Latest Blog Posts

The Real Purpose for Building Alliances

By Mikkel Juhl On February 18, 2010 2 Comments

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 complicated. 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.

The First Case Study of DaneBlogger: FM-Pundit

By Mikkel Juhl On February 17, 2010 3 Comments

We’re now ready to announce the first case study here on DaneBlogger it was Thomas Levin who first asked me ,after announcing it on DaneBlogger, to make a case study of his site. So I did that, after a few days and I finally uploaded it yesterday.

Thomas Levin’s blog about Football Manager is at this url: FMPundit.com

Now you can watch the case study, I uploaded it on Vimeo, I hope the quality is good and you can use it for anything. Send me an email if you would like your site to be case studied. Let the video talk for it self for now.

What is Football Manager?

Football Manager is a virtual football(soccer) simulation game. You control one team which you should lead to success. You decide what players to buy, which to sell. The match engine is complete, tactics are important in this game, that’s also what most of the blogs are writing about in that niche.

So it is just like, a game where you are the manager, you do not play the players yourself. It is like being a real manager.

How Alerts Can Help Your Blog and Your Brand

By Mikkel Juhl On February 16, 2010 6 Comments

Why You Should Monitor You Niche?
A blogger’s life is often very busy, maybe you have a day-job and only blogging part-time or just blogging, sometimes you find it very hard to find time to actually write posts and come up with the ideas. If you are watching your niche you will find it much easier to come up with topics etc.

You will not only find it easier to find ideas for blog posts you will also be able to see the news in your niche and be one of the first to write about them. Lots of people who are those kinds of types, they write about the latest news in their niche and they have built  a great profile of expertise.

You will also be more likely to network with others, you will know what everybody else talks about. This enables you to be albe to connect with these guys and they will know that you are into your niche.

How to Set Up These so Called Alerts

There is lots of ways to set up these alerts up, there is also a couple of places to get these news from.

Twitter alerts: there is lots of ways to help you get these alerts on Twitter. Some of these are in Twitter clients other is on a seperate webpage. What I would do to get these Twitter updates, would be to use the Twitter client called “TweetDeck” set up a search for your desired thing you want to follow. Twitter’s search also allows you to get a rss feed from a keyword search.

Google Alerts: Google Alerts will show you any type of new on those keywords you choose. You can choose whether it should be from news, blogs, web, video or groups, etc. You can receive these alerts via email or rss.

I have said that there is loads of ways to do this alert thing, and there it, but I think the far most effective is the Twitter search, because that really is “real-time” update. The Google Alerts is good, but Twitter search is faster.
Google Alerts is good for searching for something small, like your name, your dog or something like that.

What Kinds of Alerts Should You Use?

Industry types: words which is related to your niche, no names. Maybe just the niche name, if you are writing about “Sex and The City” you maybe want to do a TweetDeck column just for “Sex and The City” – in that way you would be able to talk with people who is watching “Sex and The City,” maybe they are asking some questions and you would be able to respond.

Names, brand types: this could be your blog’s name (your blog’s name wouldn’t work good on Twitter, they would probably mention your username), your brand, you competitors, urls etc.

Interaction in Your Niche

If you do the Twitter searches you will be the first one to answer any questions that comes into your niche, which will give you some kind of expertise in your niche, or at least some credibility.

So you will stay up to date with your niche and you will be able to interact and talk about the latest news in your niche.

Why Blogging With a Passion is Key to Successful Blogging

By Mikkel Juhl On February 15, 2010 12 Comments

Passion is needed when you are blogging, definitely.

If you are blogging with no passion I don’t think you will be able to write anything good, because if you blog with passion you will be so much more likely to produce good content because you like what you write about and you know something about it.

And if you are passionate about your topic, you would have no problem researching about your topic, because you are probably already doing that.

If you are passionate then you will also be more willing to blog for longer time with no money. You like what you write about thus will you love to write about it, share you knowledge with others.

Lots of people starts blogs and are hoping to earn lots of money in no time and they really doesn’t care whether they like what they write about. I think that is a totally irrational way to start a blog. If you are passionate about this topic you will have much better odds to succeed.

You should not start a blog because you want to make money, it could be one of your main  goals, but not the main purpose of why you blog. If you have chosen to start a blog you should be passionate about the topic.

What is Passion?

Almost everyone knows what passion is, but I think that you need to think what really describes passion. If you can describe passion you will also be able to find your passion, if you have a passion.

The World’s Coolest Red Hair’s definition on passion: “a burning desire to succeed in what you love”

This definitely a good definition, in which I totally agree with. If that is your definition of passion, then you will know what your passion is, if you have one. I discussed this with some friends the other day.

And all those who are just blogging and don’t blog on a topic, but actually wanted to blog on a topic, don’t know their true passion. So they start blogging about blogging. They develop this passion to blogging.

It makes sense you can’t just start a blog and then blog about nothing. Then start to blog about blogging because they know how to set up a blog and that’s it. I really don’t think that is the way to find your true passion.

