A guest post by Barrie Davenport.

If you look at recent posts on Problogger, you will find a plethora of practical and useful tools and ideas for creating a blog, growing a blog, and making money from a blog. Like me, you have probably read and absorbed as many of these pearls of blogging wisdom as your brain will allow. However, as bloggers, we sometimes get so immersed in the business of blogging that we lose sight of what should be our primary focus in blogging — serving people.

There are many valid, self-serving reasons to blog. We all want to make money. We want the satisfaction of creating something that others read and having our ideas appreciated by thousands. But if you boil down the motivation for blogging to its essence, you come to understand that we each have a unique gift, and we want to share that gift with others.

There is tremendous emotional and spiritual satisfaction in that act of sharing and serving. If you’ve ever gotten a comment back from a reader remarking, “Your latest post helped me tremendously, and I can’t thank you enough for sharing that,” then you know what I mean. Suddenly, it all becomes personal.

And isn’t that what life is supposed to be anyway — personal? Being connected with others, even in the blogospohere, is what provides the uplifting and rewarding satisfaction that gives life depth and meaning. The truly amazing part about serving others through blogging is that these efforts will propel your blogging into the stratosphere of success. Look at Darren as an example. Or Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, Mary Jaksch of Write to Done, or so many other wildly successful bloggers. They give and give and then give some more. Their ability to give and connect with people has created real relationships that are mutually beneficial and deeply satisfying.

Many people start blogging because they are introverts and may not like interacting with people in a traditional work or social setting. Others (like me) enjoy connecting with people any way we can, and the internet provides a huge pool of potential new friends. Either way, it does take attention, effort, and careful tending of relationships to be a successful blogger.

6 Ways to add a Personal Touch to Your Blogging

Here are some ideas to help you reach out and touch your growing community of readers and fellow bloggers.

1. Be Sincere

Making connections and building relationships is not going to serve you or others if it is just a means to a financial end. You must believe in the inherent value of serving and of what you have to offer. Your sincerity and passion must shine through in everything you do, or people will see through you. You may not make a lot of money in the beginning, but you are building a treasure of trust and respect with your readers and fellow bloggers. That is worth its weight in gold.

2. Always Serve Your Reader

In every idea you develop, in every post you write, in every comment you respond to, serve your reader. Give them something valuable and immediately usable. Give them more than they expect. Awe them with your gifts. Look at all of the free information, ebooks, and advice that Darren gives to you, his valued readers. Here’s an article I wrote for Write to Done on how to serve your reader.

3. Connect with Bigger Bloggers

You already know that this is a way to build your blog. Solicit guest posts, ask them to Twitter something, comment on their blogs. But what about reaching out to them as one human to another? Write them an e-mail congratulating them on a success or letting them know how they inspired you. Make contact with them with no ulterior motive except to reach out. Offer them something useful with no expectation of something in return. Be real and friendly but not gratuitous.

4. Connect with Blogging Peers

Bigger bloggers always started out as smaller bloggers. Treat all bloggers with equal respect, because you never know when someone’s small blog will take off and become the next Problogger! Communicate regularly with other similar-sized or smaller bloggers. Share ideas, frustrations, and resources. Blogging forums are a great way to do that, but one-on-one contact is even better.

5. Arrange Virtual Meet-Ups

If you’ve been communicating on-line with other bloggers or readers, arrange a meet-up through Skype or some other phone or video conferencing software. Hearing someone’s voice and seeing their face immediately makes the relationship more real and personal. It’s the substitute for the business lunch or golf outing! Through these more personal interactions, you are building friendships and networks of people who will support you and you them.

6. Arrange In-Person Meet-Ups

Connect with your readers and other bloggers who live near you and organize a dinner or meeting. If you are traveling, arrange to get together with people you have met through your blog. (Of course, be safe about this. Meet in groups or very public places.) Nothing can beat an in-person, face-to-face meeting for true relationship building. Life-long friendships can be developed with people in wonderful cities all over the world.

