A Guest post by Heather Allard from The Mogul Mom.

If you’re a regular ProBlogger reader, you know that Darren dishes up heaps of incredible blogging advice 7 days a week, 365 days a year. His archives positively overflow with information on how to build a blog from the ground up, how to engage readers, how to earn a living from your blog, how to search engine optimize your blog, how to market your blog through social media and so much more.

If you’re a beginner blogger, there’s no better place to learn than at ProBlogger.

I know because when I started blogging in 2007, ProBlogger was like a launch pad for me.

I blasted into the blogosphere, writing posts in rapid fire succession as new idea after new idea spilled out of my bloggy brain faster than I could jot them down in trusty notebooks scattered around my house and car.

I churned out short posts, long posts, reviews, interviews, vlogs, linkies and more list posts than you could shake your cursor at. I SEO’d the daylights out of my blog, carved out a nice niche for myself and built up a pretty sweet subscriber base. I came, I blogged, I monetized. Oh yeah.

And then, after 3 solid years of blogging, I suddenly found myself with nothing left to say. No, not just blogger’s block. I’m talking not a damn thing to blog about. Zero, zip, nada. Last stop on the blogosphere for this lady.

350 posts, 1200 subscribers and 2000 comments later, I was officially all blogged out.

So I spent a week curled up in the fetal position deciding whether it’s better to burn out or fade away from the blogosphere, and then it hit me.

Surely I couldn’t be the first – or the only – blogger to feel this way!

So I did what any blogger worth her Alexa rank would do – I decided to BLOG about being all blogged out.

Newly invigorated, I set out in search of other solo bloggers who’d felt this same way to ask them what they did about it.

What I found was 10 top bloggers with very different takes – and advice – on being all blogged out.

Laura Roeder @lkr

Blogging Since:

Well I’ve been creating and sharing content online in various formats since about 1996. But I’ve never really considered myself a “blogger”or had one mega-popular blog. My current blog for my business has been running for about a year and a half.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Yes, definitely! I don’t blog that frequently so I usually don’t try to force it. I sometimes only update my blog once a month, it just depends on what I have going on and what I’m inspired to create. 99% of my blog is in video format, it is really difficult for me to write a beginning-middle-end article, it’s just not how my thoughts come I guess. But I could talk forever so video is the perfect format for me!

What did you do about it?

I plan out an editorial calendar at least 6 months in advance. This is the key part – you can’t just plan but you have to force yourself to stick to the weekly topic. I think too many bloggers wake up in the morning and try to think of a great topic that day – planning out a calendar in advance is a great solution. And then you have time to filter your ideas to make sure they’re all good instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel, desperate to come up with ANYTHING to write about!

Chris Guillebeau @chrisguillebeau

Blogging Since:

2008 — although I had been writing in other formats for a couple of years prior.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Thankfully — no.

How have you avoided it?

I’ve avoided it by trying to be somewhat intentional about the process.

First, I don’t limit myself in writing about one specific, niche topic. I write about a number of topics (travel, entrepreneurship, motivation) for a number of venues (my own blog, other blogs, a newspaper column, magazines, books, etc.). The variety is very helpful, because even though I’m writing a lot, the deliverables are not always the same.

And second, writing is my job. It’s just what I do. If a plumber gets bored, she still shows up every day and goes to work. Why should it be different for creatives? Steven Pressfield wrote about this in the wonderful little book The War of Art, which I re-read regularly and would recommend to anyone feeling “blogged out.”

Chris Brogan @chrisbrogan

Blogging Since:

I started in 1998 back when it was called journaling. I’ve used several different sites before settling on my own domain, and my blog technologies used to be WYSIWYG website design tools, so those ones are lost to all but the Wayback machine.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Never. I have more blog posts than I have time to post them. I write two or three at a time, so that I have a few in my rainy day pile (though at the time of writing this, I ran out, so will have to blog a few things on the next two airplanes). I never feel all blogged out. We have TONS to cover, and lots of ways of looking at things.

How have you avoided it?

Blogging/writing is about practice. The more you do it, the easier it comes. It’s like exercise. You can’t join a gym and bench press 300 pounds the next day. It takes a while to work your muscles up into the shape you need to perform. Same with writing.

I keep my eyes open. I read. I spend lots of time on other people’s blogs. I cultivate relationships, where sometimes the question someone poses makes for a great blog topic. There are tons of ways to find blog topics. One trick to doing something about it is to maintain a list of blog topics to write about for rainy days. I’ve given people over 300 over the last few years.

Danielle LaPorte @daniellelaporte

Blogging Since:

2008

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

No, never, absolutely not, the very thought makes me gasp in horror. For real.

How have you avoided it?

Everything is content. Believing that it’s all around you will help you find it. The conversation that you had with your girlfriend about Haiti, or the absurdity of phone books being delivered, or why your barista gives you the best customer service. Notice what you notice and trust that you can create some value out of it.

Tell a story. My speaking coach, Gail Larsen told me something that changed how I approach both speaking gigs and writing: Creating good content is not about looking for stories that will support your message, it’s about letting the stories find you. The stories that you remember so vividly, that you recall with the most affection or emotional charge – they’re in your psyche for good reason. You’ve held on to them because they resonate with your truth, your message – and that’s where the creative sweet spot is. Find the message in the stories you’re inspired to tell.

Get interviewed. Ask a friend to ask you some questions. Keep it casual or turn on a video camera while you’re at. You will be amazed at how damn profound, informed, and creative you can be when you get to riff to someone who already thinks you’re great.

James Chartrand @MenwithPens

Blogging Since:

I began blogging in early 2007 for my own business blog at Men with Pens, and I also began guest blogging at various other sites around the blogosphere at the same time. This spring, it’ll be three years that I’ve been a full-time blogger.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Oh, absolutely. Since my focus has always been on freelance writing, and that’s what I’ve tried to blog about the most, there comes a point where you tell yourself that you’ve said all you could, that you can’t think of anything else to say. That feeling never lasts very long for me – I have a pretty active mind that seizes on new ideas and spins easily – but sure, I think every blogger goes through a period of feeling there’s nothing left to write about.

I feel that many people, when they hit this point, fall back on repeating the same messages or content, only in different words. It’s a way to break through the problem, but I didn’t want to go that route. I feel a sense of obligation not to cheap out just to be able to slap up a post – I worked hard to build my blog up, and it means more to me than that. Blogging is more than just a job you have to do; it’s a commitment you make and uphold.

What did you do about it?

To avoid feeling I was running on empty, I looked instead at the related subjects of freelance writing. I realized there’s a lot more to writing than just writing about writing. There’s the business side, the administration, the customer service, the branding, ways to land new jobs, etc. When I realized that I wasn’t limited to what I could write on and still stay within my specialty, a whole world of possible posts opened up. I revisit that vast pool of potential each time I feel tapped out.

Another trick I use when I’m feeling like I just have nothing to write about anymore is to write – about something else. I put the blogging aside and work on some fiction or creative writing, just for fun. Or, I go out for a day and screw off, and I find that taking myself away from feeling like I have to blog brings me new inspiration. As I enjoy my day, I think about how the experiences I have relate to my subject. How are buying a pair of boots and blogging the same, for example? How is grocery shopping and writing similar? What did I like about that sign, and why did it catch my attention?

Sometimes, to be creative, you have to get away from trying to be creative, and ask questions that you wouldn’t normally think of asking.

For tapped out bloggers, my best advice is to take away the pressure by reminding yourself that this isn’t an obligation. In the bigger scheme of life, missing a week of blog posts while you disconnect or cutting your posting frequency from five days a week to once every two weeks won’t really make much difference. It’ll give you some relief from that ‘have to blog’ feeling, remind you of what’s really important in life and let you take care of yourself first.

