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Let's Connect!How to Boost Life Into a New Blog (Or Just a Blog)
Every new blog will definitely scream “new” blog. You can’t avoid that, but you can’t get over it faster than everyone else. There is lots of ways you can tell if a blog is new and why it is screaming “new” blog.
Lack of Content
Lack of content is something that will occur on every new blog. If you are a blogger you should already know how to fix this. You just need to keep adding more and more content. When you are just starting out you need to focus on the articles, they need to be very related so you build an audience which can relate to your articles.
This task is quite tedious and it might take a month to fulfill.
Blog Sections is Empty
Bare blog sections is a quite easy thing to fix. ‘Blog sections’ is fifferent parts of your blog, which makes it up, as a whole. It is your header, main post, sidebar and footer section. You need to add some stuff to those sections, some widgets etc. to the sidebar.
I would recommend to add recent posts, archives and maybe an advertise here link.
Incomplete Navigation Bar
This is a very basic thing for every blog. For an example you could currently have home, about and contact. You should add some key posts (eventually) or just try to fill out the space you have got there. Maybe write some pages about some important stuff in your niche.
Incomplete Sticky Pages
Sticky pages is pages like about me, contact etc. It normally needs lots of improvements. It may surprise you that an about me page is one of the most frequent visited pages. This is the best opportunity to showcase yourself.
Things you should add to an about me page should be:
- Blogger introduction
- Profile picture
- Expertise
- Blog description
Those are the most vital and important things to include on your about me page. I think you should look at other about pages, to see which way you want it to be written. How you enjoy them.
Contact Page
A contact page is very important. Future businesses can rely on that one. Have you noticed on blogs like “ProBlogger” etc. have a line which goes somewhat like this “The email you may send will be read, but due hard amount of emails I receive, I may not reply.”
You shouldn’t write a line like that. Whatever someone email you, reply no matter how pointless they may be. It is definitely a great way to be professional.
Incomplete Footer
You see my footer? I have a short bio. I have my profile picture. You can tell a short story, who you are etc. the story doesn’t have to be that long. Just 20-100 words, depends on the space you have in your footer.
Blog Promotion
Be Everywhere
This is vital for every new blog. You have to spread the word about your blog. There is lots of social media sites where you can interact and stuff like that. I recommend Twitter, because it is easy and fast.
Comment Your Way to The Top
You should try to strike up a routine and visit at least 10 blogs related to your niche everyday. It’ll be easier if you have a broad niche, which gets read. Find popular blogs at most, comment on those.
You have to write valuable comments, what you don’t want your brand to be like is “Good post” – you want it to be a kick a** comment that people want to read, and then due the comment’s quality they click the link through to your blog. They discover the good content, and subscribe.
Guest posts
This is hard work, but it definitely pays off. You get traffic, popularity and authority. When you submit guest posts you will meet some standards followed by a certain blog.
Your guest posts has to be great. It should be your best content. You should definitely give out your best content, to other blogs.
Conclusion
It takes time to build a successful blog, it doesn’t happen overnight. Yet you have to provide value, be everywhere. You should work on developing your blog, keep adding good content, improve your writing style (will happen overtime), do heavy promotion.
How to Measure Your Blog’s SEO Standing
If you can see facts about your blog, it will be easier to see if all your SEO work is wasted, or if it is worth the time it takes.
Check Your Rankings
You can easily check your rankings by searching on a keywords phrase or just a specific keyword in Google. This process can easily be confusing if you have lots of keywords. You can of course get a program to do all this.
Rank Checker
There’s a free plugin made for the browser Firefox (which in my opinion is the best browser ever made). This plugin is called “Rank Checker”. Rank Checker can check your rankings for lots of search phrases and in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
How to Install Rank Checker
- 1. Open Firefox, if you don’t use Firefox you need to download it. It can be downloaded from here: http://firefox.com/
- Go to http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ and click on Download Now
- An install windows will appear on the screen, when it comes you should click “Install Now” and then restart Firefox.
How to Use Rank Checker
Open Rank Checker’s settings by choosing Functions -> Rank Checker -> Options
Set Rank Checker to check the rankings of all your rankings in Google.com (unless you do not blog in English)
Start Rank Checker by choosing Functions -> Rank Checker -> Run
Google Analytics
To measure the power of your optimization work you have to use a great web-analysis tool to your blog. Der is lots of tools to do this, every single tool has its benefits to measure the power.