7. Attend Blogging Events

Darren has already discussed Blogworld, the social media conference to be held in October in Las Vegas. I plan on attending this event, as do many of my network of blogging friends. This will be my first in-person connection with most of them. Attending these events offers so many opportunities for learning and for networking and socializing with bloggers. These events could be considered Relationship Immersion courses where you have the opportunity to build many great connections in a short span of time. If you haven’t already, please check it out.

8. Always Be Kind and Professional

This is worth repeating though I know it’s intuitive. Communicating through a computer makes it very tempting to say things that we would not say in person. As a blogger, you are still a business person, a real person who has integrity and a reputation. If you receive a snippy e-mail or comment, resist the temptation to lob a snippy response back. Be kind, gracious, ever-professional. Don’t gossip about other bloggers or undermine them on a public forum. It will serve you well in the long run, and you will serve as an example for those who read your blog or who look up to you as a blogger.

9. Share Your Connections

Unlike any other business I know of, blogging is the most mutually supportive and interactive. When bloggers help and support each other, they are creating a larger network of connections and potential readers. Isolating yourself or hoarding your connections doesn’t help you — in fact it undermines your growth. I serve as the editor for The Daily Brainstorm, an aggregate blog that links to a large pool of other blogs (including this one). Every contributor benefits from the readers driven to the blog. It is a great group relationship where everyone benefits.

If you want to build your blog, read everything Darren writes on Problogger about how to do that. But also, take a good look at how he conducts himself, what he gives away, and how he connects to people. Follow his example, not just as a blogger but as a person. Find other blogging mentors to emulate and connect with. Don’t hide your real, flesh and blood self under a bushel. Reach out, connect, make friends, share, be of service. If you do all of these things, blogging success can’t help but find you.

Barrie Davenport is a personal and career coach and founder of Live Bold and Bloom, a blog about bold and fearless living. Download her FREE e-book, How to Live A Meaningful Life.

“How do you know which projects to go with and which to leave behind?”

This is a question I’ve been asked almost every time I’ve spoken at events recently so I thought I’d jot down a few thought on the process that I find myself going through when looking at opportunities to expand my business with new projects.

Of course I’m over simplifying it a little with this diagram – but it’ll illustrate the basics of how I work.

I should also say that this isn’t really a process that I specifically take myself through each time I launch a new project – rather its something I’ve noticed myself doing naturally as I look back on previous projects. Let me say a little about each step.

Idea – For me – idea generation is the easiest part of the process. I have them every day and have a long list of potential projects that I’d one day like to take through this process fully and explore.

I find that the more I start things the more ideas come naturally as you see how readers are using your site, as they ask for advice, as you observe trends in your industry and as you receive and answer questions from others exploring your topic.

The other thing that I find is that as your blog grows you start to get pitched ideas from others. As you become seen as a credible and authoritative source of information and as someone with influence – people want to align themselves with you and explore partnerships.

The keys with this stage is to have a way of capturing the ideas, to not rush in to do every idea that comes along but to be willing to take the best ideas and explore them.

Test – The temptation when you get what you think is a great idea is to just go out and do it. I’ve seen a number of friends move from having a great idea into investing (sometimes quite a bit of money) in developing that idea within hours. In some cases this might pay off – but in my experience most ‘ideas’ could do with some testing before moving into the development stage.

There are many ways to test an idea – here are some that I’ve done:

• Ask someone – whether it be a trusted friend, your partner, a reader, another blogger – bouncing your ideas off others can be very valuable. Getting another person’s perspective will often help you filter out the crazy ideas and add depth to the good ones.
• Write a Blog Post – it may not always be appropriate to completely spell out your idea publicly (once they’re out there you never know who might take your idea) but a blog post can be used to test whether there is a need for your idea to fulfil, can be used to gather data from readers responses on how your idea could help them most or could just be a good place for you to think out loud and get a little perspective.
• Tweet it – I often test ideas with my Twitter followers. Again, you probably don’t want to spell out your idea in too much detail but use your social networks to test the things you’re thinking about.
• Do a Survey or Poll – this is one of my favourite things to do and something I’ve done regularly over the years. If you’re not sure whether your current readership or network will respond to your idea – test it by running a survey with a small group of them. For example I recently released a travel photography eBook with my photography site. Before commissioning it I did a quick survey with 1000 of my readers to see what topics they’d like more written about. One of the topics I suggested was Travel Photography – the response was that over half my readers said that they wanted more information on that topic – I then went ahead with it.

