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The Powerful Art of Community Building – Increase Your Blog’s Reach & Traffic

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Community building is basically communicating with users in your niche, whether online or off, by engaging them in conversations important to them and the market, offering advice or any useful content to make their lives better. Its about becoming a leader in your industry, with whom other users can relate to and rely on. Its about building trust and relevance in a fast paced and ever changing environment. Yet, as bloggers, how do we achieve this? Where do we go to find the users and environment for building that closely knit and profitable community?

Well, the easy answer is that its everywhere. Wherever users have a voice and are free to connect and express themselves with others, you’ll find an opportunity to engage, extend your reach and grow your community. Although communities are all over the web there are some sites which will help you gain much better results and better connections.

Don’t know where to start? Here are 2 powerful places. [Read more…] about The Powerful Art of Community Building – Increase Your Blog’s Reach & Traffic

Three Places to Syndicate Your Internet Marketing or Social Media Content

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If you have a blog with regular, great content, it may beneficial for traffic to get it syndicated on another website that brings in more traffic. There are several options for websites that syndicate content. To find one in your niche (if it isn’t internet marketing or social media), all it takes is some googling of industry keywords plus “blog syndication” or other variations.

Google News

Google News is a great resource to get syndicated on, but its process can be tedious, especially if all the guidelines aren’t followed. Once a website is syndicated, it must maintain the guidelines. The stories that are chosen by Google to appear on are by computer algorithm; websites cannot choose which of their pieces of content are going to get published on news.google.com.

However, based on the Panda update, having continuous fresh and unique content that makes an impact are most likely to get picked up by the Google News Algorithm.  Additionally, content may only appear in the Google News results for a month or so, depending on relevancy.

Business2Community

Business2Community is a great website that always has good content. There is sometimes a bit of a wait to get accepted for syndication as a Contributor, and once you are, your pieces of content are chosen by editors and you don’t have control over what gets published. Business2Community also allows its readers to contact authors through a contact form and always gives links back to the original article.

The articles on Business2Community get shared via social media regularly and the site has done a great job of promoting its contributors.

Social Media Today

Social Media Today is a lot like Business2Community when it comes to syndicating content, except it’s choosing process is more automatic and it focuses on social media-related pieces of content. If your blog covers anything about social media, it is easy to apply; once you have been accepted, you can also write unique pieces of content for the site fairly easily. This would be a great way to get exposure for unique pieces of content that are only published on Social Media Today.

Getting notification about acceptance is pretty fast and the site is vast, yet very easy to use.

When it comes to content marketing, especially if you are a blog or business offering related types of services, it is important to get as much exposure as possible. Syndicating your existing content can be an easy way to do this.

 

3 Benefits of Testimonials on Your Restaurant Site

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While the web design of your site and SEO tactics play a large role in being found on Google, it’s important that you’re optimizing for convections past that point as well. Once a customer is on your site, you have to entice them to purchase your product or service.

One way to be successful in this area is to utilize customer testimonials to your advantage. There are three main ways to use and benefit from said testimonials, product promotional, social sharing and business credibility. Though you can hope that sites such as Yelp provide your restaurant with great reviews, this is a way to take control of that.

[Read more…] about 3 Benefits of Testimonials on Your Restaurant Site

How To Leverage The Most Cost-Effective Blog Advertising Method: Blog Commenting

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Blog commenting is one of the most effective methods of increasing your brand awareness, attracting visitors to your blog and learning from the best bloggers in the field; thus helping you to fully grasp what your niche wants and needs. Its a blogger’s special tool for launching an effective advertising campaign and the only thing that will be spent with this method is time.

It is a proven method that I see many bloggers use to make strong connections in the blogosphere and grow their online presence to respectable heights. So let’s talk about how blog commenting, the right way, can give you that nudge you’ve been waiting for. [Read more…] about How To Leverage The Most Cost-Effective Blog Advertising Method: Blog Commenting

5 Tips to Protect Yourself from Blog Contest Losers

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Nobody likes a sore loser, but they’re out there, waiting to complain about your blog contests.  Don’t set yourself up for trouble.  Instead, be sure to protect yourself by writing explicit rules for your blog contests.  Believe it or not, even if you’re just giving away a stick of gum in your blog contest, it’s possible that people could complain about the results if they don’t win.