Johnny B Truant @JohnnyBTruant

Blogging Since:

I really only started seriously in late 2008, writing my old pure humor blog at theeconomyisnthappening.com. I’d been writing “blog-like” stuff for some time before that on and off, but never actually launched a blog until 08.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Oh yes. Around 2001, I used to write a humor newsletter that I’d manually e-mail out to my friends and family. (The salvageable newsletters became the earliest posts in the humor archive on my current site.) Although I haven’t hit a wall since starting blogging in earnest in 2008-9, I hit several with those old pseudo-blog writings.

I started that endeavor with a weekly newsletter, and then slipped into monthly. Several times, I’d re-run old posts because I had nothing to write about, and once I wrote a post about having nothing to write about. The reason that pseudo-blogging ended was because I got tired of feeling like I had nothing to say every week — or at least, nothing to say that was funny.

What did you do about it?

I just quit.

Now, I’m not particularly concerned about running out of material and here’s why: Back in the day, I wrote humor and only humor. If it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t fit to run — with one notable exception just after 9/11/01. So not only was I looking for funny things to happen, but I had to work hard to tell folks about them in funny ways. That’s really, really hard to do — especially ongoing.

My blog now is an unashamed hodge-podge. I’ve deliberately kept my blog from having a niche, a genre, or a focus. It’s just about me, my business, what I’ve learned, what I do, and whether or not wild turkeys have found their way into my barn. Sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s dead serious. All I have to do now is write what’s in my life, my head, and my heart — whatever that may be.

Lastly, I’ve only run two guest posts ever on my blog, but I’ve had other offers and may just start accepting some if I do get bogged down. I’ve seen some of my blogging friends do that if they are running low or if they go on vacation. I haven’t done it yet, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

Sarah Bray @SarahJBray

Blogging Since:

Don’t tell anyone, but I actually started several failed blogs before having even a whiff of success. My first one was in 2004. And no, I’m not giving details (curse you, Google archives!).

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Heck yeah. Every blogger has those moments. We pressure ourselves to crank out amazing post after amazing post, and then we wonder why the wheels stop turning. For me, it was my subject matter — writing posts about the strategic side of web design for such a wide audience. I’ve got fellow designers who want to know how I do it, entrepreneurs who are completely new to the web (or the social web), entrepreneurs who are definitely NOT new to the web, people who are curious about my adamancy for content-driven websites…it’s just a really broad audience.

More challenges:

• Writing about technology without inducing cricket chirps or loud snoring
• Writing about things that anyone can do — not just super-technical people (which requires getting out of my super-technical brain and pretending I’m my computer-challenged mother…an interesting and involved process)
• Writing about new ideas that are not talked to death all over the internet already

All of that has the power to turn me into a headlight-mesmerized deer if I think about it too much.

What did you do about it?

I put a lot of pressure on myself to only publish stuff that gives me a blood-rushing-to-the-head feeling. It’s what I do instead of punching all of those people in the face who say that bloggers aren’t “real writers”. Or maybe it’s because I like that writerly high you get when you know that you’ve communicated something really effectively.

So to answer the question, I stick to a posting schedule that will allow me to do this. During some seasons of the work year, I publish three times a week. In this particular season, I publish once a week. I’m a huge believer in sticking to a posting schedule. It’s like your favorite show being on tv at the same time every week…you feel more committed to it when you can expect it. At the same time, I let myself be comfortable with changing my publishing schedule when that makes sense.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this if your entire job is to write. But for my situation, giving myself permission to change my posting schedule for a season makes more sense than writing crappy stuff, not writing at all out of sheer overwhelm, or not getting my client-related work done. It takes some of the pressure off during busy times, which somehow brings blog topic epiphanies out of the sky. I don’t know how it happens…magic, maybe.

Dave Navarro @RockYourDay



Blogging Since:

I started the RockYourDay.com blog in 2006, but didn’t really start building it seriously until the beginning of 2008, when I went all guns blazing (thanks to some inspiration from @menwithpens). I started The Launch Coach in early 2009 and hit the ground with a running start on that one, since it was making me money right off the bat, and that’s where I put 95% of my blogging time.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

I feel that way all the time – I think it’s a natural part of a writer’s psychology, when we wonder how we can write something good when it’s already been done. We worry that what we write might not be good enough compared to other people or compared to our own successful posts, and it’s draining.

What did (do) you do about it?

The way out of that is to remember you’re in this to help people, not achieve God-like status on a post-by-post basis. What I do to break the funk is look through old comments for where people talk about what they’re struggling with and write about that, imagining I’m writing to that one person. That breaks the all-about-me-drama and gets me back on track. (And if I haven’t had comments lately I go to other blogs and look at their comments).

Audrey McClelland @AudreyMcClellan



Blogging Since:

I started blogging in June 2008.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Definitely. I started my personal blog in June 2008, after I had my 4th son. After blogging about his birth and then about being the mother of 4 boys – I started to feel VERY “all blogged out” in November of 2008. I wanted to blog about things beyond my personal motherhood story. I think I kind of felt like, “What makes my story different or unique?” I kind of felt like nothing did… my blogs started to get very much of the same feel. So I made a conscious decision to change the direction of my blog in January 2009 because I felt it would infuse me with added energy.

What did you do about it?

I came out of it by starting my 365 Days of Fashion Advice for Moms. I loved sharing my experiences as a mom, but I wanted to get away from constantly talking about how difficult mealtime was or how I was so tired from not sleeping throughout the night. I wanted to add my love of fashion to the mix. So I started blogging about fashion advice for moms and I brought my own motherhood experiences to it, as the mother of 4 boys.

The advice I would give a blogger that is all blogged out is bring another dimension into your blog. I had worked in the fashion industry for 6 years previous in New York City and I had a love and a passion for fashion. I did and still do wake up every single morning excited to blog about it. I just needed to take that step to bring another piece of me onto the table and not be scared to do it. Things changed for me professionally when I did make the change and it was all because I was feeling “blogged out.” I didn’t feel like my writing had a direction in 2008 and I wanted it to. Niching my blog became the best thing I ever did.

Michael Martine@Remarkablogger



Blogging Since:

I had been creating and designing websites since 1994 (pretty much as soon as I got online when the Internet became available to anyone via AOL back in the day). I discovered Blogger in 1999 before Google bought them and have been a blogger ever since (though I switched to WordPress as soon as I discovered it).

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Never! My audience is made of up certain segments who all have specific problems. So between that, the basics, and the new stuff that keeps unfolding, there is no end of topics to blog about.

How have you avoided it?

There are several reasons why I’m never blogged out. My readers, clients, and customers are mostly business owners. Different businesses have different challenges when it comes to blog marketing, so by focusing on a specific niche (like, say, real estate agents or freelance web designers) and then addressing a specific problem someone in that niche faces, I simply never run out of topics. I don’t always focus on a specific industry, but I’m guaranteed an infinite number of blog post topics if I do.

This means my posts tend to be longer than the usual 250 – 500 words of a typical blog post. Because of this, it takes me longer to write a post and so I don’t publish as often as many other bloggers. At the least, I publish twice a week. At most, I may publish up to four times a week. But I never publish every day of the week. This makes it easier to come up with ideas and keeps the quality of the writing higher.

Here are some tips for coming up with post ideas:

• Think of a specific type of person in your blog audience and a problem they have, then write a post for that person that addresses the problem.
• The basics never go out of style. Tackle them in your own way or link to posts which cover the basics.
• Tell a story from your own life that has a lesson to teach your audience.
• Compile a list of resources your audience will find valuable.
• Accept guest posts from others in your niche (sometimes you have to ask for them).
• You can always interview others in your niche.

To prevent yourself from getting blogged out in the future, try these tips:

• Be in constant communication with your audience: ask what keeps them up at night, what their problems are, what information they are hungry for.
• Think of series of posts you can write. A series guarantees post ideas for many days. Note how successful Darren has been with his “31 days” series. You have to think of these in advance and plan them out.
• As you surf the web, collect links by topic in Evernote or some other note-taking system. Then, when they become numerous enough, you can publish them in a resources post. These can build up over time, so that very little work is involved in creating them.

Don’t let ideas get away from you when you do have them. There are many ways to capture ideas.

So, if you’re feeling all blogged out, you’re in good company. And you’re definitely not at the end of the blogging road.