Testing need not be a long or involved process. A blog post, tweet or survey could all be put together in 24 hours. For us entrepreneurial types 24 hours might seem like an eternity – however the information you gain by doing it could either improve your idea significantly or show you when your idea is not something worth pursuing (which could save you a lot of time and money).

Tweak – Once you’ve done a little testing you’re in a position to tweak your idea. This might actually be culling it all together or it could be about making big or small improvements.

Ultimately your ‘testing’ is about putting your idea ‘out there’ to some degree and your ‘tweaking’ is about taking on board the feedback that you get and making improvements to the idea so that if you do take it to a full launch that it is the best it can be.

Sometimes the ‘test’ to ‘tweak’ stage can be a bit of a cycle before you launch and something that you need to do numerous times to get to launch. In fact sometimes the ‘test’ and ‘tweak’ approach continues after launch as well as you continue to try new ideas and gather feedback to continue to improve what you’re doing.

Launch – With a mixture of fear and excitement you gradually move your idea forward towards launch.

I can’t tell you exactly how to launch a product or service because it’ll vary hugely from situation to situation – however what I have found is that if you’ve gone through the test and tweak process well that you’ll end up launching something that is not only a better quality product or service – but you’ll hopefully have ended up with some ideas on how to market and launch that product.

For example as part of the launch of the travel photography ebook I mentioned earlier a survey I did found that many readers had regrets around previous photography that they’d done when traveling. This gave us a hint as to how to market it (which you’ll see on the sales page).

You’ll also find that if some of your testing/tweaking has been done in public (ie your readers know you’re developing an idea towards launching something) you’ll hopefully have also created some nice pre-launch buzz to assist with your launch.

Some examples

As mentioned earlier – I’m certainly over simplifying things a little here – nothing is quite as simple or easy as I’m making it sound. However I do find that this cycle is pretty typical of the things I’ve done. Let me give some examples.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

The 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook that I currently sell from ProBlogger did not start out as an eBook. In fact it started 3 (or was it 4?) years ago as a series of 31 blog posts. The initial idea was to take my readers through a month of activities to improve their blogs. The first year was very basic.

That first ‘test’ of the idea revealed that people loved the idea of doing a project like this together. It also showed me that some of the activities that I did connected better than others.

I then ran it again two years later with improvements. I added a forum area, started an autoresponder email list to help participants keep on track and changed around some of the activities. Again I learned a lot. I also began to gather feedback from participants that they wanted it as a workbook.

I tested that idea with a survey and found that a good percentage of my readers would be willing to pay for such an eBook so I had it developed (with extra content, design etc).

WIth all this testing and tweaking done I was pretty much certain that I’d not only cover the costs I put into the development of the eBook but make a healthy profit from it on launch (which is how it has happened).

In essences 31DBBB has been through 3-4 different ‘test’ and ‘tweak’ cycles to get it to its current form (and I’m currently testing and tweaking it again and hope to offer a live version of the course later this year).

ProBlogger Live Event

The 31DBBB example above is one that has taken years to go through. Another more recent example is the ProBlogger live training day that I’m running in Melbourne. This is an example of a much speedier process.

The idea came 2 weeks ago.

I tested it with a quick email to two friends (Chris and Shayne) who both added their own ideas into the mix but reacted very positively.

I then tested it with a blog post asking for expressions of interest by inviting people to sign up for more information.

I then followed up those who responded to that call by inviting them to do a survey on their situation and needs as bloggers. Around 50% of people did the survey which gave me some amazing data. The survey revealed the topics we should cover on the day, helped us work out what styles of presentation we should do in the event and also told us that there was much more interest in the event than we’d previously thought (ie we needed a bigger venue).

All of this was before we’d booked a venue, decided on a schedule for the day or even committed to running the event.

Then came the launch – we knew approximately how many would come, what they wanted from such a day and how to cater for them. As a result we’ve had no problem pretty much selling it out.

