Posted by randfish

Last week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham, whom I’ve long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View. Tonight, I presented at that evented and thought I’d share my experiences, recommendations and yes, my presentation. Not everything that was discussed is public, in fact, much of it is "classified" at YC’s request. However, there’s so much good material that it would be criminal not to share.

First up, my presentation from the YCombinator SEO for Startups event (naturally, hosted on YC company and prior SEOmoz consulting client, Scribd):

SEO for Startups: YCombinator February 2010

Next, since it’s hard to do any slide deck justice with just the slides, a list of top advice and recommendations, not just from the slide deck, but from many years of interactions, consulting and Q+A help for startups:

1. SEO as a Strategy, not a Tactic
   Yelp uses SEO as a strategy. When their community finds something new in the neighborhood, content is created. They are limited in scale only by the physical world’s local businesses. Plus, it’s only natural that local businesses with good rankings will want to share those via a badge and a link; it’s only natural that their top contributors will want to share the reviews they’ve given. SEO is a strategy – it’s part of what makes them the business they are. If you’re just thinking in terms of keywords in the title and submitting to some directories, you’re going to get lapped by someone who understands how to make content, links, sharing & search demand an integral part of how users interact with their website.
2. Start SEO in the Concept Phase, Not After the Site is Built
   It’s hard to do, particularly when you spend your first two years as a founder thinking SEO is a cross between black magic and BS, but SEO works best when it’s architected alongside a businesses marketing plan. I’ve mentioned in the past that I think VCs and angel investors should be asking about SEO in the first meeting – startups should be three steps ahead of that.
3. Build Accessibility First & Foremost
   I come back time and time again to the SEO Pyramid. It all starts with unique content that engines can find and users find valuable. I’m now the proud owner of a Y Combinator t-shirt bearing the tagline "Make Something People Want." All I’m asking is that you also make something Google (and Bing) can find, too. And, in concert with this advice, check out Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization to help solve that puzzle.
4. SEO is NOT a One Time Event
   Fire and forget works with smartbombs (or maybe not – scroll to section 5), but it doesn’t work with SEO. This is a constantly evolving field, and not so much because Google’s algorithm is changing all the time, but more so because 300 (or 30,000) competitors are constantly trying to produce better content and market it more effectively while the engines are constantly experimenting with new kinds of results and information. No product is good enough to survive without marketing – even Google itself just ran a Super Bowl ad. SEO is marketing, and as such demands the same attention. Ignore it, and you will fall by the wayside.
5. Analytics are a Religion
   An ad salesman comes to you and tells you that 20% of your exact target market is reading a particular magazine. By putting in a full-page ad every month for the next year, you can ensure that they’ll all know your name and many will buy from you. But wait… How many saw it? How many took the desired action? How many heard about it from a friend or read a loaner copy on a flight? You’ll never know. With SEO, it’s the complete opposite – every action has a trackable reaction. If you ignore the data, use last-touch attribution or neglect to build serious models that track the value of your campaigns, you may as well blow the money on a giant billboard on the 101. Who knows? Maybe the right investor will drive by and decide to invest… Just don’t count on it.
6. Clever Tricks Aren’t that Clever (or New)
   I promise that no hairbrained scheme to manipulate the search rankings by registering thousands of sites or scraping the web for open places to link or contacting 6,000 "friends" for a link exchange are either A) new or B) going to work. Apply your creativity in white hat ways and make sure it passes the Google web spam litmus test. And no, that doesn’t just mean it passes Google’s Quality Guidelines, it means you would happily show it to any engineer on the webspam team content in the knowledge that they’d actually WANT it to help your site rank better.
7. Don’t Let Search Dominate Your Traffic Sources
   If Google sends 90% of your traffic, your business has real danger associated with it. Why aren’t people coming directly to your site, being passed links in email, getting Tweets and Facebook mentions that send traffic? Why is no one blogging about you, writing about you in the press, commenting in forums with links to your content? These "natural" signs tell a story of a real business providing real value. The 90-95% Google trafficked site says something strange is going on, and Google themselves are likely to figure that out sooner or later.

