. Create an email newsletter to go with your blog and be sure to include links to your Twitter profile and other social networking profiles in it.
  17. Be retweetworthy in an effort to get more of your tweets that include links to your content retweeted.
  18. Publish press releases about your blog with links to your blog and social media profiles.
  19. Brand your Twitter profile background and provide more URLs than the standard profile allows.
  20. Keep publishing amazing, shareworthy content and organically interlink your branded online destinations!

How to Get Sales from Your Business Blog

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If you’re writing a blog related to your business then you’re already on your way to increasing sales!  The next step is turning the people who read your blog into people who actually make a purchase or contact you for more information about your business, products and services.  It’s easier to do than you might think using a few simple tricks!

First, if you run a retail website, it’s absolutely essential that your blog and the content of your blog posts link to your online catalog or store whenever possible.  At the very least, you should have a highly visible image link to your online store at the top of every page of your blog.  For example, a standard image calling attention to your online store could be placed at the top of your blog’s sidebar, so it’s easy to see and find no matter what page a visitor lands on when they come to your site.  Remember, your blog will generate incoming links from across the web over time.  Therefore, you can’t guarantee that a visitor will land on your business website’s home page.  Make sure it’s very easy for any visitor to find out more about you and find your online store with a simple click of the mouse from any page of your website and blog.

Next, don’t use your business blog as a place to constantly self-promote your business, products and services.  Instead, you should offer meaningful and useful information related to your industry.  Refer to your products (and include links to those products in your online store within your blog post) when it’s appropriate and adds value to the reader’s experience.  Simply overloading your blog posts with information about how great your business is, multiple links to your products which might be completely irrelevant to the blog post in which they appear, and so on creates a negative user experience.  In short, no one will return to your business blog if the only information they find there is self-promotional posts.  Instead, offer information that helps readers, and indirectly market your business within those posts with useful references and links that enhance the post rather than interrupt it and detract from it.

Finally, give your audience something extra or exclusive to reward them for reading your business blog.  For example, offer special discount codes that can be used in your online or offline store.  Provide tips and tutorials that are offered only on your blog.  In other words, people have to have a reason to read your blog rather than other blogs or websites.  Extra and exclusive information not only attracts new visitors but also boost repeat visitors.

Most importantly, be active.  Continually write new posts and content, interact with your readers, and begin building relationships with them that will help increase sales, brand loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.

Image: stock-xchng

How to Make Your Blog Load Faster

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Earlier this year, Google began using site speed, or load time, as a search ranking factor, claiming that “faster sites create happy users.” Since the search engine’s professed goal is to give users what they want, it makes sense that load time would enter into the ranking algorithm.

Even if you didn’t care about your Google ranking (not likely!), improving your blog’s loading time would be a good idea. Sites that load quickly are more user-friendly and tend to have more user engagement, meaning visitors stick around to view multiple pages. In other words, making your blog faster can lower your bounce rate. And the longer visitors stay on your site, the more likely they are to convert.

So if you want high rankings and happy, returning users, you need to make sure that your site runs speedily, and the same goes for your blog. Here are five tips to keep your blog running quickly. As an added benefit, these tips will reduce your bandwidth and can even lower your hosting costs.

1. Optimize your images for speed
Pictures can really liven up your blog, but they also have the potential to slow down load times. To keep your blog fast:

• Host your own images: By hosting images on your own servers, you eliminate the need for your site to contact other servers.

• Delete unnecessary images: Unless they are thumbnail images, try to limit the number of pictures in each post to two or three. These will break up the text and add visual interest without causing undue lag time.

• Reduce the size of your images: Experts recommend that you set your photo sizes to 800 by 600 pixels or smaller.

• Don’t duplicate files for the same image: If you use the same image more than once, refer to the same file—because your browser’s cache has saved the information about the file, the image will load faster.

2. Use Optimized CSS
Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead of HTML tables on your blog (and site-wide) will give you simpler source code, which promises faster load times. It’s also easier to make style/design changes after the fact. A CSS optimizer, such as the Code Beautifier (available free online), can help you simplify your CSS code, eliminating white space and unnecessary characters, converting text to lowercase and making other adjustments that will help your site load more quickly.

3. Keep it Clean
You may have noticed a theme so far—getting rid of what’s unnecessary. This is generally a good rule of thumb when it comes to load times. So aside from clean code and reasonably sized images, watch out for other unnecessary features that can bloat your blog:

• Animations: Animations and moving ads can add seconds to your blog’s load time. Make sure the amusement is worth the trade off before including an animation.

• Widgets: Widgets are small applications that run on your site, like a Twitter feed. Because they access other servers, they can slow down your blog. Be selective about what widgets you add.

4. Consider Different Hosting Options
If you use shared hosting for your blog, you might want to look into switching to dedicated or grid hosting, as shared hosting can slow down load times when the demands on the shared server are high. Dedicated hosting gives your blog or site its own dedicated server. With grid hosting, your resources are spread across multiple servers. Dedicated hosting is generally the priciest option.

5. Consult a Load Time Add-On
It’s a good idea to download a Firefox add-on for analysis of your blog’s performance as well as suggestions for speeding it up. Try Google’s open source add-on Page Speed, which tests your server configuration and front-end code and offers tips on load time optimization. There are also a number of WordPress plug-ins to reduce load time.

In addition to helping your blog rank higher in organic search results, these tips can help you in the pay-per-click advertising arena as well—landing page load time is a factor in the calculation of your AdWords Quality Score.

Elisa Gabbert is the Senior Content Development Manager at WordStream Inc., a provider of Internet Marketing Software, which includes a set of advanced SEO tools for discovering profitable long tail keywords.

Sample Guest Blog Post Submission Guidelines

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Last week, I wrote a post here on Performancing about weeding out guest blog post spam and suggested that you write very clear guest post submission guidelines and publish them on your blog.  Doing so might not deflect all guest blog post spam, but it can help to make sure the legitimate guest posts that are submitted to you meet your publishing criteria.

With that in mind, following is a guest blog post submission and publishing guidelines sample that you can tweak to work on your blog.  Feel free to copy and use it as needed.

Sample Guest Blog Post Submission and Publishing Guidelines

If you would like to submit a guest post to this blog, follow the instructions below for consideration.  Only guest posts that meet these criteria will be considered for publishing.

  • The post must be useful to the readers of this blog.
  • The post must be grammatically correct and well-written.
  • The post must not include marketing-related links and must not be entirely self-promotional.
  • The post may include links to your website and blog in a brief author’s bio (approximately 3 sentences), which will be published at the end of the guest post.
  • Guest posts must be original and may not have been published elsewhere online already.  All submissions will be verified for originality using a tool such as Copyscape.com or Plagium.com.

Guest posts that are approved for publishing will be published without notice.  Please check the blog periodically to see if your post has been published.  Due to the high volume of guest posts this blog receives, messages following up on the status of a guest post submission will not be responded to.

If you have any requirements related to length of guest posts, specific topics, things you won’t publish no matter what, image size or format, and so on, add those to the above list, too.  In other words, the more specific and clear your submission guidelines are, the less time it will take you to review and approve guest post submissions.  You can automate the submission and publishing process using a tool like the Gravity Forms plugin if you use WordPress.org for your blogging application.  Alternately, you can use a service that links blogs up with writers who are interested in providing guest posts such as MyBlogGuest.

The point of publishing guest post submission and publishing guidelines is to set expectations and alleviate some of your workload processing submissions.  If your blog gets a lot of blog post submissions, it can take up a lot of your time to review, edit and publish all of them.  Let your guest post submission guidelines take care of some of that work for you.