Laura, Chris G., Chris B., Danielle, James, Johnny, Sarah, Dave, Audrey and Michael gave awesome ideas about what to do when you’re feeling all blogged out. And, I don’t know about you but my head is swimming with new blog ideas. Now…where’s my notebook?

Well? What about you? Have you ever felt all blogged out? What did you do about it?

Heather Allard lives in Rhode Island with her husband, three kids, Hope, Grace & Brendan and one big dog, The Dude. Since 2001, she’s started three businesses and sold one of them for six figures. Now she shows mom entrepreneurs how to build a business between diaper changes and play dates – without breaking the bank, or their spirit. Find her on Twitter as @HeathAll.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



Feeling “Blogged Out?” [10 Pro Bloggers Share Their Advice on What to Do]

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Post tags: 365 Days, Allard, Blogger, Blogosphere, Cursor, Damn Thing, Dishes, Fetal Position, Heaps, Heather, Jot, Launch Pad, Linkies, Mogul, Niche, Notebooks, Overflow, Rapid Fire, Subscriber Base, Succession
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What’s Wrong with Blogging? [Take 3]

02/17/10

Back in 2005 I asked my readers a question that surprised some for a blog like ProBlogger – I asked readers to talk about what was wrong with blogging.

I introduced the question by sharing a story of a debate between a Christian group and Pagan group where each group was asked to not argue FOR their own belief system but to share what they disliked about their own Faith perspective. The result of that debate was fascinating.

Instead of it ending in an angry fight where everyone just had their beliefs reinforced the debate was actually quite constructive with both groups coming away having learnt something about the other and more importantly themselves.

Similarly the responses to my question about blogging were insightful also (in fact I’ve asked this question twice previously – in 2005 and in 2006 and both times were fascinating).

There were a couple of things that came out of those discussions:

• it was a place for some bloggers to get some stuff off their chest about their frustrations with the medium.
• the answers actually gave a number of blog tool developers some great ideas. I know that at least two WordPress plugins were developed to solve issues that came up in the conversation.

It’s been 4 years since I asked the question last – so in the hope of a productive conversation I thought it worth asking again.

What’s Wrong with Blogging?

What are the limitations of blogging as a medium? What are its weaknesses? Where does the blogosphere and/or blogging tools need to improve? What are you main challenges as a blogger that you don’t think you’d have in other mediums?

Hopefully in answering this question and deconstructing the medium of blogging a little we can play a part in the improvement of blogging as a whole. By identifying what’s wrong perhaps we can improve it.

Like last time the rules are simple – say anything you like about blogging as long as it’s not positive (note: I’m not inviting you to critique individual bloggers – but the medium itself). You can do this in comments below or by writing a post on your own blog (just leave a link below so we can find it). There are no wrongs and rights and everyone’s critique of the medium are valid and welcome.

So – what’s wrong with blogging?

Over to you!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



What’s Wrong with Blogging? [Take 3]

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Post tags: Belief System, Blog, Blogger, Bloggers, Blogging Tools, Blogosphere, Challenges, Christian Group, Faith Perspective, Frustrations, Groups, Last Time, Mediums, Pagan Group, Productive Conversation, Tool Developers, Wordpress Plugins
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What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?

02/05/10

Guest post by Mike CJ.

“Treat your blog like a business” is something we’re told all the time. It’s solid advice, assuming you want or plan to make an income from your blog, and adopting it as a mindset often leads to the successful transition from a blog into a business.

But what does it actually mean?

Have a proper accounts system

Record income and expenses as they happen. Monitor cashflow – every day if things are tight. There are so many tools out there to help you do this, and many of them are free to use. Outright is one of the easiest.

Set objectives

The blogosphere is full of objective-setting posts at this time of year. Most of them revolve around traffic and subscribers. And that’s fine, but if you do want to blog professionally, you need to have financials behind those. You need to know what you’re going to earn over the next year.

Set budgets

Once you know what’s coming in, set yourself some spending budgets. How much of your income are you going to re invest in the business? For training? Software? Marketing? By setting budgets, it makes buying decisions so much easier. Do you want to advertise your new book here on Problogger? Don’t waste hours wringing your hands trying to decide. If it’s in budget do it, if it isn’t, don’t.

Seek opinions and advice

Most “real” businesses, even small ones, don’t run in a vacuum with the proprietor making every decision. And yet many blogs do just that! Get as much advice as you can, from your partner, your bank, your accountant and from other bloggers.

Produce reports

Monthly or quarterly, produce a report showing how the business is performing against the various targets. Examine what went well, and what didn’t. Use the findings to inform your planning for the next period. The act of producing the report itself is effective, but it’s even better if you have to present it to someone else – even if it’s your partner.

Enter into collaborations

Working with other bloggers can really accelerate your success, as well as theirs. Seek out opportunities with like minded people you see around the web.

Use professional tools

It’s too easy to let yourself down with poor design, a tatty invoice or by not having a business card. None of the accoutrements of being in business cost a fortune – they’re a small expense compared to the loss of image when they aren’t right.

Invest in training

Every business should have a training budget – choose the right books, courses and memberships and you’ll get a far greater return than the initial cost.

Treat your readers like customers

Typically only a very small percentage of blog readers will ever become customers by buying something from you – most will simply enjoy the mass of free content you put out there. And that’s fine. But treat every one of them as a potential paying client, and that percentage will slowly increase over time.

Those are my thoughts about treating your blog like a business. What would you add?

Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger and author. He lives in the idyllic Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa. You can find out more about Mike on his blog Mike’s Life and catch up with him on Twitter @mikecj



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What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?

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Craftsmanship – Principles of Successful Blogs #9

02/03/10

As we continue to explore principles of successful blogging I want to turn our attention to a matter at the heart of the topic – content.

Much could be said on the topic but in the presentation that sparked my principles of successful blogging series of posts I spoke at length about the idea of ‘crafting content‘.

The idea of of successful bloggers displaying ‘craftsmanship’ began to strike me after meeting a number of pretty high profile bloggers at the SXSW interactive conference a few years back. I remember sitting down at that conference with a number of bloggers who’d build great blogs to pick their brains and having the realisation that their blogs had not ‘just happened’ but that they’d really put time, energy and thought into shaping them over the years.

This ’shaping’ of their blogs happened on two levels – it happened on a daily basis in the posts that they wrote – but also over time as their blogs grew and matured.

Crafting Blog Posts

My own experience of blogging is that in my early days of experimenting with the medium I would tend to sit down at the computer on any given day and then put up on the web whatever I was thinking about at that moment and within seconds of punching out a first draft the post would be live online.

• little thought went into the planning of posts
• no more time than was absolutely necessary was put into the writing of posts
• no consideration was really ever given to improving posts before they went live
• it was rare that I gave thought to how to time, launch and promote posts

My blogging was very impulsive and minimalistic in terms of how much effort I put into the most important factor of blogging – the content on it.

I got away with this to some degree, perhaps partly due to the fact that the blogosphere was in its infancy – but look back on that time now wondering how much more I could have achieved early on if I’d just given more time to ‘crafting’ my content.

Don’t get me wrong – I still sit down some days to impulsively write – but over time I’ve found that I get better results if I take a more craftsman-like approach to blogging.

One of the factors that changed my own approach to blogging was out of the experience of beginning to write series of posts on my blogs.

I don’t even remember what the first series was (or why I did it) but I do remember the realization of how much better my writing was when I put some time into planning what I would write ahead of time.

Setting oneself the task of writing a series of posts ahead of time mean you need to consider what you’ll write about (in general terms) but knowing what topics you’ll be covering in the future means that your ideas begin to marinate ahead of time and that by the time you come to write your posts you’ve given the topics thought, you’ve got ideas on how to explore it on a deeper level and you’ve hopefully got some creative ides of how to introduce and explore the topic in a way that makes the post stand out a little.