And last, but not least, I’d like to recognize some of the brilliant people and companies represented. It was humbling to receive such kind praise and attentitive ears from companies like:

• Apartment Rentals Site – AirBnB (whose founders were kind enough to give me a ride back to my hotel at SFO!)
• Dead Simple Publishing Site – Posterous (I learned the official way to pronounce it – "pastarus")
• Concerts & Tour Dates Startup – Songkick
• Time Management Software Provider – RescueTime ( a local Seattle startup, and host of the Feb. 25 event)
• Gift Card Exchange Marketplace – Cardpool
• Real Time Search Startup – Scoopler
• Live Video & Chat Hub – Justin.tv

Tragically, the following brief set of photos from the event were taken on my new Android camera phone (yes, I’m such a Hacker News/Paul Graham geek that I had to pull it out):

YCombinator Founders Eating Dinner (noticeably absent in the photo was the single female founder – but they do have one!)

Luckily, there was plenty of Coke to help keep me hydrated (and caffeinated) during the event

The rush for pizza (apparently, The Flash is one of the founders they funded!)

Paul and Rand in the Anybots lab – thanks again, Paul; it was a fantastic experience

There were more than 40 companies in attendance, so there’s no way to name them all here, but the above represent some of the most active on the SEO panel and during the lengthy, but phenomenal Q+A. Later this week, SEOmoz’s own Danny Dover will be attending the Y Combinator meetup in Seattle, and he’d love to say hi and chat with folks there, and hopefully help to bring a good name to SEO.

p.s. At the end of the presentation, Paul noted that the startups owed me a debt for sharing information about SEO. I disagree, but who am I to pass up such a wonderful opportunity. My only request to the attendees was that, if they should see SEO being badmouthed on Hacker News to kindly step in and help others realize the power and legitimacy of this marketing channel.

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Guest post by Ainslie Hunter from Study Skills Mentor and EduWebMedia.

I found my dream job…. and I mean dream job. A blogger / editor job for an experienced teacher. It was there in black and white on the Problogger Job Boards. Sure it was December 21, but I had finished my Christmas Shopping so I sat down and got started.

A Regular Job Interview Process

In my teaching career I have applied for 5 jobs. Face to face interviews are easy. You send in the resume, they check your references and then you hopefully get an interview. My interviews have never lasted more than 30 minutes and I have found out the outcome in a couple of days.

Does that sound familiar to you?

Well applying for an online job is a whole different game.

Problogger Job Interview Process

To gain an online job as a Blogger / Editor I have completed six general steps, and one that is a little crazy.

The application

If you are a regular reader of the Problogger Job board you will notice a trend in Job descriptions. A writing job is pretty straightforward. But many of the Blogger / Editor positions are long and vague. This job wanted a blogger who could do it all, but didn’t give out specifics of the time, pay, or responsibilities.

So I applied with two documents. The first was a standard cover letter and resume that listed my education and experience in teaching and blogging. The second was a two page proposal outlining my strategy for the company. I didn’t know what they wanted, but knew that my resume wouldn’t have given them enough information.

First email contact

About a week later I received an email from the company. They loved my proposal but were worried about location issues; they were in the US and I was here in Australia. I answered with strategies on how to deal with time difference and how we could overcome my lack of understanding of US education issues. For each point, I could see many positives from being outside of the US.

Skype Interview

Another week went by and I had a Skype Interview planned for 5:30 in the morning. It would have been so much easier to go to someone’s office then to have an interview online. Since it was a video conference I had to make sure I didn’t look like I just crawled out of bed, my office had to be clean and my 2 year old had to be bribed with a Macca’s breakfast.

The interview lasted nearly an hour and was a standard interview, once I got over the fact that I was on a massive projector screen.

Second Proposal

I decided to write a second proposal. It was a synthesis of ideas that came from the interview. An impression from the interview was a concern that I was an unknown person from destination elsewhere. So in the proposal I also gave examples of accountability practices that we could use to keep track of me.

Writing Assignment

On the 15th of January I was asked to submit a blog article on behaviour management. We had three days to write the post. Simple enough but I took a few risks with my approach.

Keeping up with Appearances

During the month I also made sure I looked after my blog and readers. I spent more time crafting blogs, wrote a Guest Post and became more involved on Twitter. I also put out a call for guest posts (as it was something that concerned the interviewers) Google Analytics is a wonderful tool and I was able to tell that the company was monitoring my blog on a regular basis.

Little Bit Crazy

Well now a month has gone by and the company still hasn’t made a decision yet. I wanted to make them know that I was still excited about the job and that I have strong convictions about my ability as a blogger. I wanted to stand out of the crowd. So I got a little adventurous…

I sent a Thank You Card and a box of Tim Tams. Express. To America. With a note that said “Let’s have another chat over Skype. I have supplies the Tim Tams.”

