Today I want to show you exactly how I do it.

Firstly a word about technology – I use Aweber to deliver my emails (I talk about why here). However you can use pretty much any email newsletter service for the process I outline below as long as it allows you to set up an auto-responder or sequence of emails.

I should also say that the process I’m about to share has evolved over time. It started out very very simple and has slowly developed with time – in fact it continues to develop as I learn more and by no means is where I want to take it…. yet.

Lets start with a visual on how my process looks (click to enlarge) before I explain the elements:

Reader Subscribes

Because email newsletters are such an important part of my site I put a lot of emphasis upon getting this conversion moment with those who come to my site. There are a variety of places around the blog where I attempt to get readers to sign up – some are more subtle than others. Some are anything but subtle including a popup signup box that readers see 20-30 seconds after they arrive on the blog.

The pop-up is set to only show once per visitor (unless they’re blocking cookies) and while it is intrusive and I was very hesitant about adding it – it’s incredibly effective at getting readers to signup.

I switched to using this Pop-Up signup technique just on a year ago and at the time wrote up how it took me from getting 40 confirmed signups a day to 350 over night here. Since that time subscriber numbers have continued to climb – I now get around 500 new confirmed subscribers a day. This adds up to around 180,000 a year which is exciting growth. It does annoy a handful of readers (I get an email or two per month) but for the payoff it’s something I’ve decided to continue with.

Welcome Email

When someone signs up and then confirms their subscription by clicking a link in an email they’re then sent (double opt in is required by law) the new subscriber is immediately sent a welcome email. This email is all about making them feel good about subscribing and giving them a quick introduction to the site.

I’m presuming that most people who sign up for the newsletter are new to the site so it’s a great opportunity to introduce myself, show them around and help get their expectations right about the site.

This welcome email has a site logo, my picture, some links to key parts of the site like the forum, some suggested reading for catching up on key posts in our archives (I send them to a few ‘sneeze pages‘ that send them deep within the archives and get them viewing multiple pages) and shares what the subscriber will receive in the coming weeks in terms of future emails.

The email also asks people to add the email address that emails are sent from to their white list/contact list to help ensure emails are delivered.

It’s written in a personal and friendly style and seems to connect as I get a lot of replies to this email from new subscribers thanking me for the personal welcome.

Weekly Updates

As you’ll see from the chart above – weekly updates are what readers get the most. They’re largely updates on what has happened on the blog/forums in the past week.

You can see one of my more recent ones here (although it loses some of the formatting in the web version) where you can see that these emails have a bit of a structure. I usually have the following sections in these weekly updates:

• Welcome: usually just a sentence that intros the week. If there’s something important I’ll often highlight it here. Sometimes I’ll also do a quick update on something cool that happened on the site during the week (record day of traffic, milestone in terms of subscribers, a mention in the press – this kind of update seems to build morale/momentum among readers)
• Quick Links: here I share the weekly assignment, any discussion oriented posts/polls, any competition announcements and occasionally a ‘featured post’ that I want to especially push traffic to etc
• Tips Tutorials and Techniques: new blog posts of a more general nature
• Recommended Resource: in this case it’s an affiliate promotion (a great product) but occasionally I swap this section to be a ‘message from our sponsors’ and have it as a sold ad position.
• Post Production Tips: updates from this section/category of the blog
• New Gear, Tips and Reviews: again, updates from this section of the blog
• Hot Forum Threads: a bit of a summary of key threads happening in the forum
• Reader Images: Being a photography site visuals are important and the images get clicked on a lot. They also give readers some incentive to post images in the forums as they could get featured in this newsletter that goes out to over 200,000 people..

I do mix things up a bit. Some weeks I’ll run a little promotion of our Twitter of Facebook accounts, other weeks I might throw in some older posts form the archives that people may not have seen and sometimes I’ll run a promotion encouraging readers to forward the email onto a friend. Really anything can go in these emails as long as they’re on topic and useful

The main goals of these weekly updates are to:

• Drive traffic to the site
• Build Community, reinforce brand with readers
• Make money through the promotions

Readers love these newsletters because while they’re largely links to the site the links are all content rich and useful resources. I title these emails ‘Photography Tips for Your Weekend’ and that’s how many of our readers use them – as a spring board into their weekend with their cameras.

Note: these emails are manually put together. They take me an hour or two a week to do. There are tools that will send out automated update emails (Aweber has one) but I prefer to do it manually to ensure that the emails are tailored for maximum impact and usefulness.

Themed Updates

I’ve written about this concept once before here on ProBlogger in a post titled How 24 Hours of Work Will Send Millions of Readers to My Blog.

The idea really came about when I realised that the majority of my blogs thousands of pages of content was going largely unseen by new readers to my blog. While I would occasionally link back to key posts most of my archives don’t get a lot of traffic.

These ‘themed updates’ are all about sending readers back to old but useful content around a single theme. Here’s how they work.

I use the ‘auto responder’ or ‘followup’ feature of Aweber to set up these emails. This means that they go out at pre-determined intervals to readers a certain number of days after their last scheduled email.

The first email in the sequence is the ‘welcome email’ that I mentioned above. 8 Days after that email goes out the subscriber receives the first ‘themed’ email. The topic is ‘portraits’ and is a newsletter that contains a short intro to the topic and then some links back to some of our most useful portrait photography tips. It also has a few recommendations of good books on portraiture (with affiliate links).

30 days after this portraits email they get another themed email (remember they’re getting weekly updates in between). This email is about ‘exposure’ (pictured right – click to enlarge) and contains links to some of our best posts on subjects like Aperture, Shutter Speed etc. It also contains a couple of recommendations to good books on the topic (with affiliate links to Amazon).

30 days later they get an email on composition (same format as above with links to archive posts and books). 30 days later they get another themed email.

The main goals of these weekly updates are to:

• Drive traffic to the site – particularly older posts
• Make money through the affiliate links – while they’re not big ticket items they do convert

These emails do take some time to set up but once they’re set up they become automated and go out every day without me ever having to think about them. With 500 people signing up for my newsletter every day I know that 500 people are getting each of these emails on a daily basis. I have 6 of these emails set up in a sequence at present and add more to the list every now and again so I know 3000 people in total get them each day of the week – forever.

Promotions

This is the most recent addition to my sequence of emails and I’m still perfecting their use but the signs are very promising already.

I use the auto-responder sequence mentioned above to deliver these (they’re going to go out every month or two) and the content of these emails is to highlight a resource or product that I recommend to readers.

The products are affiliate products that I take a commission from any sale of. We disclose that relationship in the email and get a lot of positive feedback on the disclosure from readers.

The key with these promotional emails is to choose products that you genuinely recommend. The reason for this is that at any point subscribers can leave your list – if you push too hard or recommend dodgy products they can leave (with a bade taste in their mouth).

It can be hard to find quality products – I’ve found there to be a lot of junky products in my niche for example – but when I recently found a product that I believed in (123 digital imaging) I knew I had my first product to add to the sequence.

I only sent this first promotion email 17 days ago so it’s yet to go out to everyone on the list but it’s generated 500 or so sales and will continue to sell as long as the product is on the market as it goes to another 500 people every day. In many ways it’s become a nice little passive income with a few sales every day being generated.

When we release our first ebook in the coming weeks it will also be added to the sequence of emails in a similar way.

The main goals of these weekly updates are to:

• Make money through the affiliate links – the money these earn starts with a bang when you send it out to the bulk of your list on the first day but after that it becomes a steady trickle. The cool thing about it is that once you have a few of these set up in your sequence you can be having a number of affiliate promotions paying off each day.

Summing Up

All in all I find that the above mix of emails that we send out to our list gets very positive results. I work hard to keep them a ‘win/win’ for both our readers to get useful and relevant information but for me/the site to generate income. So far I think I’ve got the balance right – I regularly get emails from readers saying thanks for the newsletter and if I’m even an hour or two late sending it get people emailing to ask where it is. On a revenue front it’s increasingly profitable – between the sales of products and the ad revenue increases from the increased traffic it certainly has become a central part of my income stream to have this email list.

With the cycle as it is readers do occasionally get 2 emails in a week – however it’s never more than that and on most weeks it is just the one weekly email. I make it clear when they signup that it’s at least weekly to get this expectation right as I don’t want them feeling duped into signing up.

I also use Aweber’s scheduling feature for the auto responder emails which allows you to specify what days of the week they can go out. I schedule the sequenced emails (the themed and promotional ones) so that they never go out on a Thursday or Friday (the same day as the weekly ones).

Lastly I generally focus my efforts with this list on HTML emails. Aweber does give you the ability to send out a text email as well for those subscribers whose email system doesn’t allow HTML. For the text version I usually just send out a short email that links to a HTML version of the email. I did use to send out a full plain text email for these people but found that when I switched to a shorter email linking to the HTML version that most readers clicked through and appreciated seeing the images (this might be particular to my niche).

So that’s how I’ve set up my email newsletters on DPS. It takes a fair bit of work to get some of it set up but as I mentioned in yesterdays post – the pay off has been great and continues to grow as we recruit new subscribers to the list.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money

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Earlier in the week I mentioned that one of the emerging themes in the monetization sessions at Blog World Expo was the idea of membership sites as a way to make an income from a blog.

The other theme that emerged in a number of the sessions was that many bloggers were placing increased attention on the medium of email as a way to communicate with readers.

Email is back!

Actually email never really went away – but it’s back on the radar of many bloggers after a swing over the last few years away from it in favour of other mediums such as RSS.

RSS feeds are far from being dead as a way to communicate with readers but while some saw the advances in feeds and feed readers as an email killer many entrepreneurial bloggers are now realising that perhaps they should not have given up on email.

I shared on at least one of the panels that I was on at BWE how email on my photography blog is much more effective than RSS on a number of fronts:

1. The Numbers Speak for Themselves

On DPS I currently have a total of 340,784 subscribers. 223,081 of these subscribe via email – 117,703 of them subscribe via RSS. That’s a 2:1(ish) ratio. While this ratio will vary from site to site considerably (depending upon the niche) I’d guess that on most blogs it’d be similar – the exception possibly being sites with a more techy/social media focus.

2. Email Drives Great Traffic

The days I send out Newsletters are the biggest days of traffic on the site. I shared this graphic a few months ago but here’s the traffic to the blog area of my site on newsletter days (it’s pretty obvious which days the newsletters went out):

RSS certainly does drive traffic – however it is less – probably because most people read the content in their feed reader.

3. Email subscribers are monetizing better than other subscribers with onsite advertising

One of the interesting things that also happens on newsletter days is that the rate that people seem to click on ads also seems to go up slightly. This was a surprise to me when I first saw it because I would have thought that subscribers who visit the blog each week would become blind to the ads but the CTR (click through rate) on my AdSense ads goes up on newsletter days. Here’s a quick screen grab of total AdSense revenue on the DPS blog – again you can see the rises for newsletter days.

4. Email Also Monetizes Better with other Income Streams

Not only does AdSense income increase on newsletter days but I’m finding that other monetization strategies also work well in the newsletter. Three come to mind:

• Affiliate promotions have worked really well in newsletter for me. I’ve tested this a number of times by posting a blog post about a product I’m promoting and sending an email about the product. In every instance that I’ve tested it the newsletter wins hands down. The best performing affiliate promotions actually work best where you do a blog post AND an email promotion – but without the email component I find I’m definitely leaving money on the table every time.
• Product Launches - if you have your own product to launch I find that in a similar way to how affiliate promotions work best in emails – so too does selling your own stuff. Again – posting both on your blog and via email (and in other places like twitter) can help increase sales further but email is crucial in driving sales.
• Direct Ad Sales – lastly the few times that I’ve sold ads in my newsletter to direct advertisers I’ve had very good feedback from the advertisers. We ran a big promotion both on our blog and in our newsletter earlier in the year for a big computer brand and the feedback we got was that the campaign was most effective on newsletter day from clicks from within the email.

5. Email is Personal and Builds Community

There is something about a regular email newsletter that just seems to make people feel more connected to you. I find it hard to put my finger why but there’s something about receiving a good email that just seems more powerful than reading a good blog post via an RSS feed. It just seems a little more personal, more special.

Perhaps it is because RSS is generally read in an RSS feed reader where there are hundreds of competing posts to be read or perhaps it is because an email is delivered into an inbox filled with more personal communications or perhaps it is because when someone signs up for an email they have to give you something personal – their address – whereas with RSS they don’t have to reveal anything about themselves.

I’m not sure WHY it is the case – but every week I get people emailing me to thank me for the emails I send them. I’ve never had anyone thank me for my RSS feed….

The newsletters I send do more than drive traffic and make money – they seem to make people feel as though they belong. To get an email someone has to sign up – they become a member of sorts and this is reflected in the emails that they send me that talk about ‘our site’.

6. Email is more Accessible

I only really started to experiment with email because someone in my family asked me how they could get updates from my photography blog. When I told them about RSS they stared back at me with a blank face. I added an email option and they immediately subscribed.

If you only offer RSS as a way to access your site’s information you’re excluding my family member and probably a lot of other people too.

For this reason I advise giving people a variety of ways to get updates whether it be RSS, daily emails, weekly emails, Twitter updates…. whatever is relevant for your audience.

Don’t Forget about RSS

I don’t want this post to be seen as writing off RSS. It’s an amazing technology and is still really important to my own sites. It too drives traffic, makes money, reinforces brand etc – all I guess I’m arguing is that bloggers take a 2nd look at email.

My personal approach is to have multiple points of connection with readers which reinforces what I’m doing on my sites and maximise the impression that I’m able to make upon them.

How I Use Email

Tomorrow I want to continue this focus upon email to talk about how I use email newsletters to achieve some of the above things. While you can set up tools to just automatically send out emails at predefined intervals to those that subscribe to your blog you can actually take it to the next level and set up a system that is much much more effective.

Tomorrow I’ll walk you through the emails that I send to my newsletter list and share with you some of the techniques that I’ve found that work to drive traffic and make money.

UPDATE: part 2 is now live at How I use email newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

6 Reasons Why You Need to Consider Email as a Communication Strategy on Your Blog

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On the current theme of Content Marketing, I have a super simple strategy I have been testing to increase exposure and profit that you’ll really enjoy. It’s simple, it’s free… and it works.

Darren gave us 9 ways to seed content to consistently grow our blog readership with each new blog post. This 10th method will bring you a lot of readers as well, without even writing a new blog post…

Putting Your Best Content To Work For You

If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time at all, you probably have some incredible posts buried in your archives. Even blog posts written only a month or two ago rarely get a new comment. Properly optimized posts might continue to receive new visitors through the search engines, but most of your content is buried – both in your archives, and in the search results.

I make a regular practice of browsing through my archives for pillar posts. I often repurpose these posts into articles for Article Marketing, meaning I make a few small tweaks and submit them to EzineArticles.com.

There are 3 good reasons to submit your better archives to EzineArticles:

1. A keyword-rich title on EzineArticles can easily get your article ranked very well in Google search results, as EzineArticles is a content authority site. If the article is not ranking well on your domain, or if you have a relatively new domain, this is a great way to get “indirect” top rankings very easily.

2. Each article you submit may include an author bio, or resource box, which will have a live link back to your blog. Readers and search engines alike follow these links, and inbound links will help your blog get indexed or better ranked.

3. Publishers search EzineArticles.com for great content to use on their websites, at their blogs, and in their email newsletters. In addition to getting more inbound links, you may also find your content in front of a very targeted audience.

Duplicate Content?

There are many theories about duplicate content, and possible penalties for using the same content in more than one place on the web. Most of these theories are completely unfounded. Read this if you’re concerned about duplicate content.

Basically, Google wants to offer a wide variety of results for any given search. If your blog post is not already ranking in the top 10 results for a specific keyword phrase, you can easily achieve an “indirect” top ranking by submitting the post to EzineArticles.com as an article with a keyword rich article title.

Taking it one step further…

This method has been working very well for me, so I decided to take it one step further. Instead of repurposing a great blog post into an article, I turned a couple of my posts into short reports.

It’s the exact same content, just a new format: PDF.

PDF files are very easy to create. You can use any number of free PDF converters. Or you can download OpenOffice.org for free, which will allow you to turn any document into a PDF file with one click.

Don’t be overly concerned with the length of the report. Even 3-5 pages of great content will make a very nice short report that you can give away.

You can also add a cover page, a copyright/disclaimer, and an about page to round it out if you like. If you want your report to go viral, be sure to include a paragraph that clearly spells out the giveaway rights to your reader.

The Results

I decided to try this with a great how-to post I had written for my blog. This particular post ended with a recommendation for Darren’s workbook titled 31 Days To Build A Better Blog. I didn’t do any fancy formatting, I simply copied the blog post and pasted it into a document – and then converted it to a PDF file.

The result? The PDF file converted readers into buyers almost 4x more than the blog post!

Thanks to that short report, I am nearing the $1,000 sales mark for a product that sells for less than 20 bucks – which makes for a nice little commission check… on just one post!

The obvious conclusion here is that a report, or a PDF file, has a higher perceived value. The exact same content, with the exact same call-to-action, has proven to achieve a much higher conversion rate in PDF format.

Using Reports For Links, Traffic & Sales…

You should use one of your new short reports as an incentive for your readers to subscribe to your newsletter or blog updates. This is a great way to increase your subscriptions, and therefore your readership.

You can use your other new reports much the same as you use articles, as well. Submit your reports to free ebook directories, the same way you submit articles to article directories.

Google will index PDF files, so the links within your report will count as inbound links to your blog. Your report may also rank well in Google, which is another great way to funnel new readers into your blog.

Tip: Don’t submit the report you use as your opt-in incentive in other places around the web. Your new visitors will be disappointed to arrive on your blog, subscribe, and receive the same report that brought them there in the first place. Mix it up!

Make sure you include a strong call-to-action in the PDF version of your content. If your content is not directly recommending a product, you can invite the readers to related articles on your blog – or to subscribe at your blog for more great free reports on the topic.

Browse through your blog archives today, and locate some of your best (buried) posts. Repurpose those posts into short reports, and put that great content back into circulation to bring in more readers – and make more sales!

Best,
Lynn Terry
ClickNewz

p.s. I found this method to be working so well for me, that I contracted someone to convert and format my posts into attractive PDF files. You can easily outsource this task by posting a request on freelance sites, or on Job Boards at various forums.

If you would like to see an example of one of my repurposed blog posts, feel free to download How to Write a Product Review.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

A Simple Way To Funnel New Traffic & Sales From Buried Blog Archives

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Today I want to take the ’seeding’ idea a step further and give a few examples of ways that you can do it – and in the process hopefully grow your readership beyond your immediate family (not that there’s anything wrong with Mom reading your blog).

I should say that while this post contains 9 ways to promote a blog post – that I rarely use all of them at once. Keep in mind that the idea of ’seeding’ is not about forcing things but rather it is about getting things going and then letting something organic happen. You might need to put a little more effort into things somewhere along the way to keep momentum going (like ‘watering the garden’ helps a seed to grow) but the idea isn’t for force things.

So without further ado – let me share a few of the techniques that I use to ’seed’ content:

1. Tweet it

I find that one of the most effective ways to get a link to a new blog post ‘out there’ is simply to tweet it. Tweeting a link is quick and easy to do – and if you do it well it can be quite effective at both driving direct traffic to a blog post but also in starting other little viral events on other sites.

The effectiveness of this does depend a little on the size of your follower group – but other factors you can have a little more control over include:

• timing your tweets to be during peak times when lots of people are on Twitter.
• doing a followup tweet to your original one (I only do this on important posts and usually try to change the wording so as not to annoy people too much)
• the wording of your tweet (give people a reason to click it)
• making your tweet ‘ReTweetable’ by not making it too long (I keep these seeding tweets to under 120 characters to leave room for people to retweet them).

I find that when something does well on Twitter (and not every post will) that it can often trigger a secondary event on a site like Delicious. This in turn can trigger blogs to link to my posts or other social bookmarking sites to pick up links.

2. Facebook Status Updates (and other social media)

This is of course similar to Tweeting a link. I’ve not had as much success with Facebook as a promotional tool for my blogs but know of a few bloggers in different niches who find it to be more effective. Whether it sends loads of traffic or not it can be helpful in an overall strategy.

Similarly I sometimes also use other social media sites like LinkedIn’s status update if I feel that the content I’m promoting is better suited to other audiences. Again – it depends partly upon the size of your network on these sites but even a small but relevant network on these sites can trigger other bloggers to link up or secondary organic submissions on other social sites by those in your network. You never know what impact sharing a link in these sites can have until you do it.

3. Pitch it to another Blogger

Is the post you’re promoting relevant to the audience of another blog?

This is a question I’m always asking myself as I’m writing blog posts. As I write I jot down the names of other bloggers that have an audience that might find what I’m writing helpful. This means that when it comes time to promote the blog post I have a ready made list of people to shoot out an email to to let them know about my post.

I don’t send these emails out often, nor do I send them out to the same group of bloggers repeatedly – but if I genuinely think my post is of high quality and that the blogger will find it relevant I will.

Check out these suggestions on how to pitch other bloggers for some more tips on how to do this effectively.

4. Pitch it to another Twitter User

This is similar to pitching another blogger but can have a great impact as well. In fact I recently had a link from a blogger who both posted on his blog and tweeted the link and the Tweet converted much better for me in terms of traffic.

The key once again is to make sure that the link is relevant to the Tweeter and the type of thing that you’ve seen them sharing on twitter with others.

5. Share a Link in a ‘Signature’

Many bloggers have links to the front page of their blogs in both email signatures and forum signatures – but what about directing people to an individual post? There are a variety of tools out there that highlight latest posts (feedburner has one) and they make a lot of sense to me because you’re sending people to standalone articles that you’ve written rather than a sometimes confusing front page of a blog.

6. Bookmark it

This is one that I don’t tend to do myself these days but I know many bloggers who do so I’ll include it. It entails submitting your post to a site like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious etc.

I don’t tend to do this any more as I find many of these sites have algorithms that penalize a site if it’s submitted by the same person over and over. What I do instead is occasionally shoot a link to another user of these sites in the hope that they’ll submit it for me. Having said this – I also find that as your traffic grows the submissions become more and more organic from regular readers so there’s less need for me personally to be involved in these types of ’seedings’ in social bookmarkting sites.

7. Guest Posts

Another method that I’ve seen a number of bloggers using with real effect lately is to link to your important blog post in a guest post on someone else’s blog.

Most people who guest post on another blog tend to link back to the front page of their blog in the byline. This is a good general link to get but if you have an important post that you’ve written that relates to the guest post you’re writing you should find a way to incorporate a link to that post – either as the byline link or if the blogger allows it – within the blog post itself.

8. Give readers an easy way to share it

Hopefully with some of the above techniques you’ve got a few readers over to your blog – now you want them to share it with others.

There are many ways to make your blog post ’sharable’. I tend to use a combination of templated techniques as well as a few custom ones that I add to posts once on posts that I think will do well on social media sites.

• Templated techniques – there are many ways to build social media buttons into your blog. There are heaps of tools and plugins that will do this for you. The key in my experience is not to have too many buttons/options but to choose just a few that relate well to your audience.
• Custom techniques – if I notice that one of my posts is starting to do well on Twitter or Digg or some other social media site I generally will either add an extra button to a post or add a text link pointing people to where they can tweet or digg the post. I find that these more obvious little additions to a post can often tip it over the edge to a viral traffic event.

9. Newsletters

This is a way that I often ‘tip’ posts that are doing OK over the edge into a viral traffic event. It usually works like this:

A – I write a post that I think MIGHT do well as a viral post

B – I time the publishing of that post for a Thursday morning – an update goes out via RSS to my subscribers

C – I use some of the above techniques to get the post seeded (Twitter, Facebook etc)

D – I wait until the post is submitted to Digg and then add a Digg button to the post (or some other social bookmarking site)

E – I then send out a newsletter to my list including a prominent link to the post

What I find is that without the last step (sending a newsletter) the post can do quite well – but when I send the newsletter I quite often see a ‘tipping point’ with the post and it’ll go viral on multiple social media sites at once on the back of the extra traffic that I’ve been able to send to the traffic via the newsletter.

2 Final Words of Advice

Let me finish with two words that I think are key to much of the above – persistence and relationships.

1. Persistence – There’s a real need for persistence in seeding content. Much of what I’ve described above are things that I’ve been doing for years and they’ve only become more effective the longer that I’ve done them.

My experience of finding readers is that it is all about momentum. In the early days to find just a handful of readers can be a real challenge – the above methods may not bring thousands of people through the door – however the 10 than they do bring in on your first day could lead to 100 next month which could lead to the thousands in the coming year.

You may get lucky and your seed may grow into something big in the early days of your blog – but even small results can grow slowly into big things over time. Each reader that you bring into your loyal readership is important because they have a network of their own that they could help spread word of your blog to.

2. Relationships – The other key to much of the above is to be as relational as possible. Much of the above relies upon people sharing your posts with others once you alert them to the existence of your posts. So put aside regular time to grow your network, to build a presence on sites like Twitter, to build trust and influence on other sites outside of your blog – this networking can pay off in a big way over the long term. Just do keep these other social networking sites in perspective – they’re not the main game themselves but should be used to build up your home base.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom

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• “Great content will market itself” – a statement I heard one speaker make at a blogging conference last year.
• “Write it and they will come” – a motto I’ve heard a number of new bloggers sharing as a secret to their yet to be found success.
• “Quality Content = Readers” – an ‘equation’ I saw being written about in one online blogging course recently

Each of the above statements has elements of truth to it. Many bloggers have built successful blogs on the back of great content. However there are almost always other factors at play.

The reality is that many blogs produce quality content that doesn’t get read. The reason isn’t that the blog’s not worth reading – but in many cases it’s because nobody knows to go read it.

Here’s the thing…..

Letting your content market itself DOES work IF you already have an audience to help with that process by spreading word of it through word of mouth – but if you’re just starting out and don’t yet have a readership the reality is that YOU are the only person who knows your great content exists.

Word of mouth can still play a part in your finding of readers – but as YOU are the only person that knows about your great content YOU need to be the one who starts the process and starts the process of getting the word out.

It’s time to hustle and get word out about your content.

Seeding Content

Later in the week I want to highlight 9 methods to do this – however today I want to start with a more general suggestion that comes from my own experience of getting content read

Seed it – Don’t Force it!

Perhaps it’s just my personality or style – but I find that sometimes less is more in the blog post promotion game. Here’s how I’d chart the effectiveness of my blog promotions vs the amount of effort (or aggressiveness might be a better word) put into the promotion.

Let me flesh this out a little:

• In my experience if you only put little effort into your blog promotion you get little results. This is what I talk about above – if you don’t let people know about your posts how will anyone find them?
• If you put in too much effort into it and get too aggressive with your promotion you can also get little results. In fact sometimes when you’re too aggressive you can actually go backwards and hurt your site.
• For me it’s about putting in some effort – but not getting too full on about it. It’s a real balancing act at times.

