12 Month Total Online Presence Blueprint

I’ve been taking business owners through the beta of my Total Online Presence Program of late and the comprehensive nature of this mindset is certainly reinforcing the overwhelming amount of stuff there is to do online if you are to tap the full potential of building a Total Online Presence.

Total Online Presence Blueprint
photo credit: someToast via photopin cc
That was a really long sentence to say – “Dang, there’s a lot you have to do to get this right.”
But here’s the good news (or maybe it’s the horrible news), it never ends, you’re never done, it’s just part of who you have to become. What I mean is there’s no point in worrying about getting it all done this week or this month unless you only plan to be in business for a month or so.

You must come to think of building a Total Online Presence as an intention and a continuous work in progress. (I’m conducting a live online seminar the subject of this post January 22nd if you want to get into even more specifics – Enroll here)

With that in mind, I present a 12-month plan of attack or blueprint for working on your presence in the coming year. I’ve long taught this “live by the calendar” approach as I think it helps business owners, who wear many hats, get above the overwhelm by taking it topic by topic and manageable bit by bit in an attempt to forge something that looks like continuous progress.

Month 1 – Create a Listening Station
Setting yourself up to actively monitor what’s being said to you, about you, about your market, your competitors and by your customers, is step number one. Employ a combination of free and paid tools such as Google Alerts, Google Reader, HootSuite and SproutSocial to filter, aggregate, follow and monitor your online presence and establish a routine of processing, acting on and sharing this information on a daily basis.

Month 2 – Set-up Foundational Content Calendar
Using your own brainstorming combined with some smart keyword research from a tool like the Google Keyword Tool, set up a calendar of monthly themes that will make up the focus of your content for each month. This can be a mix of your own content, guest content, video, audio and related content produced by others. The content created around these foundation themes will become the backbone of your SEO efforts. (I wrote more about a Total Content System here.)

Month 3 – Get More Sharable
This month you’re going to work on several fronts. You are going to audit everything you’re putting out there and make it easier to share. That means adding social media buttons to all of your content through WordPress plugins such as Sociable, adding ways for people to share your emails and adding sharing options to your printed and offline materials. In addition, you’re going to start exploring ways to share more of other people’s content. Drawing links to your content is essentially networking and you start this process by filtering and sharing good stuff that your followers and readers want to know about. One of the best ways to do this is to scan your blog subscriptions and employ a tool like Buffer to share 10-12 great finds each day.

Month 4 – Create a Point of View eBook
This month comes with one and only one task – create an eBook that will be the backbone for your lead capture program. By creating a content tool that summarizes how your firm is different by either presenting highly valuable content or outlining your unique methodology you create the foundation for trust building while giving people a reason to start a conversation beyond Twitter. This also gives you a tool to start reaching out to potential strategic partners for list swaps and cobranding opportunities.

Month 5 – Clean Up Your Content Delivery Platform
It’s time to take a good hard look at what we used to call your web site. Content delivery now means your blog, podcast, videos, eBooks, newsletters and brand assets placed in other networks around the web such as YouTube and Slideshare. And, of course, this also means your web site, your email capture process, your contact process, your about us page, your on page SEO factors and your page load speed.

Month 6 – Become Serious About Landing Pages
Now that we are producing keyword rich content it’s time to start driving people to get that content, to download that eBook, subscribe to your content updates and to connect for specific events and presentations. This month you’re going to get serious about creating landing pages for very specific purposes such as signing up for your email newsletter, downloading your eBook or attending a free educational online seminar. You can use outside tools such as Unbounce or internal tools such as Premise to help create landing pages with lots of functionality. Once you learn the mechanics of what makes a good landing page you can replicate the process to test and personalize for a variety of environment and occasions. Here’s a great primer on landing pages.

Month 7 – Revamp your Email Communication
This month you’re going to get serious about remaking your basic email newsletter as well as employing autoresponders to help follow-up with prospects and customers. By adding your monthly content theme material mixed with other people’s content you’ll produce a far more valuable newsletter that people want to receive. In addition, you’re going to start using your ESP’s tools to segment and personalize content for different audiences.

Month 8 – Tackle Social Profiles
I know that with all the emphasis on social media these days that waiting until month eight to mention it may seem odd. My view is that without addressing many of the steps that I emphasized in the previous months, social media participation is simply a distraction. Now, I can make a case for claiming and building profiles whenever you can, but serious consideration should be focused here now. Get serious about claiming, completing and enhancing your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook profiles. Don’t stop there, branch out to industry networks, Yelp, Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest profiles. Consider a service like KnowEm to create even more profiles.

Month 9 – Address Social Integration
Now that you’ve built profiles it is time to start going deeper. Choose the social network that allows you to reach the greatest number of prospects. Depending upon your business this might be LinkedIn or it might be Facebook. I believe that most businesses need to up their game in a number of networks to cover the favorite for their entire market, but it’s important to also get much deeper in at least one so you can learn how to engage in a way that attracts leads and converts fans and friends to email subscribers and customers. Then you can expand that effort.

Month 10 – Work Out Conversion
This month your entire focus should be on the conversion process. So many business focus on generating traffic when the money is in, well, the money. This begins with understanding everything you can about the usability of your web site, A/B testing your landing pages and setting up analytics goals and funnels to track every ad, call to action, headline and offer. Tools like UserTesting.com, Google Experiments and Google Analytics make up a nice low-cost toolset for these functions.

Month 11 – Start Employing Smart Advertising
Here’s another category that lots of people want to jump right into. It’s true you can run some Google AdWords and maybe generate traffic before you ever create any kind of organic presence, but I believe that your advertising gets far more effective if you can use it to create awareness for strong content offers, have a firm foothold in some social networks, are testing and tweaking your conversion tactics and are prepared to capture leads and build the kind of trust that helps you fully monetize your traffic.

Month 12 – Develop Mobile Friendliness
We end the year by looking at ways to tap the fact that almost every one of our prospects and customers have mobile devices that allow them to shop, search, research and buy products and services from local and global companies. The need to make your content mobile and tablet friendly is essential. Once that is taken care of you can branch out and explore mobile advertising, location-based offers and SMS communication knowing that the foundation built over the past year will allow you to maximize the growing mobile space.
Even at over 1400 words I realize that for some all I’ve done is whet the appetite for more specific direction. If today’s post has piqued your interest in this important subject, join me Tuesday, January 22nd for a live online seminar where I will dive into all twelve months with a list of specific actions you can take for each.

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How to Be Quiet and Why You Must

A few weeks ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a healthier economy.
You can catch the entire Recover You series here.

quiet
photo credit: emdot via photopin cc
Business is noisy. A typical day might involve dozens of conversations, meetings, decisions, tasks and insights.

Every thought, conscious or otherwise, roars through our heads like the intersection of trains headed into the station.

We get pretty good at muffling the noise, become almost use to it, but it takes its toll no matter what we think.

In fact, in response to dealing with the noise we often lose our ability to actually think, to consider the vision for the business, to make conscious decisions about the impact of every act.

One of the best ways to return our focus to things like purpose and vision is to practice being quiet long enough to turn down the noise.

This isn’t as easy at it might sound. Try this right now. Close your eyes and just sit for five minutes and see how noisy your brain is. Most people can’t do this for more than 30 seconds without beginning to fidget.
We’ve trained our brain to be on and that leads to constantly talking, considering what to do next and reaching for our phones whenever we have a down minute to fill.

I believe we need to retrain ourselves to be still or run the risk of losing touch with why we do what we do.
Here are some of the ways I’ve found to turn down the noise in my head.

Go analog
Set up an area in your office with crayons and paper and other crafty kind of materials and every now and then unplug and go draw, cut and paste while taking your mind off your to do list.