Crafting Content can happen on many levels and depending upon the type of blog you have you might not find them all to be relevant to every blog post you write – however here’s a series of posts that I wrote on the topic in 2008 that was designed to help bloggers consider ways that take a little extra time could improve their blogging:

1. How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause
2. Choosing a Topic – take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you’ll develop something that matters to readers.
3. Crafting Your Post’s Title – perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.
4. The Opening Line – first impressions matter. Once you’ve got someone past your post’s title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.
5. Your ‘point/s’ (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it is just an intriguing title and opening you’ll get people to read – but if the post doesn’t ‘matter’ to them it’ll never get traction.
6. Call to Action – driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.
7. Adding Depth – before publishing your post – ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?
8. Quality Control and Polishing of Posts – small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post ‘look’ good can take it to the next level.
9. Timing of Publishing Your Post – timing can be everything – strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.
10. Post Promotion – having hit publish – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
11. Conversation – often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.

Crafting Blogs on a Big Picture Level

The other level that I think bloggers could do well to apply the idea of craftsmanship to is thinking about the big picture of a blog and seeing the blog, in its entirety, as something that needs crafting.

Over a time as a blog grows and matures it takes on a certain shape and form.

The accumulated body of content, the voice and personality behind the content, the visual design of the blog and even the interaction with readers and emerging community are all things that go into how a blog is perceived.

Some blogs manage to evolve without much thought in a good direction – but behind the scenes of most successful blogs there is a person or team of people who are shaping the blog, plotting its course and making sure that it stays on that course.

I spoke once with a museum curator who told me about her job and it reminds me on some levels of what I do on my blogs.

Curators do many tasks to get an exhibition together – good exhibitions don’t just happen. Their work starts with careful planning, research, study and sourcing of exhibits well before an exhibition takes place.

They are not only involved in deciding what to exhibit but they’re also involved in what to leave out of exhibitions (avoiding clutter and confusion for those attending).

Once they’ve sourced the exhibits they’re involved in arranging them and making sure that they are presented in a way that draws people in and takes them on a journey.

As I spoke with this curator about the care in which she put together an exhibition (a process that took a lot of detailed thought and energy over considerable time) I was challenged to apply some of what I saw in my own blogging.

Great blogs don’t just happen – they take thoughtful consideration, planning and shaping. They too are not just about what you publish but about what you don’t publish. They too take thought as you consider the journey you want to take your reader on.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



Craftsmanship – Principles of Successful Blogs #9

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Post tags: Bloggers, Blogging, Blogosphere, Blogs, Brains, Craftsmanship, Daily Basis, First Draft, Heart, Infancy, Sxsw Interactive Conference, Time Energy
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47 Lists of Bloggers to Watch in 2010 – Check them Out!

01/26/10

Earlier this month we published a list of 30 bloggers to watch in 2010 that caused a lot of conversation and debate in the comments section of that post. Of course the list of bloggers were simply one persons opinion and fairly much focused around that persons interests – so a week later I invited readers to create their own ‘bloggers to watch’ lists and submit links to them in the comments of that post.

47 bloggers have created such lists so far. The great thing about the submissions is that while there are some themes there is also a lot of diversity in the lists submitted. There is everything from food bloggers to watch, to Mom bloggers to watch, to greeen bloggers to watch, to personal finance blogges to watch to diabetic bloggers to watch. While not every niche is represented it is a great celebration of the blogosphere.

As it’s been a couple of weeks since I called for posts I thought it might be time to combine all the lists of bloggers to watch into a list of posts.

I encourage you to surf through the list – find the posts you resonate with – link up to them, tweet them and add to them with your own comments and posts.

You are welcome to keep submitting your posts of bloggers to watch in your niche but I probably won’t compile the list again unless there are a lot submitted.

1. Saving Money Bloggers to Watch
2. Dance Blogs to Watch in 2010
3. Top Business and Finance Magazines, Blogs and Journals
4. Bloggers to Watch in 2010- Translation and Localization Industry
5. My Women of the Web
6. Faith Bloggers to Watch in 2010
7. Sewers and Quilting Bloggers to Watch
8. 11 Famous Food Photo Bloggers to Watch This Year
9. Owen Greaves Bloggers to Watch
10. 15 Simplicity/Minimalist Bloggers to Watch in 2010
11. Six Win Bloggers to Watch for 2010
12. 5 More Blogs to Follow in 2010
13. Personal Finance Bloggers to Watch in 2010
14. 5 Laser Sailing Bloggers to Watch in 2010
15. 10 Food Bloggers to Watch in 2010
16. Music Therapy Bloggers to Watch in 2010
17. 10 Top Bloggers to Follow in the WordPress Community
18. Blogs I’ll be Following in 2010
19. Green Crafty Reading List
20. Coupon and Deal Finding Bloggers to Watch
21. My Fave Blogs
22. Decluttering and Getting Organized Bloggers to Watch in 2010
23. Moms Plus Bloggers to Watch in 2010
24. Bloggers to Watch Out For
25. A List of the Best Gardening Blogs
26. 25 Blogger Active Roster
27. Israel Bloggers to Watch in 2010
28. A Few of My Favorite “Mom Blogs”
29. My 2010 Blogs Watch
30. 10 Blogs to Watch in 2010
31. Top 50 Diabetic Bloggers of 2010
32. Fun and Frugal Bloggers to Watch in 2010
33. Green Bloggers to Watch in 2010
34. People to Watch and Learn from in 2010
35. 50 Personal Finance Bloggers to Watch in 2010
36. 62 More Personal Development Blogs – Watch List 2010
37. Blogs to Follow in 2010
38. Social Media Bloggers to Watch
39. Vegan Blogger Reading List
40. The Merch Girl’s Blogs to Watch in 2010
41. 5 Frugal Blogs With the Best Strategies to Save Money
42. Watch List of Bloggers
43. 11 Kingdom Bloggers to Watch in 2010
44. Bloggers to Watch in 2010
45. List of Green Women Bloggers
46. 45 Cross-Cultural and International Bloggers to watch in 2010
47. Four Personal Development Bloggers I’m Watching in 2010

Thanks to everyone who submitted lists!

PS: an interesting piece of feedback that I had from quite a few of the bloggers behind these links was that the posts were among the most popular posts they’ve ever written. These kinds of lists do have a habit of generating traffic and conversation!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



47 Lists of Bloggers to Watch in 2010 – Check them Out!

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Post tags: Bloggers, Blogosphere, Celebration, Comments Section, Diversity, Finance Magazines, Food Photo, Greaves, Laser Sailing, Localization Industry, Mom, Music Therapy, Niche, Personal Finance, Sailing Watch, Saving Money, Sewers, Simplicity, Top Business, Translation And Localization
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How to Be a More Relational Blogger [Tips for New and Established Bloggers]

01/26/10

In this post (a continuation of my Principles of Successful Blogs) series I explore the topic of being relational with readers.

Back in 2002 when I stumbled upon my first ever blog I was immediately inspired to start my own blog based on two things that I witnessed in that first blog.

1. It gave the blogger a voice and amplified that voice around the world
2. It gave the blogger the ability to build a community around what he was exploring and enabled him to have personal (yet public) interactions with many people to further explore his topics.

The community and relational aspect of that first blog was a big part of why I decided to start my own first blog. I’d not seen anything on the web that allowed a person to grow a community around their ideas before and wanted to experience it for myself.

So I started my first blog – a personal blog about life, spirituality and culture – and began to experiment with my voice but also with engaging with those who read what I was writing each day.

I quickly discovered the power of building a blog that not only had interesting content but which drew readers into a conversation.

In those early days I spent at least as much time building relationships with readers as I did writing posts (I’ll share some of what I did early in my blog below).

As I look back on the early days of my own blogging I’d attribute a significant part of the early growth of my blogs to this type of relational activity. Content might be King but community was its Queen for me.

Things have Changed…. But….

Of course the blogosphere and wider web has changed somewhat since those days in 2002.

• Twitter and Facebook have emerged to take over some of the community interactions that blogs once had
• Social media is also a space where much of the sharing of links we once did on blogs happens
• Blogging has become quite competitive and bloggers in niches don’t always work together

Things have changed – however…. a relational approach and community are still one central aspect of many successful blogs.