TwiTip

This same process was how I launched TwiTip (my twitter tips blog).

The idea for a blog about Twitter had been something I’d pondered for a while before launching it. I decided to test whether people would be interested in reading tutorials about Twitter before launching by posting some posts here on ProBlogger – Twitter Tips for Bloggers.

These posts were very popular and got a lot of interaction.

As I began to plan the blog I started surveying my Twitter followers on the type of needs that they had and the questions that they’d asked themselves when they first started. In doing so I began to gather ideas for future posts but also began to see what categories I should have on the new blog.

I launched Twitip with a fairly ‘soft launch’. It was on basic hosting and on a fairly simple theme (I used Thesis). I could have invested into a custom design from day 1 but wanted to test the topic before spending too much on it – so went with a solid premium theme but one that wasn’t going to break the bank.

It was actually around a year before I fully launched the site with a full custom theme.

I could go on and on giving personal examples

The more I think about it the more I realize that virtually every time I’ve launched a new blog, product or service that I’ve been through this type of process. Perhaps it’s partly because I’m something of a cautious person and like to test before I fully commit – but I think it’s also a fairly solid approach.

I’ve seen so many people launch businesses that have not been thought through enough that I just think a little extra time to do some testing would be well spent.

What about you – do you go through similar processes? What would you add or subtract from the process above?

A Guest Post by Johnny B Truant.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re blogging to make money, or to express yourself. So why would you ever give something away? If you’re in this as a business, giving stuff away without charging for it seems counterintuitive. If you’re just out there writing for the sake of writing, then what you want are readers… and how is giving stuff away going to get more eyes on your blog?

The answer is that what goes around comes around. What you give comes back to you. What you sow is what you reap, and all of that. It’s not just platitudes. It works.

I was thinking about this because I’m in the middle of a promotion where I’m setting up self-hosted WordPress blogs for free. (In fact, if you want one, click over and go get one.) This isn’t an experiment. It’s the third time I’ve done it. I continue to do it because each time I do, my statistics go way up, my RSS readership grows, my Twitter followers grow, and I meet a bunch of new people who may end up being customers later. And thanks to the fact that I’m an affiliate for website hosting (which my free blog setup folks would have to buy regardless), I make money too.

All of my best tips come down to giving things away.

• Want to grow your mailing list? Write a great report or e-book — and then instead of charging for it, give it away to people who sign up for your list.
• Want to reach a new audience? Write a really good blog post, ideally one that is immediately actionable for people who read it. Reveal your best tip or tips in that post. Then, give it to someone else as a guest post rather than running it on your site.
• Want more referrals? Give a greater percentage of sales to your affiliates. I’m not quite gutsy enough to do this myself, but Dave Navarro told me once publicly that he gave affiliates 100% of the sale price on a certain product and then paid the transaction fees (which would normally come from the sale price) out of his own pocket. He “lost” money on his own product, but built a list in his shopping cart of people who liked his stuff well enough to buy it — a list he could promote to later.
• Want more goodwill, better Karma, or more raving fans? Then do something for charity. Twice that I know of, Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz.com has rallied her audience to raise money for a cause. The first time, she raised relocation expenses for a female reader who needed to get out of a physically abusive relationship. The second time, she raised over $12,000 for Cambodia — enough to build a school. The benefit to her? Tons and tons and tons of “good feelings” out in the blogosphere about her, which converted casual fans into die-hards.

I could keep going. There are tons of ways for any blogger at any level to increase either business or readership by trying the experiment of temporarily swapping “what can I get out of this?” thinking for “what can I give that people would really want and love?” thinking.

The really cool thing is that if you plan a little in advance, there’s usually a way that you can benefit too. If you’re smart, “giving it away” can get you a lot more than you’re probably getting right now.

Give it a shot. And if you’ve done it, let’s hear how it worked out in the comments!

P.S: If you’re still trying to figure out how to get your start in blogging in order to try this stuff? Well, now’s the time because I think I mentioned I know a guy who’s doing a mutually beneficial free blog setup promotion right now.

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Johnny B. Truant blogs at JohnnyBTruant.com and is one of the two guys behind The Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions.