In two minds, you “finish” the post, then spend a half-hour writing and rewriting the “ideal” headline.

Finally, happy(ish!) your cursor hovers over the Publish button … but you just can’t press it. You decide to give it some time, and come back tomorrow, when you know you’ll end up rewriting the whole thing from scratch using the same “process.”

Meanwhile, your blog’s getting more dated by the minute. Your regular publishing schedule has gone out the window, and you’re miles behind on your blogging goals.

Perfectionism: the ultimate time drain?

Back in the days of print, things had to be perfect before they were published. There are certainly plenty of great reasons for making sure your content is as good as it can be before you publish it. Yet die-hard perfectionism holds many a blogger back from achieving their full potential.

I’ve seen it many times online—and discussed it with plenty of bloggers, from all walks of life and areas of the blogosphere, over the years.

In How to Stop Procrastinating and Start Your Blog, Jennifer Blanchard lists perfectionism as one of the main reasons why people procrastinate.

As someone who’s started more than 20 blogs in my time—and wound up quite a few too!—it’s safe to say I’ve got a pretty good handle on perfectionism now. Here’s how I managed to overcome it.

• Realize that the web is flexible: The web isn’t print. You can very easily add to, update, and tweak a published post later, either based on feedback from readers or on additional information that’s come your way since you wrote the post.
• Understand that your readers know you’re human: Your readers don’t know just know it—they respect it. Bloggers like Jon Morrow and Leo Babauta work closely with their readers, and are happy to show their human sides. And their readers are all the more loyal for it.
• Recognize the value you can get from using reader feedback to improve your posts: Reader feedback can add depth and perspective to your posts, and boost their usability for other readers. But the process of working with readers on your posts—crowdsourcing the icing for your blog post “cake”—can also boost the sense of community, collaboration, and engagement around your blog.
• Respect the importance of your publishing schedule: Your posting schedule isn’t just about content—it’s about meeting reader needs. Showing up—publishing great content—is square one for bloggers. That’s where blogging starts. No content, no blog. So by using your publishing schedule as a guide—and sticking to it—you respect your readers and you’re ticking the first box on the checklist for achieving your blogging goals.
• Realize that an incomplete post will probably attract more comments: By “incomplete,” I’m not suggesting that you stop writing before you get to the end of the post and publish it as-is! But the Blog Tyrant makes the very good point that a post that exhausts its topic “leaves readers with nowhere to go.” You don’t need to cover off every aspect of the post’s topic in order for that post to be “good.” A post that doesn’t exhaust the topic may receive more comments—and shares if the conversation becomes particularly interesting or illuminating.

Of course, we all want our posts to be factually accurate and typo-free—that’s a given. But there are also considerable advantages to letting go and seeing where a less polished post might lead…

Do you struggle with perfectionism? How is it holding your blog back? And how have you overcome it (if you’ve managed to do that!)?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Is Perfectionism Stalling Your Productivity?

How often do you find it happening to you? You discover an issue with your site, or one of your community members emails you to tell you about it, and soon you start to see tweets about it too.

Maybe it’s as simple as an error message that detracts from the professional appearance of your site. Perhaps the contact form doesn’t send messages to your contact email address. Or is it that the whole site just displays as a blank page, otherwise known as the white page of death?

You’re not a programmer, a software engineer or a seasoned professional systems administrator who’s responsible for the U.S. Google Data centers. You’re an accountant, an au pair, or a globe trotter who loves surfing and seeing fantastic sites around the world. Now this isn’t to diminish any of these honorable professions and ways we bloggers spend our lives; it’s just that your strong suit likely isn’t website architecture and code debugging.

What’s more, every break in your site affects your professional image and ultimately, your bottom line. So it’s important that you get the issues rectified as soon as possible, and get the show back on the road. But what do you do? What’s the best approach to take?

It’s important to report technical problems to your tech support (whether that’s one person or a dedicated support company) clearly and unambiguously, and to provide them with as much information as they need to get you up and running again, quickly.

Technical people have a bit of a reputation for being dry, blunt, impersonal, and brusque. But this isn’t necessarily the case. Like everyone else, they have their priorities and ways of approaching the work that they do, as do plumbers, dentists, lawyers, and politicians.

And, as with all people, to get the most out of them—especially when you need them—you need to talk in a way that they’re responsive to and understand. It’s a lot like writing: when you’re reporting technical issues, you need to write for your audience.

Unless your technical support person’s completely lacking in all forms of social and inter-personal skills, which is highly unlikely, here’s a set of tips to get a quick and effective solution to your problem.

Can you replicate the issue?

To be sure that the issue exists, you need to be sure that the issue is replicable, quickly and simply. Then, you need to write down the steps that you took to replicate the issue, clearly and unambiguously, so that your tech can repeat the issue themselves.

Let’s say that a page on your blog that displays a series of images about one of your products crashes when people try to view it.

Here’s how I’d report it.

