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5 Crucial Tips To Help You Secure A Successful Blogging Future

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Blogging SuccessBlogging, depending on your approach, is a lot like investing in prime assets. Some niches appreciate faster than others and all require a dedicated overseer who is constantly tweaking and improving the portfolio and instruments to guarantee the best results. The blogosphere is your marketplace and the strategies that you implement and maintain will greatly affect the long term success of your blog.

However, before investing your precious time and effort into growing a blog you need to have a solid plan to execute and define clear goals for yourself. Here are some excellent tips to help you get started on the right track to achieve your blogging dreams. [Read more…] about 5 Crucial Tips To Help You Secure A Successful Blogging Future

Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

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2010 World Cup FootballAlthough many of us are blogging for the long-term in very specific niches, there exists many more dynamic opportunities to achieve blogging success as well as various styles that can be adopted. Over the years I have learned that there are some of us who have not really mastered the quality of patience and do have difficulty being committed to tasks and goals that require long-suffering dedication that leads to success.

So I have a few ideas through which I can offer some inspiration for the short-term blogger and how you can take advantage of the various changes and seasons of popular events. [Read more…] about Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

Powerful Strategies To Sink Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

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Improve Blog Bounce RateTo effectively maintain and grow our blogs we need to pay very close attention to the facts that lie within our site’s statistics. The sole purpose of statistics is not just to show off our rising numbers in visitor traffic but can be an extremely useful tool for making those well needed adjustments to our performance that can make the difference between an OK blog and one that truly rocks.

Your blog’s bounce rate, in particular, represents the number of visitors who came to your blog and left without clicking to another page which generally indicates that there was nothing else that really interested them. The ultimate goal is to get visitors to stay, read our content, subscribe, purchase our products and all the other good stuff.

So, here are some effective techniques to capture the interest of your readers and get them flipping through the pages of your blog. [Read more…] about Powerful Strategies To Sink Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

The Most Powerful Characteristic of Successful Bloggers

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Blogging CharacterUndeniably, we can’t help but admire the legends who came before us; who set the trends and standards that many aim to achieve and maintain. Financial success and fulfillment of life are very attractive goals but require the dedicated, passionate and sometimes lucky soul who will dare to venture and claim the prize.

In the world of blogging, this is no different and still there is only a small percentage of bloggers, in comparison to the entire blogosphere,  who actually achieve huge success through blogging. After taking note, you will find that there are a few key characteristics that most probloggers possess like persistence, focus and passion but there is one more requirement to the mix. That ingredient is the ability to change and adapt. [Read more…] about The Most Powerful Characteristic of Successful Bloggers

Stake Your Claim on Your Blog Niche

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blog-nicheIt seems like everyone is trying to find their niche on the social web, particularly when it comes to blogging.  In simplest terms, a niche is a very specific area of focus, and a niche blog is one that is tightly focused on one specific subject.

The web has become a very cluttered place, and it’s hard to compete for traffic for broad keywords (such as parenting or business) against larger, well-established sites with deep pockets.  However, you can stand out from the noise by choosing a niche and offering authoritative, reliable, and shareworthy content and conversations related to that niche on your blog.

The first step is to define your niche by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What subject can write about frequently?

Define your area of expertise that you want to use as the core of your online reputation.  Your niche should be a subject that you can write about a lot and that you actually have something worthwhile to discuss.  Once you identify the subjects that you can write about extensively, then break that topic up into smaller, more focused subjects.  In other words, define the niches within that broader topic.

2. Is my niche viable today?

Take some time to learn who else is publishing content related to your possible niches, and make sure there is an active and engaged audience already seeking information about and talking about your potential niches.  Also, use a tool like the free Google AdWords Traffic Estimator to get an idea of the traffic a niche blog might attract.

3. What keywords should I target?

Do some keyword research to further research the potential audiences niche topics could generate to your blog, and ensure your content is optimized for search engine referrals and effectively attracts your target audience using tools like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, or the free Google AdWords Keywords Tool.

4. How can I differentiate my content and make it valuable?

Niche blogs are highly focused, therefore, it’s important that you learn who else is publishing content related to your niche to ensure you add value to the online conversation.  You don’t want to simply republish the same kind of information that other bloggers are already publishing.  Take the time to create amazing, shareworthy content related to your niche to fully leverage the compounding effect of blogging.