Journal
Get a big notebook or use any text editor and get in the habit of free flow journaling. When I first started doing this is was so goofy what spilled out of me, but I didn’t edit a word or judge what I wrote in any way and eventually it became an outlet for releasing thoughts that were somewhere rolling round blocking my intentions.

Meditate
I’ve written about this before and certainly many now agree on the benefits of a meditation practice. It’s hard for people to do I think because they believe it is supposed to be this path to enlightenment. If you put that kind of pressure on anything it won’t be enjoyable. Think about it as five or ten minutes a day to simply witness your thoughts and experience first-hand how noisy it is up there. Then you can take little steps.

Get outside
I am amazed at the healing power of nature. Every single one of us should get outside and lay on our backs in the grass and watch the white puffy clouds go by for about ten or fifteen minutes a day minimum. If you really want to experience the power of nature take a daylong hike or pitch a tent in a forest near a stream. The bigness of it all is one of the most quieting tonics available.

Sit and listen
Try this one for a little different perspective. Close your eyes and sit and listen to all the sounds near by. Don’t think anything just notice. Then slowly move your perception out farther and farther picking up sounds just outside, traffic maybe, and then a train off in the distance. See how far you can tune in. I don’t know why but this little exercise seems to open up pathways in my thinking and quite the noise that’s right around me.

Retreat
Of course the biggest, scariest and most awesome things you can do is lock yourself away for a weekend retreat with no computer, phone, TV or need to make any conversation at all. I realize this is pretty impractical for most, but what if you tried it for even half a day? I would write and read inspiring passages but mostly I would slow down and think about the things that really matter, the things I know I’m meant to do, the things I’m grateful for, the intentions I have for my business and my life.

It’s a shame in some ways that being quiet is so hard. Part of this is just the world we live in and part is self-inflicted. The good news is we still have the ability to dial it up and down as a choice in the infinite number of choices we get to make.

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How to Create a Total Content System

As content becomes increasingly important in the marketing mix, it must take on an elevated place in your strategy and planning. The use of high quality, education based content has become an essential ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, serving customers and generating referrals.
I’ve said this many times over the last few years, but marketers these days have a lot in common with publishers and it’s time to embrace this reality fully.

Today I want to outline a complete systematic approach to creating and executing a content plan that borrows heavily from the editorial outlook of a publisher while acknowledging the marketing objectives facing most businesses.

Content creation and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing marketers today and you must take a very planned and practical approach to getting it all done. Waking up every morning and deciding what you are going to write on your blog does not scale.

A Total Content SystemTM approach allows you to plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and generally get far more out of every piece of content you produce. Once your system is in place it will build momentum with each passing month and begin to multiply in value to your organization.

The Total Content System goes like this:
Create a list of monthly Foundational Content Themes
Develop your Content Delivery Platform
Integrate your content with Core Business Objectives
(You can also listen to a 13 minute audio overview of this topic above)
Foundational Content Themes
Either through your own knowledge or by using a keyword tool like Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker, develop a list of core content topics and assign one to each month for the next 12 months.
Each theme should be a substantial topic related to your business or industry and represent an important keyword search term. It might be helpful to think about it like a book. Each month might represent a chapter in what will ultimately make up an important body of work by the end of this year.
You can also designate terms that you know you would like to rank higher for, but currently have little or no content that leads people online or off to you.
I’ll use my organization as an example to help illustrate this point. My business and model may be significantly different than yours, but examples always seem to help fill in the blanks for people.

My editorial themes for 2013:
January – Referral Marketing
February – Coaching and Consulting
March – Sales and Lead Conversion
April – Online Integration
May – Writing
June – Strategic Partners
July – Customer Experience
Aug – Content Marketing
Sept – High Tech, High Touch
Oct – Growth Strategies
Nov – Analytics and Conversion
Dec – Personal Growth

These are all topics that I believe my community is interested in learning more about and that I personally have an interest in developing more content around. (I’m working on a sales book and will be heavy into daily writing on that project in March – all content has a purpose!)

Develop your Content Delivery Platform
Now that I have my list of foundational themes I can organize my Content Delivery Platform components accordingly. Again, this is my model, but many of these elements work for any kind of business and should be considered in your business.

Newsletter – I put out a weekly email newsletter. I will add themed content to each issue either through some of my own writing or by finding other people’s content related to the theme and highlighting it.
Blog posts – I write a daily blog post and may schedule a post related to the theme on a weekly basis. This still gives me lots of room on topics but helps me focus both from a content and SEO standpoint.
Guest posts – We currently run one guest post a week and use our monthly theme to suggest topics to potential guests. (If you would like to submit a guest post see the themes above for guidance and submit your idea here.)

Podcast guests – I produce a weekly audio podcast and the monthly theme really gives me guidance in lining up topic experts well in advance.

PR Pitches – We use our themes to promote stories and pitches to the media.
Sponsored pitches – We receive invitations to write sponsored content and conduct sponsored webinars and use our theme to guide these pitches. We also reach out to organizations that might have a special interest in a particular month’s theme with sponsor opportunities.
Webinars – Since we are creating all this rich, topic specific content we host monthly online seminars to deliver the content in a new form.

eBook – People really seem to love eBooks and they are an essential element in our list building efforts. Most themes lend themselves nicely to an eBook compilation.

Curate a Scoop.it topic – As we are doing the research and preparing all of the ideas for our own content, we bookmark tons of other people’s content, books, experts, tools and the like related to our theme and save the entire collection as a curated topic on Scoop.it. This allows us to attract even more readers and creates a nice library to draw from.

Create a content package – The final step is to take all of this content from each month and create a membership or community offering that would allow people interested in the monthly topic to access the entire package in one tidy resource. One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is that while so much content is free and available, people will pay for content that is packaged and delivered in the way they want it. Figure that piece out and you’ll really make your content efforts pay directly.

Integrate your content with Core Business Objectives
Okay, so now you’ve got your themes plotted out and you’ve got a plan for creating, filtering and aggregating all manner and form of content into your delivery system. It’s time map your content plan to your core business objectives.

This step allows you to better understand how to get return on your content investment and how much you should actually invest in creating a certain form or package of content.

For example, if one of your stated annual objectives is to dramatically increase the sale of information products, you would produce content with product creation in mind. Or, if one of your stated objectives for the year is to significantly increase your subscriber list, you would focus on producing, delivering and sharing content that attracts email capture, links and strategic partnering.

One of the most important aspects of a Total Content System plan is that it changes the lens you use to view all the information that comes at you all day long. When you know what your theme is this month and next month all of a sudden books, tools, articles and conversations take on new meaning and seem to somehow organize themselves for the benefit of your ongoing, long-term approach.

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Strategic Blogging

logging as a business rather than just a job. One of the things that has become evident to me is that good sustainable businesses don’t usually just happen by accident.

Instead they take planning, strategy and intentionality.

So as part of our 31 days to building a better blog series I thought it would be wise to start by talking about some big picture issues. Whilst these first few posts may not be as practical as some that will follow in the coming weeks – I believe that thinking through the issues that they contain could be the difference between a good and a great blog.

I know that for some this type of talk will be frustrating – words like mission, vision, values and strategy are not where you’re at – but humor me please. You see I believe that if you get these things right you’ll find many of the other tips that I share later in this series to be much more powerful as you’ll be able to use them in much more focused and effective ways.

Over the next few posts I’m going to lead you through a strategic plan process that a friend of mine gave me to think through another (non blogging) project that I’m working on – I think it’s highly relevant for ProBlogging and hope you find it helpful.

In each post I’m going to give us a little homework, a few questions to ask that hopefully will help you to think through the issues at hand. Feel free to answer them in private or to even think out loud in comments after each post.