Note: I’m not just talking about building your blog into a community (we discussed community earlier in our series) – instead what I’m talking about in this post is being relational with your readers – the blogger/reader relationship and not necessarily relationships between your readers.

So how does a blogger grow relationships with their readers? I’d actually like to tackle this question by making some suggestions for newer/smaller blogs and then for more established blogs where the challenge of scaling a relational approach is a challenge.

How to Be a Relational Blogger – For New Blogs

When starting out with a new blog there are many tasks that will confront you. Creating great content is of course your primary concern, getting your blog looking attractive and inviting is also important, thinking about branding, networking with other blogs in your niche, setting up with some good SEO…. the list of things you could fill your time with goes on.

However putting some concerted effort into building relationship with those who do come to your blog is something well worth putting time into. If you can build a loyal group of regular readers in your early days you’re well on the way to growing a blog that is read by many. Each loyal reader you have has their own network that they can spread word of you to.

Following are some of the things I spent a lot of time doing in the early days of my own first blogs:

• Reading and responding to every comment left – particularly any with questions
• Visiting the blogs of those who were leaving comments and interacting with those bloggers on their own blogs
• Engaging on other blogs that were linking to mine
• Emailing new readers to thank them for commenting
• Linking to other blogs in my niche – promoting those who were reading my blog
• Responding to email queries

These types of activities are very basic yet they have an impact and will draw those who read your blog in the early days to take a second look and come back again.

Tips for Established Blogs Trying to Scale Rationality

The above basics for newer blogs do work – but when your blog starts to grow the challenge for bloggers is to how to stay relational in their approach without burning themselves out. You see responding to every comment left on your blog becomes incredibly challenging when you have hundreds of comments left each day. Personal and in depth responses to every email from a reader takes over your whole day when you have tens of thousands of readers…. Scaling relationally is definitely a challenge.

So what’s a blogger to do?

I actually grapple with this one on a daily basis and would love to hear how other bloggers approach the challenge however thought I’d jot down some starting points (it should also be noted that much of this can be put into practice by new blogs too):

1. Write in a Relational Voice

One of the things that can help is to simply write in a relational or conversational style. Tell your own story, share your experiences, write about your failures, be personal. While you might not be able to respond to every reader personally all of these things make you more relatable.

2. Invite Participation

One part of writing in a relational style is to invite interaction with readers. Asking questions of readers and giving spaces in posts for discussion and interaction may not be fully relational if you yourself don’t participate – but it at least opens up opportunities for readers to interact with one another and get a feeling of being heard and valued as a reader.

3. Set Up Opportunities for Intentional Interaction

Another strategy that I find a win/win for bloggers and their readers is to set up specific times and places for interaction between blogger and reader. Put aside time for this intentional community time, publicise them with readers and then make yourself available to interact.

For me one of the ways that I try to do this every now and again is by doing a live Ustreaming video session where I simply do Q&A with readers. I’m amazed at the response from readers who join these chats – while I do feel a little ‘odd’ sitting there talking to my laptop answering basic questions about blogging readers really do seem to value the times and feel much more involved.

Note: Another way that I try to give readers another avenue for interaction is by promoting Twitter as a place for conversation. The key is to name where and when you’re going to interact and then make sure you do.

4. Answer Reader Questions with Posts

A further technique I try to do is to try to answer questions from readers with posts rather than just in comments or via email. When I get a reader asking a question I could respond with an email or comment and help that particular reader – but to maximise the benefits across the full community I try to take some questions and turn my responses into a more public answer in a post – thereby answering the person but also hopefully sharing some solutions with others who might have the same question. I find that the added bonus of this is that you highlight a reader interaction publicly which shows that while I might not respond to everyone that you are attempting to be interactive.

5. Manage Expectations

Without going over the top and becoming boastful or arrogant – try to communicate with your readership what they can expect from you as a blogger. Readers all come with their own expectations of what they should and shouldn’t be able to expect from you as a blogger. The emails I get from readers at times illustrate that some readers come with pretty good expectations while others come with unrealistic ones.

Side Note: interestingly these unrealistic expectations can swing both ways. For example today I had one email from a reader demanding I answer a list of 20 questions for them while another reader emailed saying that they didn’t really expect I’d even read their email and didn’t expect any kind of acknowledgment of their problem. The reality is somewhere between the two emails – I can’t give readers hours of my attention each – but I do read emails and try to respond to as many as I can.

One way to manage expectations is to have a system in place around your contact form. Communicating what you’re able to help with, whether you are able to respond personally etc on a contact form helps readers to gauge what sort of response (if any) they’ll get. Some bloggers also put systems in place to send auto response emails back when contact is made to help with this.

6. Build Community

Another way to help readers get help from your blog is to set up systems and areas on your blog where people can help one another. This is one of the reasons that both ProBlogger and Digital Photography School have community areas. The hope is that while I can’t possibly respond to every reader that there is always someone in the wider community that does have the expertise and resources to help. I also find that in time as a blog grows that this reader interaction between readers extends naturally into a comments section – a larger blog tends to have readers who love to help one another.

7. Get Help – Outsource

One of the hardest things I’ve done in the last couple of years is to get help to manage this aspect of my blogging. Outsourcing community is not something I ever wanted to do but getting help from someone to assist in the moderation of comments was actually something that helped me to be more responsive to readers. If you do end up hiring someone to help with moderation try to get them to alert you to threads of conversations that need your attention rather than just hiring someone to delete spam.

How do You Do It?

As I say above – I’m no expert in being a relational blogger. It’s one aspect of what I do that I do grapple with and have good days and bad days with. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you approach being a relational blogger and what impact it’s had on your blogging.

PS: One last bonus tip – Stay True to Yourself and Your Personality

I say this because as people we all have different styles and personalities that will leave us able to interact with readers differently. I’ve been critiqued a few times over the years about not being interactive enough with readers but in the last 12 months or so have also come to realise that my approach in this area is not just about being too busy to interact but that it is partly about who I am as a person.

As a pretty extreme introvert I do enjoy personal interaction but also find that I’m not able to sustain as much of it as some others who are more extroverted and get energy from such interactions.

Those of you who’ve met me will know that I’m actually someone who tends to sit at the edge of groups watching and listening more than those who might enjoy being the life of the party. While I do enjoy conversation I’m someone who is a little slower paced and more laid back and who enjoys chiming in from time to time with my insights and thoughts – but who also enjoys listening.

On the flip side of this I know that one impact of being this type of person is that I can come across as being a little uninterested in those around me – it’s something I do have to work on (I could quite easily retreat to my introverts cave and never come out for weeks at a time). So for me it’s about being true to myself and not forcing myself to be the extrovert but also knowing that my introversion can also be an excuse and something that limits me.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



How to Be a More Relational Blogger [Tips for New and Established Bloggers]

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Post tags: Blogger, Bloggers, Blogging, Blogosphere, Building Relationships, Community Interactions, Continuation, Culture, Facebook, Many People, Niches, Personal Blog, Queen, Spirituality, Twitter
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The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger]

01/22/10

Last year I began a semi regular series of posts here on ProBlogger that explored the principles that I saw being exhibited in successful blogs. So far in the series we’ve talked about Listening, Trust, Usefulness, Community, Being Personal and Story Telling.

Not all successful blogs will do all of these things – but in my experience, many of them do.

Today I’d like to continue this series by talking about another such principle – Uniqueness.

The Problem of Clutter

Almost every time I’m questioned about blogging I’m asked whether I think it is too late to get into the medium. There are so many blogs that have been going for so long on almost every topic – isn’t it too crowded, cluttered and noisy to start something that gets noticed?

On some levels there’s real truth to this.

There are many thousands of blogs being started each day and there are what seems like a myriad of blogs in each niche. It can be overwhelming to step back and look at the blogosphere – an organism that is churning out millions of new pages of content each month. How will your single blog rise above the rest? Isn’t it all just too hard?