1. Open up the browser to <insert your domain name here>
2. From the main navigation, click Products, then Books, then New York Times best-seller, then click Gallery.
3. On that page, you will see a product image gallery with buttons to navigate through the images at the bottom-center of the page.
4. Click through the pages, starting at one using the numbers, not the forward arrow at the end (think: Google search results navigation).
5. When you get to page 6, the page shows nothing except what appears to be an error message, which is as follows: “Error 5000. PHP could not connect to MySQL with username <username> and password <password>.”
6. The url of the page is: http://www.superbooks.com/products/books/nyt-best-seller/gallery/6

From this description, it’s simple for your tech support person to start at the home page of the site and, step by step, move from there to the point at which the error occurs. In addition to this, you’ve provided the URL so they can go straight to the error, as well as a copy of the error message. This provides comprehensive information to get the issue resolved.

Browser(s) and operating systems

Now whilst this information is pretty good, it’s not all that’s available. As is so common for TV salesmen to say, “but wait, there’s more!” In addition to this information, you should also provide details of the browser, browser version and the operating system that you’re using.

Whether you’re using Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, or another of the multitude of browsers out there, put that information, along with details about your operating system, into a table similar to the one below. Include it with the information you send to tech support.

I’ve quickly prepared this one based on the technology I’m using right now.

Finding this information

This is all well and good you say, but how can you find this information?

Windows

To find out which windows operating system you’re using, right click on your desktop and select Properties from the menu that appears.

A dialog will display, showing your operating system under the default tab, named General.

Apple Mac

To find out the version of Mac OS X you’re running, click the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen, then click About This Mac.

In the window that pops up, under Mac OS X, you’ll see text that reads something like, “Version 10.7.2”. As it says, that’s the version number of the operating system. If you click on that text, it will give you a “build” number.

Browser: Google Chrome

If you’re using Google Chrome, click About (on Windows) or Chrome (on Mac) and then click About Google Chrome. In the window that appears you’ll see the full version number under Google Chrome.

Browser: Mozilla Firefox

If you’re using Firefox, click About (on Windows) or Firefox (on Mac) and then click About Firefox. In the window that appears you’ll see the full version number under Firefox.

Browser: Apple Safari

If you’re using Safari, click About (on Windows) or Safari (on Mac) and then click About Safari. In the window that appears you’ll see the full version number under Safari, similar to: Version 5.1.2 (7534.52.7).

Why is this important?

This information is important is because, despite appearances, not all of the modern web browsers are created equal. Though Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari all render web pages pretty closely, and more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer are rapidly getting better, they each have quirks and differences between such things as their Javascript engines, and the support they provide for different aspects of web standards, such as HTML and CSS.

If you can provide this information along with the process the tech support can use to repeat the error, it really helps isolate the issue. One further thing to remember is that some specific versions of software have particular quirks or bugs that don’t exist in any others. So the operating system or browser version can be crucial in some cases.

When did it happen?

Now while all of this information is great, it’s not always enough to isolate the issue. Please don’t be despondent, though. Sometimes it’s not a browser issue as such—maybe it’s an issue relating to the web server. Maybe your site’s particularly popular and has traffic spikes which cause problems, for example.

So as well as the information you’ve already provided, let the tech know:

• the time of day and
• the day of the week and
• the month when you or your readers first noticed this issue.

If the tech support is on their game and also has access to your site’s analytics, they may be able to make a correlation between the times that you report the issue occurs with the traffic loads on your site.

Maybe the error is not an error, but an indicator that you blog’s gaining in popularity, and that your audience is really starting to grow. This “error” may be an indication that you need to upgrade your hosting plan and infrastructure to cope with it.

Anything else?

What about a screenshot? Images of the issue can be very helpful for tech support.

Don’t get carried away: just capture the moments at which the error occurred and what you saw. In either Mac or Windows (and on Linux too of course) you can capture what the screen looks like in a screenshot and, using such tools as Microsoft Paint, Gimp, Paint.net, Paintshop Pro, or Adobe Photoshop, crop the image so that it’s not enormous, and to highlight the

Better support

This list isn’t everything, but it’s a good start. By providing this information as quickly as possible, you’re going to give your tech support a lot to work with, and a good head-start to help you out and resolve your issues. These details aren’t a guarantee of success, but they are much better than nothing.

So the next time you hit a problem on your site, go grab that information, put it together, and send it over to your tech support. I’m sure that they’ll appreciate you putting in such a lot of effort on their behalf. If not, I can hook you up with someone who will be!

Matthew Setter is a passionate writer, educator and software developer. He’s also the founder of Malt Blue, dedicated to helping people become better at web development.You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ anytime.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Succinctly Report a Blog Issue to Tech Support

Image by Stuart Richards

“You’re wrong…”

“How can you say that? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I couldn’t disagree more…”

“This is the last time I read this blog!”

These are just some of the criticisms bloggers regularly face—I’ve received versions of all of these many times over the years, and if you’ve been blogging for any length of time, they’re probably fairly familiar to you, too.