As I post each post in this mini series within the larger 31 days to a better blog I’ll post links to them here as a central place to see the whole process.
I hope you enjoy.

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8 Alternatives to Google Keyword Tool

Keyword research is vital. It’s an essential tactic for developing a powerful content strategy, targeting pay per click advertising campaigns and improving search engine optimization.

keyword research

photo credit: shawncalhoun via photopin cc

For many years Google offered what was undoubtedly the most used free tool for conducting research on popular and not so popular keyword phrases with useful information regarding popularity, competition and suggested variations of phrases.

The tool was actually an AdWords offering that effectively helped people do better AdWords planning, but it certainly worked for all manner of research.

Recently Google decided to more tightly integrate the tool with AdWords and rebranded it as AdWords Planner. In addition to requiring users to log in to an AdWords account to access the tool a great deal of useful research functionality has been stripped away.

While I found that it was sufficient for most basic research it no longer serves that need very well.
Below are four free alternatives and four paid alternatives that I suggest business owners and marketers consider adding to their resource and research routines.

Free keyword tools

Wordtracker -  https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Ubersuggest – http://ubersuggest.org/
SEO Book – http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
WordPot – http://www.wordpot.com

My favorite paid options

MOZ – http://moz.com/tools/keyword-difficulty
Raven Tools – http://raventools.com/tools/research-central/
KeywordSpy – http://www.keywordspy.com/
SEMRush – http://www.semrush.com/

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5 New Realities of SEO

Back in the day, SEO was more technical and less, well, semantic. Now I realize that for most a term like semantic query relevancy might as well be the name of computer programming language, but the fact is Google’s customers, the searcher and the advertiser, are no longer content with results based on related page keyword content. This Wall Street Journal article explains Google’s take
google search 


To improve accuracy Google and Bing both are attempting to understand what is actually meant by a search and refine results based on things like recency, location, context and of course relevance.
For example if you search “best place to buy a MacBook Pro” there was a time when search engines would return results of blog posts about good places to buy a MacBook Pro or maybe even computer reviews. From that you might have been able to find what you were looking for, but with semantic knowledge graph built in Google is more likely to think – oh, you want to buy a MacBook Pro and I know where you are and I know the inventory levels of the nearest stores with sale prices, so here are your results.
What this means for website owners is they can no longer count on writing content about a subject, optimizing it and going to work on links to the page. Sure, that stuff will always play a role, but there are other significant factors at play today.

Google officially rolled out a new search algorithm recently that employs a great deal of their progress in semantic search. The update is called “Hummingbird” and while traces of it have been coming in previous updates, this one is significant and lasting.

Search has been heading this way for some time now. So, no SEO is not dead once again, unless you mean quick SEO – SEO that doesn’t contain relationship and authority building. Bottom-line though – quality, frequency, depth and authority matter more than ever.

Below are five realities that site owners and SEO professionals must address in order to remain relevant.
Social signals matter a lot

One of the biggest factors baked into search results are signals that search engines can receive about content quality based on social interactions. How many +1s a page has matters greatly as do shares, likes and retweets. My guess is that it’s nearly impossible to get most content to rank without it.
In depth is the new snack sized

One of the things blogs ushered in was the ability to create small little bits of content frequently. While readers seem to enjoy this, often the content lacked much depth and certainly did not engender many retweets and shares (unless you are Seth Godin and you’re followed by 113,000 people on Google+ even though you’ve never shared anything on Google+)

Many people still throw out thinly disquised lists as link bait, but nothing gets shared and strongly indexed today like long, in depth narrowly cast articles. Google has even created markup standards for in depth articles as long as 2000-5000 words.

Who writes it matters too

Authority based on authorship has grown to be a major ranking factor. Claiming your own Google+ Authorship for your content is vital. This includes telling Google other places where your content appears.
While there is no “kloutlike” scoring system as of yet, understanding whose content is thought of authoritative because that’s your relationship building hit list!

Link building is networking

Past Google updates with names like Panda and Penguin were different than Hummingbird as they we updates to fix stuff, mostly artificial link building. Like it or not the more sophisticated algorithms become the harder it is to fake link relationships. Link building in the old school SEO fashion is going the way of the compact disc so you better get good at writing high quality content, sharing high quality content and building authoritative relationships with people that Google thinks matter when it comes to content.
In case that sounds like good old fashion networking that’s because it is.
Keyword not provided is the new deal

Site owners long ago made a deal with Google – let us crawl your site and we’ll tell you who is visiting your site and why – just kidding – take a look at your Google Analyitcs these days and see if your “keyword not provide” or what terms someone searched on that brought them to your site is hovering in the 100% range like mine is.

There are some clever ways to hack together this data (future post on that) and word on the street is Google may find a way to sell it back to you through some sort of premium analytics, but look for some 3rd party tools to fill this gap and get used to a world without the ease of knowing why someone came to your site. (I suppose this is actually a step back into the more technical SEO need.)
Tomorrow I’m going to give you a look into my top 5 recommended action steps for addressing the new realities of SEO today.

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There’s a Hole in my Blog – Holistic Blogging

“Your blog will only ever be as good as it’s weakest component.”
Warning: Tangent Ahead

Imagine you’ve been given a task of hauling water from one place to another (over a long distance) – but that all you’ve been given to do the job is a rusty old bucket which has multiple holes in it. There are holes both low and high on the bucket which make transporting water a real challenge.
You’re given materials to patch some but not all of the holes in the bucket. Which one’s would you fix?
There are a number of ways of approaching this problem – you could attempt to patch the biggest holes first, you could patch those which are most prominent on the bucket etc…
But perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to make the priority of your repair work those holes which are lowest on the bucket.
The reasoning for this approach is that over time your bucket will only be able to hold as much water as the lowest hole on the bucket. Common sense really and a principle I want to suggest bloggers think about on their blogs.
Your blog will only ever be as good as its weakest component allows it to be.

I’ve been thinking about how to say this all week after what must have been around 50 conversations with new bloggers via email, IM and in person. In conversation after conversation it seems that many of the bloggers I’ve talked to seem to be quite obsessive about one element of their ProBlogging efforts. Whether it be Adsense, finding readers, Search Engine Optimization – in most of these conversations the bloggers have seen all of the answers to their blog’s success as laying in the one area.
What I’ve found myself suggesting this week to many of these bloggers is that to concentrate on one area of your blogging is ok for a short period of time – but for your blog to grow to its fullest potential you need to be willing to work at it on a variety of fronts. If you don’t it’s like patching holes high on the sides of a bucket and ignoring others lower down.
One of the common holes that I’ve noticed recently on new blogs is a severe lack of content.
I spoke to one blogger this week on around 20 occasions – each time they asked questions about design and ad placement issues. They spent hours and hours chopping and changing things on their blog but in that week wrote no new content on a blog that only has a handful of pages. At the end of the week they asked me why they didn’t seem to have any readers and why the ones who had stopped by didn’t come back? The fact that the page’s content hadn’t changed all week didn’t cross their mind.

Another problem on some blogs is to focus upon content TOO heavily at the detriment of other factors.

I had contact with another budding entrepreneurial blogger this week who writes brilliant content for his blog (and has done so for months) but who has virtually no readers because he has never worked on blog promotion, SEO or networking with other bloggers. As a result in the months that he’d been blogging he’d not had more than 10 visitors to his blog per day. He’d never left a comment on another blog, he’d never even submitted his blog to a search engine or to his knowledge been linked to by anyone else (and subsequently he’s still not been indexed by any search engine). Writing content is a great start – but if its all you do it won’t take your blog to its fullest potential.

