A Guest Post by Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing.

No matter how big their blog is, every blogger loves and wants comments. When you’re just starting out, there are few bigger thrills than writing something and having people comment and give you feedback about what you’ve written. Veteran bloggers love comments and also know that the quantity and quality of the comments says a lot about the impact of the particular post in question.

But sometimes you write something that you think is awesome and the comment thread is like a ghost town. To say that this is discouraging is to put it too lightly. Not only does it suck, but it’s enough to make you start thinking that your writing sucks, and it makes it really hard to hit write and hit publish the next time, too.

Here’s the deal, though: just because you’re not getting a lot of comments doesn’t mean that your posts suck. Here are eight reasons why you might not be getting comments – and what you can do about it.

1. Your Posts Are Too Long

While it’s hard to say that long post always get fewer comments – there are a lot of different considerations at play – as a general rule, longer posts set a bigger barrier to commenting. I write a lot of long posts, and I’ve seen this bear out time and time again.

There are two things to keep in mind when you’re writing longer posts: 1) most blog posts are short(er) and 2) your readers are busy. If they’re used to reading 500 word posts on other blogs and then hit your 3,000 word post, they’re might be a bit overwhelmed. It’s not uncommon for them to bookmark your post for reading “when they have time” and move on to the next, shorter post, only to forget to come back and read yours. (For more considerations on blog length, check out Post Length ‚Äì How Long Should a Blog Post Be?)

Some bloggers manage to thrive in the long post format, but you’ve got to understand that you’ll be going against the current if you write in that style. That’s not a bad thing – just understand that you might not get as many comments as if you wrote shorter posts.

Once your post is published, it’s probably best to leave it, though. In the future, see if you can take a long draft of a post and split it into a series or discrete post. Also try varying the tempo of your blog by following a long post with a short post and vice versa.

2. You Haven’t Asked Them to Comment

Sometimes a post just ends and it’s not clear to your readers whether you actually want a response. Because they don’t know whether you want a response or not, they might not comment.

Furthermore, if you don’t answer comments at all or regularly enough, it sends the message that you don’t really value comments. Larger blogs get a pass on this one, since many people understand that bloggers with larger audiences can’t answer every response.

When you conclude a post, ask your readers what they think or end it with a question that makes it clear that you’d like a comment. If you haven’t been responding to comments on your blog, start doing so.

3. They Don’t Know What To Say

Have you ever read a post and were so inspired that you felt that anything you might say wouldn’t do the post service, but at the same time didn’t want to say “Great post!”? Or have you read a post that was so deep or complex that you honestly didn’t know how to respond?

I’m sure you have. Now, why don’t you think that can happen with your own posts?

Before you write off a lack of comments as a sign of your utter brilliance, though, check your post to see if you wrote clearly and simply. Ask if what you wrote was relevant, useful, or interesting to your readers>. And if it is a bit of inspirational awesomeness, consider editing it and including a question or statement that lets people know that you’d appreciate some feedback.

4. They’re Doing What You Told Them To Do

If you give your readers a great tip that requires them to do something to implement it, be prepared for the possibility that they might actually go implement it.

Similarly, if you’re doing a link roll-up and you tell people to go check out the links you’re talking about, there’s a good chance that they might go do that.

I know that this is obvious in hindsight, but it’s easy to forget that our words can influence people into action, and it’s possible to unintentionally steer people away from commenting.

5. They’re Chasing Links On Your Blog

Writing posts that include links to older posts or using plugins that show related posts do have an effect on the number of comments you’ll get. If they click a link that’s midway in your post, they’ll probably read the second post before they comment on the first, and if that second post is linked to others, they might just keep clicking.

It’s for this very reason that you don’t find many links on a sales or landing page, and if you do find them, they eventually lead back to the original page. Marketers know that people will click on the links, and if those links lead away from the original page, that’s probably a lost sale.

While it’s not exactly an exclusive either/or choice, think about the relationship between how long people stay on your blog (due to interlinking) and comments. If you write compelling headlines, there’s a good chance that those related post plugins have an effect on the number of comments you’re getting. Change your linking strategy or consider turning those plugins off a bit if you’d like to see if they’re making a difference.

6. They’re Following Your Social Media Trail

This is very similar to the last two points, but if you’ve given your readers a bunch of different ways to connect with you, then that’s another thing that might keep people from commenting.

Think about how many times you’ve clicked to follow someone on Facebook only to get lost in a chat on Facebook, or how many times you’ve followed someone on Twitter only to get engaged in conversations there. The same thing goes for badges and links that send people to blog networks.

If you’d prefer more comments than social media connections, consider placing your social media links further down the page or only keeping the ones where you’re active.

While you’re at it, it’s probably a good time to declutter your sidebar.

7. It’s Hard For Them To Comment

I ran into this one the other day. I wanted to reply to a friend’s blog that was hosted on Blogger and found myself frustrated that I couldn’t just leave a comment like I can on other websites. It gave me five or six different options – none of which I use – and, ten minutes later, I finally went with the “best fit” option just so that I could comment. If she weren’t my friend, I probably would’ve given up.

Some of the other comment implementations like Disqus can also set a barrier to comment. I’ve often bailed on those, too, because I didn’t remember my OpenID and didn’t feel like figuring it out. (Luckily, they’ve improved substantially over the last year.)

The harder your readers have to work to comment, the less likely that they’ll do it. Think long and hard about all the comment plugins you might want to implement – and remember that sometimes the best solution is the simplest one.

8. You’re Posting At The Wrong Time

If you post when all your readers are asleep, then the soonest they’ll comment is the next day, but then your post is in with a bunch of others in an RSS feed. Likewise, if you post after the time that your email subscribers get their daily email, the soonest many of them will read what post is the next day when they get that hit.