I had just read a quote from Teresa Taylor, “I never hire someone without having a meal with them. I am absolutely convinced that that’s how you see what people are really like…you can pick up all these lifestyle things that you can’t get out of questioned them sitting in your office.” I wanted to show them that I was happy to have a chat over coffee so they could get to know me better.

I reached out to an online friend. Josh from World’s Strongest Librarian put my post on his site. I wanted to see how others would respond to my story.

I sent this post to Darren.

So Did the Tim Tam’s work? Not sure. I just checked Australia Post and they are still in transit. Somewhere between LA and New York.

I still hope I get the job. I really do want it. But this experience has taught me so much about applying for online positions. Whilst blogging experience is important, what our future employers are looking for is someone they can trust. Especially if that person will be blogging from destination unknown.

We all know that trust takes time to develop with our own blog readers. But time is not a commodity you have when applying and interviewing for an online job. So you also need to find a way to show entrepreneurial spirit.

Have you got any great strategies on how to ace a blogger job and? Let us know.

Read more from Ainslie Hunter at Study Skills Mentor and EduWebMedia.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How a $50 packet of Tim Tams could get you a Blogger Job

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A few days back I asked readers a question:

What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?

Some of the responses to the question in comments (and via email and Twitter) revealed a lot of bloggers really wanting to step things up and get what they’ve been putting off done.

So – lets set some goals – what do you want to achieve by the end of February?

I’m not going to be calling you up to check up to see if you’re meeting your goals – but hopefully in putting them down publicly you’ll find yourself a little more spurred on to reach what you want to achieve.

My Goal for February: I want to get a new E-Book out the door by the end of the month.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Is Your Blogging Goal for February?

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Just over 48 hours ago those of you on my newsletter list would have received an email from me introducing a new venture that I’ve been working on – The Third Tribe.

Third Tribe is a new collaboration between myself, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone.

I’m going to tell some of my story of why I’m involved in this venture below – but if you want to skip straight to the offer you can read the story behind Third Tribe, what it is and how you can be involved here.

Third Tribe – A Conversation Between Two Worlds

If you were at Blog World Expo last year you might have seen a panel that the four of us were on where we began to explore the topic of our journey as online marketers trying to find our place between two groups of people who we didn’t always feel quite at home with.

Of course these two groups don’t really exist as groups – they’re generalisations and are probably more two extremes of a spectrum we all find ourselves somewhere on – but they are:

• Traditional Internet Marketers – known for their hype, at times obnoxious, annoying and manipulative tactics.
• Social Media Cool Crowd – known for their ethics, value of community and relationships – but also renowned for struggling to make what they do profitable.

Over the years I’ve felt like I’ve spent a little time in both groups. I’ve been to their conferences, tried their ‘tactics’ and ‘approaches’ and attempted to fit in. I’ve also, at different times, swung too far into either camp and done and said things that I now regret.

Tangent Time – A Story of 2 Conferences

I remember speaking at one internet marketing conference a few years back – my first – there were fireworks…. literally and figuratively. My memories of that week include

• speakers selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of coaching and product from the stage (I saw people literally run to signup)
• a presentation on how one internet marketer was setting up hundreds of meaningless blogs to game Google and make money
• one speaker make an entrance that included a light show and fireworks
• a movie star coming to sign autographs

Some of what I saw was amazing – much of it left me feeling quite uncomfortable and out of place.

Mixed in with all that there were also some amazingly genuine and smart people who made a real impression on me and taught me a lot despite being surrounded by hype.

I also remember another conference a few years ago – it was a social media event where I was invited to speak about making money from blogging and social media. In retrospect I think I was actually set up by the organizers who knew those attending would want to shoot me down in flames.

The Q&A time was filled with biting questions – the theme of which was that social media should not EVER be used for anything other than relationships, community and social good. Marketing or profit was certainly not welcome in social media in these people’s minds.

Of course at the event were also some amazing people who I also learned a lot from about the value of community and the power of social media to do good.

I tell these stories for two reasons:

1. there are things about these two groups of people that I’ve learned a lot form and resonate a lot with. Much of what I do is based upon elements that I’ve picked up along the way from a variety of people all along the spectrum.
2. there are things about both groups which leave me either uncomfortable or in some kind of conflict. I do want to make money online – but I don’t want to resort some some of the extreme, deceptive and hyped tactics I see happening around the web.

I’m not the only one who feels a little out of place between these two extremes. I meet people who grapple with these same things regularly.