Well the most widely tool is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free, and it is getting improved all the time and it is presenting all the important facts in a great visual way.
Access Google Analytics
- Go to http://google.com/analytics/
- Click on the blue button to your right.
- If you already have a Google account (AdWords, AdSense, GMail or any other) you can use the mail and password from that. If you do not have a Google account you can create one by clicking on the link
- Log in to Analytics with your Google account informations.
- Click on the blue button (again).
- Write your informations, and click the agree check-button.
- Copy the track-code to your header in you theme (in WordPress it is: Appearance -> Editor -> header.php
Quick View of The Possibilities With Google Analytics
When you opens reports for a webpage profile in Google Analytics you will see the Dashboard. This is just lots of facts for the chosen period.
You can easily get the visitors count showed, you can choose if it should be referral, search traffic or direct traffic. You can also see the bouncerate. These numbers is the percentage of people who are leaving your pages again. Unless the visitors has clicked on something.
The average time usage on a blog is interesting relative to SEO. A high average on a blog is usually a sign that it is great content you provide your readers with.
Increase Sales by Setting up Goals
If you are setting up goals in Google Analytics you will be able to set the converting-rate for actions on specific things. You can see how many choose not to buy in a buying process. If you set up a goal will you be able to check the converting-rate for:
- Newsletter Subscribers
- Sales
- Creations of Accounts
- Downloads
How You Can Set Up Goals
- When you are on the Dashboard you click on Edit, right under the bounce rate.
- Click on Edit Goal One
- Fill out the URL, chosen step, goal value and activate the goal.
You can easily improve your blog, much more with Google’s “Website Optimizer”. You can create split tests, for your landing pages, see which pages that creates the best converting rate. You can go to the Website Optimizer, using this link:
https://www.google.com/accounts/Serv…bsiteoptimizer
Build Trust Using Your Profile
I know lots of bloggers and every single person in the blogosphere should know lots of other bloggers. It is what you should be doing every day. Connect with other bloggers, build relationships.
Networking is something you really have to do as a blogger. You simply need to connect with other bloggers. So as a blogger (no matter what niche) you should connect with bloggers like you, it’s critical for your outcome as a blogger.
You need to “build” a profile. A profile consists of these things:
- A brand
- How you are (sense of humor, negative or positive etc.)
- Your writing style (should be unique)
You should not write a profile and tell “hey this is me, I’m like this” it should be something people will recognize you from. Let me give you an example. Jordan Cooper. He is a nice guy, he is honest and is extremely funny (though many people doesn’t appreciate the honesty of him.)
That’s his profile, this profile is something that somehow “defines” you. Who you are. It wouldn’t be hard not to change your writing style and how you are, because if you want trust from your readers, you will have to real, so be who you really are, in real life.
I guess if you met me now, you will be surprised how much I talk like I write. I try to make my content to sound as much as if it was me who actually were talking.
Now I don’t think that you are acting in a way online, you would not be able to act if it was offline. Because if so you will find it easy to change your writing style, etc. If you change your style all the time people will not build that trust around you, which is needed in a online business.
If you find it easy to build up a profile around your blog, then you definitely have succeeded.
Remember your profile is also a part of your brand. It is how you act, it’s who you are
I’m not as shy, online as I am in the “real” world. I am more spontaneous and probably also easier to talk with here. Well I’m not shy in “real” life, only if it’s someone who I don’t know – but aren’t we all a bit shy?
It’s just important that you maybe show a personal side of yourself on your blog, it doesn’t have to be in your post. But on your about page, that’s very important. Mostly because that it will build some trust, people would probably (after they read your awesome content) want to know a bit more about you, as a person. How you are on the other side of the screen.
So stick with one style of writing, of course your writing will improve a lot, through your blogging journey. Mine is still, I think everybody’s writing style improves, but there would not be radical changes to your writing style.
As it is now you probably already have a profile, unless you’ve just started blogging, but maybe it’s time to do a bit of changes, here and there. It can be healthy for your blog, maybe go to a person you know (in “real” life) and ask them what they think about your writing styles etc?