Figure out when your readers are active and try to publish when they’re reading posts. This takes a bit of homework and observation on your part, but it makes a huge difference in terms of the number of comments you’ll get on your post.

There’s More To Comments Than Content

What you may have noticed is that the first five of these points have to do with the content of your individual posts and the last three don’t have anything to do with your posts. It’s hard to say what would have the biggest effect since each of our blogs are different, so take a look at your post and blog from your reader’s point of view, pick one that you’d like to tweak, and see if it has any effect. (By far the easiest place to start is by changing your comment plugin/solution, though.)

As you can see, there are a lot of different reasons that people might not be leaving comments on your blog, and many of them have nothing to do with you or your posts being unworthy. Keep writing and testing what works – that’s the only way you can become a better writer and grow your blog.

About the Author: Charlie Gilkey writes about meaningful action, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Productive Flourishing. Follow him on Twitter to get bite-sized slices of mojo.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

8 Reasons You Might Not Be Getting Many Comments

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Lets kick off our new series on what to do on the first week of a new blog with the most obvious task. Once your blog is set up and functioning it’ll need some posts for it to be truly live.

Image by Brian Lane Winfield Moore

In many ways this task should have begun in the pre-launch stage of your blog as it is very handy to have a number of posts written and saved as drafts before you launch. This means that during your launch week you can free yourself up a little to focus upon other activities.

Types of Content for Your First Week of Blogging

The content that you write will vary depending upon the type of blog you’re running and it’s topic – however some of your early posts might include:

• an introduction to the blog and what it’ll be about – his could double up as your about page.
• your story – one of the best types of posts for establishing a relationship with readers is a post where you share your own story as it pertains to your niche. Again – this could function as a type of about page (or at least be linked to from your about page.
• pillar content – most topics have topics in them that could function as a pillar type article for your blog. By this I mean topics that are central to your overall topic that will contain solid advice that you’ll be linking to again and again. Getting these types of posts written early is important as they’ll both show that you are tackling the important issues in your niche and they’ll give you something to point new readers to. For example – on my photography blog I set about writing posts early on on the central themes of good exposure – shutter speed, aperture and ISO.
• epic posts/viral content – this can be hard to do when you don’t have a lot of experience with blogging but one strategy to get things kick started is to start off a blog with an ‘epic’ post that is written with the hope of getting attention. It’s hard to define this type of post but they’re the type of things that get passed around on Twitter, that do well on social bookmarking sites and that get emailed from friend to friend. These posts are often comprehensive lists, humorous posts, controversial topics or epic guides to topics.
• a short series of posts – sometimes having a series of posts at the beginning of a blog can be worthwhile as it helps to create a sense of momentum on your blog. Someone new visiting is immediately given incentive to come back or subscribe because they want to see what you’ll be producing tomorrow that relates to what they’ve just written.

As mentioned above – this content writing task should really begin before you go live.

I would normally suggest launching a blog with 2-3 posts already live and another 5-10 posts saved as drafts. Having a range of posts ready to go as drafts means that you’re free to do other stuff but that you’ve also got a range of types of posts ready to go as the need arrives.

Establish a Posting Rhythm

Related to this task is that of thinking about the frequency of publishing (something you’ll want to establish early also).

The frequency that you publish posts in the first week will vary from blog to blog but I’d normally start with at least 3-4. If something that you publish does get some decent traffic try to publish another post that follows it up in some way the next day as it’s important to keep the momentum flowing.

It’s also important not to push too much of your content out too quickly. The temptation after launching is to just publish everything you have at once. This unfortunately leaves you with nothing in reserve. Be patient and establish the kind of posting frequency that you’ll continue with when your blog has been going for a while.

Further Reading on Blog Content:

Writing compelling content on a blog doesn’t usually just happen – it takes time to find your voice and establish a style of writing that connects and engages. However a lot can be learned early on with a little reading and lots of practice. Here are a handful of posts that will help you to get your mind into gear on this crucial topic:

• How to Get in Tune with Your Readers Needs and Produce Compelling Content (first post in a series of posts)
• How to Craft a Blog Post (another series about taking ‘good’ content to ‘great content’ by taking a little extra time at each of 10 different points in the writing process
• 7 Types of Blog Posts which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic
• 7 Tips on How to Write Sticky, Memorable Blog Posts
• How to Write Great Blog Content – a collection of post from the ProBlogger archives

What You Said about Blog Content in the First Week of Blogging:

Last week I asked readers what they advise bloggers do in their first week of blogging. Many of the responses so far have centred around this topic of writing content for a blog. Here is some of that advice from our readers:

“Have 7 or 8 posts written and scheduled posting for the next 2 wks.” – Rachel

“Write at least 10 blog posts – advice, lists, personal, a video – and add each one every day for the first 10 days.” – Andrew

“What we did right out of the gate was write out a series of post that all went with one theme for our first week, the 2nd weeks theme coat-tailed the 1st weeks theme and the 3rd week coat-tailed the 2nd… Next week we are going to be tying everything together…” – BrianJUY

“If you’re really serious about building a blog for the long term, I think the most important thing to do is create a posting schedule. Be honest with yourself and don’t overestimate what you can do, but do commit to a schedule. This has helped me through little dips when I lacked motivation.” – Peter

“In the first few weeks of a blog, I would suggest you concentrate on creating 10 to 20 awesome posts.” – Tee Riddle

“Post to your blog! No matter how excited you’ve made people about the launch of your blog, they’ll stop visiting if new content is too infrequent.” – Laurajr

“Create valuable content at the very beginning. Include several pillar posts and content that engages the reader and creates a impact.” – Mathew Day