Back to The Third Tribe

Brian and Sonia started blogging about these same themes last year and the idea of a ‘Third Tribe’ began to emerge as a term to describe those of us in the middle. Chris Brogan joined the conversation and then I jumped in and we began to plan a panel for Blog World.

The more we talked about the Third Tribe concept and the journey that we’d been on to find our place as online marketers the more people began to come out of the woodwork expressing similar experiences and feelings. We decided it was time to call people together and provide those wanting to explore the topic with some training on what we were learning and a place to connect with others on the journey.

As you’ll see in the story on Third Tribe – there’s an amazing group of people lined up to share their journey with Third Tribe members. What’s better still is that since launching 48 hours ago we’ve had may others join and begin to interact – the depth of what’s being shared is fantastic (there’s already over 1000 posts on a great range of topics) and I can see that there are going to be a lot of great collaborations emerge out of this.

The other reason I’m excited about Third Tribe is the mix of people involved all bring such a wonderful collection of skills, strengths and experiences. We’ve got people with experience in copy writing, social media, building membership sites, E-Book marketers, SEOs, affiliate marketers, those who use social media to market their real world businesses…. and much more.

The Offer

As we’re still growing and shaping The Third Tribe we’ve set up a discounted Charter Member Offer for those who join in the first week. This is partly to thank those in our current network but also simply because the site is still growing and those who join now help us to build it with their contributions in the forum (thus they should get a discount).

Third Tribe Marketing is a paid membership site. If you sign up before February 5th at 6PM (Central Time – GMT -6), as a Charter Member the cost is $27 USD a month (you’re locked in at that price even after the price rise). If you sign up next week, the cost jumps to $47 a month.

You can see what the deal entails and what you get on the inside of the TT here.

Of course both the topic and the deal will not fit for everyone. If you don’t resonate with where we are at or don’t find the deal is where you’re at we’re not wanting to pressure anyone to join up.

You’re welcome to sign up and trial things for up to 30 days – it it’s not where you’re at you’re welcome to a refund.

Join us Today

I’m really excited by The Third Tribe and hope you’ll consider joining us.

Check out the details here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Third Tribe – Launched [My Back Story]

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“Use it or lose it!”

It’s a statement that can be applied to many aspects of life – not the least of which is building an online business.

I discovered this the hard way recently with one of my email lists – in fact the newsletter associated with this very blog here at ProBlogger.

Over two years ago I was sending out weekly newsletters to readers of this blog. They contained updates from the site, a few extra tips exclusive for subscribers, the odd competition, the occasional promotion and a bit of behind the scenes information on what I was doing.

The emails were converting well in terms of driving traffic and building community with readers and they even drove some affiliate sales from time to time. It was something well worth doing…..

But then I stopped.

I can’t really put my finger on why I stopped (it was a gradual thing and something I intended to get back to ) – perhaps it was because I started doing some of what I’d been doing in newsletters on Twitter, perhaps it was because I was simply getting too busy, or perhaps I was just getting lazy…. for whatever reason – I stopped sending weekly newsletters. In fact they slowed down to a point where I was lucky if I were sending them out every six months.

The problem is – six months is too long to go between newsletters. If you don’t use it – you lose it.

Six months without contact with subscribers is not a great way to build brand, trust, relationship, familiarity – it means that when you do send something it’s less likely to be read.

People forget they subscribed, people are more likely to view you with suspicion, people could feel slighted.

Some might call it letting your list go ‘cold‘ – I call it a big mistake.

It meant that when I recently restarted my newsletter that a large percentage of those who had subscribed were inactive, unresponsive and a few were quite angry about me emailing them because they had little idea why I was sending them emails out of the blue!

The same principle applies in other places too.

• Blogging/RSS Feeds – I recently spoke with a blogger who decided to take 12 months off blogging – he returned expecting traffic and reader engagement to pick up where he left off – he was surprised to find that while Feedburner still reported him as having subscribers that it was like starting again in building traffic.
• Social Media – people often describe using social media as developing a ‘presence’. Problem is – when you’re not actually ‘present’ for any length of time that ‘presence’ is hard to build. Whether it be on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn – when you let your account become inactive – in time the relationships that you have with those that you’ve previously connected with can go ‘cold’.

I guess it’s pretty much the same as real life – when you disappear unexpectedly from a circle of friends it can be a little awkward coming back to them – it sometimes takes time for the friendships to ‘warm up’ again.