How Interaction Made My Blog Better
When it comes to the blogosphere, content is king – or at least that is what they told you. I have another perspective on it. I think that relationships is king. It is quite easy to establish a solid readership, where everyone is commenting, tweeting and so on. It just takes time.
The thing while you may have lots of people reading your blog but you aren’t really interacting with anyone of them. If you actually try to interact with people who is commenting or just reading your blog, they will feel much more welcome and probably more likely to stay on your blog for a longer time.
Interaction Through Blogging Alliances
If you read this blog everyday, you would know what a blogging alliance is, to be short it is just a community of bloggers, you connect and stuff like that.
“Everyone thought Batman could beat the Green Hornet, because Batman had all those gadgets. But the Green Hornet won because he had Kato.” – Carrie Bradshaw (from Sex and The City)
If we look at this quote and believe what it says, it generally says “two bloggers working together will be much likelier to succeed, than if you only were one blogger.”
It is easier to build a blogging alliance than it sounds, almost everyone likes to connect and talk with other people. Especially bloggers, they love to connect. While you aren’t just connecting inside these blogging alliances, you are helping each other. Not by commenting, not by guest posting, not by sharing social traffic. Simply by trying to improve each other’s blog, with critique.
You can set up an alliance which do all the stuff mention above, but the only one you will fool is yourself. If you say to yourself: “Wow! I actually have an average of 10 retweets of my post.”
Of course I could do that as well, but if you are 9 people in this alliance and retweeting each other’s stuff then it is easy to get 10 retweets, in average for those posts.
What you really should do is share the link to your latest post. Ask them, what can I do better in this particular post? That would be much better, you get critiqued by the fellow members. They have to tell you, what they think honestly. In that way you will be able to improve your blog.
By the time you will improve and people will actually retweet your stuff because it is great. I don’t say that as a blogging alliance you shouldn’t retweet, comment and all that – but only if you feel inspired to do so.
This is a way to connect with the other bloggers in your niche, you will have something to discuss, really build a friendship that way.
Interaction Through Social Media (Meeting Potential Readers)
If you are in a non-techie industry people will not have other blogs, maybe not on Twitter, maybe not even on Facebook. At least not every single person would be on those sites.
However I am quite sure that some of them are, if you are on Twitter you will be able to interact with them in that way.
You could use TweetDeck (or something similar) do a Twitter search for your niche and whenever they talk about your niche, it will pop up. If they ask a question you could answer it in that way, you could just chat with them about this subject.
You can use Facebook, create a group about your niche and in that way start to interact with people who loves to do the same thing as you do.
Interaction is One Key, But Only One
Interaction with readers and potential readers takes time, but it will pay off, no doubt.
If you are polite and interact with your blog’s potential readers, you certainly have increased the chances of them to read your blog. It can be hard to interact with the people in your niche, if there isn’t many of them on Twitter or Facebook, but I will guarantee that there will be a couple of them on these social media sites.
It isn’t hopeless for you to start communicating with your niche. You can work together in blogging alliances with the other bloggers in your niche. You can interact with many of your potential and readers on Twitter.
I have truly improved my blog by doing this. I have interacted with other bloggers in my niche and with potential readers and I really think it have helped me a lot, I build my community around interaction and you should do so too.
Interaction will give you one key and you will get closer to success. Unfortunately you need more than just one key to succeed.
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Okay, you got me, I’ve been watching Sex and The City in the last couple of weeks, I (my sister) have the box and I started watching it a couple of weeks ago, not finished yet.
Carrie Bradshaw (the main character) is a writer if you didn’t knew. She writes a column called Sex and The City anyway let’s get started.
There is an episode called “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” – which means “Could Have, Would Have, Should Have.” I think this headline was amazing, and I thought about a way I could implement in on a blog post. Unfortunately Julie Roads did this before me, but I think it is worth for me to comment on.
The blogosphere changes as fast as you can say “blogosphere.” So you can’t expect everybody to keep up with everything in the blogosphere.
You can always look back and say “coulda, woulda, shoulda” – and yeah we do make mistakes. In life and in blogging.
You just have to move on. Okay you have to learn from your mistakes, but don’t think way too much about the past. You should rather go and look into the future. Of course learn from your mistakes, but you need to look into the future. Because it is in the future things happens.
“Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.” -Denis Waitley
Uniqueness
And you are all special, we are all unique. That is also why you should not go to a blog, which has success, and then copy the things they do and then expect that your blog will succeed.
We are all unique and there is no exact formula to success. That’s why you I don’t think you should ask guys like Darren Rowse how they build traffic or stuff like that. If you get the chance talking to these so-called ‘a-listers’ you should ask them questions you just can’t get an answer to anywhere else.
You shouldn’t ask them questions you can find with a simple Google search and thereby get 55.000 relevant answers to those questions. I haven’t told you that I am at the Third Tribe, but I am, and the first live call I was not impressed. The questions which was asked was something like this “Should we have links in the content of our blog to our e-commerce site?”
I just think it is waste of time, of my time, of Brian and Darren’s time. I think we should (everyone) take time to ask some relative good questions to anyone we are talking to. Instead of just asking a question. Okay, we are a bit off track here. You will also get much more noticed if you ask a great question. It doesn’t matter if you are talking to me or Darren, ask questions that is worth asking.
The Real Purpose for Building Alliances
Alliances is something we create each day, an alliance is an agreement between two or more parties. This alliance could help each other to reach a goal or just help each other to reach individual goals.
Alliances is not just two or more people working together it is people who (somehow) want to do the same thing. We had the “Holy Alliance” which was formed in 1815 which had Russia, Prussia and Austria as former members, all in all it had around 23 members. The alliance was created because everybody wanted to achieve the same goals to instill the Christian values of charity and peace.
That’s one alliance, which was built to reach the goals they wanted. They all wanted the same thing, so it was easy for them to co-operate. This was a political alliance, there is alliances everywhere. We can somehow consider separate families as alliances, of course not an alliance as the “Holy Alliance.” To mention something that is ongoing in our time, NATO.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance, in these times (as of 9/11) they are helping Afghanistan, where they have deployed troops as well as trainers to Iraq. Which just is another example of a very powerful alliance.
Different Alliances, Different Purpose
Alliances like NATO is a big alliance, it is countries with common interests. Now these big alliances are maybe not the best thing, because the system of NATO is rude. You can’t really use it for anything, but let’s stay on topic.
I wouldn’t try to build a product with a big alliance (25+ participants) I guess we could all write a chapter of a book, but nothing more complic
ated. I would just ‘limit’ an alliance with this big amount of participants to only chat and improve each other individually, because that would not get so complicated.
With small alliances you will find it easier to manage the thing, if you are working towards a common goal, lots of difficulties could be there. Just keep in mind if you are working (as NATO) towards a common goal then I think you should not expand your alliances with more than 4 persons/companies. For an example if you want to launch a product together. I wouldn’t do that with 25 people, it sure could be powerful but you will still not get the same result as if it were 4 person creating a product.
So for these ‘small alliances’ I would use them for launching products much like joint ventures. So I would limit these kinds of alliances to at most 4 participants.
The Purpose of An Alliance
Everything is relative. The purpose of your alliance could be to have fun, work together, help each others and so on. While your neighbor’s alliance could have a complete other purpose.
In a school alliance it could be to help each other to study, motivate each other, share notes, and stuff like that. A blogging alliance could have a common interest of raising each other’s blogs, but only if it is worth it. If you do something good, you will get to know. If your content suck, you will be the first to know.
Some people can’t handle the constructive critique, you possibly could get from an alliance, if that’s the case then an alliance isn’t for you.
So you can go off in the comments and tell me, if you had an ally, what would the purpose be? There is no wrong answer.
After all an alliance is lots of things, but in the end an alliance is a place where you support each other.
How to Build a Powerful Blogging Alliance
What Exactly is a blogging alliance?
A blogging alliance is a couple of bloggers working together trying to improve each other’s blogs. It is a phenomenon that really works. The blog alliance doesn’t have to be all about blogging, it can just be a few blog owners chatting and just chillin’, but sometimes still serious and they help each other out.
If it is possible for you to build an ally with a few other people then you should do it.
Other people will call it a “mastermind group.”