“Before even you setup blog, create rough drafts of atleast 5-10 original posts you are going to write.” – Harsh

“My advice is to launch into writing a series of posts. Something with a timeframe like ‘every day this week I’m going to explore a different …’ or ‘every Monday I will put the spotlight on …’ or ‘every month I will interview a well known …’ and so on. It puts the pressure on a bit but it’s great for motivation!” – Kerrin

“Write something EVERY DAY. Writers write. You don’t have to *publish* everything you write – the ’save draft’ button is your best friend. But scribble in a notebook or keep a draft word processing doc; write something. Set aside some time – 15 minutes, a half-hour – and write something. Your writing muscles (and that elusive voice everyone keeps talking about) only develop if you use them.” – Pat

“Take your time to craft a couple of really great posts. And enjoy being able to do so without feeling pressured to churn out content (you’ll have those chomping-at-the-bit readers soon enough!) Never think that it’s a waste of time to produce your very best work at the start of your blog’s life: you can link back to these early posts as your blog grows.” – Ali

“Don’t burn off a lot of time writing a first post that basically welcomes readers. You’d figure the initial post — the hello, world! part — would be among the most important assignments you give yourself. You’d be wrong. Instead, put your energies into a brilliant on-topic post that’ll have great shelf life — a so-called tentpost article.” – Glenn

In coming days, as part of this series, we’ll talk a little more about content. In the mean time – feel free to add more of your own tips and experiences. What type of content did you publish in the first week of your blog?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Your First Week of Blogging – Write Compelling Content

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Posted by Danny Dover

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Chapter 4: Finding SEO Problems

Sections:

• 15 Minute SEO Audit
• 10 Minute Brand Reputation Audit (Not included in this blog post)
• Identifying Search Engine Penalties (Not included in this blog post)

15 Minute SEO Audit

The basics of SEO problem identification can be done in about 15 minutes. When completing this audit I recommend you take notes based on the action items listed in each section. This will help you later when you do a deeper dive of the website. This audit is not comprehensive (See Chapter 9 for a full annotated site audit), but it will help you quickly identify major problems so you can convince your clients that your services are worthwhile and that you should be given a chance to dig deeper. The smart ones reading this section may notice that it builds upon the ideas expressed in Chapter 2. The dumb ones reading this, will think it is Harry Potter. The latter might enjoy it more but the former will end up with better SEO skills.

Prepare Your Browser

Before you start your audit you need to set your browser to act more like the search engine crawlers. This will help you to identify simple crawling errors. In order to do this, you will need to do the following:

Disable cookies in your browser

Switch your user-agent to Googlebot

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

When the search engines crawl the Internet they generally do so with a user-agent string that identifies them (Google is googlebot and Bing is msnbot) and in a way where they don’t accept cookies.

To see how to change your user-agent go to Chapter 3 (Picking the Right SEO Tools) and see user-agent switcher. Setting your user-agent to Googlebot increases your chance of seeing exactly what Google is seeing. It also helps with identifying cloaking issues (Cloaking is the practice of showing one thing to search engines and a different thing to users. This is what sarcastic Googlers call penaltybait. ) In order to do this well, a second pass of the site with your normal user-agent is required to identify difference. That said, this is not the primary goal for this quick run through of the given website.

In addition to doing this you should also disable cookies within your browser. By disabling them, you will be able to uncover crawling issues that relate to preferences you make on the page. One primary example of this is intro pages. Many websites will have you choose your primary language before you can enter their main site. (This is known as an intro page.) If you have cookies enabled and you have previously chosen your preference, the website will not show you this page again. Unfortunately, this will not happen for search engines.

This language tactic is extremely detrimental from a SEO perspective because it means that every link to the primary URL of the website will be diluted because it will need to pass through the intro page. (Remember, the search engines always see that page as they can’t select a language) This is a big problem, because as we noted in Chapter 1, the primary URL (i.e. www.example.com/) is usually the most linked to page on a site.

Homepage

Next, go to the primary URL of the site and pay particular attention to your first impression of the page. Try to be as true to your opinion as possible and don’t over think it. You should be coming from the perspective of the casual browser (This will be made easier because at this point you probably haven’t been paid any money and its a lot easier to be casual when are not locked down with the client) Follow this by doing a quick check of the very basic SEO metrics. In order to complete this step, you will need to do the following:

Notice your first impression and the resulting feeling and trustworthiness you feel about the page

Read the title tag and figure out how it could be improved

See if the URL changed (As in you were redirected from www.example.com/ to www.example.com/lame-keyword-in-URL-trick.html)

Check to see if the URL is canonical

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item on this list helps you align yourself with potential website users. It is the basis for your entire audit and serves as a foundation for you to build on. You can look at numbers all day, but if you fail to see the website like the user, you will fail as an SEO.

The next step is to read the title tag and identify how it can be improved. This is helpful because changing title tags is both easy (A big exception to this is if your client uses a difficult Content Management System.) and has a relatively large direct impact on rankings.

Next you need to direct your attention to the URL. First of all, make sure there were not redirects that happened. This is important because adding redirects dilutes the amount of link juice that actually makes it to the links on the page.

The last action item is to run a quick check on canonical URLs. The complete list of URL formats to check for is in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web). Like checking the title tag, this is easy to check and provides a high work/benefit ratio.

Global Navigation

After checking the basics on the homepage, you should direct your attention to the global navigation. This acts as the main canal system for link juice. Specifically, you are going to want to do the following:

Temporarily disable Javascript and reload the page

Make sure the navigation system works and that all links are HTML links

Take note of all of the sections that are linked to

Re-enable Javascript

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As we discussed in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web), site architecture is critical for search friendly websites. The global navigation is fundamental to this. Imagine that the website you are viewing is ancient Rome right after the legendary viaduct and canal systems were built. These waterways are exactly like the global navigation that flows link juice around a website. Imagine the impact that a major clog can have on both systems. This is your time to find these clogs.