I could go on with example after example of bloggers who either ignore or become obsessed with different factors of their blogs. I’m getting to the stage with some where I’m going to start saying that if they don’t work on the areas that I suggest that I’ll stop helping them because while their intention is to improve their blogging – some are getting to a stage where they are just wasting their own time (and mine) with their efforts.
So what should a blogger work on?

This is a difficult question to answer with a sweeping statement because each blog is different and needs different levels of attention put to different areas of it depending upon many factors. Having said that – there are a number of areas that I’d suggest bloggers consider devoting serious time to.
• Writing Content - without content your blog is nothing.

• Sourcing Content - this will depend upon the type and style of blog you’re running – but if your blog is not solely about original content (for example here at ProBlogger I mix original content and link/quote posts to other blogs) you need to work on developing good sources of content via RSS, other sites, alert lists etc.

• Design – while not essential to be successful I believe that thinking about how your blog is designed and laid out can improve it on many levels.

• Income streams – not all bloggers are into making money from blogs but I’m assuming most readers of a blog on the topic are. This doesn’t just happen – put time aside to learn about different income streams, ad positioning, affiliate programs etc

• Networking – I’m a massive believer in NOT blogging in a vacuum. Build relationships with other bloggers and site owners – work on common projects, share ideas, learn from one another.

• Promotion and PR - You don’t have to hire a PR company or have a complicated publicity plan – but ask yourself how potential readers will find your blog and work on some ways to get your name out there.

• SEO – Most web users start with search engines when looking for information online – if you’re not working on being on the end of their searches you could be ignoring potential readers.

• Trend Watching – I recommend that bloggers keep an eye on the big picture as well as their blogging niche. Is your niche growing or shrinking? What opportunities might exist to expand your blog or even start another one? Are their areas within your niche that can be developed?

• Tracking Performance – I devote time each day to analyzing the performance of my blogs on many fronts including traffic levels, earnings, mentions on other blogs, search engine rankings etc. Keeping an eye on these internal trends help to determine future strategy.

I’m sure there are other aspects of blogging that we could (and should) add to this list. I’m really interested to know what you think? What do you spend most time doing on your blogs? Where are the holes in your blog? What factors would you add to or subtract to this list?

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Getting Inside Your Blog Readers Mind

Ali  has another worthwhile post at Ads On Blog on the topic of Optimum Placement of Google Ads where he suggests that bloggers consider five questions when they decide how to place ads on their blog. Here are the first three which I think are key:

’1. What is a user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?
2. What do they do when viewing a specific page?
3. Where is the focus of their attention likely to be?’

One of the traps that many bloggers fall into when placing Adsense ads is to just put them where everyone else does – but I think these sorts of questions are a better starting place. Understanding the thought processes and habits of your readers is actually a very helpful thing.

How do you do this? I have done a number of things to try to get inside the minds of some of my readers. Here’s a few suggestions:

1. Watch someone surf your blog – ask someone who hasn’t been to your blog before to have a look around your blog while you watch on. Don’t tell them where to go – but watch what they do. After a few minutes ask them a few questions about what they saw, what they read, what stood out etc. Of course you could pay for a professional eye tracking type service – but even just what you can glean from just observing one person very unscientifically can be very useful.

2. Email your regular readers – On occasion I pick a random regular reader from one of my newsletter lists or comments lists and will ask that reader for feedback on my blog. I seek their opinion on design, ad placement etc and ask them for their impressions of my blog.

3. Do a survey or poll – this can be as big or as small as you like but give all of your readers the opportunity to feedback to you who they are and what they think of your blog. Collect data on who they (demographics), why they come to your blog and what they think of it. Also give them an opportunity to make suggestions. I’m always amazed at how my readers see things that I’ve never noticed before about my blog because they look at it as an objective outsider.

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The Secret to Interactive Blogging – Expertise blended with Invitation

Rob Hof over at Business Week has stumbled upon one of the secrets of growing interactivity on a blog -
 it’s about not knowing all the answers. He notices that the posts with most comments on his blog are where he asks for help.

‘The tough thing for journalists, I think, is that we’re supposed to provide answers, not just pose questions. So what makes a really good story–insight into an issue or person or company, wrapped up in a tidy, complete package–is precisely what doesn’t work on a blog. People are more interested in responding to questions. Provide just answers, and, well, there’s nothing more to say….’

This is so true yet I’d not write off posts that provide answers altogether.
What I’ve discovered over the last couple of years is that people want a mixture of expertise but also room to speak from their own experience. I’ve tried in the past few months to create this type of space in the way I blog here at Problogger – blending posts that are are quite ‘How To’ in nature (with lots of tips and answers) with plenty of opportunities for readers to share their own expertise.
In a sense this was my motivation behind the 31 Day Project and my invitation for readers to submit their blog tip posts.

The result is quite spectacular with around 160 reader submissions already in addition to my own 45 or so ‘expert’ pieces.

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Adsense Optimization Case Study – BuzzMachine

Yesterday I mentioned that Jeff Jarvis has made the decision to add Ads to his Blog (BuzzMachine). After posting this I emailed Jeff to let him know that I’d be happy to give a few free tips on how to get the most out of his Adsense ads. I’m yet to hear back from him (I know he’s a busy guy – so I’m not offended) but as I thought about what I’d suggest to him I thought it might make an interesting case study post here at ProBlogger as part of the 31 Days Project.

So consider this an open letter of advice for Jeff – but also for the many other bloggers who have similar blogs. Jeff uses a fairly standard WordPress template so what I share here might be useful for others too. Feel free to add your suggestions and tips to the comments section below.

The first thing I would recommend that Jeff does is go and have a look at the advice the Adsense team give publishers at their optimization page. Of particular usefulness is the heat map that they give that shows hot zones for the best positioning of ads (see diagram below).

Adsense-Placement-2
Possible Problems/Issues

If you compare this heat map (above) and Jeff’s page (left) you’ll notice immediately a couple of things.

1. Jeff’s BlogAds position is in a completely cold zone. White patches on the heat map are dead/cold patches. I was actually going to buy an ad space from his blog ads but when i saw the position I decided against it.

2. Jeff’s Adsense ads are in a pretty cool zone also (right hand sidebar). This is the position of them on every page in the blog. probably the only worse place for them would be below his footer and on the same sidebar but below the fold.

Buzzmachine-1
Another issue that I’d suggest Jeff take a look at is the visual barrier that he’s created by putting the ads column on a different color background to the rest of the blog. There is a line between his site proper and the ad section. While this might help to identify what is an ad and what isn’t an ad – it is a pretty basic no no if you want to get good results form your ads
.
Not only is there a line between his content and ads, there is also a menu column on his main page which further separates his readers main attention and the ads.

Another observation that i make is that when you look at the source code on Jeff’s site – the Adsense code is the very very last piece of code that you see on the page. This means that the adsense code and the content (which adsense looks at when determining which ads to place on the site) are not in proximity to one another. This is one problem that many bloggers have and it can be one of the reasons that many bloggers get quite irrelevant advertisements served.

Suggested Solutions
I would highly recommend that Jeff do one or all of the following things:
Move his ad column to the left hand side of the blog – This is probably the simplest tweak he could make. It would solve a couple of the problems mentioned above including putting the ads into hot zones and putting the Adsense code higher in the source code (and hopefully increasing ad relevancy).

New Positions – While just moving the ad to the left of screen would definitely help click through rates I’d suggest that other positions are worth experimenting with ads also. For starters could try the positioning on his son’s blog (see below) – a small banner at the top of content. This is a good position for a front page. These ads would do well if they were blended in (ie black text and blue title/links) in a similar way to how they are at Jake’s Blog (note – Jake is not only Jeff’s son but he’s Jeff’s blog designer – and does pretty nice work I have to say).