Additionally, you should publish rules with your blog contest post to protect yourself.  For example, are you willing to pay shipping costs to mail your blog contest prize to the other side of the world?  This is just one thing you need to think about before you publish your blog contest post to make sure the entire process goes smoothly and you leave no loopholes to participation.

Following are several suggestions for writing your blog contest rules to protect yourself from potential complaints or legal trouble:

1. Clearly state the entry time frame.

Make sure your contest has a start and end date and time and include the time zone!

2. Clearly state prize delivery restrictions.

This is where you can communicate where you’re willing to ship prizes and what delivery method you’ll use.  For example, if you live in the United States, you might want to set a restriction saying that only people living in the United States can enter to avoid large overseas postage fees.

3. Clearly state what qualifies as an entry.

You need to make sure people understand exactly what they need to do in order to have a qualified entry into the contest.  Don’t just assume people will “get it”.  Instead, spell it out for them in no uncertain terms.

4. Clearly state how winners will be chosen.

If your blog contest winner will be chosen randomly, include that information in your blog contest post.  You might want to use a tool like Randomizer.org to select the winner, and mention this in your post.  If the winner will be chosen using a subjective selection process, clearly state the steps necessary to submit a qualified entry and explain how winners will be chosen from those entries.

5. Clearly state how the winner will be contacted, the prize acceptance rules, and the alternate winner selection process.

Believe it or not, your blog contest winner might not respond to your attempts to contact them to obtain their mailing address or other necessary information to send their prize to them.  Therefore, it’s important that you tell people in your blog contest post how the winner will be notified, so people are sure to include accurate contact information with their entries.  Also, explain how long winners have to respond to your attempt to contact them before an alternate winner will be selected, so you’re not holding a prize indefinitely for a winner that never responds to you.  Finally, describe how the alternate winner will be selected.

Blog contests are a great way to reward your loyal readers and drive a short-term traffic boost to your blog.  However, they can cause problems, and by following the suggestions above, you can protect yourself from some of those dangers.

What rules and information do you include in your own blog contest posts?  Leave a comment and share what works for you.

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Explaning Niche and Community using the Reverse Maslow

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I sat in a series of sessions of a co-professor who projected stuff from the Authenticity Book for his marketing class. Part of it had to do with understanding new media, the Internet — that sort of stuff, really. So I borrowed it. And it’s been a “formula” I use to introduce or summarize “new media” from a different perspective. Let me share this.

You may be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Before aiming for higher and more profound functions of self actualization, the basic needs need (food, clothing, shelter) to be addressed first. Today however, with the advancements of technology and the “fast paced lifestyle” seem to push people to want to be “accepted” first in order to function properly. An argument here is that every human being ideally needs to belong to a family. With new media, it becomes easier for individuals of similar niches to find one another: Star Wars forums, Macintosh zealots, Trekkies, Trekkers, food bloggers … the list goes on and on. There seems to be a community for everything. Seth Godin refers to this social structure as “Tribes.”

With that mindset, it becomes more apparent how communities work, and how authentic messages can be distinguished from those that are canned from press releases or below the line gimmicks. Authenticity is still key, and this is where the machinations of A-listers, authority figures, conversion and credibility come along. Forums, blogs, microblogs … these are all manifestations of this.

If you’re a marketer, do you believe you are treading on sacrosanct grounds when you wish to involve communities?

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So What Should the Performancing Hive be Really About?

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We’re currently in the process of revamping the Performancing Hive, Performancing’s paid subscription community. Like the current sign-up page says, Hive “exists to provide you the help you need to increase the performance of your blog.” As we take steps to improve Hive and re-examine the focus of the community—not to mention Performancing itself—we would very much like to hear from you. [Read more…] about So What Should the Performancing Hive be Really About?

Case: Measuring Word of Mouth via Bloggers

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Back in 2007, I partnered with a PR agency that handled a french inspired fast food company serving mainly breads and pasta. They were looking into doing a “blogger meet up” and experiment with the idea of measuring word of mouth. They were in the process of launching a new product, which happened to be a special blend of spiked coffee; one of those amaretto or Bailey’s infused mixes.
[Read more…] about Case: Measuring Word of Mouth via Bloggers