I like the term ’seeding’ to describe how I try to promote my content.

I’m not really a great gardener but I do know that in order for me to have a new plant grow in my garden I need to go to some effort – but that if I do too much I can actually hurt the growth of the plant.

To have a plant grow I need to plant a seed, I need to ensure it gets water, I can give it some fertilizer, I need to give it a little protection from my kids digging it up…. but after that it’s up to the seed and the environment to make it grow. It takes some effort – but there comes a point where I need to step back and let the seed do it’s thing.

This is similar to my experience of promoting content on blogs. Often it takes me getting the ball rolling but if I force things it can actually have the reverse effect.

As I look back on some of the biggest traffic events on my blogs there’s been a real mix of my own promotion (usually to start the process) and a more organic thing happening. Sometimes I push too hard and don’t get results – other times I don’t push enough and get little return also – however getting it right can lead to incredible days of traffic.

Update: read the continuation of this post at my next post in the series – 9 Things to Do to Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your MOM

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Myth of ‘Great Content’ Marketing Itself

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One of the question I’ve already been told to prepare a question for is – How do you find Readers for a blog?

The question is of course one of the most common ones that I get and the answer is far more complex than I could possibly answer while on a 45 minute panel – there are a myriad of techniques for growing a blog’s readership (I’ll link to some posts I’ve written on that topic below). But I did today want to share the main points I plan to make in my answer today.

By no means is the following comprehensive or applicable to every single blog – but it’s where I’d start in tackling the challenge of finding readers:

How do you find Readers for a Business Blog?

Start With Your Current Network

Keeping in mind that I’m talking to businesses about blogging here – I think the best place to start with finding readers for a blog is to start with those that your business is already in contact with.

Any business will already have some kind of network which will include:

• Employees
• Previous and Current Customers/Clients
• Industry Groups
• Suppliers
• Mailing Lists

This is where I’d start if I were a business starting a blog. Get those you’re already in relationship aware of your blog. These are the people who know you (and hopefully like and trust you) – they can help get the ball rolling in terms of generating some subscribers, comments – this will hopefully help create some social proof to help hook others.

Leverage Other Places Where you Have a Presence

Most businesses will also have other points that they can highlight their blog including

• business cards
• email signatures
• signage
• letterhead
• advertising
• websites
• social media pages

There will of course be others – but the key is to find appropriate places to highlight your new blog and drive traffic from those who might be outside of your network but who you come into some kind of contact with.

Content as a Foundation

The content appearing on your blog will be one of the most important factors in getting those who stumble upon your blog to come back again (and spread the word of it to others).

Your blog posts need to meet a need of readers in some way. Readers of business blogs needs will vary but could include a need for news about your industry, a need to learn how to use your products, a need to get updates on developments/news about your company that relates to them, a need to see how others are using your products.

Once again – this list of needs could go on and on and will vary greatly from business blog to business blog. The key is to work out what your customers (and potential customers) needs are and to develop content that will help those people solve their problems and enhance their lives in some way.

Content also needs to be well written, clearly communicated, of a good standard and compelling.

Go to Potential Readers

A ‘Build it and they will come’ mentality does not apply to blogging. The reality is that your potential readers are unlikely to find your blog unless you get a little (or a lot) proactive.

One of the keys to finding readers is to identify what type of reader you’re looking to attract and then to identify where those types of people are gathering (online or offline).

Do some thinking about the type of person who you want to connect with – this might be a certain demographic, a person with a certain hobby or interest, someone in a certain type of job etc. Once you’ve got them pictured begin to brainstorm where they gather. It might be online on another blog or forum, it could be on a social media site, it could be reading an offline publication like a magazine or it could be in some kind of real life networking group.

Once you’ve started to identify your potential reader’s gathering points you need to begin to find ways to build a presence in those places. If it’s an online blog, forum, social networking site it might be as simple as joining the community and being a useful and social member. It could also include creating content for these sites. If it’s an offline networking group it could mean becoming a member, attending, presenting etc. If it’s an offline publication there may be opportunities to contribute or advertise.

Build Relationships with Others in Your Niche

Other bloggers and website owners in your niche may well be ‘competition’ in some ways – but they also could be collaborators. Blogging is a medium that has been built on bloggers within a niche having conversations, linking to each other and collaboration – don’t treat other bloggers as the enemy – reach out and see what opportunities for working together there may be.

Experiment, Track and Evolve

In the early days of a blog (and beyond the early days) it’s important to try new things on your blog. Try new types of posts, experiment with different voices and mediums (think video, podcasts, images etc) etc. In time you’ll begin to find that some types of posts get more reaction and attention from readers than others. It could be topic related or perhaps the style of posts.

Track what works and what falls flat on its face. Build upon the positives, repeat what works and learn from your mistakes. If you keep doing the types of things that have worked in the past you’ll often find you become known for a certain type of blogging and momentum will grow.

Build Community

Many people online don’t just want to consume content – they want to belong, contribute, participate and interact.

I’ve found that the more I concentrate on creative spaces for interaction with and between readers and the more permission I give readers to be active – the more my blogs and business grows. This can happen on many levels but at the most basic level it can start by simply asking readers questions and interacting with their replies.

Don’t just be a content creator – be a community builder!

Add Your Tips for Building Traffic to Business Blogs

As I’ve mentioned above – there are many many ways to build traffic to a blog. I’ve got some further reading listed below – but I’m also keen to hear your suggestions – particularly from those who have ‘business blogs’ (ie blogs attached to an existing business). What would you add?

Further Reading on Finding Readers for Blogs

• How I’d promote my blog if I were starting out again
• 19 Strategies for Finding Readers For Your Blog
• Finding Readers for your Blog – What We Wish We Knew
• How to Find Readers for Your Blog (a collection of lots of articles on the topic)

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to find Readers for a Business Blog

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We’ve already established that doing a giveaway can be an excellent way to promote your blog. So now that you’ve decided to do a giveaway – and it’s been live for three hours with zero entries – what do you do? If your goal is to reach new readers you’ll need to promote the giveaway – especially if you don’t have an established reader base yet. Here are 6 tips for promoting your blog giveaway:

1. Give away something of value

This sounds like a given, but there are so many small hodgepodge giveaways out there already (personally, I love Etsy giveaways, but hardcore promotion of a $5 item isn’t going to earn you points with most people). A good rule of thumb is a $50 minimum value – if you’re planning to promote to a new audience. Plus, many blog giveaway promotion sites require the prize value to be $50 or greater.

2. Keep it simple!

Make sure the entry requirements scale with the giveaway’s value. For example, if you’re giving away a $50 gift card make the entry requirements quick & easy, like “leave a comment with the words ‘i heart cupcakes!’” Requiring six steps to enter is a quick way to see your incoming visitors bounce. Requiring just a comment and then allowing people to get “bonus points” by following you on Twitter, re-tweeting, friending on Facebook, and subscribing via RSS will create much more goodwill. In my experience, only 17% of the entrants did a bonus option.

3. Keep it short

I found that one week is a good time limit. If you let it drag on too long, your readers will stray, but if it’s too short you won’t get as much promotion and traffic out of your giveaway.

4. Leverage your network

Promote to your existing blog network (via Twitter, Facebook Pages, reminders at the bottom of new posts etc). When appropriate, share the giveaway with your personal network too. Don’t be pushy or repetitive, but posting a link on your personal Facebook page with a “Hey guys, I’m giving away xxx on my blog tomorrow!” can generate quite a bit of traffic from friends and acquaintances that are interested in you, but might not have checked out your blog before.

5. Submit your giveaway to blogs

There are many blogs devoted to listing giveaways, but most of them are a waste of time. I submitted my giveaway to about 30 sweepstakes and giveaway websites, and only saw multiple entries from four sites, but overall those 4 sites generated 85% of my contest entries! (see chart) Another idea is to look for other bloggers in your niche who are doing giveaways and swap links — by mentioning each others’ giveaways. Remember, this needs to beneficial for both of you, so think about what would make you want to swap, if another blogger requested the same from you
.

6. Expect attrition

Anytime you’re doing a giveaway, you’re going to get more traffic, followers, subscribers etc, but when the giveaway is over some of them are inevitably going to drop you like third period French. Fortunately, there will still be some entrants who saw enough value in your blog to stick around. The day my giveaway ended, I had 6x the RSS subscribers and followers on Twitter than what I had started with. Within a few days though, 10% of them unsubscribed/unfollowed – which to me was an acceptable attrition rate and I was stoked to see that I was creating enough value after the giveaway for the 90% of my new “friends” who stayed.

If you’re still in the planning stages of your giveaway, try to think of creative ways to do a cheap giveaway… Have you won anything recently? Or received a gift that you can’t return? I gave away a Sansa slotRadio mp3 player (valued at $99) that I won from another blog giveaway that had only 21 entries – fairly good odds – so shipping was my only cost.

How have you successfully promoted your blog giveaway?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How To Promote Your Blog with a Giveaway

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Getting featured in press and media is probably like a dream come true for many bloggers. If you are thinking that you need to be an accomplished name online like Darren Rowse or John Chow who gets a six-figure annual paycheck before you are in any position to get media coverage, think again.

In 2008 last year, I left my day job at the age of 24 to pursue my fierce passion to help others be their best self and live their best life. I started my personal development blog CelestineChua.com, intending it to be the cornerstone of my business. I had no experience in Web 2.0 web development/internet marketing (The last time I had a proper site was 6-years ago and the landscape had totally changed then) .

In less than 4 months, I got my first media coverage in a popular local newspaper, with circulation of 300,000. My second media coverage came the next month. Then came the third. And the fourth. And more.

To date, I’ve been featured in press and media at least 6 times, which have resulted in a new flock of loyal readers, huge flood of life coaching sign ups, increased awareness levels of my business/blog, heightened credibility, multiple collaboration proposals by interested parties, numerous speaking engagements, just to name a few. So many people who have registered for my services that I have to put up a waiting list, which is stretching till Nov ‘09 at the moment (that’s 4 months away). At the rate it is going, the waiting list isn’t showing any signs of shortening. And this is definitely not the last of it.

If I were to look at the trigger point for my results today, it was the first media coverage which helped put me on the map. The amazing thing is, none of these came about due to any personal relationships or media contacts. Media coverage is something that you can get, whether you are a newbie blogger or a seasoned veteran. In this article, I’ll openly share the strategies I used to secure my media coverage.

Benefits of Being Featured in Press

So why should you seek media coverage? Here’s four key benefits:

1. Distinctiveness.

Let’s face it – Online marketing channels are exhausted to death by right about every blogger out there. Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, forums, commenting, article directories, guest posting, writing list posts, writing pillar articles – You name it, everyone’s doing it.

While these were probably the key success strategies of the past right at the time when Yaro Starak first wrote the Blogging Profits Blueprint, they have since dwindled to become steps to putting yourself at parity level with the rest. I’m not saying that these steps aren’t important – They certainly are, and you should continue putting efforts into them. The question is what, then, sets you apart from the others?

Press isn’t going to be the one thing that sets you apart from the rest, but it is one of the best ways to do that today, especially since getting a press/media feature is totally underutilized by bloggers. Just because you are operating a blog doesn’t mean you should stay clear from traditional marketing vehicles. In fact, you should leverage on as many mediums as you can to gain the maximum exposure. If you get a press coverage, it’s certainly going to put you in a totally different position in your readers’ minds.

When I first started CelestineChua.com in Dec ‘08, I realized that there were about thousands of personal development blogs out there, and I had to do something big to set myself apart from all other blogs. Press instantly stood out as one of the ways I could use to do that, and it proved itself to be an immense tool to my results.

2. Exposure to new audience.

The people who check out the press regularly are quite distinct from blog readers, so being featured in press gives you access to a new audience group. The media I’ve been featured in so far have a circulation of about 200k~300k on average. A good number of them have turned into loyal readers on my site; and many have gone on to share my site with their own networks. Within this large base of audience you can reach, there will be a good handful who are interested in what you have to offer and become loyal readers/users of your service. This is going to be especially critical when you are first starting out.

3. New opportunities.

With each media coverage I get, what’s hot on the trails are new readers, new people interested in my coaching services, new collaboration proposals by people in the industry and new speaking engagements. In fact, it was my first media coverage which put me officially on the map – everything just took off by itself afterward.

4. Credibility.

Features in traditional media automatically instill “credibility” in the subject that is featured (I’m not talking about paid advertising, of course). This is unless the article is writing you in a bad light, which isn’t likely to happen if you follow the steps in the 2nd half of the article. Most reporters are really nice people – if you work hand-in-hand with them and help them to your best ability, they will reciprocate this kindness too.

My media features have been incredibly helpful in establishing credibility in what I do. I’m in the personal development/life coaching industry, where age of the person is often used as a measure of his/her skill as a coach even though it isn’t an accurate measure. Prior to starting my blog, I had already spent many years intensely growing and helping others and had amassed a huge array of personal winning strategies and learnings. Not only that, growth is a continuous journey and I’m constantly developing myself to self-improve and better help others. With the multiple media coverages, I was able to get strong endorsement on my credibility and expertise. It has since brought me a whole list of coachees who in their 20s, 30s, 40s and even late 50s, who go on to provide great testimonials. Age is clearly no longer the issue.

So, How Do I Get Featured in Press?

Now the magic question comes – “So how exactly do I get featured in media?” I’ve lined this out into a simple, easy to follow 3 step formula. Let’s explore each step.