Jakes-Blog
Another useful position on a front page is to position a rectangle ad two or three posts down the page (say between post 2 and 3) – as I do on my main page.
On individual pages I’d recommend jeff consider either placing an ad inside content like I do on many of my blogs (example). This is the hottest zone on the above heat map. In addition to this another option is to add a second ad at the bottom of his posts but before comments. Jeff gets a lot of comments on his blogs and as a result readers often get to the bottom of his posts and will see these ads (illustrated below). As with my other suggestions I’d encourage a blended ad approach here – black text, blue titles/links.
New-Ad
Add more ad units – at present Jeff has only one ad unit – I’d recommend that if income generation were a high priority that he consider adding at least one more unit, if not two. Of course he probably doesn’t want to dominate his page with ads (I’ve no problem with this) but I suspect adding a second unit on individual pages above the comments section would not clutter the page with ads too much.
LinkunitsAdd Link Units - the beauty of Adsense’s link units is that they are small and pretty adaptable. Again Jeff’s son Jake has these on his blog – in one format that might work (at the top of a sidebar). Another option would be to place them along the top of Jeff’s blog or underneath his header (as I do here at Problogger at present). Adlinks work very well on some blogs and not on others – but it’s worth a try as they are pretty small and unobtrusive ads.

I’ll leave it at that for the moment – there is a lot more that can be said but these are the basics that I’d recommend to someone wanting my opinion.

I should say that I’ve written these tips not knowing what Jeff’s overall blog goals are. I suspect that while he’s interested in advertising revenue that it’s not the main motivation for his blog and that he will not want ads to dominate his pages. This is great and fits his blog well – however I believe that he could make a few of these tweaks, still keep a clean and classy design for his blog and not interrupt the flow while still earning a few dollars on the side.

As I’ve written above – I’d love to hear what suggestions you’d make to Jeff in comments below.

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Overnight Blogging Success

Here is a quote from Ali that I should be tattooed to the foreheads of all bloggers hoping to make it rich via their blogging efforts:

‘My brother Curt, founder of Folio Corp, former CEO of MyFamily.com, and current CEO of Agilix, a venture-backed company, is fond of saying telling how his company was going to be an overnight success…after 10 years of hard work.

I believe that the single most important key to success in an online venture is doing the little things day after day for years and years until you magically reach the tipping point and everyone seems to have heard of you. In other words, persistence is required for most successful ventures.’

Last night I had just finished posting on 15 new digital cameras and printers that had been announced by Canon – it was 2am – and I was just about to close my laptop when my instant messenger beeped – signaling someone wanted a chat. 2am is not my favorite time of the day to start IM conversations but my curiosity got the better of me and I opened the window to find out who it was. It turned out to be a journalist from a pretty major online publication wanting an interview (glad I checked).

I am a little fearful of the article that will be the result of the interview because at 2.00am to 2.30am in I don’t generally have much that is worthwhile to say – however the one thing that I found myself saying to every second question is ‘it takes time’. The questions were varied – but the answer remained.

• How do you build up a readership?

• How do you get ranked in Search Engines?

• How do you start so many blogs?

• How did you learn your craft?

• How did you get credibility in the area you blog in?

• How quickly can you build a successful blog?
It takes time. As a result essential qualities of successful entrepreneurial bloggers are patience and persistence. If you have these you just might find yourself becoming an overnight success – eventually.

Read Ali post – How to have Overnight Internet Success

While you read it I’m going back to bed – I’ve got a blogging hangover.

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Monkey Bar Blogging

I’d like to take a moment to make a ProBlogger Public Service Announcement.

Its actually something that I’ve been considering doing for a while now because I’ve had two worrying incidents happen in the past week that have left me somewhat concerned.

The latest of these incidents happened two days ago when I received an excited email from a new ProBlogger reader (I have his permission to share this with you without using his name) who was writing to tell me that he’d just ‘turned Professional’ as a blogger and quit his job to go full time with blogging.

His email was written in an excited tone and was full of grand visions of blogs that would make lots of money. Not only was he excited but his partner was also as they had been reading numerous stories of bloggers making their riches from the medium over the past week. They have two little kids and he was excited to be able to stay home with his family to write each day and be able to provide an income for his family.

The email left me with a sinking feeling in my guts as I considered the decision that this guy had made to quit his secure job to become a Professional blogger. You see he’d only started his first blog a week ago – the day he handed in his resignation.

ProBlogger Public Service Announcement

It takes time to build a profitable blog. You do not just become a Professional Blogger anymore than you just become a Professional Golfer. It is not a decision you make, it is something you work towards over time.

I’d invite you to glance over tot he poll I’m currently running this week on how much money Bloggers are currently making from their blogs from Adsense. Look at the figures – not just the ones at the bottom, but all of them.

Over a third of those who have responded make less than $30 each Month – less than $1 per day. Around half of those who responded earn less than $100 per month – less than $3 per day. Those are numbers to consider before you launch into ProBlogging without a back up plan.

Monkeybar-2

Monkey Bar Blogging

A wise man once gave me some good advice on business. He reminded me of when as a child I would play on the Monkey Bar Play Gym equipment. If you want to get across the monkey bars, from one end to the other, the safest way to do it is to grab hold of the first bar and swing to the next without letting go of the first until you have a firm grip of the second one. As you let go of the first you propel yourself to the third without letting go of the second until you have a strong grip of the next one.
The quickest way to fall off the monkey bar and break a bone (I broke my collar bone doing this) is to try and skip a bar, or to let go of the first one before you grip the next one.
Business (and Professional Blogging) is the same. There are times when you need to take risks in business – but there are also times when you have to be sensible and have some sort of a backup plan. Don’t try and skip steps without being sure you can survive on where you’re at.
My Blogging Journey

When I first started blogging I was working two jobs part time. I had no idea that blogging would become an income stream for me – it was purely a hobby.

Six or so months later when I started to earn an income from it I was tempted to quit my jobs and go full time but I decided to be careful – and I’m glad I did.

There came a time when I let go of one of those part time jobs – when it became realistic that I would be able to earn enough from my blogging to make up for the loss of that income – but I did keep hold of one of the jobs. Later on I was able to relinquish the second part time job and go full time with my blogging.

In actual fact I have recently taken on another part time job for six months while we get ourselves settled with a new mortgage – partly becuase the role is an exciting opportunity, but also partly to ensure a steady back up income for 6 months in our time of transition.

I’ve been blogging for 2.5 years now and only recently could afford to ‘go Pro’ (and still don’t). I work 6-10 hours 7 days per week (sometimes more) and am updating 18+ blogs daily. It is hard work. I love it and wouldn’t do anything else – but consider the cost before you launch in.

Yes you CAN make a lot of money from Blogging – read the stories that are going around on blogs of people making decent money from blogging – but also read about the hard work and time that it’s taken them and remember that for every success story you read there are plenty of others around who have tried and failed to make more than a few dollars from their blogs.

I’m not wanting to dampen the excitement and dreams of Pro Bloggers – in fact the whole point of this blog is to help them reach those dreams – but I think its the responsibility of those of us who are ‘talking up’ blogging to also keep giving reality checks. Otherwise we’re going to end up with a lot of Bloggers that look a little like this guy on the Monkey Bars – handing on for dear life!

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When is it Time to Go Pro as a Blogger?