What You Can Use Passion For?

Passion is great for delivering blog posts every single day. Like every blogger should aim for. I think that you would be much more able to succeed with one blog where you really are focused instead of having ten different posts.

Do you see the difficulties on having 10 different blog posts in one single day? It wouldn’t be realistic. You could have 2-3 different blogs, but you should have at most 1 main blog, which you would focus 100% on whenever you need it.

If you really are passionate about your topic then you will be able to keep up with your writing and then your blog will last much longer than if you are not passionate about what you write about. It could make you money but not as much as if you were passionate.

If you don’t blog with passion, then you will not be able to keep up with the writing.

How to Keep Your Blog Posts Alive For Longer Than A Day

By Mikkel Juhl On February 13, 2010 17 Comments

I think lots of people want to make their blog posts be more popular over a longer time frame. They keep getting this feeling that they have to write every day, which they aren’t supposed to. Of course every day is good, if you can keep up with it, but if you can’t, then it isn’t cool. I think it is an extremely important thing to do. If you can make your posts more popular over a longer time frame, then you would be able to:

• Get more comments
• Get more page views
• Get a lower bounce rate

So this is definitely benefits that would help your blog grow, bigger community and so on. Can you see the benefit from having a post which is popular for a bigger time span. These aren’t the only benefits, not at all, though you can imagine what the benefits are.

Keep The Posts in Circulation

Some people doesn’t like this method, but I think it is great for three reasons.

It helps when you have a writer’s block, you will get some content and then be able to relax.
It will increase your Google Page Rank for that specific page (gets linked to, more etc.) Will gain more comments, overtime.

What Exactly Is Circulation?

It’s quite simple, it is when you have published a blog post, let’s say 5 months from now. It was a good post, which could get rewritten and get some new points.

I think that you should rewrite the whole post, instead of just editing it, if you do so this post would be much more unique and people who have followed your blog for over 5 months, would be able to recognize the post if it is the same post.

So you need to rewrite it, this wouldn’t help if you have the writer’s block, where you mind keep stopping you from writing, but if it is the kind of writer’s block where you can’t find a topic, this would be an ideal way to break the ice – or at least try to do so.

Edit the Posts

Edit your headlines, will work. Headlines is the key to a blog post, if the headlines is good, you shouldn’t fail, to get people to click on the link, from the front page to the posts page. I think this is important, if you make sure that you have a powerful headline. It matters!

Edit your opening lines, is the second thing that the reader gets to see, this really is where you need to impress the reader and make him/her read the whole post. It is like in a newspaper, I don’t know what you would call it, it is like a sub-header, it is what gets the person interested in your article.

Edit Your Formatting, is good. If you restructure a post just before publishing it. Make it scannable, readable. Just make it simpler in the formatting.

Writing New Fresh Content Which Gets Popular

Didn’t like the “circulation method?” On that occasion I have some other ways to write some posts that will be alive for more than one day.

Keep it simple, when you write something that is going to be popular for more than one single day, thereupon you have to make it simple. If it is simple then every single body and brain will understand it in this world. If they understands what you say, then of course.

Try to tell a story, this will only be a success if you are good at finding the relevancy of a story (if you are not, you should use this “method.”) But this will simply add some relation to the article and make it more personal, it just have to have a certain level of relevance.

Link to older posts, might help your older posts to get a bit more views. You should do that with a good anchor text and maintain the relevancy the link. You can easily do this and if you do it the right way people will click on it.

Short about how you can improve your blog post’s live, did this have an impact on your blog? I would love to know.

The Honda Way of Success

By Mikkel Juhl On February 11, 2010 5 Comments

You know Honda? The engine company?

They have been quite successful in some years now, their key to success was failure. This amazing video is going to show you how they turned failures into a positive thing. This is definitely a video worth watching.

Key elements:

• Ideas
• Failures
• Chances
• Keep trying
• 1/100(0)

I actually saw this video in school, we were just about to finish the main topic in English, which was success. So our teacher showed us this. Great inspiration.

Please share your thoughts on this video in the comments. If you didn’t think that this is a good way to get success, then you should definitely tell why, I’d like to hear your opinions on this.

How to Build a Powerful Blogging Alliance

By Mikkel Juhl On February 9, 2010 20 Comments

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 Increase Your Productivity in 8 Easy Steps

By Mikkel Juhl On February 7, 2010 19 Comments

Productivity is one of the biggest problems for me nowadays (and for others). I am the worst time manager ever. Last night I ended up writing no blog posts, but hell lots of tweeting. That isn’t waste of time, but just a sign that I can’t manage my time, that well.

I think lots of bloggers and twitter-ers are pretty bad to manage their time – while sitting in front of their computer. We might go tweeting, instead of blogging. As I did. Or they find other distractions, if they don’t want to write a blog post.

I don’t think it is smart to force yourself writing blog posts, but if you have a brilliant idea, but you just don’t want to write it. You should start writing it. I have collected some tools I use and methods/techniques I use, to be productive.

Read rest of the entry

Everybody Isn’t Perfect and That Affects Your Blog

By Mikkel Juhl On February 6, 2010 6 Comments

We are all not perfect as well, nothing is perfect…

Definition of perfect: Perfect is a non-existing thing that people try to find or live up to. No one can be perfect because everyone has faults of some sort. If anything ever was perfect that should be (for the believers) the person who maybe died on a cross 2000 years ago.

This in other words means that you are allowed not to be perfect. No one expects you to be perfect.

I know that I suck at stuff. Other people are really bad at some other stuff, we all have our strengths and our weaknesses. I should be the first to admit that my English grammar isn’t the best, especially my punctuation. I am aware of that, I know there is something I can work with.

Do you have that as well? Now that we know everyone isn’t perfect, then what aren’t you perfect at? There probably

is something blogging related. Share with us, if you share it with us – then you’ve already done the first thing.

Which is to be aware of your imperfectness. Though sometimes you can’t do a single thing about your imperfectness, but when you can, just try to improve. Of course you do not need to try to be perfect, because that is unreachable. You can always try to improve your imperfectness, but you can never be perfect.

Not Good at Writing?

This reminds me of an email I got a couple days ago. It was a sales email, I read it anyway. It said something like this “I’m not much of a writer, so I’m now using this automated blogging system.” I was just thinking, do you really wanna give that sh*t to your readers?

If you can’t write good, then just write your best. Do never do anything automated. It really is a stupid thing to do. The content have probably been published before you published it and it probably isn’t better than your own content.

If you are having trouble writing good content, then sit down and edit and add something here and there, make it more appealing and add more meat. You just need to practice then, take your time. Edit it a few times, till you have a stunning article.

Therefore be more satisfied and if you keep editing on every single post, then you will also be better to write the articles, without having to edit them. So that’s just practice.

What to Do About it?

You need to analyze what the problem is. What you can improve on, and we are talking about the imperfection of your blog writing, especially. You can also use this to see what you can improve on in other topics. But I have written this post so you will be able to improve your blog.

You should be able to see your own imperfection, if not then ask another person. But please, tell me that you know, there’s something you can work on? Something you can improve on. When you have analyzed the problem, then you can easily see how you can improve.

Practice, practice and practice.

You just need to admit that you can improve. If it is a big thing then you should try to improve as soon as possible, but if it isn’t a big problem then why not screw it? Is it worth it to use 5 hours to improve something that really isn’t so urgent?

What can you improve on?

How to Guest Post the Tactical Way

By Mikkel Juhl On February 3, 2010 12 Comments

I have talked a bit about guest posting before, in this post we are going to talk about how you can write guest posts a tactical way. Let’s jump right to the meat.

You are writing guest posts to get known, to get traffic, to get readers. Just to get more popularity. I know that guest posting is a so good tool when you are trying to build your audience. It can build up traffic, credibility.

I think you should try to publish as many guest posts as you can. Just be sure not to burn out, you should always know your limits. If you are comfortable writing 1 blog post each day, then do that. If you like 1 post every second day, then go for that.

The thing is that you shouldn’t write too much, so eventually later on you will burn out. The first priority should be your blog and marketing your blog that is definitely #1. Then you can when you have written today’s blog post, then you can go for the guest post or anything else after that.

Remember content is what drives a blog.

This was a bit of a sidetrack, but I just wanted to make sure you shouldn’t go out and market your blog, without writing the content. So when you have written your blog post then write the guest post.

When Writing a Blog Post

The first thing when writing a guest post is: you should look at the blog you are about to guest post on, look at his content. How long is it, what are the topics (then you know what fits his readers) and then try to “copy” those thing.

When you do that, you should write an article that fits the blog, it should definitely be quality. Give away your best articles, that is what you should do when you write a guest post. Quality, quality and quality.

So the only thing is not the post. You need a bioline. These are important, that is the lines where your blog link is. It should be an appealing and descriptive text of you and your blog. Much like an elevator pitch.

It might be a good idea to talk with the guy, before submitting the post. Talk to him and ask if it is okay if you send him an guest article? And if he says, yeah sure. Cool then you’re in his little club. After some hours when you have written the post, give it to him. Be sure you have proof  read it. It really is important. That everything is good here.

The Day After the Blog Post

Now this is when we start getting more tactical. You already know the kind of stuff he is producing, what kind of content.

The last cause, “what kind of content” is important.

Because after you published the article, people will stream on to your blog and they will read more of your content because they liked it so much.

And you want to satisfy them, they want some good content. Therefore you do need your next blog article to consist of nothing but quality. The same way that your guest post was. Not only the quality way, but also the “kind of content” alike. So they if his content is quite techy, then your next blog post should also be techy.

Then people will subscribe, the days after the blog post you should keep doing this a few days after. Then you will be able to gain some readers from that guest post, instead of just traffic for a couple of days.

Take care, just study the audience you are about to post for, before posting.

This reminds me of, do you want to contribute on DaneBlogger?