5. Can I make this niche work for the long term?

While it’s important that your niche is viable today, you also need to make sure that you set your business blog up for long term success.  Make sure you can create enough content for your niche blog for years to come while remaining passionate about your subject matter.  Also, don’t choose a trend niche that is hot today but is likely to fade into oblivion in the not too distant future.  For example, writing a blog about a popular television show might sound like a great idea today, but if you want your blog to be successful indefinitely, then a television show that could be canceled in a year or two might not be the best niche topic for your blog.  Make sure your niche topic matches your short and long-term blogging goals.

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How the Compounding Effect of Blogging Gives Your Blog a Huge Boost

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The compounding effect of blogging is a topic I often discuss in my books, to my clients, and at speaking engagements, but in order to understand the compounding effect of blogging, you have to understand the importance of search engines in sending visitors to your blog.

Consider this…

Where do you go to find information about just about anything when you need it? Do you check the Yellow Pages? Nope. Do you go to the library and look at an encyclopedia?  Not anymore.  Today, most people have access to the Internet and they turn to Google or their favorite search engine (with Google being #1) to find the information they need on just about any subject.

Example — Imagine you have a website and you want to increase traffic to it.  Here’s how the compounding effect of blogging works:

  1. You have a website made up of 20 pages. That’s 20 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
  2. You add a blog to your website, and you publish a blog post everyday for a year. Now you have 365+20=385 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
  3. You publish posts on your blog and those posts offer interesting, useful, helpful or entertaining content that your audience finds value in. In other words, those posts are shareworthy.
  4. People find your blog content and realize it’s interesting and shareworthy. They share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. with links back to your blog. They write about it on their own blogs with links back to your blog. Now, the number of entry points to your website (via your blog) has increased exponentially. Your Google search traffic increases as all of these additional incoming links to your blog and website boost your Google search rankings, and traffic to your site from referrers across the web increases, too!
  5. Your website went from a static destination with 20 standard entry points to an interactive, engaging site with hundreds or thousands (or more) of entry points and an increase in traffic from search engines and referrers! You can’t buy that kind of exposure and growth potential!

The compounding effect of blogging really is that simple. It’s about creating shareworthy content and entry points, and it’s a method of building organic search traffic that has a good chance of turning into a long-term, sustainable traffic-stream and help you build a loyal audience.

Bottom-line: any blogger can benefit from the compounding effect of blogging, but it starts with creating shareworthy content.

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10 Things You Learned in Kindergarten that Make You a Better Blogger

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I bet you didn’t know that a lot of the things you need to know to be a good blogger were taught to you before you could even write your name.  It’s true!  A lot of the things you learned in Kindergarten apply to blogging and other aspects of your social web activities.

Don’t believe me?  Keep reading to learn about 10 of those things you learned in Kindergarten that make you a better blogger.

1. You need to be polite.

This one is a no-brainer.  If you want to build your audience, then you need to do what your Kindergarten teacher told you and be nice and respectful to others, even if you don’t agree with them.

2. You need to share.

At 5-years old, we learned to share toys, but as bloggers, we need to share each other’s content, ideas, conversations, and so on if we want our blogs to grow.

3. You need to take your turn.

In Kindergarten, we learned not to cut in line, and as bloggers, we can apply that lesson to allowing others to have their say.  While you might not agree with a comment left on your blog, let others have their turn to share their opinions, and then enter into an adult-conversation to discuss the issue further.

4. You need to say thank you.

This goes without saying, but showing your appreciation is extremely important to helping you build relationships across the social web.

5. Don’t run with scissors.

Be careful what you publish on your blog and follow the written and unwritten rules of the blogosphere to ensure you don’t put yourself in a bad situation.

6. It’s not nice to take other people’s stuff.

Don’t scrape content, don’t use images without permission, and don’t try to pass off any kind of work that you did not create as your own.

7. It’s really hard to get gum out of your hair.

Your words live online.  Once you publish them, you might not be able to remove them.  Always think about how the content you publish will affect you and others now and in the future.

8. Don’t hang upside-down on the monkey bars while wearing a skirt.

Avoid getting too personal on your blog.  It might seem like a good idea to publish those funny pictures of you doing a keg stand at a frat party on your blog, but if a hiring manager sees them a year from now, you might think differently about putting those pictures out there for the world to see.

9. I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

People will say mean things about you online.  It’s inevitable.  You need to have a thick skin to be a blogger.

10. Raise your hand.

Write about what you know and don’t be shy about it.  Be confident and don’t be afraid to share your knowledge, opinions, and yourself on your blog.

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