Instant Messaging Conversation with Reader (used with permission – name changed to protect the innocent)

Rex – ‘Darren Darren Darren….I’ve decided to become a Professional Blogger!!!!’
Darren – ‘Wow that’s exciting Rex!’
Rex – ‘yeah I’m writing my letter of resignation as we speak….’
Rex – ‘I can’t wait to see my boss’s face when he sees it! :-)’
Darren – ‘that’s great…. but before you resign can I ask you a couple of questions?’
Rex – ‘sure’
Darren – ‘how long have you been blogging?’
Rex – ’3 months’
Darren – ‘how many blogs do you have?’
Rex – ‘just one’
Darren – ‘and if you don’t mind me asking how much does it earn each day?’
Rex – ‘…around $1.50′
Darren – ‘do you have any savings to live off for the next year?’
Rex – ‘………..’

This is a real conversation and one that I seem to have about once per month – bloggers who are excited by the potential that blogging has to pay them an income – who are so eager to ‘Go Pro’ that all sensibility goes out the window.

Most people would make sure they have another job to go to before resigning from a current one (or at least they’d make sure they had a way to survive in the short term) – why wouldn’t they do the same with blogging?

I’ve written about this before at Monkey Bar Blogging (a public service announcement that I wrote for bloggers a few months back) – it’s a post that I’d highly recommend anyone considering ‘Going Pro’ has a read. What I write below is similar I guess and my latest thinking on the topic.

So when should a blogger ‘Go Pro’?

Let me start answering this question by saying there is no one way to enter into blogging on a professional level. I know quite a few bloggers who have gone full time into blogging and with virtually every one there is a different variation on the story of how they did it.
Below is some of the advice I give to bloggers with aspirations to full time blogging:

Don’t view going Pro as an event, instead see it as a process

You don’t just decided to turn professional in any area of life without there being some sort of process that leads up to it. Tiger Woods didn’t just decide to turn pro one day – he had practiced for yeas, he’d put a lot of time into his golf, he’d had coaching, he’d played tournaments as an amateur, he’d developed skills and had made sacrifices. There must have come a time in his development when he (and those around him) realized that he was ready and he officially became a Professional athlete – however in reality he’d been becoming professional for many years proceeding that date. I think bloggers need to take a similar approach. It takes practice, ground work, experience, sacrifice and planning to go pro in most cases – it’s not just a decision.

One step at a time

The temptation when embarking upon this journey is to behave like you’ve already arrived and to forget the reality of life that you’re currently in. Don’t just quit your job without having some way of surviving in the mean time. This is irresponsible. The way I did it was to recognize I was in a transition and to slowly back off the work that I was doing in my ‘real job/s’ and as my blogging earnings increased to increase the time I allocated to blogging.

In the beginning for me blogging was a pure hobby that I did after work. 9 months in it was something I was able to cut my ‘real job’ back to 4 days per week, 18 months in I was 2-3 days per week blogging….and the process continued. Even today – almost three years after I started blogging I have another part time job (this ends in a month). I have this partly because when I took it I still wasn’t sure whether blogging would sustain me full time and also because I didn’t want to spend all day everyday alone in front of a computer).
It takes Significant time

I always say that ProBlogging takes time on two levels. Firstly on a long term level – getting to a full time level with your blogging can take years. Some do it quicker but the reality is that for most that have achieved this goal it has been a long journey. In the IM conversation above, this was one of the key things that Rex didn’t understand – he thought it was like starting a job – you start work and you get paid. This is not the case. The work you do now many not really pay off for 12, 24 or even 36 months. In fact the reality is that it may never pay off (sorry to be the prophet of doom).

Secondly blogging takes time on a daily basis – significant time. You need to be able to find spare hours in your day for blogging if you want to build a career out of it. It’s not easy money. My tip to new bloggers exploring income from blogging is to put an hour or two each day into it. Get up an hour early, go to bed an hour later, sacrifice some time in front of the TV, do it in your lunch break – I don’t care where the hour or two comes from but if you don’t invest significant time into it in the early days it is very difficult to develop a blog (or blogs) big enough to sustain a large enough income to begin to cut back on your ‘real job’. Any small business owner will tell you that the set up phase calls for a lot of time and sacrifice – a blog business is no different.
Diversify

‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ is the advice I was brought up hearing from my parents. This is a good lesson for ProBloggers. While I know of one or two bloggers that make a full time living off the single blog, most have a number of projects underway. In fact I was chatting to one full time blogger recently and he told me how he’d been full time on a single blog – but that Google had reindexed it in the last update to the point where it was virtually gone from that search engine – his income was also virtually gone.

So diversify – You can do this in a number of ways – start multiple blogs on multiple domains on a variety of topics. Take on some blogging work on someone else’s blogs. Do some consulting work. Have a non blogging part time job. Experiment with some websites that aren’t blogs. Partner with other bloggers to work on combined projects. Hire yourself to a business who wants a corporate blog. Write a book, start a podcast – just mix it up. You’ll find this also helps your sanity as you’re not just thinking about one topic and medium all day.
Adapt

Blogging is a fluid medium (in fact online work in all its forms are fluid). One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt over the past few years is to expect the unexpected in my work and that the key to moving forward is to be flexible enough to maneuver into the right position at the right time as opportunities present themselves. Don’t hold so tightly to ideas that you can’t let them go if they don’t work out. Some of my best ideas for blogs flopped and some of my accidents are my biggest successes.
Experiment heaps, be willing to work with new people and see where collaborations lead and whilst you work your butt off be willing to let go of the flops and move onto the next thing.
Blogger for Hire

One thing that I do recommend for bloggers on this journey to full time blogging is to consider working for someone else – at least in part. I constantly get emails from readers wanting to start their own network of blogs (I got three yesterday alone). While starting your own network is a great way to earn an income from blogging its a very long term strategy and with the emergence of new networks every week or so it’s getting to be a crowded and difficult thing. Perhaps another way forward is to work for an existing network on one of their blogs. In doing this you generate an income (some networks give a guaranteed minimum each month), you gain experience, you build profile, you gather skills and make contacts.

Of course you need to realize that this approach means you’re building someone else’s empire, the reality is that most networks own the content that you write – this is seeing blogging as more of a job than a business. I think this is a totally valid way forward however and a great way to get into the industry. Perhaps as you write for someone else you can also be working on your own projects with the hope of one day being able to transition with more and more time spent on them.
Have your Say

These are some of the things I’d recommend bloggers keep in mind as they consider going pro. I am sure there is a lot more wisdom in our community though and so I’m interested in the experiences and stories of others who are both at the start of this journey or those who have made the transition and are now full time bloggers. Share your stories of going pro in comments below or write your own ProBlogging story up on your own blog and let me know the URL and I’ll include it in my next daily summary (I’d love to read the way it happened for others and am sure I’m not alone).

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Writing Blog Content – Make it Scannable

Only 16% of people read web sites word for word. Source

The average person only comprehends 60% of what they read. Source

Knowing this – how should bloggers who want to communicate effectively write?

Is your Blog Scannable ?

Most people read online by scanning the page for individual words or phrases, headings and other visual cues. Studies have shown that reading from a screen is more tiring and therefore about 25% slower than reading from paper – hence scanning becomes a technique that most employ.
Is your Blog Scannable? It’s a pretty simple thing to test. Ask a friend who is not familiar with your site to take a quick look at a few of your recent posts. Give them 15 to 30 seconds on each post, at the end of which you ask them what the post was about. You’ll quickly get a sense of how they’ve interacted with your blog.

Techniques to Make your Blog Scannable

Good bloggers keep this in mind as they write and will employ a variety of techniques to make their posts easier to read. Some of these techniques include:

Lists – Anecdotal evidence here at ProBlogger suggests that its my posts with bullet point lists in them that get linked to ALOT more than similar length posts written in of an essay style.

Formatting – Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, teletext and to emphasize points. Don’t go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.