Your first action item in the section is to disable Javascript. This is helpful because it forces you to see your website from the perspective of a very basic user. It is also a similar perspective to the search engines.

After disabling Javascript, reload the page and see if the global navigation still works. Many times it won’t and it will uncover one of the major reasons the given client is having indexing issues.

Next view source and see if all of the navigational links are true HTML links. Ideally, they should be because they are the only kind that can pass their full link value.

Your next step is to take note of which sections are linked to. Ideally, all of the major sections will be linked in the global navigation. The problem is, you won’t know what all of the major sections are until you are further along in the audit. For now just take note and keep a mental checklist as you browse the website.

Lastly, re-enable Javascript. While this will not be accurate with the search engine perspective, it will make sure that AJAX and Javascript based navigation works for you. Remember, on this quick audit, you are not trying to identify every single issue with the site, instead you are just trying to find the big issues.

Category Pages/Subcategory Pages (If applicable)

After finishing with the homepage and the global navigation, you need to start diving deeper into the website. In the waterway analogy, category and subcategory pages are the forks in the canals. You can make sure they are optimized by doing the following:

Make sure there is enough content on these pages to be useful as a search result alone.

Find and note extraneous links on the page (there shouldn’t be more than 150 links)

Take notes on how to improve the anchor text used for the subcategories/content pages

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As I mentioned, these pages are the main pathways for the link juice of a website. They help make it so if one page (most often the homepage) gets a lot of links, that the rest of the pages on the website can also get some of the benefit. The first action point requires you to make a judgment call on whether or not the page would be useful as a search result. This goes with my philosophy that every page on a website should be a least a little bit link worthy. (It should pay its own rent, so to speak) Since each page has the inherent ability to collect links, webmasters should put at least a minimal amount of effort into making every page link worthy. There is no problem with someone entering a site (from a search engine result or other third party site) on a category or subcategory page. In fact, it may save them a click. In order to complete this step, identify if this page alone would be useful for someone with a relevant query. Think to yourself:

1. Is there helpful content on the page to provide context?
2. Is there a design element breaking up the monotony of a large list of links?

Take notes on the answers to both of these questions.

The next action item is to identify extraneous links on the page. Remember, from Chapter 2 we discussed that the amount of link value a given link can pass is dependent on the amount of links on the page. To maximize the benefit of these pages, it is important to remove any extraneous links. Going back to our waterway analogy, this type of links are the equivalent “canals to nowhere”. (Built by the Roman ancestors of former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens)

To complete the last action item of this section, you will need to take notes on how to better optimize the anchor text of the links on this page. Ideally, they should be as specific as possible. This helps the search engines and users identify what the target pages are about.

Content Pages

Now that you have analyzed the homepage and the navigational pages, it is time to audit the meat of the website, the content pages. In order to do this, you will need to complete the following:

Check and note the format of the Title Tags

Check and note the format of the Meta Description

Check and note the format of the URL

Check to see if the content is indexable

Check and note the format of the alt text

Read the content as if you were the one searching for it

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item is to check the title tags of the given page. This is important because it is both helpful for rankings and it makes up the anchor text used in search engine result. You don’t get link value from these links but they do act as incentives for people to visit your site.

Similarly to the first action item, the second item has to do with a metric that is directly useful for search engines rather than people (they are only indirectly useful for people once they are displayed by search engines.) Check the meta description by viewing source or using the mozBar and make sure it is compelling and contains the relevant keywords at least twice. This inclusion of keywords is useful not for rankings but because matches get bolded in search results.

The next action item is to check the URL for best practice optimization. Just like Danny Devito, URLs should be short, relevant and easy to remember.

The next step is to make sure the content is indexable. To ensure that it, make sure the text is not contained in an image, flash or within a frame. To make sure it is indexed, copy an entire sentence from the content block and search for it within quotes in a search engine. If it shows up, it is indexable.

If there are any images on the page (as there probably should be for users sake) you should make sure that the images have relevant alt text. After running testing on this at SEOmoz, my co-workers and I found that relevant anchor text was highly correlated to high rankings.

Lastly and possibly most importantly, you should take the time to read the content on the page. Read it from the perspective of a user who just got to it from a search engine result. This is important because the content on the page is main purpose for the page existing. As an SEO, it can be easy to become content-blind when doing quick audits. Remember, the content is the primary reason this user came to the page. If it is not helpful, vistors will leave.

Links

Now that you have an idea of how the website is organized it is time to see what the rest of the world thinks about it. To do this, you will need to do the following:

View the amount of total links and the amount of root domains linking to the given domain

View the anchor text distribution of inbound links

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As you read in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization), links are incredibly important in the search engine algorithms. Thus, you cannot get a complete view of a website without analyzing its links.

This first action item requires you to get two different metrics about the inbound links to the given domain. Separately, these metrics can be very misleading due to internal links. Together, they provide a fuller picture that makes accounting for internal links possible and thus more accurate. At the time of writing, the best tool to get this data is through SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

The second action item requires you to analyze the relevancy side of links. This is important because it is a large part of search engine algorithms. This was discussed in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization) and proves as true now as it did when you read it earlier. To get this data, I recommend using Google’s Webmaster Central.