We are on a conference call, quite often. We discuss different stuff, as I said not everything is about blogging. You guys can talk about a lot of other stuff than just blogging. It doesn’t have to be Internet marketing related either, but this really depends on your time.
If you have the time to network with people in a much funnier way (like this) then you should do it. If not, then you should just talk about blogging, Internet marketing stuff all the time.
What Can a Blogging Alliance do For Your Blog?
A blogging alliance can do a hell lot to your blog, it can inspire you to write more posts, help other bloggers. You can learn from their failures and they can learn from your failures.
You share failures and success, which definitely is the way to go.
But a blogging alliance reach a deeper level, than just telling success and failures. The best thing is that when you have a blog alliance you are not feeling obligated to tweet, comment or what so ever. Only if it really is good content and something we would like to share with our readers.
I am, though, much more likely to share an article with one from my blogging alliance than just a random guy posting a link, because normally I know this is quality. I really know that each one of these guys are providing quality.
What it really can do for your blog is a lot. It only depends on the people you are building this alliance with. In our blogging alliance we have some unofficial guidelines, why we share and so on. I think that every single blogging alliance should make it clear with each other what we want to get out of this. Otherwise you guys will be so confused, with each other.
The Conference Call
This is a fun part, probably the best. It is where the most active members are just chatting throughout the evening/morning/night (as we are from all around the world) – we talk about blogging related stuff, off-topic, we rant (lol, mostly one person only)- there is not a thing we don’t do. We laugh, generally just having a great time.
The biggest call is Saturday, that is where everybody have the time to be online and just is online, after our big live show, we also are holding each Saturday.
We are having this weekly call, but that isn’t all. We are constantly having conference calls, we are having, on most days, one call. Sometimes we are having none, but most days we have at least got one.
It is at least 30 minutes long the call, but normally it is much longer. I have met new people. This really benefits, every body.
How You Should Build Your own Blogging Alliance
You shouldn’t be afraid of starting a blogging alliance. Just explain to the people you would like to join what it is. How they can benefit from it.
If you aren’t trying this you are really missing a lot of good stuff. You always have someone who can answer your questions, no matter what time it is.
You could talk to 3 bloggers you talk/network with and ask what they think about the idea and you should tell them that they should consider doing it, because it can improve their blog. If they say that they would love to try it and so on – you should tell them to invite a few people, to it.
There is no exact guide at all, just do it. Not many are doing this. And I can tell you that a lot of people are missing something here.
We just use Skype to do everything here, chats, conference calls and so on. Skype does it all.
There really is no “how to” create blog alliance. The only thing you should do is consider them as friends, not competitors. If you consider them as competitors, then you will have a hard time to build a reasonable relationship where you are helping each others. You need to be friendly and consider them as friends. Help them and they will help you.
Want to Know More About Blogging Alliance?
How to Build a Powerful Blogging Alliance by Rob Rammuny
How to Build a Powerful Blogging Alliance by Nicholas Cardot
How to Construct Interviews That Rocks
This is a follow-up post to the previous post I wrote the “12 Types of Blog Posts”-post. In this post I am going to explain how to make a good interview, which will be shared and commented a lot.
An interview is not just an interview, with another person. When you are publishing interview on your blog you should do a lot of work before shooting the interview with the person. You should try to get as many opinion from the person you’re interviewing, because everybody want to know about their opinions.
Preparation For The Interview
As when you are shooting a video you need to be prepared. You can’t just get some questions right away. And you shouldn’t only prepare questions, there is much more you should prepare.
Research the Person
Changes are that you know the person you’re going to invite, but even if you do then you should do some research. Just what he does and what he likes etc, if he/she has a blog then it should be no problem.
Just be sure that you know who this person is in general, if you normally are using explicit language on your blog, but this person isn’t then I think you should cut of all the explicit of the interview. The person may feel bad about using explicit words in your interview and may find it hard to tolerate stuff like that. So just cut that off.
Just be prepared, who is this person and why do you want to interview him?
Prepare a Couple of Questions
Questions, questions, questions. That is what an interview is all about. You need to have some question prepared, it can take lots of time if not are familiar with interviews, but it is pretty easy, when you have done the research of the person.