Headings and Sub Headings – Large, Bold words that act as visual cues of what is happening in the content are effective ways of drawing readers further into articles.

Pictures – Research shows that readers eyes are drawn down the page by pictures. Place them cleverly by your key points (especially when they closely relate to the content) and you have more of a chance of getting readers to read full articles.

Borders/Blockquotes – boxes around quotes and key points can similarly get the attention of readers.

Space – don’t feel you have to fill up every inch of your screen – rather create spaces because they help readers not to feel overwhelmed and again tend to draw readers eyes to what is inside such space.

Get to the Point – try to be succinct with your points.

Don’t Bury your Points – one trap many of us fall into is to bury our main points deep within content where it’s unlikely to be noticed. If you have a key point make sure you say it up front. You can expand upon it later but get your message across in the first few sentences if possible.
Find creative ways to reinforce your main point throughout your post.

Don’t Introduce too many New Ideas in one post – once again this helps to avoid overwhelming readers with information all at once. If you want to cover many ideas that relate to one another consider a series of posts that link to each other.

If your site and its posts are not easily scannable you run the risk of losing your reader to another blog that is.

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Converting One off Visitors to Your Blog into Regular Readers

One of the most exciting things about blogging is logging into your blog after a night’s sleep to find that overnight some large site has linked to you and that you’re in the middle of a deluge of visitors. Your statistics package graph (which you check every 13 minutes) has a massive mountain in it in the middle of something that looks like a flat line. Your heart beats faster as you realize how many people are reading your content and if you’ve got Adsense ads on your site you begin to dream of the things you could buy with the income that the influx of visitors might bring – if only you could keep them coming back to your blog….

Of course this is where the problem lies – most influxes of traffic from other sites are usually pretty temporary in nature – they last as long as your link lasts at the top of the other site’s page – a few hours, a day or two perhaps at most – and then things return to normal as your new readers surf off to the next great link put on the site that had linked to you.

Does it have to be this way?
What if you could not only enjoy the influx of visitors but could also convert them to regular and loyal readers of your blog? What if each time you had an big incoming link you had the ability to captivate a percentage of your new readers in such a way that they’d keep coming back?
I’ve been pondering this topic for a couple of years now and whilst I don’t want to pretend I have all the answers (otherwise I’d have 200,000 daily visitors rather than 2,000) I’d like to share a some things that I’ve been working on lately to see if I can convert some of those one off visitors into regular readers.

Create Conversation

One of the first things you can do with any new reader that is likely to pique their interest is to engage them in conversation. Blogs are ideal for this as most have a comments section that invites it – but you need to be willing to interact with your readers – especially new ones. The way you write posts can draw readers into conversation on many levels – ask questions, invite opinions and experiences, leave your readers room to be experts (don’t answer all the questions for yourself all at once) etc. When readers leave a comment email them or reply to the comment wherever you can. I know if there is a robust and interesting conversation happening somewhere on the web I can go back to it numerous times in a day to check for updates and every time I go back I’m a little more likely to add it to my regular daily sites that I visit
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Build Anticipation

One of the things that I love about writing a series of posts is that it creates momentum and anticipation on a blog. If your readers know you will be continuing a topic of discussion that they are interested in tomorrow they are likely to make a point of returning. I’ve found this 31 Days Project has also created a lot of anticipation in the wider blogging community and know that many of those reading ProBlogger today that were not reading it a fortnight ago have been drawn into the momentum that we’re building here.

Foster Relationship

Relationship goes beyond conversation and is perhaps why some of your most loyal and long term readers keep coming back to your blog. It takes time to build real relationships (after blogging at this domain for 11 months I feel we’re just getting to this stage) but out of it comes some amazing collaborations and partnerships. I’m not just talking about you as the blogger and your readers either – create a space where your readers can meet and interact with one another and grow friendship and you’re even more likely to retain readers. In fact the best people to recruit new regular readers to your blog are those who already are regulars. Find ways for them to evangelise on your behalf and you’ll find they are often much more effective than you’ll ever be. People want to belong to something – give them a place to hang their virtual hat and spend some time.

Get Sensual

Ok, I’m not talking about slipping into something more comfortable – no I’m talking about making your blog a sensory experience. The web is filled with dry, uninteresting, forgettable sites that do little to spark imagination – break the mold with the look of your site a little – do something that will be remembered, something that is a little mysterious, a little fun, a little sensual. Use pictures, spaces, colors – anything you can. One of my favorite books is Lovemarks (affiliate link) which talks (in part) about how marketers engage the senses in their efforts to make us buy products and services these days. Get yourself a copy of that book and read it – I’ve found it incredibly helpful.

Generate Mystery and Intrigue

– This is similar to what I’ve written about being ‘sensual’ in that it comes from Lovemarks also which talks about how a lot of marketing messages these days have a sense of mystery about them. This might include the way you design your blog but could also include the way you write and engage readers on a heart level. Here’s a quote from the book that I love – ‘Mystery opens up emotions. Mystery adds to the complexity of relationships and experiences. It lies in the stories, metaphors and iconic characters that give a relationship texture.’ Some of my favorite blogs use story, pictures, anonymity and symbols in ways that keep drawing me back for more.

Involve Others

Get readers active in your blog. Invite contributions, involve a guest blogger, start a project of some sort. People like to feel like they are a part of making something better or achieving something so give them space to do that.

Obtain Permission

I’ve been writing in the past couple of days about how email newsletters can help you in your blogging – perhaps the best thing that I’ve found about them is that they are great for turning one off visitors into regular readers. I suspect that many blog readers intend to come back to blogs that they find helpful but that in the busyness of life that they just forget. Get permission to remind them.

Create Ownership

Yes you might ‘own’ your blog on one level – but the sooner you realize that your blog is nothing without it’s readership and actually hand over some of the reins in making decisions about where it’s headed to them the better. I’ve let readers make some big decisions over the years about my blogs and always find that in doing so it improves the level of participation and the quality of the blog.
What other tools, methods and strategies have you used to convert one off readers into regular readers of your blog?

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Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed

Yesterday I mentioned a post at Thirty Stories Up by the name of 7 Mistakes for your First Week of Blogging as part of the 31 Days project – it’s a worthwhile article to read but I want to mention it again not because of what it says but because of the response that it had.

There are over 40 comments on the past now which is pretty cool – Kurt the author of the blog writes in comments that the reason for the response is that the post got picked up and ranked highly by Digg which led to 8000 or so page views in just a 24 hour period – not bad for a blog that has been going for just 20 days! At the time of writing this the post in question is ranked the 11th most ‘dugg’ post for the week so far.

It just goes to show the power of social bookmarking sites like Digg which have the ability to push vast quantities of visitors around the web at the drop of a hat. Having been ‘dugg’ numerous times myself it’s quite an amazing experience. Similarly del.icio.us is another example of a site that has been known to lift the profile of my posts (in fact at present my 31 Days project HQ is ranking well on their popular links page). Furl is yet another example (although from what I can tell it’s less popular than it once was) as is Linkfilter, another smaller social bookmarking sit. The great thing for bloggers is that each of these services allows you to submit/suggest posts to them and all of them accept every submission (unless you spam them) – unlike other sites like Slashdot who strongly moderate submissions.

The site’s I’ve mentioned above as examples of social bookmarking sites are just a small number of the many sites out there that you can explore that are doing similar things. For a more comprehensive list you might like to take a look at those listed at Wikipedia’s Social bookmarking page.

While I don’t recommend spamming social bookmarking sites I would recommend being aware of them and submitting your best posts from time to time. In this way you put your posts out there for others to find. They may or may not take off so don’t think it’s a guarantee that you’ll get visitors – but you’re at least giving them a chance. If they do get popular the traffic doesn’t last long – but in the process you just might retain some extra new readers and perhaps just as importantly often after being ‘dugg’ you find that other bloggers link to you – giving you all important incoming links to your post which will help with Search Engine Optimization.