Search Engine Inclusion

Now that you have gathered all the data you can about how the given website exists on the internet, it is time to see what the search engines have done with this information. Choose your favorite search engine (you might need to Google it) and do the following:

Search for the given domain to make sure it isn’t penalized

See roughly how many pages are indexed of the given website

Search three of the most competitive keywords that relate to the given domain

Choose a random content page and search the engines for duplicate content

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As an SEO, all of your work is completely useless if the search engines don’t react to it. To a less degree this is true for webmasters as well. The above action items will help you identify how the given website is reacted to by the search engines.

The first action item is simple to do but can have dire affects. Simply go to a search engine and search for the exact URL of the homepage of your domain. Assuming it is not brand new, it should appear as the first result. If it doesn’t and it is an established site, it means it has major issues and was probably thrown out of the search engine indices. If this is the case, you need to identify this clearly and as early as possible.

The second action item is also very easy to do. Go to any of the major search engines and use the site command (as defined in Chapter 3) to find roughly all of the pages of a domain that are indexed in the engine. For example, this may look like site:www.example.com. This is important because the difference between the number that gets returned and the number of pages that actually exist on a site says a lot about how healthy a domain is in a search engine. If there are more pages in the index than exist on the page, there is a duplicate content problem. If there are more pages on the actual site than there are in the search engine index, then there is an indexation problem. Either are bad and should be added to your notes.

The next action item is a quick exercise to see how well the given website is optimized. To get an idea of this, simply search for 3 of the most competitive terms that you think the given website would reasonably rank for. You can speed this process up by using one of the third party rank trackers that are available. (Refer back to Chapter 3)

The final action item is to do a quick search for duplicate content. This can be accomplished by going to a random indexed content page on the given website and search for either the title tag (in quotes) or the first sentence of the content page (also in quotes). If there is more than one result from the given domain, then it has duplicate content problems. This is bad because it is forcing the website to compete against itself for rankings. In doing so, it forces the search engine to decide which page is more valuable. This decision making process is something that is best avoided because it is difficult to predict the outcome.

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Last week we published a post by Jade Craven which contained a list of 30 bloggers to watch in 2010 from her perspective.

As tends to happen with these kinds of posts – the list caused a lot of discussion!

Not only did people post comments about it and Tweet up a storm – some bloggers even put together alternative lists of bloggers that they are watching in 2010 (see Sherri’s list here for example).

Sherri’s list got me thinking – perhaps it’s time for a mini ProBlogger ‘Group Writing Project’.

My hope is that this little project will not only highlight some great bloggers, but that it’ll help bloggers generate a little link love from one blog to another within niches and also be useful to your readers (and hopefully some of these posts will generate some buzz for your blogs – these types of lists generally do!).

Your Task is to write a ‘Bloggers to Watch’ post on your blog

Jade’s list last week was a list of bloggers that she’s watching (and as a result did have a focus upon a certain type of blogger that she follows) – but my hope is that this little project will generate some lists of bloggers that focus upon all kinds of niches/industries.

• If you’re a craft blogger – write a list of Craft bloggers to watch in 2010.
• If you’re a sports blogger – write a list of sports bloggers to watch in 2010.
• If you’re a political blogger – write a list of political bloggers to watch in 2010.

Your list doesn’t have to be 30 bloggers – it could be 100, 50, 30, 10…. or if you have a small niche even smaller.

Once you’ve created your list…. Tell Us About It

After publishing your list – come back to this post and leave a comment with a link to your new post (please only submit new posts that have been written this year).

Also take some time to surf through the other comments left on this post to see what lists that other readers have created!

I’m looking forward to reading your lists of bloggers to watch!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Create Your Own ‘Bloggers to Watch’ List and Tell Us About It Here

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A Guest Post by Nathan Hangen of Making it Social.

Ah, the “It Factor…” that something successful people have that the rest of us can’t seem to figure out. To some, it’s an enigma, while to others, it seems to flow like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate river…boundless and with fervor. Well, until it was clogged by Augustus Gloop, but I digress…

We’re all looking for some of it. It’s obvious that you need it to get noticed and to hold your audience captive, but no one knows how to get it. Believe me, I’ve asked. But, that didn’t stop me from trying.

As part of another project, I’ve been studying a lot of A-List bloggers and I have been trying to figure out both how and when they were bestowed with this “It.” Furthermore, I wanted to know what it was so that I could try and quantify it.

Did I find it? I think so, but if my conclusions are any indication, it’s not quite as mysterious as you might suspect.

What is It?

It’s the buzz around your blog that gets people interested. It’s the special factor that makes people want to RT, share, and comment on your posts.

In my studies, I believe it’s that feeling you get when you find a blog that you know isn’t going anywhere. For instance, when I read Problogger, I buy in because I know that:

1. Darren knows what he’s talking about, we trust him.
2. His blog isn’t going anywhere. He’s invested, and it’s part of his life.

Other blogs feel temporary, like they’re an experiment. Those don’t have it…they can’t. People want to know you aren’t going anywhere before they invest energy into propping you up. That’s just human nature.

It’s also a style of writing that speaks to people on their level. It’s confident and unabashed. Those bloggers that have “It,” aren’t afraid to speak their mind.

Is there a way to quantify it? No, but you and I both know what it looks like. We can sense a blog that’s on the rise or at the top…that’s about as close to measuring it as you can get.

How Do You Get It?

This is the crux really, because this is what we really want to know. You might not care who has it, but you know you want some. You want to turn your blog into a success, and you want people to not only subscribe, but to hang out and comment. You want people to listen to your advice, and maybe even pay you for it.

It’s funny, but looking back to a year ago, I was an unknown. I had a blog, but it was all over the place and I was doing a terrible job of building an audience. Now though, although I’m not on everyone’s radar, I’m at least moving in the right direction. Whereas people a year ago commented just to be nice, people these days tell me that the future looks good. My blog is an entirely different place, and it’s starting to get some of that “It.”