5 Lessons to Help You Keep ‘Using It’ – Not ‘Losing It’

A few quick tips on keeping thing going – whether it be your blog, newsletter, Twitter account etc.

1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

The temptation in this game is to commit to being active in too many places at once. Newsletters, Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Forums, LinkedIn…. and when you have more than one blog – multiply the accounts that you might potentially have!

In most cases it is better to do a few things well than to do many things poorly.

2. Regularity is more important than High Frequency

When asked ‘how much should I post on my blog’ I generally answer with ‘regularly’ and with ‘regularity’.

In my experience the actual frequency of posting doesn’t tend to matter as much as the ‘regularity’ of your posts. Bloggers tend to get into trouble when they move from posting at one level and then changing their frequency. Going from 3 posts a week to 5 posts a day is going to aggravate some of your readers. Going from 5 posts a day to once a month is also going to have a detrimental impact.

Post as regularly as you are able to sustain and try to develop a pattern to it so that readers know what to expect.

3. Under Promise and Over Deliver

If you’re not sure how much of something you’re able to sustain – pull back not he promises you make.

If you’re starting an email newsletter and you ‘hope’ to make it weekly but wonder if you can keep that up – advertise it as being ‘at least every month’ or every second week.

I guess it’s about identifying what the minimum is that you need to do to keep your list/blog/social media presence ‘warm’ and at least sticking to that as a minimum rather than attempting to do more than you can realistically do.

4. Build a Schedule

I used to be very impulsive in my online business. These days I’m much more reliant upon schedules. I set myself deadlines for blog posts, newsletters, forum interaction, social media interactions…. and more.

I still don’t achieve them all but without a schedule areas of what I do would fall dormant very quickly.

5. Have Someone (or Something) Manage You

Extending the schedule strategy is that I like to be ‘managed’ by someone or something.

This means that I have people around me who ‘remind’ (or tell) me when I need to do certain things.

‘Darren you need to get a newsletter out today’ is something I heard last Thursday from one of the people involved in my photography site.

‘Darren here are 3 threads you need to respond to in the forum’ is something that Lara told me earlier today (we use Basecamp to send these type of reminders/to do tasks).

I also set up systems for these type of alerts.

I use iCal on my mac and iPhone to set up alerts at certain intervals to remind/tell me to do certain tasks. These range from monthly alerts to pay affiliates, to weekly alerts to send newsletters, to daily alerts to have certain articles written by.

I do have some internal alerts too – by this I mean that I know before I go to bed each night that I need to have 3 posts set to go off on my blogs while I sleep. I don’t need to set myself an alert for these because its just what I do each day – they’ve become automatic internalized rhythms.

What do You Do?

How do you keep your blogging and other activities regular so that you don’t let things go cold? Looking forward to reading some of how you approach this.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Use it or lose it! 5 Tips on How to Keep Your Blogging Regular

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Over the last three weeks I’ve noticed a massive upswing in emails, tweets and comments from bloggers feeling depressed about their blogs going into 2010.

• Some of them took a week or two off blogging over the holidays and can’t get restarted.
• Others are looking back on 2009 and realising that they didn’t meet past goals.
• A few are paralysed by the possibilities and don’t know which direction to head

It’s that time of year when we assess how we’re traveling and wonder what we can do about it!

Tomorrow, and for the next 7 days only, I’m releasing 3 bonuses for all previous and all new owners of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook.

The workbook itself is a great way to to kickstart a blog that has been struggling (it gives a series of 31 tasks to help bloggers get their blogs going) but from tomorrow and for one week only I’ll be bundling it with 3 extra bonuses:

1. 9 Things to Do to Get Your Blog On Track in The New Year – a short report that gives bloggers an extra 9 tasks/exercises to help get you focused for the new year (based on the process I take myself at the start of every year).
2. Interview with Leo Babauta – just under an hour of a podcast interview with Leo from Zenhabits.net.
3. Interview with Neil Patel – a 45 minute podcast interview with traffic generating and personal branding genius from Quicksprout.

None of these bonuses have been available before and each will be available for those who buy the workbook in the next 7 days only (although once you’ve got access to them you’ll be able to access them indefinitely).

If you’ve already got the workbook you’ll get an email with download details of these bonuses tomorrow.

If you’ve not bought your workbook yet you’ll have 7 days to grab a copy to secure the bonuses (note: if you buy it now/today you’ll get an email with the bonuses tomorrow).