Let me reinforce that you don’t spam social bookmarking sites – you’ll just end up making people angry and decrease the effectiveness of your submissions (remember ‘the boy who cried wolf’) but used at the right time and with a bit of luck (it’s amazing how some posts do well and others don’t) these sorts of tools can really effectively lift the profile of your best work.

Tell us about a time that you got a deluge of visitors – what other sites do you use in this way? What tips do you have to share on getting visitors to your blog?

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Declaring War on Blogger Apathy IV

• Develop a Posting Schedule – it’s amazing what you can produce if you give yourself a deadline. Whilst for some people the idea of schedules and plans might have the opposite effect – for many of us they help keep us going. My posting goal is 25-35 posts per day – knowing what I’m aiming for helps keep me on track. Whether you’ve got a goal of 2 daily posts, or 500 monthly posts some goals can help get your blogging into gear.

• Get a Guest Blogger - put a little new blood into your blog by inviting someone else to join you in posting either while you take a short break to rejuvenate or to blog alongside you. I’ve recently added a few bloggers to a handful of my blogs and have really enjoyed both the pressure that it’s taken off me but also the energy and fresh ideas that they’ve brought.

• Read other’s blogs – sometimes its easy to become so focused upon blogging that we forget to interact with other bloggers. I remember a few months ago realizing that I rarely really read other blogs any more (apart from those I scanned each day for useful information to blog about). Get back to basics and actually read other blogs – you might just find that in doing so you rediscover the reason you started your own blog in the first place. In addition to that you’ll probably find yourself stimulated to bounce off their blogs with your own.

• Interact with other bloggers – connected to the last point I also find it very useful to not only read the work of others but to converse with them. I regularly chat via instant messaging or phone with other bloggers – in doing so we encourage and inspire each other to break through the dry times. So leave a comment somewhere, start an IM conversation, send an email – talk to someone. Don’t let blogging become an insular lonely thing – rather take advantage of the relational aspects of blogging.

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On Posting Schedules

Ali at Almost Cool comments on my series on Blog Apathy – particularly picking up on some of the comments on posting goals and schedules. He rightly observes that with RSS subscribers you’re likely to get readers look at your posts whether you post regularly or irregularly and argues against quantity over quality of posts. This has been a common response to my mention of a posting schedule from a number of readers.

I agree with Peter and others – quality posting is essential to good blogging – but I guess want to argue for balance.

Blogging commercially is a traffic game whether we like it or not. If you want to earn more money one good way to get it is to increase your readership. Quality content is essential but so is quantity. You can write one fantastic post per week and get a bit of exposure but the chances are that unless it’s amazing it will never draw enough traffic to sustain you financially until the next post.

Having a posting schedule or goal is like being a journalist with a deadline. It’s not meant to decrease the quality – but gives an end point when the article needs to be finished so that a new one can be started upon and that a paper/magazine can continue its publishing rhythm.

Perhaps one of the things I should have mentioned some of the following in my initial comments on posting schedules:
• when you choose a posting schedule look at your current blogging rhythm and base your future goals on this. Its like when you go to the gym – you need to be realistic and base your fitness plan on your current situation. If you’re not fit it would not be wise to commit to running 40 miles per day. You need to work up to it. Set your rate too high and the quality of your posting will definitely suffer.

• make your posting goals realistic and achievable – Take into account factors including how much time you have to blog, how long your blog posts generally are, how many posts per day your readers are used to reading, how much content is out there as a basis for your posts. With these factors in mind pick a goal that you know you can achieve on a good day. I’m fortunate enough to be able to blog full time – so my posting schedule is higher than many of my reader who only have an hour or so per day – that’s cool. Start where you’re at.

• stretch yourself - to use the fitness analogy again – if you want to get fit sometimes you have to push yourself a little. You don’t need to break your back but most personal fitness coaches will set a goal a little beyond what you currently do to take you out of your comfort zone. Sometimes this hurts, but the result is growth.

• rules are made to be broken – Don’t get down if you don’t achieve your goals – they are not there as hard and fast rules to make you feel guilty – they are there as something to strive for – as inspiration. I regularly have days when I don’t post at the rate I set myself – other stuff comes up, I get distracted, I get sick, I have breaks. Whilst I try make up for when I miss a day I don’t get down on myself and just get back on with blogging.

The last thing I’ll say is to draw your attention to Ali’s last statements:
‘I think the quantity game is a dangerous one for a business blogger.

Now, if your business is blogging, it’s a different scenario. Your goals will be to get maximum total exposure. A blog talking to an established or niche customer base (say, like a designer talking to potential customers) will be less concerned with adsense click through rates and more concerned with earning and keeping happy clients.’

This is a good distinction to keep in mind. If you have a business blog (ie you’re blog is not directly about making money but rather draws attention to your (or someone else’s) business then quantity is probably not as key as if your running a commercial blog. I would still argue you need both – but perhaps as Peter writes the focus should be more upon the quality end of things.

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Domain Name Suggestion Tool – DomainBot

I’ve been working on some ideas for new blogs over the past 2 weeks and as part of the exercise I’ve been looking at choosing domain names. Of course looking for a domain name can be a frustrating business – you know what you want but the chances are that it’s already taken as a .com and probably most of the other extensions also.

You can spend endless hours typing random names into domain search tools and come up with very little.


Surely there is a better way?

Luckily a year or so back someone pointed me to DomainsBot which is a domain suggestion tool. You simply type in the key word or words that you want to be in your domain and it comes back to you with a variety of combinations of available domains using that combination of words (and if you like synonyms of the words). The results of this come with a suggested ranking.

I know there are other similar tools out there but for some reason I keep coming back to this one. How have you come up with your blog’s name or domain?

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SEO Tip 1 – Put Keywords in Titles

One of the things I’m constantly amazed at is how many web publishers miss one of the easiest ways to maximize their positioning in Search Engines by simply including the keywords that they’d like to be found for in their post titles.

I spend a lot of time looking at online articles written on blogs, newspapers and websites and some days it seems that every second or third one has a title that is either cryptic, clever or cute at the expense of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

To put it bluntly – when it comes to blog SEO I believe that your page and post titles are incredibly important. Google in particularly seems to value the words in your title incredibly highly.

Whilst I too feel the temptation to be clever with my post titles from time to time (and sometimes give into it) – I know that if I don’t get traffic from search engines then a fairly significant part of my income will disappear.

So if you’re writing about a new ‘Pink Widget’ have a think about the words that a potential reader will use to search for in Google to find the information you’re presenting. How would you search the net for information on ‘Pink Widgets’?

Without a doubt we’d all include ‘pink widget’ in the search we did. We might refine it by including a third word like ‘price’, ‘review’, ‘advice’, ‘problems’ etc (which may be worthwhile words to include either in the title or body of content) but the best words to include in the title are ‘pink widgets’ – if you don’t you’ve got virtually no chance of being found for that search term unless no one else is writing about them.

Keep in mind that research shows that people search the web a lot for names of products and people and that they are often quite specific their searches. If you’re writing about something specific make your title reflect this.

Of course it’s worth saying that it’s not as simple as just stuffing your titles with keywords – for one they need to make sense (no one will click on a link in Google if its a collection of unrelated words), secondly if you put too many words in your title you run the risk of decreasing their power and confusing the search engines and thirdly you’ll disillusion your regular readers if you mess with stuffing titles with too many words.

My advice is to keep it simple – get to the point with your titles and try get into the shoes of your reader.

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