I’m not saying this to toot my own horn, but as someone that has been on both sides of the equation, I think it’s important to say that I understand where people are coming from, because what I’m about to say might not be what you want to hear, but it’s the truth…

It is nothing more than hard work…

Disappointed? Surprised? You shouldn’t be. In fact, you should consider this good news. Why?

Because if “It” was nothing but a mysterious aura that to some was given and to others was withheld, than you and I would have no chance at it. However, if it’s nothing more than a little bit of elbow grease, then there’s hope for all of us!

Looking at the history of some of the most popular bloggers in the world, you’ll find a common element that binds them all. Yeah, there is luck involved, but more than that, there was a lot of hard work.

Hard work cranking out content on a weekly basis…hard work writing guest posts for popular blogs…hard work managing dozens of blogs until they found one that worked…hard work interacting with their 1 or 2 commenters until they got a 3rd, and then a 4th.

“But I’m working hard!” you might say, and I don’t doubt it, but are you working hard consistently? Are you learning, implementing, analyzing, and fixing on a daily basis? Are you doing everything that you can to become a successful blogger?

Are you networking? Are you honing your writing style and finding your true voice? Are you giving as much as you are taking away?

These are the questions you’ll have to answer for yourself, and only you know the truth.

I’ll be honest

Some people just might not make it, at least not the first time. Show me a blogger that did get it right on the first effort and I’ll show you another thousand that didn’t. The difference though, is in persevering and not giving up. If one project fails, start up another.

One of the most inspiring things any blogger ever told me was that he didn’t have a backup plan…he was in 100%. He said there was no way he was going to fail, because he couldn’t afford to. That man was Gary Vaynerchuk, and now he’s built an empire.

You too can have that “It Factor,” and can have your own empire, but you have to start building it first. It might be tough, but you’ve got to be more resiliant than the obstacles you face. Accomplish that, and you’ll have it, I promise.

I think Chris Brogan said it best, when he mentioned that being an overnight success required 11 years of hard work. Remember that when you see a blogger that appears to have come from nowhere. It was probably 11 years in the making.

Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, and co-author of the book - Beyond Blogging.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The ‘It Factor’ – How to Get It as a Blogger

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Just a quick note to point you to a post that I’ve had published on an Australian Blog – The Punch (I wrote it all except for the title ).

Seven rules of blogging from a legend of the craft.

It probably won’t be completely new to regular readers of ProBlogger but goes through 7 of the very basic steps that I’ve gone through to grow my photography blog to the point that it’s at today (it just had its first Six Figure month).

I’d be interested to hear your comments on the post over on The Punch.

PS: this was my first guest post on another blog for a long time. I actually found it to be a really interesting process – I’ve not had bloggers block for ages but finding an angle to write a post on someone else’s blog was actually quite a challenge for me and I learned a lot doing it!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

7 Principles of Launching a Six Figure Blog

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Over the last week I’ve had a couple of record days of getting comments on my own blogs. Here on ProBlogger my ‘win a book’ competition drew in 1512 comments while on DPS asking my readers if they had a photoblog and giving opportunity for them to promote it drew in 592 (although this will go a lot higher tonight when I send my newsletter out).

It’s no surprise that these types of posts got a lot of comments – for one I specifically asked for comments and there was a tangible benefit for commenting in each case (the chance to win something and the chance to promote something) – but what other types of posts get lots of comments?

I asked my followers on Twitter to share some of their most commented upon posts to see if I noticed any trends on types of posts that drew readers out of lurking mode to react with a comment.

Here are 13 types of posts that were most common in people’s responses with a few links to examples.

Note: some of the examples could have been used in multiple categories and some get more comments than others – but that’s because they are from smaller blog where the blogger doesn’t normally see loads of comments. I could have found bigger more well known blogs as examples but decided to go mainly with ‘normal’ blogs from readers as I think it is probably more useful than highlighting just mega blogs that get lots of comments on most posts.

1. Competitions

Lets start with the most obvious – give people the chance to win something by leaving a comment and you’re well on the way to drawing people into leaving a comment. Example: Giveaway: SKIL 4-piece Power Tools Combo Kit.

2. Personal Stories

Sometimes sharing something personal really draws people into what you’re writing. I know when I’ve shared something from my personal life on my blog – either as an off topic post or as a way to illustrate something that I’m talking about that it always draws people in. This is particularly powerful if you share a problem overcome, a failure or something that people can relate to. Examples: I’m a Mom and Exposed.

3. Show Off Posts/Share a link

These types of posts ask your readers to show or share something that they’ve done, written, created etc. The ’show us your photoblog’ link above is an example of this. So to was another of my posts – ‘Share Your Best Photo‘.

4. Creative Posts

posts where the blogger has gone to extra lengths to do something out of the ordinary and creative often have a ‘wow factor’ that gets people commenting. Example: Disney’s “A Whole New World” Sung in Pictures.

5. Hacks

Walk people through a process or show them how to do something for themselves (DIY). These types of posts are great for traffic but I find that they also tend to get reactions – particularly if it’s a good and helpful hack. Example: Apparently My Bling Likes to Swing.

6. Meaty Posts

It was fascinating to read through the 80-90 links to most commented upon posts that people sent me – one thing I noticed is that it was often quite long and in depth posts that seemed to be getting commented upon. Longer resources that really looked deeply at a topic or that gave comprehensive advice. Example: How NOT to Suck at Blogging (this post probably fits into some of the other categories too – it is strong, opinionated and pretty in your face – all of this Elicits a strong response).