Try to ask the person some questions that you would like to know about him, try to ask new things instead of things he already have been asked before. Then the person will also be more likely to link to it, if it is new, you know? If all this stuff is new instead of the old stuff. You are asking him new things, while everybody else is asking a cook blogger how he cook, or something like that.
So ask new questions, instead of the same “routine questions.”
When you have your list of questions, ask the person you want to interview if they would like them, so they can prepare for the interview as well.
Types of Questions
Changes are that your audience would not know the person you are interviewing, so I think that it is really necessary, that you ask for a short introduction, just shoot the question “Can you tell a bit about yourself?” – that would work. If it is a blogger then the person would tell them where they can find their blog.
As I said before then you need to stand out from the crowd with your interview. Ask new and inspiring questions, instead of the same old boring stuff, if you are interviewing a problogger then you should ask over 95% blogging questions, it is okay to have some off-topic questions.
Also try to be funny, prepare some funny questions, the funniest questions is almost always the off-topic questions.
So try to shoot a couple of off-topic questions, because they are probably the funniest questions you can ask and it can give some opinions and reveal stuff about their private life.
Types of Interview
There is three types of interviews. Maybe more, but these are those I know about.
- Text Interviews
- Voice Interviews
- Video Interviews
The first one “text interviews” is just an interview, where you send the questions to the person and then he/she is emailing the answers back to you. Probably the easiest way to make an interview
The second, “voice interviews” could be you calling the person on Skype and then recording from there.
The third will be the same, but just Skype with webcam.
The second and the third would give you much more credibility, then you actually have talked to for an example Tony Robbins or a person like that.
I hope this blog post inspired you to start interviewing some people. So what is your take? Any way you want to share, how do you construct your interviews? Please let us know in the comments, much appreciated!
Does Article Marketing Work? I Just Increased My Income by 66.69% With Three Articles
Guest post by Britt Malka
Often, it’s not easy to measure how much impact article marketing really has.
You’ve probably seen an increase in your traffic, but did it affect the bottom line of your bank account at the end of the month?
Last year, I decided to participate in the Hundred Articles in Hundred Days event that started January 1st, and I’m only a little behind schedule. Out of the articles I’ve written so far, three of them pointed to a specific page in the resource box.
Allow me to go more into details here, so you really will be able to see, just how powerful article marketing is.
A while ago, I purchased the Mini-Site Formula, and I decided to test it. So I followed the instructions, and build a page which I chose to put only eBay ads on.
What really intrigued me about this product was that there were no hype about it. If you could make about $3 per day, you’ve reached your goal. Then you could make a new site that made $3 per day, and after a while, you would make real good money.
A few videos points to the site, but I haven’t really been advertising for it in any way. Even so, this site made me money each month. Not a lot, but some, and for being a site, I almost never write on, I’m pretty satisfied. Last month I received 28 euro ($39), and it’s been around those numbers every month.
The site is made up as a blog, where I have written 19 short posts.
When I submitted three of my articles to Ezine Articles, I pointed to one specific blog post in three of them, and not only did I see a spike in the traffic. I could also measure an increase in the gains, I’ve made so far (the month’s not finished yet).
I went from 28,01 euro last month to 46,69 this month, and since eBay not shows you gain for the last two days, I can make much more than that, before the end of January.
That’s a huge increase of 66.69%.
Or more than $9 per article, if you like.
Would you think it’s worth your time to write articles, if you knew that each of them would bring in at least $9 already the first month?
One of the advantages with articles is that they stay online. The $9 I gained more per article was just this month’s result. I expect that to be much higher next month.
So, I’m pretty happy that I decided to join the Hundred Articles in Hundred Days challenge, because that was the motivation I needed to get started writing a serious amount of articles. After all – one article a day? How hard can that be?
You’ll see, it’s fun, especially when the money starts pouring in.
Britt Malka is from Denmark, she knows how to write, in a very good and attractive way. She is big in Denmark, really a writing-expert. So take notes, folks.
How to Increase Your Blog Readership 10-fold
This is the text version of the live show the 13th of January 2010. I hope you can use it and thanks for everybody who showed up. Much appreciated.
Introduction
So there are two key things you need to do to gain readers from Google and the word of mouth method.
- Write consistently
- Build credibility
If you write consistently, you will get better search ranking in Google, because Google likes frequently updated blogs, in general Google just like content.