Update: if you purchase the workbook now you’ll receive the bonuses immediately. Previous buyers of the workbook should now be receiving emails telling them how to collect their New Year Bonuses.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Feeling Depressed About Your Blog? Get the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Bonus Pack Here Tomorrow

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If you’re anything like me you’ve probably left your Christmas shopping to the last minute (as I write this post there are less than 3 hours left til the shops close here in Australia and I still need to get one more gift)!

If you’re still searching for a great gift for that special blogger in your life (or perhaps a treat for yourself) we’re happy to provide you with a solution here at ProBlogger – the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook.

While an e-book is a little hard to wrap I’ve had a lot of readers from both ProBlogger and DPS email me today to tell me that they’ve just bought copies as gifts for family and friends. It’s particularly good because you don’t have to leave your house to get it and there’s no delivery fee – just pay for it and download.

Some are being quite creative in how they give them too with many burning the PDF onto CDs/DVDs so that they’re able to wrap it up. Others are buying them and then forwarding the download link onto the receiver of the gift via an email.

PS: In mid January I’ll be offering a special limited time bonus for all buyers of 31DBBB. I’m not ready to announce it yet but both those who get a copy that week and those who already have at any time in the past will get the bonus. Just a little extra sweetener for buying the e-book – stay tuned.

PS(2): Of course if you’re buying a gift for a photographer – you should look no further than the Essential Guide to Portrait Photography

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Ultimate Last Minute Christmas Gift for Bloggers

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Yesterday I watched this mini disaster unfold before me between a couple exchanging Christmas gifts.

As I watched the repercussions of the exchange of gifts (I’ll tell you what happened below) I found myself thinking about unmet expectations.

Elliot Larson once said – “Anger always comes from frustrated expectations” – as a blogger interacting with readers for 7 years I’d have to say that I agree.

As I think back over the times where I’ve had readers most frustrated and angry with me (and when I’ve been most frustrated with others) – it almost always comes down to there being a difference in expectations between blogger and reader.

Most bloggers who’ve been at this game for a while have had at least a handful of complaint emails/comments from readers:

“You post too often!”
“You don’t post enough!”
“Your posts are too advanced!”
“Your posts are too basic!”
“You do too many promotions!”
“You promised XXX but you never delivered on it!”
“You never replied to my email!”

Sometimes the complaints are legitimate and other times as bloggers we write them off as the reader just not getting us or asking too much.

Whether justifiable or not – in each of the cases above the person making the complaint had some kind of unmet expectation. They signed up for an RSS feed, newsletter, Twitter account or bought a product expecting one thing but getting another.

As bloggers – how do we manage expectations better and minimise these kinds of complaints?

A few thoughts come to mind:

1. Know what your own Goals and Expectations are

As I look back on some of the instances that I’ve had with readers having unmet expectations of me I can honestly say that in some instances the reason was simply that I didn’t have a very clear understanding of what I was trying to do or achieve.

I’m sure many bloggers are similar – we can be an impulsive lot – experimenting, tweaking, changing directions and starting new things at the drop of the hat. While this often leads to great discoveries and creative new directions – it can also leave readers reeling a little and feeling disappointed.

I’m still quite impulsive – but over the years I’ve learned a little more to take my time with new ideas, to test them with small groups of people before launching them publicly and to force myself to plan and think about over arching goals and objectives in order to make the road a little less bumpy for readers.

2. Communicate Your Expectations Clearly

Once you know what your readers will get from you and your blog – communicate it clearly to your readers.

For example – if you have a newsletter and intend to publish it weekly – state that in your subscriber page. If the newsletter is simply an update of what’s happening on your blog – let them know that so they don’t expect completely new content.

If there are strings attached with any aspect of your blog – it can be well worthwhile letting your readers know about them up front.

This particularly applies when you change any aspect of your own expectations or goals.

For example if you’ve been happily posting at a frequency of 4 posts a week but suddenly decide to start publishing at a rate of 10 posts a day – you’ll want to communicate your decision and reasoning to readers. Changes in your own approach might make sense to you but if you have readers who signed up for something completely different you’re setting yourself up for a clash of expectations.

I’ve seen this problem on numerous occasions including about post frequency, changes in topic/niche of a blog and even changes in the way that a blog is monetized (suddenly adding lots of ads, or paid posts, or affiliate promotions).

3. Identify Common Unmet Expectations and Preempt Them

Over time you might find that you constantly get the same complaint from readers. This could be an indication that you need to consider changing your approach – OR it could simply mean you need to work harder to get the reader’s expectations right earlier.

For example I worked with one blogger a few months back who kept getting nasty emails from readers complaining that the blogger didn’t respond to emails quickly enough. The blogger was inundated with emails and found it hard to answer everyone (and it could take a week or more to do so when he did get to it). He was frustrated that readers expected too much and readers were frustrated because they expected more of him.

We added a simple sentence or two to his contact page explaining that the blogger received 100+ emails a day and was not able to respond to everyone. We also added alternative places that people could interact with him (on Twitter) and also added a FAQ section to his blog and linked to it from the contact form to help readers find answers to some of the more common emails requests that he received.

The complaints he received by readers dropped dramatically.

4. Don’t Hype

Many unmet expectations are just simple and understandable misunderstandings between blogger and reader – however at times bloggers could be a little more at fault by falling into the trap of hyping themselves, their blogs and their products up to a point where they’re setting themselves and their readers up for a clash of expectations.

I know this temptation – you slave over what you do, you want it to succeed and you stretch the truth just a little in some of your claims or promise things you probably can’t deliver on in order to convince potential readers that you’re worthy of their readership.

The problem is obvious though – you simply can’t do what you say you’ll do and as a result you end up with a disappointed (at best) or an angry and aggressive (at worst) reader. At the more aggressive end of the spectrum you might also have the reader tell others about how you’ve let them down.

5. Under Promise and Over Deliver

There’s nothing wrong with big promises and claims – IF you deliver on them. However if you’re not sure if you’ll be able to deliver on an element of what you’re tempted to promise – leave it out and add it later.

For example when we launched ProBlogger.com I always wanted to add a featured content area where I would produce extra and exclusive content for paid members. However at the time of launch I didn’t yet have the time allocated in my weekly schedule to be able to commit to delivering regular extra content.

It wasn’t until recently that I was able to do this and I’ve since added the area to the community. The reaction of adding it later was that readers are thanking me for the bonus – something extra to what they signed up for expecting. Perhaps we could have signed up more people earlier by promising this area earlier – but I’d rather a smaller number of happy members than a larger number of angry ones!

What Would You Add?

By no means am I perfect in this area. I still get readers telling me that I’ve not delivered upon what they were expecting from me – I’ve still got work to do. As a result I’d love to hear from you on how you manage reader expectations in comments below?

PS: I promised that I’d tell you how the gift exchange that I witnessed above turned out. Here’s what happened about half an hour later!

It’s not quite an ‘under promise and over deliver’ situation – but both went away happy with a story to tell!

PS: just been told by people on Twitter that ‘pearl necklace’ might have a double meaning. It was not my intention to be funny or offensive with this, it’s really what the gift was!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Manage Expectations with Your Blog Readers

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This week, on a busier than normal day, I Tweeted that I wish there were more hours in a day (or that there was a pause button so that time could stand still for a bit so I could catch up). The tweet was of course an attempt at humor but the deluge of replies that I received from that Tweet revealed that I’m not the only blogger out there that wishes they had more time.

As I giggled at the responses it struck me that if I’d not posted that message on Twitter about how I wish I’d had more time that I’d probably have had an extra 6 minutes that hour to get the things I needed to get done finished.

While I’m glad I did get on Twitter for those 6 minutes (it gave me a laugh, made me relax and lightened my day a little) I began to think about all the other small little distractions and time suckers we as bloggers face and on a whim (and for a bit of fun) came up with this list of how to be a more productive blogger.

How to be a more productive blogger:

1. Turn off Twitter – 6 minutes an hour
2. Turn off Facebook – 3 minutes an hour
3. Stop checking your Traffic Stats – 2 minutes an hour
4. Stop checking your AdSense Earnings – 2 minutes an hour
5. Stop Tweaking your blog design – 3 minutes an hour
6. Stop checking your Google Page Rank – 1 minute an hour
7. Turn off Email – 5 minutes an hour
8. Log out of your RSS Feed Reader – 2 minutes an hour
9. Stop checking to see if someone Dugg your latest post – 1 minute an hour
10. Stop checking affiliate earnings/e-book sales earnings – 2 minutes an hour
11. Turn off any other Social Media Sites (LinkedIn/StumbleUpon/Plurk/Reddit etc) – 3 minutes an hour
12. Turn of Skype, Gtalk and all other IM services – 4 minutes
13. Stop Reading Blog Tips and Start Blogging – 3 minutes an hour

By my calculations this gives you an extra 37 minutes an hour to do what you need to do. Over an 8 hour work day I’ve just found you a smidgen under 5 hours!