7. Relatable Posts

Many of the posts talked about were on topics that a lot of people would have been able to relate to. Not always personal stories – but on issues and problems that lots of readers might face. They draws out people to tell their story or personal reflection on their own experiences with the topics. Example: Why Do Women Let Themselves Go (this post also has a strong headline and perhaps some controversy attached to it).

8. Question Posts

Ask a question and those who hear it are wired to answer it. I find when I include a question in the title of my posts that comment numbers tend to be at least double normal posts. Do Young Entrepreneurs Need to Go to Collge? (a post that had a question it its very title – as long as some opinion and meat to it). Also What Camera Gear Would You Buy if you were Given $1000 to Spend? (this post not only asked a question but was a hypothetical/fun post on a topic that I knew would also create some debate between readers loyal to different types of cameras. Also Net Worth vs Self Worth: The Passion Paradox (while this post isn’t a pure question post there’s a strong call for people to react in it and the blogger highlights other people’s posts on the topic/reactions).

9. Debate or Controversy Posts

Put two or more opposing arguments to your readers and step back to see what happens. Example: Which Digital Camera Manufacturer is Best? (this is an old post when we only had a few readers – I’m too scared to post the question again as this question always gets people so fired up). Also Adam Lambert’s Jacket Auctioned for $2000 (not a debate but certainly stirred up some controversy).

10. Opinion Pieces

Expressing your own strongly held opinion on an issue will generally have your readers examining their own opinions. If you do express it strongly you can expect your readers to share what they think strongly also. Example: I like Dave Ramsey, But He is Still Wrong. Also Why our Current Education System is Failing (also some controversy/debate in this one too).

11. Humor

Humor evokes a natural physical reaction (smiling and laughter) which sometimes also comes out in other ways (like sharing a reaction, passing it on to a friend etc). Example: I took 1,973 pictures of my children on vacation and all I got was this lousy blog post (also a personal type post).

12. Group Projects/Challenges

This is one I’ve used quite a bit over the years – getting readers all to go and do something and then come back and share the results. Examples: Top 5 – Group Writing Project, Enter the Passion to Profit Challenge and RED: Weekend Photography Challenge.

13. Mega Lists/Resources

There is nothing like a mega/over the top list of resources or links relevant to your niche to draw in traffic and comments. These posts are a lot of work but tend to do well in social media – but also at getting comments. You get comments from those in the list, from those who want to be in the list, from those who find the list useful, from those who think your list is skewed and biased…. etc. Example: 87 Great Photography Blogs and Feeds.

What Was Your Most Commented Upon Post?

Of course these 13 types of posts just scratch the surface – I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you’d add.

I’d also love to see your most commented upon blog post. Dig back through your archives and find 1-2 examples of where you had comment numbers way above your normal average and share the link below!

Further Reading: 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog (ironically another of my most commented upon posts ever).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

13 Types of Posts that Always Get Lots of Comments

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Post tags: Blog, Blogger, Blogs, Combo Kit, Competitions, Dps, Followers, Lot, Off Topic, Personal Life, Photoblog, Power Tools, Record Days, Something Personal, Surprise, Tangible Benefit, Twitter

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How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging

12/15/09

Last night I was chatting with a blogger who was feeling completely overwhelmed with their goal of making a living from blogging.

I asked them how much they wanted to make from blogging.

They responded that they wanted to be a full time blogger.

I pushed them for a figure – what does ‘full time’ mean for you?

They thought for a moment and said that they could live off $30,000 USD a year (note: they wouldn’t have minded earning more but would be able to quit their current job at this kind of rate).

$30,000 a year sounds like a lot to make from a blog – especially when you’re starting out and are yet to make a dollar. To this blogger it seemed so overwhelming that she had almost convinced herself that it was not possible.

Advice for Becoming a Full Time Blogger

My response was threefold:

1. Don’t Give Up Your Day Job…. Yet

It is possible to make $30,000 a year blogging, but it’s unlikely to happen over night. Keep your feet on the ground and your expectations reasonable. IF it happens (and there are no guarantees) it is almost certainly going to take some time.

2. Be Specific

Saying that you want to be full time as a blogger is a great goal – but it’s not really specific enough. This is why I wanted the blogger I was chatting with to name a figure. For her full time was $30,000 – for others it could be more or less – the amount is not the point, the point is that you need something more concrete to work towards so that you’re able to measure where you’re at.

For me when I decided I want to go full time as a blogger I decided that I wanted to aim for $50,000 (Aussie Dollars) in a year as the bench mark (at that time $50,000 was around 36,000 USD). That’s around what I would have been earning in my current main job if I had been doing that full time (I was actually working a number of part time jobs at the time as well as studying part time).

Knowing what I was aiming for helped me in a number of ways when it came to getting to that goal.

3. Break it down into something more Achievable

$30,000 USD still sounds big when you’re a new blogger – and in some ways it is. However there are different ways of thinking about that figure. Lets break it down in the way that I used to look at my target.

• $30,000 a year = $576.92 per week
• $30,000 a year = $82.19 a day
• $30,000 a year = $3.42 an hour

We could break it down on a monthly or on a minute by minute basis if we wanted to (in fact I did do it by minute from time to time for fun) – but the exercise is really about helping you to see that perhaps your big goal is a little more achievable if you are to break it down. Making $82.19 somehow seems a little bit easier to me than making $30,000 (or is that just me?).

OK – the other way that I used to break down my goal that I found really helpful to me was to do it based upon what I need to achieve to meet that target. For me I would usually look at the daily figure – in this case $82.19.

What do I need to do to make $82.19 a day ($30,000 a year)?