1. Create an absolutely enticing news story.

This is the most important step out of the 3 steps. The newsworthiness of your news angle is going to pretty much determine if your story gets featured or not. Newsworthiness means how intriguing your story is to others. Reporters are always on the lookout on what’s the latest and most exciting in the world now. If you can offer them a news story that’s absolutely irresistible and “breakthrough”, they will want to cover it.

To do that, it doesn’t mean that you have to be elected into the White House, win the Oscar or invent the vaccine for H1N1. Coming up with a good news angle just takes some element of creativity. Think about what the readers of the particular press are interested in. Your message should be one that appeals to the readers. Check out the previous editions to get a sense of the kind of stories they like to run. Coming up with an excellent news angle may mean creating a story or a movement out of nothing. (i.e., launching a new book which the world has never been seen before, doing something really viral and unique). Checkout 25 Brainstorming Techniques for 25 different ways to brainstorm for out-of-the-box ideas.

Think about these questions – What is so unique about you and what you are doing? What sets you apart from everyone else in your industry? Why should everyone know about you/your business? These should be related to your Unique Selling Proposition, which is a fundamental strategy for anyone who wants to succeed in their business/blog. (If you don’t have a USP defined yet, spend some time to craft it out first!)

I’ve learned from my media coverage that one of the best ways to create a newsworthy story is to use your personal story. Everyone has their story to tell. What’s unique about yours? My personal story was that I ditched my USD $50K/year Fortune 100 career to pursue my passionto help others live their best life, all at the age of 24. There were 3 big reasons how this was newsworthy:

1) I completely went against all types of social norms in my country (I live in Singapore which has an Asian culture and largely conformist tendencies). The most common values among Asians are financial stability and job security. Many people typically put money first and see the pursuit of passion as a luxury. Yet, I did the compete opposite – I put my passion before money. To many around me, what I did was deemed as bold, courageous, vivacious, somewhat defiant, possibly crazy, or inspiring even. Whatever it was, it was definitely not ordinary.

2) What made the story even more unconventional was I had a highly coveted career in a Fortune 100 company. Companies on the Fortune 100 list are highly prestigious and sought after by employees. I tossed away what society considered to be a conventional, golden path – right when the recession was kicking into full gear, no less! – for my passion.

3) My previous salary of USD $50K/year was considered to be high in my country, especially at my age. The average paycheck of my peers would be around half of that. People typically look upon one’s salary as an indication of one’s worth and have a habit of comparing earnings with others, especially in Asia. By very transparently and openly putting my salary right smack in my press release title, it was a great way to catch the eye of editors.

How about you? What’s your story and what makes it newsworthy? Here are some helpful articles on how to create a newsworthy story:

Get Your Message Out: Pitch Your Story

What Makes Something Newsworthy

How to Find a Newsworthy Story Angle

Spend some time to get your news angle right, and don’t even proceed to the next step unless you are absolutely sure that you have a totally irresistible news angle to pitch.It was after some brainstorming that I finally arrived at my final idea. Before that, I just refused to move to the next step because I didn’t think the ideas were strong enough. If you don’t have a highly newsworthy story to begin with, you will just be wasting your time with the next 2 steps.

Note: As you create a newsworthy story, remember to stay true to the core message and theme of your blog. While the thought of getting coverage is definitely very enticing, don’t become so eager that you lose sight of the original intent of your blog. You can certainly get featured on the press if you do something totally out of the world like running around naked in the middle of the expressway during peak hours, but that isn’t going to get you the kind of coverage you want.

2) Write Your Press Release.

After you have come up with an absolutely enticing news story, the next step is to write the actual press release. If you don’t have the luxury of a PR team (which would include me and probably most bloggers), you need to get down and dirty and write the release yourself. It’s not such a bad thing since you have complete control of how it’s written. Here are some links to check out on how to write a press release, complete with template samples:

How to Write a Press Release (PR Web Direct)

How to Write a Press Release (Publicity Insider)

Be sure that the press release you write is your absolute best and vet it repeatedly for mistakes before you move to the next step.

3) Send it to everyone u can reach

After writing the press release, it’s now time to send it to all the editors. Some people probably prefer to select a few key channels and send to those. My personal motto is to just use the shotgun approach of Ready – Fire – Aim. Since you have already taken some time out to write the release, might as well just send it to as many (relevant) channels as possible and let them decide if they want to run the story. This includes newspapers, magazines, online portals, or even radios and TV if you are interested. You can easily get the contacts from their websites or just by looking through the papers and magazines for the email addresses.

After Sending the Press Release

At this point, there’s nothing you can do but wait. You might want to get the phone number and give a call to just check if they received your press release. Depending on how popular the media channel is, the editors can receive anywhere from tens to even thousands of press releases every day, so a follow-up call might be good just to bring their attention to your release. Personally, I never did any follow-up since I got their repsonses quite promptly.

Usually, if your story has been picked for publishing, you will be notified anywhere from within the day to maximum 1 week. It depends on the type of stories they have planned for their papers and when they are running those stories. Beyond 1 week, it’s safe to assume that your press release has not been picked.

If You Are Called For An Interview

If you are contacted for an interview, congratulations! The reporter will either interview you over the phone or schedule a time/date for a face-to-face interview. If you are getting a decent feature, they will probably arrange for a photo shoot. I had done a series of phone interviews, face-to-face interviews and photo shoots where the photographers come down to my house, since my room is pretty much my ‘office’ where I write my blog.

Throughout the interview, be clear on your message you want to drive home (whether it’s on publicizing your blog/business, establishing your expertise, etc), and articulate it clearly and concisely. You can’t control how the story is being written, but you can increase chances of your message being featured by being singly-focused in your delivery during the interview. Be professional, open and personable as you share your thoughts.

At the end of the interview, check with the reporter on when the feature is coming out and whether they will be featuring the URL. The caveat is most press don’t feature web addresses as it is seen as a form of advertising. Try to rope their help in publishing the URL. Even if it can’t be published, the world doesn’t end there. People are smart – Many people went online to search for my name in Google or Facebook after reading about my coverage and eventually found me and my personal development blog. Bottomline is, if the coverage resonates with the reader, the reader will find ways to find you. ;)

Getting the Coverage!

Of course, things don’t end after the interview is out. Here are some things to do after that:

• 1 day before the coverage is out, do an mass announcement on your blog and to all your friends. Let them know that your feature is coming out and prep them up. This helps create hype and excitement!
• Enjoy the new stream of traffic and opportunities you will get on the day of the feature. :D I remember I was getting new emails by the minute when my first feature was out.
• With the article out, leverage on it. Create a media section and use it as an archive for your media features. Share it with your readers through an announcement. Include it as part of your elevator pitch if you want. I put a reference to my press/media features in a corner of my header, so new visitors can immediately see that.
• Maintain good connections with the reporters and media houses for future collaborations
• Continue to create new stories for coverage in the future. Be on the lookout for newsworthy things you can do to get ongoing coverage. The good thing is, once the first coverage is in, subsequent ones will typically get easier. Out of all my coverages, some of them were solicited, and some were initiated by the reporters who read about me either through the existing coverage or other channels.

What to do if you didn’t get any coverage?

If you didn’t get any responses in your first attempt, don’t feel dismayed. Go back and review the 3 steps above. Was your news story enticing? Was your press release well-written? Did you send the release to as many different media as you can find? Check against the stories that have been running in the particular news channel for the past 1-2 weeks and try to spot the differences between those stories and your stories. Why were those stories being run and not yours? How can you create a story that’s more newsworthy than any of those? From there, refine your story. There’s some possible reasons. Sometimes, it might be the theme of your story wasn’t aligned with the type of topics the press wanted to run at the time.

Whatever it is, work on improving your news angle and your press release. You might want to improvise on what you have now, or totally work on a new angle (which might be needed if your original news angle was time-sensitive, which meant it would be outdated in due course). Then, wait for about 2-months before you send your new press release to send to the editors. The reason for 2-months is because you don’t want to overwhelm the editors with your submissions. You don’t want to get to end up having your email blacklisted in their address books.

Don’t give up – as long as you keep trying and doing, you are bound to get better and better. Here’s a favorite quote on mine on success: ìSuccess is not built on success. Itís built on failure. Itís built on frustration. Sometimes itís built on catastrophe.î – Sumner Redstone Chairman. As long as you keep working on it, you will reap the fruits of your labor in time to come.

Hope this article has been helpful to you in getting your press release :D . I’ll love to connect with you, so please let me know what you think!

Celestine Chua chose her passion over money when she left her high paying Fortune 100 career in 2008. she dedicates herself to helping others others achieve their goals and dreams through her popular personal development blog CelestineChua.com and 1-1 life coaching.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How To Get Featured By the Press (Repeatedly) Even If Your Blog is New

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Over the last few days I’ve read a few comments here on Problogger from bloggers who are feeling low because they’ve noticed a plateau or even a decrease in the traffic coming to their blog.

While we all want to see our traffic rise the reality is that every blog has days, weeks and even months where traffic levels out or even decreases. This can be quite distressing for bloggers who have big hopes and dreams for their blogs.

Today I’d like to look at some of the reasons a blog’s traffic might decrease and suggest some ways forward for each of them.

1. Seasonal Traffic

If you’re still in the first year of your blog you are yet to see what a full calendar year looks like in terms of traffic for your niche. Most niches have natural rises and falls in traffic.

For example (see below for a chart of visitor numbers) on my photography tips blog we see spikes in traffic in December and January. December’s traffic boost is generally to do with people researching new cameras to buy and January is generally associated with people working out how to use cameras that they got for Christmas. On the flip side we often see dips in traffic over August to October.

What to Do: The first time you see a seasonal rise or fall in traffic it can be quite confusing – however the key with it is to not panic when you see a dip but to identify opportunities to maximize the rises and to minimize the falls.

For example it might be that you need to tailor your content for certain times of year and what people are doing in relation to your niche.

For me on my photography blog this meant writing content in November-December on how to buy a digital camera (to capitalize on the Christmas buying trend), writing beginner photography tips in January (to capitalize on the trend of people looking for tips on how to use their new cameras) and during low seasons (like July when it’s summer in the US) writing topical tips like Beach Photography Tips or How to use a camera in the Bright Sun.

Another Tip – one great free tool for looking at seasonal traffic is to use Google Trends to analyze what people are searching the web for. For example if I type in ‘digital cameras’ I get this chart:

There’s lots of interesting stuff in this (the downward trend for starters) but it clearly shows what I’ve observed above – more people are searching the web for that term from November-December each year. This information could confirm a suspicion you have or help you identify a trend to capitalize on in your niche.

Further Reading: Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture it for your Blog.

2. Topical Interest

At other times of year traffic events can be triggered by other current events. For example I know one music blogger who has had a lot of traffic this past few weeks simply because they’d previously had a lot of content that ranked well in Google on Michael Jackson. Of course in coming months as the news of Jackson’s death subsides it’s likely that they’ll see some declines in traffic.

What to Do: The key with topical rises and falls in traffic is to try to capture as much of the rush of traffic as you can so that when the decline comes you’ve got new subscribers/readers to your blog (see further reading below on ’sticky blogs).

It’s also important to be aware of upcoming events in your niche and writing content in anticipation of that. This can be hard in predicting the death of a mega pop star like Jackson but in different niches it’s possible to predict events.

For example - before the Athens Olympics I was involved in running a blog where we wrote a post in advance of the Olympics for every single event in the games. The posts included athletes names and any information we could get on the events. We updated the posts with results once they events had been run. As a result we were consistently ranking very highly for ‘Event name Results’ when people were searching for winners of events in Search Engines.

Further Reading: How to Create a Sticky Blog

3. Posting Frequency

One common reason for lulls in traffic is that a blog has had a lull in new content being published. I saw one blogger writing a post recently about how their blog was failing to gain traction and in the comments of the post a reader pointed out that the blogger had hardly been posting. The reality was that the blogger had produced very little to be read and so people were not visiting.

What to Do: Posting more doesn’t guarantee extra traffic but it can be a factor to consider. Chart your last few months of posts and see if there’s any correlation to rises and falls in your traffic – you might identify a trend!

Worth noting is that some bloggers report that when they post LESS that they actually get more traction with readers. I know of one blogger who was posting 10-20 times a day and when he dropped things back to 2-3 posts a day he noticed not only increases in comment numbers per post but that his posts were being shared more on social media sites. At 10-20 posts a day posts were coming off the front page of his blog so much that readers hardly had a chance to read and share them.

Further Reading: What is the Ideal Post Frequency for a Blog?

4. Shifts in Search Rankings

Many blogs see the way that they are ranked by Google (and other search engines) rise and fall over the years.  

A Personal Example – Back in 2004 (just before Christmas) I woke up one day to find that my main blog at that time had all but disappeared from Google. I’d not done anything to the blog that wasn’t allowed by Google and hadn’t made any major changes to the site – I just disappeared. My heart sank (actually I felt quite sick) because that blog was the main source of income from my blogging and 75% of my traffic had vanished.

The lull in traffic lasted about 6 weeks before it magically reappeared. In that time I got myself another job and diversified my blogging and learned a lot.

What to Do: Sometimes search engines change their algorithms and occasionally they seem to lose sites from their rankings for no apparent reason. The key with this type of loss of traffic is to not panic, make sure you’re abiding by Google’s guidelines (not selling text links or doing anything else considered to be black hat) and then  apply for re-inclusion using Google’s webmaster tools.This has happened to me a couple of times over the years and each time the traffic came back – it wasn’t quite as good as when it disappeared but things seemed to right themselves.