What would you add?

Update: No I’m not really serious. While we could be more productive as bloggers by minimizing a lot of this stuff there can also be a lot of good things come from these activities. I guess it’s about knowing your goals, setting good boundaries and engaging in these kinds of activities to the extent that they help us achieve our goals.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Be A More Productive Blogger [And Add 37 Minutes to Every Hour!]

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In my recent post on the importance of having your own product to sell I was asked in comments by Todd for advice on choosing the best topic to create an ebook on.

Here are a few quick thoughts on some starting points for choosing a topic for an e-book – mainly for people who already have a blog:

Todd – Good question. For me it was partly just about blogging for a number of years in my niche and starting to just get a hunch for what would work. I guess in that time I began to see patterns in what was working and what was not working in my niche. I also began to get to know my readers more and saw the challenges and problems that they faced.

Of course saying ‘go with your hunches’ isn’t probably the answer you were after – so below I’ve identified a few steps to work through in choosing a topic for an E-book.

Step 1: Ask Some Questions about Your Readers and Their Needs

here are some questions I’d suggest you consider to help you identify and sort through those hunches.

• what questions do you keep getting asked repeatedly by readers (via email, in comments etc)?
• what are readers asking you to make recommendations on?
• what posts on your blog are getting the most visitors?
• what posts on your blog are getting most comments/discussion?
• what trends are emerging on your topic in your niche?
• what’s the biggest problem or challenge for people in your niche – particularly for beginners?
• what terms are people searching for to arrive on your blog?
• what words are people searching for on your blogs search tool?

Answering these types of questions should point you in the direction of some topics that could be suitable for an e-book.

Step 2: Ask Some some More Probing Questions to Narrow in on the Topic

Once you’ve identified some of these topics you will probably want to narrow the field a little by asking some of these questions:

• what topics have you written a lot about already that you could pull together as the basis for an e-book? (see a note on this below)
• what do you know enough about to write something useful? Do you have the authority and expertise to write it yourself or should you outsource the writing?
• are you interested in or passionate about the topic? I’m sure that not all authors are passionate about their topics but it sure helps because there is a lot of work involved!
• is the topic you’re thinking of writing about something that really needs more than a single post – can you write enough to justify it being an e-book and something people pay money for?
• are there many other resources already available on the topic – how will yours be different?
• is the topic you’re thinking about too wide or narrow? Sometimes topics are too big and could end up being a series of e-books. ON the other hand some topics are too narrow to really justify being an e-book and perhaps it’d be best to widen it and look at a larger topic.

Step 3: Test Your Topics

Once you’ve narrowed Your Field – test the topics that you’ve come up with. I’ve seen a number of bloggers come up with ideas for big projects that they think are great which in reality are not. If only they’d tested their ideas before investing significant time into them!

You might want to bounce them off a fellow blogger, perhaps test them with a small group of trusted readers, ask some questions on Twitter etc. If you’ve not covered the topic much on your blog before you might also want to test the idea on your blog with a post on the topic to gauge reader interest. Alternatively you might run some kind of poll to see if your suspicions about your readers needs are confirmed.

The key is to try to find out if the topics you’re thinking of writing about are the types of things people are REALLY interested in and willing to pay for. Note: This might be an ideal time for a survey.

Three last thoughts:

1. ‘How To’ Topics – My suspicion is that ‘teaching’ or ‘how to’ type e-books are going to be more attractive to potential buyers than other types. I’m sure there will be exceptions but most of the e-books that I’ve seen do well either lead people through a process, explain something, solve a problem or give them skills and understanding over a particular topic.

2. Start with a Problem – when it comes to selling an e-book you’ve got a lot better chance of convincing someone to buy it if you can tell them that it’ll solve a problem that they have. In my e-books I took the problems/challenges of ‘building a better blog’ and ‘taking better portraits’ and centered everything in the e-book around them. These problems were reflected both in the writing and the marketing of the books. Once you’ve identified a problem you’re on the right track.

3. Repurposing Old Posts – I mentioned above that you might like to consider what topics you’ve written about a lot already that you might be able to base an e-book on. All I’d want to qualify this with is that you’ll probably want to add some solid extra content to these types of e-books. I’ve proved (twice) that people are willing to pay for stuff you’ve published before but in each case I worked hard on adding extra material to make it more valuable.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

3 Steps to Help You Choose a Topic for an E-Book

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