Yes it is hard – but…. (and this might sound harsh) that’s life. We live in a world of billions of people, all striving to achieve. We live in a world surrounded by thousands of companies and businesses, each struggling to to succeed. Life is cluttered and congested – but it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) stop us. The key is to find a way forward that works for you.

New Blogs DO break onto the scene and ‘make it’ on a regular basis. Yes – they’re in the minority – but it is possible. I know in the photography blogosphere that there are significant new blogs that get a hold on part of the wider niche started every year. In one of the most congested niches of the blogosphere (making money online) new players always are emerging also.

What sets them apart?

Of course there is no single thing that sets good blogs apart – in fact that’s the point – they usually have something about them that is unique.

Side Note: in the original version of this post I was planning to share a personal story here. But the story evolved and became a post of itself – Lessons about Blogging from a 90’s Road Trip. The point of the post – for me one of the turning points in my own blogging journey was the time I decided to stop trying to be someone that I wasn’t – imitating the style of others did help me learn about blogging, but it didn’t help me set my blog apart from the crowd. Part of being unique is being yourself.

How to Be Unique as a Blogger

Of course teaching someone to ‘be unique’ is a challenge. Uniqueness by definition isn’t something that I can really tell you how to be – your blogs uniqueness is something that needs to come from your own uniqueness as a person – at least to some extent.

Having said that – some of the ways that blogs tend to be unique and stand out from the crowd often start with:

1. Voice – your style of writing. Manolo the shoe blogger is the blogger was the first blogger I remember reading with a really unique voice (he writes in the third person).
2. Topic/s – Manolo again an example of uniqueness in this – his two topics when he first started were ‘celebrities’ and their ’shoes’. John Chow perhaps is another example – who ever heard of a make money online blogger who documents his food and talks about cars?
3. Design – the way your blog looks is a great way to make an impression, grab attention and stand out from the crowd.
4. Being First – not easy to do but if you can be one of the first blogs in a niche it can help you stand out. ProBlogger would be my own lucky example of this – at the time no one else was blogging about making a living from blogs.
5. Your Blogs Name – sometimes it is just the name of a blog that makes it stand out whether it be by being confronting, funny or otherwise.
6. Being a ‘Character’ – the Fake Steve Jobs blog comes to mind as one blog that was unique not only by the content being great but by the blogger blogging as Steve Jobs and keeping his real identity secret.
7. Use of Media – some bloggers mashups of different types of media set them apart – clever use of video, imagery, audio and text all together in a post can have a real impact.
8. Depth of Content – a number of bloggers that I follow set themselves apart by producing content that obviously has a lot of thought put into them. Instead of quick and short posts that do nothing much more than link to other sites they carefully and thoughtfully ponder a topic and produce content that is deep and thought provoking.
9. Frequency of Posts – it strikes me that some of the most popular blogs product A LOT of content. Engadget and Gizmodo being two examples. This high frequency of posting makes them prolific and means that if a story is breaking in the gadget space that you’d be certain that they’re covering it. On the flip side some blogs take the opposite approach – their new posts become so rare that people value them highly and share them prolifically.
10. Vaults of Resources – some bloggers become successful because their blogs are just filled with such rich resources. These bloggers might not have as much original thought but they are passionate about gathering information and resources from others and sharing it with their network. People read them because they save them time by researching and gathering the information that the rest of us need but don’t have time to find.
11. Community Focus – some bloggers go above and beyond when it comes to their readers. They put the rest of us to shame by the way that they pay personal attention to everyone, interact with every comment and seemingly know every person who reads by name.
12. Opinion – one of the easiest ways to make your blog is to share your opinion. Your opinions won’t always be unique but the combination of them and the way you express yourself will be and will often set yourself apart from other bloggers who just report news.
13. Usefulness – some blogs are insanely useful. I know we’ve covered this earlier in this series but it needs to be said again – useful blogs build themselves a solid foundation for success.
14. Originality – its amazing how some people just have an ability to explore a topic that everyone else has talked about but put a new spin on it! I sometimes feel this way about Seth Godin’s blog – his ability to make me have light bulb moments around simple concepts is amazing.
15. Personality – I’m finding this one hard to define but some bloggers just ooze personality. Perhaps another way to describe it would be that they have Mojo or are charismatic. They are just infectious with the way that they write and interact.
16. Personal – as you read some blogs you sometimes get a spooky feeling that its almost like the blogger is there in the room with you. They blog in a way where you can almost hear their voice and feel as though you’re in a conversation with them. They share on a level that goes beyond just the transference of information – they share of themselves.
17. Expertise – some bloggers rise to the top of their fields because they are simply authoritative and have real expertise in their field. They are well read, have extensive experience and have forgotten more about their topic than most of us will ever know about it.
18. Connectors – other bloggers are successful because they are so well connected in their niche. They not only know a lot of people but they have a gift in helping others to connect with those in their network.
19. Prolific – some bloggers are unique because… well they’re everywhere. These bloggers seem to have the ability to be in more than one place at a time – they blog, they’re active on multipole social networks, they are at conferences, they are guest posting on other blogs, they’re in forums…. they are everywhere!

There are of course an almost unlimited list of other ways that bloggers set themselves apart and rise above the millions of other blogs. Yesterday I asked on Twitter what makes people’s favorite blogs unique – the list of answers have some similar themes to my own list as well as a few others.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger]

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Post tags: Billions, Blog, Blogosphere, Blogs, Break, Clutter, Making Money, Myriad, Niche, Niches, Organism, People, Personal, Photography, Principle, Real Truth, Rise Above The Rest, Uniqueness
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Bloggers from Non English Speaking Backgrounds – Share Your Tips and Stories Here

01/16/10

If you’re a blogger where English is not your first language – I’d love to get your participation in this discussion.

Recently I surveyed subscribers to my newsletter on the challenges that face them going into 2010. Quite a few of the responses to that question came from bloggers for whom English was not a first language.

The problems that this group of bloggers presented to me were numerous but two recurring challenges were:

• Not knowing which language that they should blog in – should they blog in their own first language and have a smaller potential readership or blog in English where their readership could be larger but where they had challenges in writing as well?
• Feeling isolated from other bloggers – a number reflected that at times they felt that they were not taken as seriously by bloggers in other parts of the world and found networking difficult.

As a blogger who speaks no other language but English I’m probably not the person to bring much wisdom to this topic – however I’d love to get the thoughts, experiences, tips and stories of bloggers who have been in this situation in comments below.

My hope is that this post will not only give bloggers struggling with these and other issues a place to tell of their challenges – but that some might also share how they approach the challenges and give some tips and advice for bloggers from a non English speaking background. I’d also love to hear stories of (and see examples of) your successes (and those of others) as I know that the blogosphere is alive and well in all corners of the globe.

If you’d like to share in your own language and/or English I’m happy for you to do so in any way that you feel comfortable.

I’m looking forward to reading what is shared below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



Bloggers from Non English Speaking Backgrounds – Share Your Tips and Stories Here

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Post tags: Background, Backgrounds, Blog, Blogger, Bloggers, Blogosphere, Challenges, English Language, Experiences, First Language, Globe, Love Stories, Networking, Participation, Readership, Share Tips, Subscribers, Successes, Tips And Advice, Wisdom
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Get These 3 Free Bonuses by Buying 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – 7 Days Only

01/12/10

2010 is here and it is time to kick start your blog into action to ensure that the year ahead it reaches its potential.

19,782 bloggers have participated in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and the reports that I’m getting back from them are that it’s the ideal way to get a blog fired up in the new year.

Extra Inspiration and Instruction for the New Year for All 31DBBB buyers New and Old

Over the next 7 days only if you purchase the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook I’m throwing in 3 great bonuses to help you get your blog going in the new year.

Bonus #1: Free Report: 9 Things to Do to Get Your Blog On Track in The New Year

Written in the style of 31DBBB this report talks you through 9 things that I do at the beginning of every new year. Each step gives you a practical exercise to go away and DO to help get your blog going in the right direction. Effectively it turns the 31 day workbook into a 40 day one!

Bonus #2: Podcast with Leo Babauta from Zen Habits

Regular readers of ProBlogger will know the wisdom and insight of Leo from Zen Habits. He’s grow his blog Zen Habits from nothing to being one of the most read self help blogs in the blogosphere in just a couple of years. He’s released a book (The Power of Less) off the back of his blog and has also since launched a number of other successful blogs, profitable e-books and other products off the back of his blog.

This 55 minute podcast interview with Leo goes through his history of blogging and explores much of his philosophy behind what he does including:

• his recent decisions to turn off comments on his blog
• how he comes up with ideas to write about
• his tips for launching e-books
• his decision to remove all but one ad on his blog
• tips on growing traffic and subscribers

There’s lots of good practical advice in this podcast – I came away from it with loads of ideas and inspiration myself and am sure many will benefit from it.

Bonus #3: Podcast with Neil Patel from QuickSprout

Neil Patel has built an amazing reputation and brand for himself in the last 3-4 years. He’s been a part of building two successful blogs but has also work with some amazing companies on their social media presence (like AOL, HP, Viacom and General Motors). He’s also been a part of helping blogs like TechCrunch rise to the power blogs that they are today.

Neil also is the co-founder of CrazyEgg and KissMetrics and has some great advice in this podcast in a number of areas including:

• Personal Branding
• SEO
• Productivity
• Building Traffic to Blogs

The podcast goes for 42 minutes and is not available anywhere else but to 31DBBB buyers.

7 Days to Get Your New Year Bonuses

These 3 free bonuses are exclusively for buyers of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (both past and present) and they’re only available until midday on Tuesday 19 January – Melbourne time (that’s 8pm Eastern in the US on Monday 18th and 1am London time on Tuesday 19th).

The cost of the 31DBBB workbook is $19.95 – it contains 31 days of teaching and daily activities to help you create a dynamic blog. Make your purchase and get it and the 3 bonuses here.

If you have already purchased the workbook you should have received an email from me in the last 12 hours (sent to the PayPal email address you paid with) that contains details of where to get the bonuses. If you purchased it through SitePoint I’m working on getting you the bonuses too.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



Get These 3 Free Bonuses by Buying 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – 7 Days Only

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Post tags: Blogging, Blogosphere, Blogs, Bonus 2, Decisions, E Books, Exercise, Free Bonuses, Going In The Right Direction, Ideal, Insight, Inspiration, Leo, New Year, Philosophy, Podcast, Subscribers, Traffic, Wisdom, Zen
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Rookie Lessons for New Bloggers

12/21/09

Guest Post by Katie Kimball from Kitchen Stewardship.

I know how it feels to know absolutely nothing, and that’s actually a good place to be.

When I hit the six-month mark with my blog, I took time to sit down and digest the experience, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much one can learn about a totally new field in half a year. I wrote down my lessons, some “rookie strategies” if you will, thinking that although the perspective of a seasoned pro is incredibly valuable, there’s something significant about still having the eyes of a newbie.

I learned the basics by reading posts about blogging (at Problogger, of course). Anyone will tell you content is king, you should learn about SEO just a little, be consistent in writing, interact with readers, comment on other blogs, etc. As I forayed into the blogosphere haphazardly, I had to use my own uncanny powers of perception and a hefty dose of common sense to figure out a myriad of little intricacies. Want to know how to enter carnivals effectively? Why you need a gravatar and should learn to play the fool? How about my number one tip that helped me hit 1,000 subscribers in 9 months?

Enter a New Society

When I began blogging, someone told me “Welcome to the blogosphere.” I thought it was a nice sentiment, but now I realize that the blogosphere is more than a funny phrase. It’s a society all on its own, complete with traditions, customs and strict standards of behavior that would impress any cultural anthropologist. It even has a unique language that you’ll have to learn if you want to get by. Quick – define these words:

1. SEO, WP, RSS
2. carnival, meme
3. gravatar, Photo Bucket, button
4. Alexa ranking, Google page rank
5. permalink, internal link
6. retweet, DM, hashtag
7. plug-in, widget
8. bot, crawl, ping
9. monetize, affiliate, disclosure
10. sleep.

I wouldn’t have known what to do with that list at this time last year. In fact, I had to have someone explain to me what a “blog” was. Now I’m intimately familiar with all of them… except that last one. If you’ve mastered the list already, keep reading for some “finer points” that may be new to you.

Making Comments Count, Not Just Numerically

As I learned about blogging, I read everywhere that commenting on other people’s blogs is the best way to get your new blog “out there” and gain readership. However, you can scramble around the blogosphere all day long and leave nothing but a time-consuming anonymous trail if you’re not wise about leaving your mark:

• You must have a gravatar, preferably a photo, definitely something memorable. On any Wordpress blog, your smiling mug will hover next to your well-chosen words. People will “recognize” your face around the blogosphere, and if you leave thoughtful comments, they may visit your blogo-home to see what else you have to say. Don’t change this image too often, if at all. Take care in choosing a great pic that you’re willing to see every day for a few years!
• Don’t be just you, become your blog. I had people as regular commenters and didn’t realize were coming back over and over because they were just “Sarah” or “Jen”. The photo helps, but also get in the habit of commenting as Name @ Website name so people connect you with your site and notice you more. I’m Katie @ Kitchen Stewardship everywhere I go.
• Two “don’t” notes:
  • Don’t just say “great post” and think you’ve left a meaningful comment. You can say something significant in one sentence, but that sentence ain’t it.
  • Don’t constantly leave links to your own site. Shameless self-promotion is obvious, no matter how exuberant you are!
• Of course, there’s already a great post on Problogger to help you learn how to craft quality comments.

Number One Way to get more Comments on YOUR posts?

Play dumb or make mistakes. If you write a fabulous, seamless post, you will likely get comments like “great post.” If you demonstrate that your knowledge is slightly lacking or ask a question of your readers directly or fumble around a bit, you will have people (women especially) clambering to help a poor soul out. There’s a reason women talk a lot… we like to give advice. Open yourself up to be the receiver of some advice, and you’ll get more comments.

By the way, when you respond to comments, try to use the person’s name. This way if your comment is ever separated from the original question, as mine were when I moved to self-hosted Wordpress, your readers aren’t confused.

The Importance of Links

Google acknowledges that your site is the real deal when other sites link to yours. Friendly links also help real people find your site. You can obtain links in the following ways:

• Comment on another blog and leave your URL (on Blogspot you may need to choose the Name/URL option to help yourself out).
• Write something that another blogger enjoys – they may link to you later. If you’re savvy about it, you can leave a link on one of their posts or send a direct email invitation to a series or the like.
• Of course, there’s a Problogger post on the subject… but he doesn’t include this next one!
• Enter carnivals.

Is Entering Carnivals Worth It?

Thou must enter carnivals. At least in the mommy blogger and real food blogger world, my niches (vocab alert!), there’s no easier way to get a link to your site than by entering the ubiquitous carnivals out there on the web. (What’s a carnival, you ask? It has nothing to do with elephants, let me tell you.)

When a blogger hosts a carnival, they choose a theme and generally a day of the week, and on that day you can input your blog’s name, post that applies, and the permalink (URL that goes directly to the post) in a form at their site which will then become a link to yours. Carnivals are also called memes, especially when one includes a list of questions to complete. (Read more about memes here.)


This is one of my favorite carnivals demonstrating how many blogs do it, with a Mr. Linky system for linking up.


Here are Katie’s tips for carnival success:

1. At first, enter any carnival you can find. When you’re a nobody, a link is a link. This is how you get people to find your site on the vast Internet.
2. You can enter a post in more than one carnival.
3. Always follow proper carnival etiquette: be sure to put a link back to the host’s carnival page somewhere in your post. I usually create a bulleted list at the bottom of my page with this format:
   
   • Super Foods Carnival at Kitchen Stewardship.

Google likes it when I make the name of the site into a link, and I also link that carnival’s permalink to the carnival name so my readers can find it.