Further Reading: Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers

5. Poor Quality Posts

Of course another factor to consider when looking at the traffic to your blog is whether you’re actually building a valuable site for readers and producing high quality, engaging and useful content.

This one can be a little confronting to think through and might take you getting an outsiders critique or feedback (sometimes it’s hard to be objective about something you’ve put so much work into). As I look back on my own blogging I know there have been definite times where traffic has suffered when I’ve struggled for inspiration as a blogger and where this has impacted the quality of what I was able to write.

On the flip side there have been times where I’ve been inspired to write series of posts that have connected with readers and helped them in practical ways which has driven a lot of traffic to my sites.

What to Do: Ask yourself (and others around you):

• Are You Being Relevant and Useful to Readers?
• Is your blog helping your readers by providing them with value, solving their problems, entertaining them or giving them a sense of community?

If the answer is no then it is likely to impact the number of people reading it.

Further Reading: How to Write Great Blog Content

6. Promotional Activities

As I look at some of the rises and falls in traffic to my blogs I know that some of them can be directly tied to my own marketing and promotion of my blogs (or the lack of promotion that I’ve done).

Writing great content doesn’t guarantee a blog’s success. You can’t just build it and expect that ‘they will come’. Sometimes you need to get out there and promote yourself.

Perhaps the lull in traffic on your own blog is partly to do with taking your foot off the accelerator in your own marketing.

What to Do: This means different things for different blogs but could include investing into social media sites like Twitter, promoting your posts to other bloggers, networking with other bloggers, running a competition on your blog, leaving comments on other blogs and forums, guest posting on other sites, doing promotions in main stream media, doing some giveaways….. etc

Further Reading: How to Find Readers for Your Blog.

Keep Moving Forward – Don’t Give Up

There are many other potential factors that could be at play (I invite you to share others below) but the key is to not be paralyzed by the declines and plateaus in traffic that you experience but to spend a little time trying to identify the reasons and then keep on motoring on with your blog.

You can see from the first chart above that my photography blog has had quite a few months where traffic has plateaued and dipped – but I’ve kept to the vision that I have for the site and continued to keep working. A decrease in traffic from one month to the next is not pleasant but it’s not the end of your blog. If I’d allowed the dips to determine whether I’d keep blogging or not I’d probably have lasted 2-3 months on that blog and failed to see it grow to the point that it has.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It]

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Over the last week or so I’ve had the opportunity to see inside the MyAds from MySpace.

MyAds have been an advertiser here on ProBlogger for a month or two now (consider that a disclaimer) so I wanted to see for myself how it worked. What I found was a very easy to use and pretty affordable way to advertise a product, service or even your blog.

In short – MyAds is a pay per click banner advertising system where you can advertise on MySpace and get your message in front of potentially millions upon millions of MySpace users.

You can use it with an advertising budget of as little as $5 a day and have a pretty good looking ad set up to run within just a few minutes using their ad building tool (or you can upload your own using an uploader).

Worth noting before we go any further is that to run a campaign you need a US address and credit card. As someone without either of these I could only go as far as designing an ad and testing out the targeting features. I did however talk to a number of MyAds advertisers to get their feedback (see below).

Setting up an ad is easy. Even me as a design challenged guy got one set up in a few minutes. I put a mock ad together for my 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook. Here’s a screenshot of the page where you set up the ads (click to enlarge):

As you’ll see there are three ad size options and it’s as simple as typing in your ad copy, adding an image, choosing a background color and adding in a destination URL.

You can then preview your and move on to working out who you want to see it as well as setting a budget.

On the following screenshot you’ll see the section to choose your target audience:

As you make your choices about who you want to see the ad the grey area the bottom of the screen changes. It shows you how many users on MySpace will potentially see your ad as well as giving you a suggested bid price for how much the ad might cost per click to run.

The targeting options look pretty good – not only can you target by demographics (gender, age, education, relationships, parental status and location within the US) but you can also choose categories of interests and occupations of the type of person you want to reach with your ad. I tried a number of options and got the target number of people to reach quite focused and the suggested cost per click quite a bit lower than what you see in the above screenshot.

This enables you to increase the chances of conversion with your ad quite considerably.

All in all from where I stand MyAds seems like something that I’d like to use if I were running an ad campaign for a product, service or even to launch a new blog. I’ve previously used similar ad systems on other social networks with some success and the easy of use of MyAds plus what looks like great targeting make it an attractive option.

How Does it Perform? Testimony from a Heavy User of MyAds

As I was unable to go much further in the process (as a non US resident) I approached a number of people to get their feedback on the ads. One of those I talked with was Joe Frevola from Globalizer who uses MyAds quite extensively. I asked Joe a number of questions to get his insight on the why and how of MyAds:

How have you used MyAds and How has it performed?

Globalizer uses Myspace MyAds to buy media for our GlobalizerNetwork advertisers. We have had tremendous success with several campaigns on MySpace and have been impressed with its powerful targeting tools, which we have utilized to target the demographics and interests of our audience.

In comparison with Facebook, it’s hard to pick a clear cut winner and both should be a part of your media buy in most cases. Each has advantages and disadvantages and the best choice of the two will vary based on the type of campaign you are running.

While MySpace’s targeting tool is more organized and allows you to select keywords sorted by categories and sub categories, Facebook’s keyword search tool allows you to access a more robust database of target interest. MySpace does have useful demographic targeting that you can’t get with Facebook, such as the ability to specifically target mothers or recently married individuals.

Both MySpace and Facebook have solid targeting tools that should allow you to push positive ROI. While the Facebook ad platform is global, you can only target US users on MySpace currently, however word is MySpace is adding new countries later in the year. I would highly recommend the use of both ad networks to just about any advertiser.

Do you have any tips for using MyAds to share with ProBlogger readers?

There are some tricks to getting the most out of MySpace MyAds. Globalizer runs a lot of lead generation campaigns that drive a very high response, but don’t pay high bounties per conversion and therefore don’t allow us to pay very high CPC’s.

Often, when you start a campaign with a very low CPC, the ads delivers very little or no volume at all. We find that in order to kick start this sort of campaign, we overpay on CPC in the beginning and fully expect to take a short term loss as MySpace’s optimization system values the quality of our offers.

In the end, the system just wants to back into the highest eCPM, so the fact that our ads are driving very high click through rates more than compensates for the lower CPC. Once the campaign starts getting significant delivery, we are able to adjust our rate down to a profitable number and continue to experience a great a volume of traffic.

Also, when you first start running a new campaign on MySpace, definitely go with your gut and select targets that you feel will have the best chance of success with your offer. However, don’t neglect to test various demographics that you might not think would typically perform with your ads. You will often be surprised at the demos that respond to your offers.

Get $50 Credit with This Code

If you’d like to test MyAds for yourself (IF you’re in the US) they’ve given me a coupon code for ProBlogger readers to try it out and get $50 credit to use in doing so. You need to be new to MyAds to redeem it (ie if you’ve already used MyAds it’s not redeemable).

To use it – just design an ad and at the end of the process use the coupon code of Pro50. Of course this is only for those who are residents of the US and have US address and credit card details.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

MyAds: Promote Your Blog, Product or Service on MySpace

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Put $50 towards some ads in an AdSense campaign and maybe you’ll get a few hundred click-throughs. What if that same $50 could get you over 12,000 pageviews, plus a mention in the British newspaper the Guardian. Here’s how I did it.

Photo by vinduhl

50 to 12,000

Some back-story: I’m making a documentary on life hacking (finding shortcuts in everyday life to get the boring stuff done quicker), and with that I have an accompanying blog and podcast.

A few months back I was reading a profile on the author Will Self. He made a comment about how he still enjoys using a typewriter because it forces you to write differently and not edit yourself.

I’m always trying different ways of writing, and being in Gen-Y I’ve always had a word processor to punch out essays and articles, so I’ve never had the experience of writing on a typewriter.

I figured there must be a program out there that mimics the behavior of a typewriter, something basic like WriteRoom that wouldn’t let you delete or insert words.

I did a search and came up with nothing. However, the idea of a very minimal text editor that was so archaic it wouldn’t let you delete stuck with me. I figured it was in the spirit of the film, so it would be something cool to share on the site and see what people make of it. And like the blog posts and podcasts, hopefully it would be something people would spread around and help promote the film.

I have no programing experience, so I turned to Elance, the great freelance site where you can hire anyone from virtual assistants to graphic designers to programmers.

I posted the job for a programmer to make this minimal text editor, waited around for a bid that was in my price range, and finally got the minimum $50 bid. After hiring we went back and forth with tests and notes, and about a week later I had the creatively named program Typewriter.

I posted it to the site. A few days went by and not much activity; a few mentions here and there, but nothing big. Then the hit I was hoping for came.

It was posted on Lifehacker. In one day I got 5000 pageviews, plus mentions on dozens of other blogs (it was sad to see how many would just copy the entire Lifehacker post verbatim).

This traffic boost led to more subscribers and sales, plus a greater awareness of the film and blog. And I’m still only $50 out of pocket.

Blog to Newspaper

That Saturday night I got another surprise. One of my Google alerts showed my name mentioned in an article in the Observer, a weekly paper that’s part of the Guardian. It was about the author’s first experiences with word processors, a story prompted by Typewriter the program, which was mentioned at the end (my name popped up when Will Self’s quote was misattributed to me).

At first I thought this was just some online blog on the Observer’s site, but I soon discovered that this was in the actual printed edition, distributed around the world.

It’s been a little over 2 weeks since the post went live, and the post alone has gotten over 12,000 pageviews, not to mention traffic to the rest of the site. All for just $50.

Ideas for your Ideas

Here are some ways you can use what I did to help your own blog and projects:

• Ideas are cheap to make into a reality. I think the beauty in all of this is that it’s so cheap and easy to implement an idea and see if it sticks. If you have an idea that you have the slightest belief that there might be something there, just do it. Throw it out into the interweb and see what happens.
• Think beyond your traditional content. As I said I have no programming experience. Plus my blog is about a movie, yet a piece of software became a hit. With Elance and other freelance networks, if you can imagine it someone can implement it (and for not that much). Make an iPhone app. Design an eBook or cool poster as a unique interpretation of your content. Read lots of stuff, related and unrelated to your blog, and keep an open mind and eye.
• Offer it for free. If I didn’t offer Typewriter for free I don’t think it would have been nearly as popular. Sure, maybe I could have made a couple bucks, but I’m a filmmaker, not a software developer, and goal number one of the program was to promote the film and blog.

I hope you found something useful in this post, and hopefully it gave you some ideas of your own. Now go make them a reality.

Joey Daoud is a filmmaker and freelance photographer finishing You 2.0, a documentary on life hacking. He also writes about film and photography on his blog Coffee and Celluloid.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How I got 12,000 Pageviews for $50

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I should note the most people who approach me about guest posting do it right – so if you’re one of them this post is probably not about you!

1. Using Someone Else’s Content

One of the stupidest things you can do when submitting a post to someone else’s blog is to use someone else’s content. You might laugh, but I’ve had this happen to me numerous times. On one occasion the guest post submitted was extra familiar – it was something I’d published years ago on my original blog!

2. Using Content Published Elsewhere

Don’t submit a post that you’ve already posted on your blog (or that you intend to publish on your blog in the future). This is one of the more common problems I have with guest posts. I’m not sure if people do it intentionally to try to get away with it or that they’re unaware – but having the same content appear in multiple places on the web doesn’t help anybody rank well for that content in Google. Write and submit something unique. If you do intend to post something in multiple places make sure you get the approval of the blogger first.

3. Poor Quality Writing

Let me start by saying that I understand not everyone has the same ability in this department. Let me also say that you don’t need to be the most brilliant at spelling or grammar to be a successful blogger – however one of the main reasons I reject content is around the quality of writing.

4. Content that Isn’t Useful

Successful blogs are blogs that are useful to people in one way or another. As a result successful guest posts are posts that meet needs, answer questions that people have or that solve problems. If your content is not much more than a 500 words that do barely more than touch the topic of the blog you’re unlikely to connect with the audience or make an impression upon the blogger.

5. Self Promotional Content

The main reason that you as a guest poster are likely to engage in guest posting is to get exposure to a wider audience. That’s pretty well understood by everyone – however sometimes posts go too far and become more about the guest poster than anything else. If you’re going to use links back to your own blog inside the post (as opposed to just a byline) then make sure they’re completely relevant to the post itself and useful to readers. If you’re too self promotional you’re less likely to have your post accepted and if it is you could end up hurting your reputation with those who read the post. Read more on this at When Guest Posts Become Too Self Centered.

6. Irrelevant Content

One of the things that surprises me most about some of the guest post submissions that I get is that they don’t relate to the topic of my blog. One submission for a guest post that I received last week was for a post titled ‘10 Ways to Prepare for a Job Interview’. The post itself was quite good – however considering they wanted it to be published here on ProBlogger….. it was a complete waste of both my time and the author of the post’s time to submit it to me. While this is a fairly extreme example many submissions that I receive show a lack of understanding of the topic of the blogs that they are asking for a guest post on. The more tailored your post is for the audience of the blog you want to appear on the better.

7. Topics that Have Been Published on Recently

Another reason that I regularly reject guest posts for is simply that the posts submitted are on topics that I’ve recently covered on my blogs. This one is a little tricky because as a guest poster you’re not always fully aware of what the last month or two have seen published on a blog but a quick perusal of the archives or search for keywords will help you identify what has already been covered. Another quick tip to stop this happening is to email the blogger with a topic before writing it to see if it’s something they’re interested in.