You need to stay up-to-date with your topic, if you aren’t doing that you will simply fall out, you need to give away fresh content, to able to compete with others. So what you read about your niche, is something you really need to educate your readers in, but of course you need to be unique.
Post about the new but add your angle to it, so it gets unique!
Guest posting for Newbies (read it even if you aren’t a newbie)
Guest posting isn’t something I’m doing enough, to be honest. I once did one at Teenius.com (sorry Simon, but I didn’t), which didn’t gave me any traffic at all and when I get no traffic = no readers.
Remember you are writing guest posts to get readers, not traffic. To get known. To get your brand out.
Analysis of The Blog
When you are writing guest posts on other blogs, then you need to study 10 different posts and see which of these posts are the most successful and see why they are so successful as they are.
So analyze the blog you want to write for, because then you will be able to see what kind of content you should write to get success on that blog. I’m not saying that you should copy the topic. Not the writing style, well at least not that much. But just see how he have done it.
Is it a list post, what is it? How did it become that successful?
Networking is Important
When you want to get a guest post on a blog you don’t know or at least you do not know the blog owner, I think it’s important that you build a stable relationship with the blog owner first. Because then he’ll be more likely to approve your blog post.
You can do it by tweet him and say that he has an awesome blog and you would like to have is instant messenger username. Then he will probably give you that, if he want to network with others.
Then write a bit with him everyday, for 3 days or so, if possible not less. Then ask him on the fourth day, if it is okay to give him a guest post and if there’s any chance for him to approve the post.
If he answers yes, then give him the post on the sixth day, not instantly. Two days after, he shouldn’t think this relationship is all about getting some traffic from his blog.
Keep chatting with him, for 14 days and if you like keep holding the contact to him (but do not write every single day, just once in a while). It will be best to keep the relationship on going as you will be a good friend of his and then you can eventually after that, do some business together.
If you do not want to do this, just send away a sample to him and then hope for the best. Worst case is that it wouldn’t get approved. Best case is the opposite.
Using Twitter to Get Readers
It is far from easy to get readers from Twitter, it is easy to get visitors come straight to your blog, but chances are that you’ll never see them again. P(getting a reader from twitter of all the visits you get from twitter) = 1%.
For the non mathematicians that just means that the chance (p is for probability) for getting a reader from Twitter who already got to your blog from Twitter is 1%.
The easiest way to get Twitter visitors to stay loyal readers is to build a relationship at first. When you want to turn visitors into readers then you probably should start laying out a foundation to a relationship.
Start by tweeting to some of your followers and so on, just interact. The formula to get Twitter relationships is:
Twitter + Interaction + Friendly Tones + Being Funny + Being Helpful = Twitter relationship
It’s quite simple, just be simple and helpful.
Make Visitors Feel Welcome
It’s critical that you make your visitors feel home, so they eventually is going to subscribe to your RSS feed. You can do that by using the WordPress plugin called “WP-Greet Plugin”
When you for an example have written a guest post on DaneBlogger.com, you can set this plugin to show a message, to every people who gets to the site from DaneBlogger.com to say “Hello DaneBlogger.com Reader, I hope that you enjoyed my blog post. If you did, subscribe to my RSS feed”
How BlogEngage is Going to Help You
When we are talking about gaining blog readers, why don’t we talk about BlogEngage.com?
Blog Engage is a community driven by the awesome man called Brian. He is f*cking helpful, really. This guy is having a so, so awesome heart. He is just amazing.
Blog Engage is so much more powerful than Digg, which I have mentioned before (Why Blog Engage is More Powerful than Digg and how to use it)
Digg is more for tech blogs where Blog Engage is more for bloggers who blogs about blogging.
To be honest, I haven’t been able to reach the Digg front page, have you? If so, then keep doing what you are doing. But it is much easier to reach the front page of Blog Engage. Of course it isn’t that much traffic you get from that. But still, it’s really hard to get to the Digg front page.
That was, all the topics we got around in the 13th January live show. I hope you enjoy it! The next live show is the 27th of January 3 P.m.
Hello, I'm Mikkel Juhl, young blogger. I started blogging in 2007, let's say that I've been around for a while. I'm 14 years old, I have a passion for 