Well there’s a number of ways that much. Lets look at a few:

• CPC Ads – lets say we’re running mainly AdSense on our blog and that the average click is paying 5 cents. That equates to 1643 clicks on AdSense ads (note: AdSense also runs CPM ads so it’s not quite as simple as saying you need 1643 clicks… but to keep this simple lets just go with that).
• CPM Ads – lets say that we’re running CPM ads on our blog and we’re being paid $2 CPM per ad unit and we had 3 ads on each page (which is effectively $6 CPM per page). This would mean we’d need 13,000 page impressions.
• Monthly Sponsorships – one way to sell ads directly to advertisers is to sell ads on a month by month basis as a sponsorship. To make $30k in a year you need to sell $2500 a month in ads. You might have 6 ad spots on your blog so this is 6 advertisers at $416.66 per advertiser per month.
• Low Commission Affiliate Products – Lets say we were promoting affiliate products from a site like Amazon and your commissions were on average about 40 cents per sale. To earn $82.19 you’d need to sell 205 products.
• High Commission Affiliate Products – In this case you might be promoting ebooks and earning $8 a copy (that’s what you’d earn selling my 31DBBB ebook per commission). The math is simple on this one – you’d had to sell around 10 e-books a day.
• Really Big Commission Affiliate Products – of course e-books are not the biggest product out there to promote – there are products like training courses where you can earn hundreds per sale. Lets take one that might pay out $300 for a yearly membership on a bigger product. In this case you need to sell 8 of these per month.
• Selling Your Own E-book – got your own product, perhaps an e-book, to sell from your blog? At $19.95 a sale you need to sell just over 4 of these a day. You can do the sums on cheaper or more expensive products.

Of course there are many many other ways to make money from blogs. Subscriptions, donations, paid reviews, selling yourself as a consultant….. etc. You can do the sums for yourself on your own model.

I know that some of the above figures still sound out of reach for bloggers – 1643 clicks on your AdSense ads sounds massive to a new blogger…. and it is – but do keep in mind that you can combine some of the above (in fact I’d recommend you diversify your income).

You might run 2 ad networks on your site, promote Amazon affiliates, sell your own e-book and promote someone’s membership course.

Looking back on my own figures for around the time when I hit my $50,000 AUD (around $100 USD a day) goal and for me at that time my income mix looked a like this (going from memory here):

• AdSense: $35
• Chitika: $20
• Private Ad Sales: $20
• Amazon: $15
• Other Affiliate Commissions: $10

Note: I didn’t achieve this milestone until I’d been blogging for over 2 years (I blogged for the first year without trying to make money).

This didn’t happen over night (let me emphasize this – blogging for money is neither quick nor is it easy money) but I really found that breaking things down into more bite sized pieces helped me to stay motivated but also helped me to identify what I needed to work on in order to reach my goals (and for me to quite my day job).

Again – don’t quit your day job yet (in fact you may not want to quit it even when you reach your goal – it can be good to have a back up plan) but do work hard at being specific about your blogging goals and attempt to break it down in a way that helps you move towards them.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging

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Post tags: Advice, Aim, Aussie Dollars, Bench Mark, Blog, Blogger, Chatting, Concrete Work, Current, Day Job, Dollar, Feet On The Ground, Full Time, Guarantees, Lot, Part Time Jobs, Sounds

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Google Add Socialize Feature to Feedburner – Tweet Your New Blog Posts from Feedburner

12/15/09

Google today announced a new feature that impacts bloggers – a new URL shortener that integrates with Feedburner and a new ’socialize’ feature on Feedburner.

This allows bloggers to use Feedburner to send Tweets out automatically via Feedburner.

Of course most bloggers already have tweets going out to promote new blog posts by using either a plugin or a service like TwitterFeed.

Feedburner give you a number of options – including the ability to tweet out just the title or include some of the body (or only the body), adding hashtags (based upon your category), adding something before or after the title, filtering (to stop some new posts going out) – and limiting how many tweets go out.

Get more help and details on setting up your Feedburner account here.

In many ways it is pretty similar to what a lot of the other alternatives give you for this type of thing – but it is good to be able to have it all managed from one account. I’ll also be interested to see how Google/Feedburner integrate this into their Analysis/metrics (ie to see if they can measure clicks on their URL shortened links accurate – I’m not seeing any mention of this but it would seem like a logical extension).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Google Add Socialize Feature to Feedburner – Tweet Your New Blog Posts from Feedburner

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Post tags: Blog, Feedburner, Google, Logical Extension, Lot, Metrics, New Feature, New Url, Tweet, Url Shortener

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A Look At The Visual Future Of Search

12/11/09

Anyone who tries to picture the future of search will indeed see quite a lot of images, according to Anne Kennedy. At SES Chicago, Kennedy talked to Abby Johnson about how, in the next three to five years, online searches should become a much more visual affair.

Kennedy, who’s the founder and managing partner of Beyond Ink and the founding partner and director of marketing at Joblr.net, noted, “We’re a visual species.” She then continued, “People tend to respond better to visual information . . .” In fact, in a study, Microsoft recently measured a 28 percent better response to visual data than text data.

So pics and videos will show up more and more following standard searches. Thanks to the trend started by the iPhone, videos will become more common in the mobile environment, too.

As a result, Kennedy said, “As marketers, we need to pay close attention to how we can provide visual information, whether in videos or in images, and have those optimized.” Creating a YouTube channel is one option, since the cost of entry is so low.

Then there are just a couple of things to remember about producing videos that are actually good: attempt to make them both well-written and well-lit.

Post tags: Abby, Anne Kennedy, Director Marketing, Director Of Marketing, Images, Iphone, Lot, Marketers, Microsoft, Mobile Environment, Partner Marketing, Picture Search, Ses, Trend, Videos, Visual Information

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