8. Writing on Ideas that the Host Blogger Doesn’t Agree with

This is another tricky one that takes a little research to avoid but if you’re wanting to write on a topic that is a little controversial it can be worthwhile finding out what the blogger thinks about the topic before making your submission. There’s nothing wrong with a blog having different opinions shared on a topic – however if the blogger doesn’t agree with what you’re going to write (and has a different ideology) you might want to talk to them about how you can present an alternative point of view without it seeing as though you’re undermining them.

9. Demanding too Much

I have no problem with working with a guest poster to make sure that they benefit from their guest post and fit in with their needs – but occasionally I get submissions from potential guests who place such high demands on when and how their posts should appear that I give up. Remember that you’re a ‘guest’ publisher – while this doesn’t mean you should be walked all over by the blogger you should be polite and not too demanding.

10. Biting off More than You Can Chew

Sometimes I get amazing submissions from potential guest posters who suggest ideas for posts that are so big that they’re actually unable to achieve writing them. Often it’s about topic selection and choosing a topic that is simply too big. Other times it is about saying you’ll have a post ready by a deadline that is just not realistic. Be careful not to over promise or you could leave a blogger without a post on the day you said you’d have one ready.

11. Not Following Up a Post in Comments

This one is common. You’ve written a post, it’s accepted by the blogger, they publish it, readers respond in comments with their own ideas and questions….. and there is silence from you as the blogger. One thing that can help your guest post to stand out and be even more useful is to interact with those who read it. This not only goes down with the readers but it makes an impression upon the blogger. Similarly – another way to make an impression is to actually promote the posts you’ve guest posted. Tweet links to them, promote them on social media sites, link to them on your own blog etc. This all helps your blog to be more successful which helps everyone.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How NOT to Get a Guest Post Published on a Blog [in 11 Easy Steps]

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This is a guest post by Kevin Geary from This is Broken Blog, a blog exposing important things in our daily lives that are broken and need to be fixed. It’s entertainment and education. Come visit us to see more of what’s broken (and even submit your own ideas).

For every great blog promotion strategy, there are five that suck. Really suck. They suck so bad that using them can get you blacklisted by real bloggers, ignored by annoyed readers, unfollowed on Twitter, and possibly placed on the terrorist watch list.

Being successful is not just about doing the right things. Avoiding the wrong things is just as important. Nobody wants to take two steps forward and three steps back; especially in blogging where success is few and far between, often takes a long time to become successful, and has a gigantic Dip.

If you’re to have any chance at success, you need to protect your blog from yourself. Protect it from your lust for quick success, your desire to become a ProBlogger in six months, and your general blogging ignorance (if you’re new).

10 Blog Promotion Strategies to Avoid at all Costs

1. Leaving “great post” comments on other blogs.

One of the best ways to get readers to your blog early on is to leave comments on other blogs. Of course, there’s a right and wrong way to go about this. Here is an example of a good and bad comment, using ProBlogger’s comment section as an example.

Patrick O’Keefe recently wrote a guest post on ProBlogger titled “Enhance and Grow Your Online Community Through Appreciation“. Here are two comments from that post:

Shane wrote:

Very good post, thank you for writing it.

Baker Wrote:

I saw this first hand, but really I stumbled into it unintentionally. I put up a bumbling video of myself thanking everyone for allowing me to have over 6400+ visits in my first full month blogging. The video wasn’t great quality or presentation, but people realized it was very genuine and I received several comments and e-mails. Again, I wasn’t out to really benefit like this, but I realized a side benefit from my regular reader’s really connecting with the video. Thanks again for 31DBBB, it helped me so much in having a great start!

Shane, you’re comment is broken. Obviously, you got one of the top 3 spots (which drives a lot of traffic on a successful blog like ProBlogger). But where’s the sincerity? Where’s the realness? It’s a fake comment meant to do one thing, drive traffic. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and it’s a big no no.

Baker did it right.

When you leave comments on other blogs, remember these three things: sincere, relevant, and valuable.

2. Emailing random blog authors and asking them to link to one of your posts.

I made this mistake early in my blogging career. Needless to say, I got a lot of hate mail in return.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If your first impression is a spam-looking (no matter how good your intentions are) email to a random blog author trying to get them to link to your posts, you’re not going to make any friends.

Instead, find a way to add value to their blog and engage them with that in mind. They call it “link love” for a reason. Very few time-tested bloggers have sex on the first date. Build relationships slowly over time and you’re in like Flynn.

3. Asking random blog authors for a link exchange.

This goes along with number 2. Usually new bloggers will write to other bloggers and try to get them to place a link to their site in their blogroll in exchange for a link back. It’s a good way to build pagerank and get recognition, especially if you’re in the blogroll of a highly trafficked site.

But what’s a blogroll for? It’s to help readers find other quality sites on the same topic. Insincere link swapping devalues the goal of a blogroll.

Again, build that relationship. Add value. You get rewarded for being genuine, not for being hyperfocused on getting traffic.

4. Making Twitter all about you and your blog.

Twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Darren recognized that early and started TwiTip, a site that gives you tips on using Twitter effectively. Unfortunately, as Twitter gets more mainstream it’s going to lose value. That’s just the nature of free networking and exposure.

Twitter is my third highest source of traffic and I don’t have all that many followers. What I do have is important followers. Relevant followers. And I only follow relevant people who I actually care to hear from. That’s what Twitter was designed for. That’s what makes Twitter effective.

The people who are breaking Twitter (yes, it’s being torn down in terms of value as we speak) are the ones who use it to promote only themselves and only their blog. They’ll throw a retweet out there every once in a while and join in on a #followfriday session, but that’s about it. Their main goal is to drive traffic without adding any value. And who can blame them? It’s free and easy.

Let me give you a tip. Free and easy asks for abuse. Abuse is a great short term strategy. So is eating donuts for energy. But what happens when you get a big sugar spike? Crash. If you abuse Twitter and Facebook and others you’re going to crash as soon as people catch on to your antics. Shamless self-promotion on Twitter and social networking sites is a horrible long term strategy.

5. Joining forums simply for promotion.

See point number 4.

Forums are a great way to drive traffic to your site if you do it right. Don’t be a broken forum user. Put a tasteful link to your site in your signature and then make it your mission to interact the way the forum was designed. Be on the forum for the benefit of others and to further your own education, not to promote your blog. If you add value (see the trend), you’ll get the traffic.

6. Submitting all your posts to social media sites.

Are you a social media spammer? Do you have 70 social media buttons below your posts? Do you submit every post to most of them? It’s cheesy. Again, things that are free and easy get abused. It’s your job not to abuse them. Write great content and you’ll get recognized in time. If you force it, you’ll get recognized as the spammer you are and you can kiss success bye bye.

Instead, join the three most relevant social media sites and work to build value. Promote 10 times as much of other people’s material as you do your own. And don’t forget: sincere, relevant, and valuable.

7. Writing for search engines.

I want you to achieve the top spot on Google. Really, I do. But as a reader, I’m hungry for good content that’s sincere, smooth, and easily ingestible. Your keyword soup gives me the runs, in like, I run far away very fast.

If you write for the search engines and not for your readers, you’re going to get the top spot in Google. You’re going to get a lot of traffic and your adsense revenue is going to be great. But you’ll never have a great blog. You’ll never have a dedicated tribe of readers. You’ll never be a respected resource.

Search engine spiders aren’t going to give you good word of mouth. Neither are the strangers that find you on google who visit you once, hate your content, and leave.

Good content can and should be keyword dense. The trick is to do it without making my head spin. Copyblogger will teach you how it’s done.

8. Loading your site up with badges to all the social media communities you joined overnight.

Have you ever been to a blog that has a sidebar full of social media and social networking profile links? They’re on just about everything. On top of that, they throw in a big mybloglog widget and an entrecard widget.

You can be a jack of all social media sites, but you’ll end up being a master of none. Besides that, it’s just a bunch of clutter to your readers. Google beat out Yahoo because Google was simple and Yahoo was hectic. Do you want your readers to focus on the content or to focus on everything BUT the content?

Zen Habits is the master of simple. You have no choice but to read his content because there’s nothing else to do. And look at his subscriber count. Take a hint. There’s no way you can add value to a hundred social media profiles. Be selective and go for clean.

9. Copying someone else’s style or idea.

The easiest way to look creative is to not be creative at all. There’s enough creative out there that you can just copy and paste and people will probably never be the wiser.

And I’m not talking about lifting content from other blogs. That should be an obvious no-no. What I’m talking about is finding a successful blog and copying their overall style and even parts of their design. If I look like them, I’ll have their success. No, you won’t. You can never be more original than the original. Think about how that affects readers…

If they like the original, they’ll stick with the original. If they don’t like the original, they’re not going to go for a copy cat. You lose both ways. When you copy what your competitors are doing, you ensure that you’ll never pick up any market share.

If you want to be the best, you have to stand out. Figure out what everyone in your niche is doing and do the opposite.

10. Using search engine auto-submitters.

Have you seen these things? Get your site indexed on 50000000000000 search engines instantly!

This isn’t particularly bad, it’s just a waste of time and money. It’s not necessary. The only search enginge you need to target is Google and getting your site indexed is free and easy.

Use Google’s Webmaster Tools, get a sitemap plugin, write great titles and great content, and get “link love” by building relationships and adding value to other people’s projects. That’s all you have to do to own Google search. Throw the gimmicks out the window and focus on sincere, relevant, and valuable.

I know there are more broken strategies out there. I had fun talking about the top 10. Now I want you to expose more of them in the comments section. Let’s see how many we can come up with. Go.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies

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One of the ways that many successful blogs build a readership and profile is by spending significant time and energy building up a presence on other websites. Whether this be forums, social bookmarking sites (like Digg or StumbleUpon), social messaging sites (like Twitter), other blogs or any other type of site – time invested in other websites can be a great way to build your own brand.

However…. spending time on other sites can also be a complete waste of time.

A trap that I see many bloggers falling into (and have fallen into myself) is sinking significant time into building a presence on sites without having really thought through two things:

1. Whether it’s the right site to build a presence on
2. What their strategy and purpose is for being on the site

Perhaps I’m describing myself more than you here – but many of us as bloggers tend to DRIFT around the web from site to site without any real direction or purpose.

20 minutes onTwitter, 5 minutes on MySpace, 20 minutes reading other blogs on Google Reader, 30 minutes checking out photos of friends on Facebook, 20 minutes checking out the latest threads on our favorite forums, back to Twitter for 20 minutes, 15 minutes following links we found on Digg……..

It’s easy to get to the end of the day and wonder what it was that we really achieved. We aimlessly drift around the web and have very little to show for the time we spend.

Can you relate?

It is a pity that so many of us struggle with this problem because spending time on other websites has the potential to really build our blogs…. however for so many people it can end up being largely a waste of time.

Your Task Today

Today your task is to do something that some of us (yes I’m talking to myself here) will find difficult. Depending upon our personality type it could feel a little too rigid – however I ask that you humor me and see where the exercise takes you.

1. How Much Time Do You Have?

Work out how much time you have each day (or week) for spending time on other websites to build the profile of your blog. Remember that you need to also have put aside significant time to spend on your own blog (writing, interacting with readers etc).

2. Describe Your Desired Reader

Spend 10-15 minutes describing the type of person that you want to read your blog. For some of you this will include very specific things like demographics (age, gender, location) but for others of you it will be less specific. Your potential readers might be defined more as ‘beginner photographers’ or ‘people interested in learning the latest patch working techniques’ (ie a description based more upon people’s needs or behaviors).

3. Ask yourself this Question

“Where are my potential readers gathering online?” This is a key question be asking yourself regularly. If your goal is to build your blog you need to know what type of people you want to attract and to be on the look out for other sites where this type of people are gathering.

Of course this question is not easy to answer and it can take a lot of time to identify these types of sites. Let me give you some examples of how I’ve answered this question:

• Flickr – for me a site dedicated to photo sharing was an obvious place for me to have a presence when starting my photography site.
• Lifehacker – a blog with an audience with a techie interest but that was all about helping people with ‘hacks’ or tips. A logical place for me with all three of my blogs which hare ‘tips’ related blogs.
• Twitter – until recently Twitter has been mainly used by social media buffs – it’s a logical place for me to have a presence for ProBlogger and especially TwiTip.
• Forums – when launching ProBlogger I spent a lot of time on webmaster related forums like DigitalPoint and Webmaster World. When starting out with my photography blog I spent time on a lot of photography forums.
• Blogs – I still hang out on a lot of blogs related to my niches but particularly in the early days of my photography blog I was a daily commenter and occasionally guest poster on quite a few.
• StumbleUpon - image based posts tend to do really well on StumbleUpon – as a result it was a logical place for me to build a presence for my photography blog.

These were some of the places that related to my own blogs – for your niche/topic it’ll probably look quite different. Perhaps there are other social media sites (for example Facebook often has strong ‘groups’ on different topics or LinkedIn might be a more appropriate place to interact) or other types of sites that seem to attract your kinds of readers.

Keep in mind that you’re not just looking for other sites with your exact same niche/topic. For example, Lifehacker is not a blog about photography but it has a readership that overlaps with the type of people I want to read my photography blog. The Webmaster forums were not forums about blogging specifically – but they had a user group which would have had a % of people who operate blogs.

So don’t just identify sites in your own niche – look at related topics and whether there might be some kind of overlap between the readers that they have and what you’re looking to attract.