1. Once your site becomes more well-established, you can become more savvy about being selective with your carnival entries. Check your stats to see which carnivals generate hits. Some will bring in four visitors, some 50-100. Clearly you can prioritize and focus on the carnivals that bring you readers. Also, if you’re running low on time, enter carnivals at sites with better Google page rank or Alexa rankings (for the link recognition).
2. There’s a fine art to getting genuine clicks from a carnival.
   • Be wise about how you word your entry. Instead of just using your post or blog title like this: cooking from scratch, you’ll get more people interested in clicking to your site if you’re creative or controversial, like this: Should SAHMs cook from scratch?
   • Use caps to draw attention to your entry, but not excessively.
   • Standard entries include your name @ blog name and your subject. If necessary to be more appealing, leave out your name and even your blog name. Draw them in…
3. I absolutely assumed that getting listed on a well-known site would generate a lot of clicks, but that’s not necessarily so. The sites that have active, strong communities are the ones who have readers interested enough in clicking on their carnival links. I’ve been published at or linked to from all three of these “big” sites: Blissfully Domestic, Tip Junkie, and 5 Minutes for Mom. (Note: Blissfully Domestic as both a contributor in the food niche and in the weekly Tuesday carnival I am Blissfully Domestic; Tip Junkie’s Submit a Tip; 5 Minutes for Mom’s Sunday Around the Blogosphere, twice as a feature and a few times in the giveaway linky.) Only one of them resulted in triple digit hits: publishing a tip at Tip Junkie. The others? Only single digit rewards.
4. Sometimes the best carnivals to enter are those that are not weekly but a special feature. They often have a theme that readers are interested in, therefore folks are more likely to click around. The only way to find these is to be a regular blog reader. Another favorite blog hosts great carnivals like this one:



An incredibly comprehensive list of carnivals can be found here and another here (although outdated – I left a bunch of updates in the comments!), and find lots of carnivals at www.blogcarnival.com. This latter style of carnival also gives you an SEO-friendly link to your home page.

Are Some Links Better Than Others?

Quite simply, yes. I can link to your site all day long, but if I’m just a little “write about my kids for grandma to read” website, Google doesn’t care. Here are two things to watch for to tell when you’ve hit upon a site worth linking to:

1. Google page rank
2. Alexa ranking

You can install the SearchStatus bar for Firefox here to find out how various websites rank. It shows up at the bottom of your computer screen, and when you see a Google rank higher than your own or an Alexa rank lower than yours, you’ve found a site worth spending time at.




This is what the SearchStatus bar looks like. Unobtrusive at best.

As you can see, my Google rank is a 3, and Problogger is a 6. Guest posting here is a great idea! You won’t see many non-corporate sites any higher than a 6 (10 is the highest). The higher your Google rank, the higher Google puts your pages when people search.

Alexa rankings work opposite: lower is better. New sites start out in the millions. I’ve taken Kitchen Stewardship from over 400,000 at the end of August to well under 200,000 less than 3 months later. Mr. Rowse is sitting pretty at 2,467. (That’s really low, in case you’re wondering.) Paying attention to these rankings is one reason you still want to link up at the “big” sites I mentioned above, even though direct hits may not be plentiful.

Participate in the Internet Time Warp

Everyone knows that once you get on the Internet, you don’t come out again for two days. I suppose some people can get out of the Internet-suction within hours, but you never do just one thing. If you’re going to blog, you might as well do as the Romans do and try your darndest to draw people in to your site until they feel an overwhelming urge to add you to their reader!

The best way to draw people in is to provide ample opportunity to exercise their mouse finger. That is, give them something to click on. Anytime you can link to your own content within another post, do it. At the end of your posts, it’s not a bad idea to give your reader even more to click on. Keep them at your site reading quality content for 15 minutes, and they’re likely to add you to their reader and come back for more.

I use WP’s Link Within plug-in to help with this, but I also try to provide manual links at the end of most posts that compliment the post itself. I use headings like “Other Fall Recipes” and “More Ways to Save Time in the Kitchen” and list three great posts, using intriguing titles – not necessarily the actual title of the post.

I also have a standard closing to all of my posts. It explains the mission of my site (for the sake of new readers), invites people to click for RSS feed or email subscription (links included), and tells them where to find the latest Monday Mission (a feature at Kitchen Stewardship). You can see it in the screen shot above. I manage this function with my “endnotes” page, explained below.

Finally, use your sidebar to your advantage. Be sure to share your latest 5-10 posts somewhere near the top to capture new readers. You might also consider listing “5 Most Important Posts” or something similar in your sidebar. I keep a list called “Currently Featuring” right at the top for any series, giveaways, carnivals or special posts that I have going on.

Choose interesting tags and categories. One thing I wish I would have done is to be more cognizant about my categories and chosen phrases that would really pique folks’ interest and get them to click. Mine aren’t so hot right now! Put yourself in the shoes (computer chair) of your reader. What might you stumble across and be interested in enough to click?

Sanity Savers for Bloggers

First, realize this:

• There is always more to do in the blogging world.
• Sleep is secondary.

Then try to pick up some tips to streamline your time at the computer. Organizing my information has been invaluable. I quickly learned that, although I love composing my text in MS Word, links don’t always copy over well. It’s too easy for a small mistake to happen, and I don’t have time to test all my own links every time I publish. When you want to include internal links (links to your own content) often, use one or both of these two strategies:

1. Keep all your permalinks in a text doc. Every time you publish a post, view it and copy the URL to the post (from the web address bar) into a Word or notepad document. Mine is titled “000 post links 000″ so that I can see it easily as I Alt+Tab through my open windows. Don’t bullet or number them, just paste the links in.When you need to link to something, use the “Find” function (ctrl+F) in Word and type part of the title of your post. Then you can easily copy and paste the URL into a new post as a link, or into the comments at other blogs when applicable. I promise this is much quicker than finding a past post via your website’s search bar or in your Wordpress dashboard. The latter in particular takes such a long time. This is also how I find a post when I need to edit/update it after publishing.
2. Create a “page” (not a post) and give it a parent page in case you ever accidentally click “publish”. On this page (mine is called “Endnotes”) place anything that you’ll use often: certain graphics, your post closing text, some favorite posts, written for draw-ëem-in purposes and linked to the URL already, and your carnival favorites. If you have this open in another tab while you’re composing a new post, you can easily put your closing and some effective internal links in your new post with a quick copy and paste. For organization’s sake, I always have my dashboard, then comments, then Endnotes page in tabs in that order when I’m working on my blog. List the carnivals you’ve found like this:

• My Favorite Carnival at Kitchen Stewardship

You can quickly copy a handful of appropriate links over to your new post and enter those carnivals in a very short amount of time. When you go to the carnival, you should make the words “My Favorite Carnival” a link to that specific post. You can enter many carnivals very efficiently this way if you have a flexible post! I keep a list of my favorite carnivals that generate the most hits organized by day in a text doc as well.

Single Greatest Tip?

You’ve been waiting for that number one subscribers’ tip, haven’t you? I’m hoping the answer is “guest posting at Problogger” myself… Honestly, beyond writing fabulous, amazing content that people care about, you need to believe you’ve got something good, work hard shamelessly promoting your own site, and get lucky sometimes. When a random site that has well-established readership links prominently to a post you’ve written because the author just happened to love it, that can garner more hits and subscribers than anything you can purposely do. You just have to make sure you have a few methods in place in case that happens to draw those readers into the Internet time warp, and you’re well on your way to a readership boost.

Katie Kimball is a former teacher, at-home mom, and newbie blogger at Kitchen Stewardship, which is dedicated to balancing nutrition, environmentalism, time and money through the eyes of faith.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.



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Post tags: 9 Months, Blogosphere, Carnival, Common Sense, Cultural Anthropologist, Customs, Funny Phrase, Google, Gravatar, Hefty Dose, Intricacies, Kimball, Myriad, Page Rank, Perception, Photo Bucket, Sentiment, Stewardship, Strict Standards, Widget
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