As I mention above – learning where your potential readers gather online is a long term search – but try to come up with at least a couple for the purpose of this activity.

4. What Opportunities are there to Build a Presence?

Once you’ve identified at least a couple of places that your potential readers are already gathering spend some time looking at what opportunities you might have on these sites to build your own blog’s profile.

The opportunities will again vary quite a bit from site to site. Some of them we’ve touched on earlier in the 31DBBB challenge and include:

I. Guest Posts – if it is a blog do they accept guest posts? Some blogs actively seek contributors (look for ‘write for us’ pages) while others don’t advertise it but do use reader contributions.

If you’re accepted as a guest poster pay particular attention to what types of posts work well on the site you’re writing for. Look at comment numbers and try to find out what types of articles might have done well previously on social media sites. Quite often the blogger will be willing to help you and give you examples of what has previously worked on their blog.

II. Submit Tips/News – similarly – some blogs rely heavily upon readers for story ideas and will give credit for the source. For example in the early days of my photography blog I was regularly emailing Engadget and Gizmodo when new cameras were released. I’d send them not only the news of new cameras but images that they could use. They didn’t always use my stories and link back but when they did it was a boost both to traffic, profile and SEO.

Quite a few blogs have links in their navigation areas inviting these types of tips and ideas for stories so don’t be afraid to use them.

III. Leaving Super Useful Comments – if there’s no way to share tips or write guest posts the comments section of another blog is a place that you can really build a profile. Don’t just leave quick pointless comments – go to some effort. I was speaking with one blogger recently whose strategy was to leave at least one post length comment on another blog each day.

By ‘post length’ comment they meant that they aimed to write at least one in depth comment of 500 words or more every day on another blog in their niche. The comment would extend the ideas in the posts they were commenting upon, share examples that made the posts deeper, added resources etc (not just with links back to their own blog. The strategy was to add comments that were attention grabbing by their usefulness.

The result was that the blogger was regularly asked by other bloggers to guest blog on their blog and that other readers began to visit their blog even though they rarely linked to it in their comments.

This same strategy can be used in forums. Start a new thread that is a tutorial or highly useful resources – people will want to know more about you if you do (more on this strategy of using Forums to promote your blog here).

IV. Making Connections/Building Your Network – if the site you’ve identified is more of a social networking or social bookmarking site then one strategy you’ll want to work on is making connections with others on the site. Set up an account and start making ‘friends’. Pay particular interest to making friends with other active users and people with shared interests.

It can also be well worth identifying key players or influential members on the site. Watch how they operate and look for opportunities to build relationships with them.

The key is to be a genuine participant on the site. To add value, to become a key member of the community. As you do this opportunities will arise that will allow you to promote yourself and your blog a little more.

V. Profile pages – Does the site have an opportunity to set up a profile page or have any ability to promote yourself in any way? On most social media sites and forums there is the ability to say something about yourself, share a link back to your blog, customize your presence with an avatar and/or background image and nominate some keywords as tags.

Try to keep your brand consistent across the different sites that you are building a presence on where you can. Also think about using a ‘landing page’ as the page that you link to rather than just the front page of your blog (read more on how I do this with a Twitter Landing Page).

VI. Signatures – If it’s a forum (or some other community site) you might have an opportunity to add a signature. My only tip with this is that sometimes less is more. Long, flashing or bright signatures can look quite spammy – so go for something tasteful and descriptive.

Other opportunities to promote your work exist on other sites. For example on Facebook you can promote your blog using a variety of applications that allow you to pull in your latest posts or list your blogs. See what other bloggers are doing and test to see if their strategies work for you too.

VII. Advertising – this won’t be for everyone but many sites will have opportunities to engage their readers with advertising. While this might sound very expensive there are quite a few sites that allow you to start ad campaigns that are quite affordable and with a small budget.

For example social media sites likeMySpace (disclosure: they are currently an advertiser on ProBlogger), StumbleUpon and Facebook all have advertising options that allow you to target specific demographics and even people with certain interests. They all allow you to set up campaigns with quite small budgets too.

Other types of sites might not have quite the same sort of ad opportunities but might be open to other types of advertising. If it’s another blog of a similar size to yours you might even approach the bloggers to do an ad swap – you put an ad on their blog and they put an ad on yours.

Further Reading: Run a StumbleUpon Campaign on your Blog (from the last 31DBBB challenge)

VIII. Volunteer to Help – if it’s a forum site that you’re wanting to spend time on there are often opportunities to help out by becoming a moderator. Most sites won’t take you on as a moderator straight away but contribute genuinely over time and there may be opportunity in this area. While you don’t want to abuse the privilege it – moderation status gives you a certain level of authority and profile on a forum.

5. Plan a Strategy

OK – so you’ve identified some sites where your potential readers are gathering, you’ve assessed some of the opportunities that exist to build your profile on these sites – the task now is to think a little strategically about what you’re going to do on these sites.

Don’t feel you need to have a highly developed plan or strategy – but jot down some of the following:

• How much time will you spend there? (prioritize which sites you want to spend more time on than others)
• What times of the week would be best to be active on this site? (sites have their own rhythms and some will be more active on some days/times than others).
• What types of things am I going to do on this site (which of the opportunities that you’ve identified in step #4 will you pursue?)
• Set yourself some goals. Again – they need not be highly formal but could include things like getting a guest post published, becoming a moderator, posting X number of comments a week, getting to know the owner of the site etc.

You can extend this step by actually planning out what an average day or week will look like for you as you go about your blogging. I know of a few bloggers who’ve gone as far as setting up a spreadsheet with each day and the hours on that day outlined. They then block out times for each day for certain activities. They fill up their most productive times of day with the most important activities (like writing content on their own blog) and then set aside time each day/week for spending time on other sites.

While this type of schedule might not work for everyone – I personally have used it at times where I’ve felt particularly ‘aimless’ with my time. Even doing it for a week or two can help you to develop more healthy habits online.

6. Analyze Your Current Activity

The last step in this task is to take a little tie to analyze what you’re currently doing with your time online.

• What sites do you spend time on already?
• Do these sites actually help to build your profile or could you be more effectively use your time elsewhere?
• Are you being effective with the time you spend on these sites?

I did some analysis on this 12 or so months ago. At the time I was sinking a lot of time into two main social media sites – Twitter and Plurk. While I enjoyed both I realized that it was Twitter that was a more effective place for me to be interacting. While I’d become a top 10 user on Plurk it wasn’t really as effective use of time for me so I decided to stop interacting there and focus my energies upon Twitter.

Note: I’m not arguing that everything you do online has to be productive and building your profile. Some of you use Twitter more as a social thing than to build your blogs and that is legitimate – however it is worth asking yourself the question and doing a little analysis of your online habits.

Lastly – Keep Balance

My last words of advice are to not become obsessed with building your profile on other people’s sites. I’ve seen a number of bloggers spend so much time building their presence on sites like Twitter that they fail to actually build up and develop their own blogs. Identify key sites to spend time on – but put your own blog at the top of the list and set aside as much (if not more) time for working specifically upon it.

6 Posts for Suggested Further Reading:

• Home Bases and Outposts – How I use Social Media in My Blogging – a post that outlines how I use social media sites as satellites around my blogs rather than the main activity. It’s about keeping perspective on why you’re using these other sites – to build your own home base.
• 10 Ways to Find Readers for Your Blog by Leveraging Other Online Presence – really what we’re talking about here in this post is building a presence on other people’s sites that you can leverage to build your own profile. This post shares 10 tips (some of which we’ve touched on above) for doing this.
• Using Social Media Sites to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic – a series of posts on social media marketing for bloggers.
• Grow Your Blog’s Readership By Targeting Readers – a similar process to the one I’ve outline above.
• Feeling Overwhelmed by Social Media? Here are 5 Tips for You – sometimes it feels like there is so much opportunity in the social media space – here are some tips on getting focused and making what you do count.
• 4 Social Media Marketing Tips for Bloggers [VIDEO]

Feel free to discuss here in the comments, or over at the forum post for this task.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Develop a Plan to Boost Your Blog’s Profile and Readership Online [Day 29 31DBBB]

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“Leave comments on other blogs.”

If there’s one piece of advice for building traffic to a blog that is given to new bloggers more than any other it is about leaving comments on other blogs.

Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better blog is to do just that – spend 10-15 minutes reading and interacting on other blogs on your topic (or surrounding topics).

The benefits of commenting on others blogs:

• You’ll be getting to know what other bloggers in your niche are doing
• You’ll hopefully read some great content that could spark ideas for your own blog
• You’ll be reaching out to another blogger in your niche (often comments are the start of fruitful relationships
• You’ll be creating a small doorway back to your own blog for the readers of that blog
• You’ll be building your own profile in your niche – it’s a chance to show your expertise, knowledge and understanding of the topic.

Warning!

It should go without saying but just having moderated the comments on my own blogs I suspect it needs to be said a day – DON’T BE A COMMENT SPAMMER!

More than that – DON’T LOOK LIKE A COMMENT SPAMMER!

I add that second warning because I come across a lot of bloggers who try to leave comments on other blogs in a way that they think is genuine – but that looks very spammy. Their comments more often than not get them on blacklists of comment spam filters.

The rule of thumb that I advise when leaving comments on other people’s blogs is simple – add value.

A comment that simply says ‘great post’ and that then has a link signature back to your own blog adds little if any value to the blog. It looks spammy. The only visitors you’ll get back to your blog are people wanting to know who the spammer is!

• Keep comments on topic
• Let your comment show that you’ve read the post
• Say what you like or don’t like about the post
• Add an example or another point that the blogger might have missed
• If you put a link back to your own blog in the comment try to make it a relevant one that adds to the post and will be useful to those who follow it.
• Ask a relevant and insightful question

Comments are Mini Resumes - Every comment you leave is like a mini resume for you and your blog (read more about that in the last point of Lorelle’s post on comments here).

Comments can Hurt Your Brand - On the flip side – every comment you write can potentially hurt your reputation and brand as a blogger. Here are 10 Ways that comments can actually do more harm than good to the brand of your blog.

Further Reading: I wrote a comment back in 2007 (which I think is still relevant today) with 11 Tips for Getting Your Comments Noticed on a Popular Blog.

Your task today is to find blogs on a similar or related topic to yours and to spend 10-15 minutes interacting on them in a genuine and useful way. Let us know how you go below (with a comment of course)!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Leave Comments on Other Blogs [Day 20 - 31DBBB]

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One of the questions I always get new bloggers to ask when it comes to finding readers for their blog is ‘where are your potential readers already gathering online?‘ One of the places I encourage them to go looking for those potential readers is on forums on related topics to your blog.

Forums are fantastic places for bloggers to participate for a number of reasons:

1. Profile Building – put consistent time into a large forum on your topic and you can build a significant profile in your niche. I’ve seen it happen in my own photography forum numerous times where people have produced such value and shown off their expertise that they’ve actually developed fans among other forum users.

2. Driving Traffic – create value and become a useful resource in a forum and people will want to know more about who you are and what you do via your signature and or profile page. You’ll also sometimes have opportunity to share some relevant links to things you’ve written.

3. Understanding Your Niche – the hidden benefit of joining a forum that many don’t talk about is that for a new blogger a forum can actually be a fertile ground for gathering ideas and understanding the needs of potential blog readers. Go to any forum and you’ll begin to see the same questions being asked over and over again. The questions actually annoy some regular forum members but you as a blogger should be taking note of such questions and writing posts that answer them because they are usually signals of problems and needs that people have on those topics. I know if I’m ever in need of a topic to write about on my blogs that forums are one of the first places that I go looking for topics.

Spend some time today searching for forums in your niche. Once you find them, join up and start participating. The key is to spend time being as useful as possible to the forum. Your main activity should NOT be leaving links to your blog but answering questions, making connections and generally being as useful as you can to other members of the forum.

Here are two posts on building a blog with Forum Traffic that you Should Read:

I could say a lot more about building your blog up by participating in forums – but we’ve covered the topic a few times on ProBlogger previously. Check out these two posts:

• Build Your Blog With Forum Traffic - a post where Skellie suggests 4 strategies on this topic.
• How to Use Forums to Drive Hundreds of Thousands of Readers to Your Blog – a story from an anonymous reader who built a successful blog using this technique.

Note: if you can’t find a forum on your exact topic look for them on related topics. If you can’t find any at all, perhaps it is a signal that you should start one at some point. Forums can actually be great additions to blogs.

Update: Day 9 – Promote Your Blog by Finding a Forum to Participate In – People are sharing and exploring this task together over at the forum… you could start there!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Join a Forum and Start Participating [Day 9 - 31DBBB]

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The task is simply to email a new reader (or more than one).

While the tip sounds simple – too simple – it is actually a technique that I used in the early days of this blog (ProBlogger) and it really helped build up reader engagement.

What I found is that when you pay personal attention to a reader it significantly increases the chances of them not only returning to your blog but also spreading the news of your blog through their network.

So look over the most recent comments left on your blog and identify a reader that you don’t recognise the details of. Shoot them a quick email thanking them for their comment.

Make sure you include a link back to your blog so they know who you are and make the email relevant to their comment (ie answer a question they asked or add to their comment in some way). You might also like to point them in the email to your RSS feed (converting them to a loyal reader). While there are some tools out there that email new comment leavers automatically for you – the more personal you can make it the better.

Two Ways to Take this Further and Make a Bigger Impression

The above technique can really be worth investing time each day into – but here are two ways that you can extend this:

1. To make an even greater impression if the person has left a link to their own blog in their comment click that link and leave a comment on their blog. Again – this is another technique that I used in their early days of my blogging and it was certainly a factor in getting the ball rolling for me in terms of building readership.

2. Another quick thing to do is to respond to the comment ON your blog. Sending the email is great on making an impression on the person themselves but leaving a comment in your own comment section shows other readers that you’re interested in engaging in conversation. It also helps build comment numbers which can build social proof and show your blog is active.

Rinse and Repeat

If you’ve got a few extra minutes today – do this with a handful of new readers – the more the better. I’d also highly recommend adding this task to your daily routine – 10-15 minutes a day on this task could make an impression on thousands of people a year.

This simple tip takes just a moment to do but can create a loyal long time reader. Do it at least once a day (or set yourself a higher target) and you’ll build your blog consistently over time.

Is this Tip Not SPECTACULAR Enough For You?

Last time I shared this tip with a fellow blogger they rolled their eyes at me and told me that they didn’t want to find just one more reader for their blog – they wanted hundreds or thousands.

This blogger failed to realize two things:

1. Loyal Readers Spread the Word - I’ve found that in many cases a single reader quickly becomes numerous loyal readers because when you make an impression on people it’s likely that they’ll spread the word about you. They do this through their own blogs, word of mouth, Twitter and other social networking sites.
2. Loyal Readers Build Page Views - One loyal reader can potentially view your blog hundreds (if not thousands) of times. A daily visit from that reader for a year brings an extra 365 page views to your blog. Gain an extra loyal reader every day for a full year and the numbers start to add up.

While there’s nothing wrong with attracting thousands of new readers to your blog quickly – the majority of times they’ll come and go very quickly.

Build loyal readers one by one on a daily basis and can be a lot more fruitful in the long run.

Don’t have any comments on your blog yet?

I know there are a number of very new bloggers doing this challenge that might not yet have people leaving comments on their blogs to email. If this is you – don’t worry, I have another mini task for you to do today.

Spend 10 minutes visiting other blogs on your topic and leaving relevant, helpful and genuine comments on their blogs. The more helpful your comments the better – make an impression with quality comments raises your profile and can potentially drive traffic to a blog.

Related Reading:

• 10 Techinques to Get More Comments on Your Blog – for those who are still trying to get readers commenting.
• Should You Respond to Comments via Email or in Comments – two options for interacting with readers – both have their place.

Update – Find out how others are doing with this task over at the forum! Day 5 – Email a Reader

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Email a Blog Reader [Day 5 - 31DBBB]

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Today we’re going to take that post and attempt to drive some readers to it.

Today’s Teaching on Promoting Blog Posts:

Blog Promotion is something that most bloggers have tried to do in many ways – however one mistake that I see a lot of bloggers making in their attempts to find new readers is that they only ever promote their blog as a whole. Their promotion is all about driving traffic to their blogs home page URL.

While there’s nothing wrong with this – I personally have had A LOT more success in promoting individual posts than my blogs front page. That’s what we are going to do today.

Having hit publish on your post yesterday – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Be more proactive than that and spend a little time today giving it some ‘nudges’ to help it on its way.

I know quite a few have already done some of this by leaving a link on our previous post promoting your link (some of your are reporting quite good traffic from doing it) but lets go a step further and find some ways to promote your post in other networks outside of ProBlogger.

11 Ways to Promote a Blog Post

note: please be careful in using these techniques. Don’t use them all with every post you write. Choose your best posts and promote them selectively and in ways that are useful to other people.

1. Pitching Other Bloggers - asking another blogger to consider linking to your post. note: there’s a real art to this – read more on how to do it at 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger.

2. Social Messaging – what social networks like Twitter and Facebook are you a part of? Attempt to leverage these to promote your post. The key is not to incessantly spam your followers and friends with your link – but use your network to ’seed’ the link and let your followers spread word of it for you (this won’t happen every time but as your network grows it can become more and more powerful).

3. Social Bookmarking - promoting selective links on a site like Digg or StumbleUpon can lead to amazing results. Further reading on this topic at How to Get to the Front Page of Digg and Using Social Media Sites to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic.

4. Internal Links – don’t just promote your post on other people’s sites – think about where you can link to it from within your own site. Perhaps you’ve written on the topic before and can add a link for further reading, perhaps adding a section in your sidebar for ‘latest posts’ could work. Internal linking won’t drive heaps of new traffic but it can help with SEO and increase page views.

5. Newsletters - if you have an email newsletter list – shoot out an email to your list about your latest post.

6. Other Blogs Comments Sections and Forums – leaving helpful and insightful comments on forums or other blogs can be great at driving traffic if your comment is genuine, relevant and sensitive to the discussion. Leaving a link is sometimes also appropriate if highly relevant.

7. Email Signatures – Adding links to your blog to your outgoing emails is fairly common place – but whatever including links to recent posts instead of just your blog’s front page URL.

8. Followup Posts – write a new post on your blog that picks up where your last one left off. This builds momentum and if you inter-link the posts drives more page views.

9. Advertise Your Post – for posts that you’re particularly proud of and that are well received by readers you might even consider a mini ad campaign with a small budget using a service like AdWords or StumbleUpon advertising. Further Reading on this at Run a StumbleUpon advertising campaign on your blog.

10. Pitch Mainstream Media – occasionally posts will be relevant to mainstream media. You want to really pick a highly interesting post for this – it’s not something for every day.

11. Article Marketing – I wouldn’t recommend submitting exactly the same article you’ve posted on your blog to article marketing sites (this can get you into trouble with Google penalties for duplicate content) but I know of a few bloggers who rewrite their key articles for article marketing.

Of course there are many other ways to promote posts. Feel free to tell us how you do it in comments below.

Please note: don’t do all of the above things for every single post on your blog. I personally tend to pick 1-2 posts a week to give a push and let others grow organically.

Today’s Task – Promote a Post:

Take a little time to look at yesterdays post and ask yourself where it might be appropriate to promote it. If you look at the post and don’t think that it is really worthy of promotion anywhere – feel free to choose another relevant post to do it with. If you don’t have one – spend some time today writing something that you feel IS link worthy and then try promoting that.

For most of you I’d start with point #1 above – pitching to other bloggers. Choose another blog with highly related content to your post and politely submit it as a suggested link to that blog. Again – check out 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger for tips that will help increase the likelihood of it being successful.

Feeling Timid?

I know that many new bloggers often feel quite timid and wary of promoting themselves. Don’t worry – you’re not alone. I have felt that myself many times and have at times not put my work forward where perhaps I should have. However – the times that I have been willing to push myself out of my comfort zone have often paid off.

While I’ve had a few times in my blogging life where I’ve had lucky breaks that result in traffic – most of the times traffic has arrived at my blogs in numbers have been a direct result of me doing some promotional work. Don’t just leave it to chance – put yourself out there and see what comes as a result.

Once you’ve done it – I’d love to hear how you went about promoting your post and what the result was in comments below. Lets learn together how to get this task right!

Update: There are lots of folks talking about this over at the forum, you should check it out! Day 3 – Promote a Post

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Promote a Blog Post [Day 3 - 31DBBB]

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My reaction was not positive – in fact within a few moments I’d tweeted that I’d had the request and wasn’t overly impressed.

This post is not about Dummies.com – it’s about asking for links.

I have no beef with Dummies – they produce some great books by some amazing authors. This post isn’t about them. It’s about asking for links.

You see I get quite a few emails asking for links like the one from Dummies but they’re not always from big well known brands, they’re more often than not emails from bloggers. In 99% of cases the email ends up in my trash folder in Gmail but occasionally I not only read the emails but I link to the persons site.

Why do some emails generate links and others don’t?

Following are 11 suggestions for those wanting to email a blogger to ask for a link (whether they be big brands or bloggers):

1. Write something worth linking to – this is a no brainer but so many people don’t get it. In the same way you wouldn’t successfully pitch a TV news service or newspaper a story like ‘I’ve got a newly designed website – it’s got videos’ you’re not likely to get much success with a blogger. The best way to get the attention of a blogger is to write something useful, entertaining, controversial, helpful, informative, intriguing…. etc. Check out my series on LinkBaiting for more ideas on this (particularly the post 20 Link Baiting Techniques).
2. Suggest a Link to a post not your site – don’t ask for a link to your site – suggest that they check out a link to an individual page or post that you’ve written. A blogger is much more likely to run with a story linking to a post about a specific topic relevant to their topic than adding a link to your site.
3. Develop a Relationship – cold calling a blogger that you’ve never interacted with before asking for a link is not the best way to start off a relationship. It’s like in real life – would you walk up to a stranger and immediately start asking them for favors? Get to know the blogger, their blog and let the ‘favors’ emerge out of that.
4. Demonstrate Knowledge of the Blog and Blogger – building upon the ‘relational’ aspect – use the blogger’s name, show that you know what their blog is about. You don’t need to write an epic introduction that proves your knowledge – but a polite and not overly familiar approach can do you wonders. Also – introduce yourself to the blogger you are pitching to. You might feel like you know them but they could be in contact with many people – a quick reminder of who you are and what you do could help.
5. Research – sometimes it can be worthwhile doing 5 minutes of research before you email another blogger. Look back over their last few months of blogging. What is their topic? Do they link to other blogs? What kinds of sites/posts/topics do they link to? Do they interact in other mediums (ie perhaps Twitter could be a better place to contact them)? The more information you gather the more able you are to tailor your pitch to them appropriately.
6. Add Value – a blogger is unlikely to link to you unless there’s something in it for them or their blog. I’m not talking exchanging of money or even reciprocal links when I talk about value (although for some bloggers those will be motivating factors) – I mean the page you’re asking for a link for should be something of value that will actually enhance their blog. I can only speak for myself but I know that if someone pitches me a link that I’ll link to it or at least tweet the link in a heart beat if I think it adds value to the lives of my readers or followers.
7. Stay on topic – this really is an extension of a couple of the points above but it always amazes me how many emails I get for people asking me to link to their ‘golf’, ’stock market’, ‘book review’ and ‘kids fashion’ sites (they were just 4 requests that I got today alone). If you’re pitching a blogger to link to something you wrote make sure that the blog you want to appear on has relevancy to your topic. For starters it increases the chances of a link, it increases the chances of a reader clicking the link and it increases the power of the search engine juice that you’ll get from the link.
8. Be selective in what you promote – we all like to think that every post we write is worthy of links from thousands of other blogs but the reality is that some are more likely to be linked to than others. Pick your very best posts to promote in this way and keep your requests to a minimum.
9. Reciprocate – I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about reciprocal links. ‘Link to me and I’ll link to you’ doesn’t really hold a lot of value in SEO any more from what I can see. What I am talking about here is being willing to be generous TO the blogger and not just expecting them to be generous to you. Shane Gibson described these emails on Twitter yesterday as “we Win you Lose invitations” – I think that sums it up nicely. See the relationship as being like a bank. You’ve got to put in to get something out. If you take too much out the relationship will be bankrupt. I’m not just talking about giving the blogger links – you can reciprocate in many ways including by writing them guest posts, sending them small gifts, sponsoring a project that they’re running, promoting them to your own network…. etc
10. Build on the Experience – no matter what the bloggers response is – you can learn from and build upon the experience. If they do link then there may be opportunity to deepen the relationship in some way. If they respond angrily, you probably don’t want to send them links again. If you get silence, don’t take it personally and continue to find ways to build relationships with the blogger.
11. Be Link Worthy – let me emphasize this again. The best way to get linked to by a blogger is to produce a page or post that is link worthy of the link.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger

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I’m not going to rehash all of the reasons why email marketing is worth adding to your blogging or even give tips on how to build a successful email newsletter – today I just want to illustrate with a couple of charts why I believe in email marketing.

What you see above (click to enlarge) is a screen shot of the Google Analytics area of the forum area of Digital Photography School (ie it doesn’t include the blog area’s traffic).

The stats go back for 6 weeks and you’ll notice that there is a nice weekly pattern going on in terms of rises and falls in traffic.

What causes the predictable rises in traffic each Thursday? Thursday is the day I send newsletters.

Each week a newsletter goes out to readers that simply contains a summary of the latest activity on the site. Interestingly – the newsletter only contains one link to the forum area – yet that one link is enough to come close to doubling traffic to the forum for that day.

But Wait, There’s More

OK – so the ability to drive regular traffic to your blog is one great reason to start an email newsletter for your blog – but today as I analyzed my blog’s stats I realized that there’s another reason.

Take a look at this chart. It shows traffic from Digg to the blog area of DPS since mid last year (click to enlarge).

OK – it’s a little hard to see a correlation between newsletters and Digg traffic from that graph – but what I noticed today is that the majority of my ‘Digg Events’ happen on the same days of the week. Let me show you (click to enlarge):

I’ve had 19 ‘Digg Events’ in this period and 16 of them have happened on a Thursday or a Friday (two of the others hit the front page on a Saturday).

Articles hit the front page of Digg every day of the week yet on my site they almost always fall on a Thursday or a Friday.

I send newsletters out to my readers on a Thursday morning.

Now I rarely mention Digg or any form of social bookmarking in my newsletters – but it seems to me that the newsletters are having an impact upon social bookmarking to me.

Further Reading on Email Marketing/Newsletters and how to use them Effectively:

• Why email marketing is worth adding to your blogging  
• How to build a successful email newsletter
• How to dramatically Increase Signups to your Newsletter
• Why I use Aweber to Deliver My Email Newsletters

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

4 Pretty Pictures to Illustrate Impact of Email Newsletters on Traffic (and Social Bookmarking)

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