Criticism can be deeply painful. As I explained here, the difficulty in dealing with criticism caused Elizabeth Taylor to ignore everything the press said about her. The discomfort of being criticised has led more than one blogger to shut down their blog, so it’s an issue that bloggers really do need to think about.

How can we manage criticism, not get dragged down by it, and maybe even benefit from it?

Embrace criticism?!

That probably sounds a little odd, but the first thing you need to do is accept—even embrace—the fact that your blog has attracted criticism.

I know that can be difficult to do, but think of it this way: you’re a blogger, and you’re tackling the tough job of putting yourself, your work, and your opinions on the line every week.

Not everyone will agree with you all of the time, but negative feedback is a sign that you’re making people think. After all, that’s one of the most common reasons why many start blogging in the first place.

Certainly, few bloggers are ever going to gleefully greet negative emails and comments the way we do positive feedback, but the first step in using that information positively is to accept it as a natural part of blogging.

Don’t take it personally—everyone gets criticisms—from the longest-standing A-list bloggers to the newest blogger on the block. It’s not pretty, but it’s part of the job.

Consider the criticism

Some criticisms are better than others. Some negative commenters just want you to know that they feel this post’s no good, or they don’t like your logo. Others are more considerate—they’ll give you reasons for their negative feedback.

There are trolls out there—people who are just negative for the sake of it—but if you cultivate the right culture of comments on your site, you’ll likely receive more valuable criticisms than trolling. If your site is the victim of trolls, you might find this post, which explains a Buddhist monk’s philosophy of dealing with “haters”, helpful.

Be careful, too, not to discount a brief criticism that lacks detail as “just trolling.” Sometimes what appears to be a thoughtless negative comment from a troll can turn out to reflect an undercurrent that’s taken up later by more constructive commenters—and that can be extremely valuable to you and your blog.

Making use of criticism

I find it’s best, wherever possible, to take the emotion out of the criticism. So if you have more than one negative comment on a post, look first for those that are written reasonably and respectfully. These kinds of readers are advancing ideas for you to consider so you can better meet their needs. Have a read, but don’t take the feedback personally, or even on board, just yet.

Now look at the remaining criticism—the angry or otherwise emotional feedback. Think as objectively as possible about how that supports the other feedback. If you could boil down the feedback to one thing, what would it be? What was it that readers didn’t like about this post or product?

Criticism often falls into one of a few categories:

• a difference of opinion
• a lack of perceived value
• a sense of frustration linked to an underlying problem the reader is struggling with.

If you can work out which of these problems is at the root of the criticism you’ve received, you can do something about it.

A difference of opinion may cause you to re-check your facts, do a little research, and respond to the criticism with evidence that supports your case—perhaps in a follow-up post.

A lack of perceived value may encourage you to tweak the way you present value through your blog. It might also prompt you to post on different topics or try different approaches to the topic in question. This may even open up your blog to a broader audience over time.

A sense of frustration among readers can give you real insight into deep audience needs, and what you can do to meet them.

Take it on board

Now’s the time to take the criticism on board—but not emotionally so much as practically.

Now you know what the real issue is, you can undoubtedly think of a few ways to try to tweak your work to try to cater to the needs your readers have flagged.

“Tweak” is usually the right word here. If you take the criticism personally, you’ll be more likely to make drastic changes that can end up undermining your blog and possibly disappointing the majority of readers who like what you do and how you do it. So act with caution—but do act.

On the other hand, if the negative feedback is overwhelming, you might do well to respond (not react!) with corresponding passion, showing your audience that you’re listening, and that their feedback is important to you.

After all, they took the time to tell you what they didn’t like, which means they do care about you and your blog. A criticism says, “I want your blog to be what I want.” It’s up to us as bloggers to decide if, and how, we want our blogs to be what those readers want.

How do you handle criticism on your blog? Share your tips with us in the comments—we could all use some help handling negative feedback.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Handle Criticism: a Practical Guide

Is it just me, or do you ever find yourself in a situation when you just want to lock someone up for the things they’re doing either on their own blog or while commenting on other people’s blogs?

You know, moments when you wish you were the blogging police … anyone?

I do. Quite often actually. And I am by no means perfect myself. But you don’t have to be perfect to have an opinion, just like you don’t have to be a musician to be able to tell that you don’t like a song.

So even though I am not perfect, I’ll tell you what I’d do if I were the blogging police. The list isn’t long, thankfully, just a handful of points. When I’m done, though, I want to hear what you’d do if you were on my blogging police taskforce.

1. Lock people up for publishing lame list posts

A lame list post in one that makes you immediately think “how obvious can you get?!” This doesn’t happen that often nowadays, but when it does it strikes hard, with no warning.

A lame list post is one where every single thing on the list—every piece of advice—is just so utterly obvious that the only possible reason for writing such a post is not to forget about all that stuff. You know, it’s the personal-reference-file kind of a post.

I’m sorry, but if you’re writing a list post on blogging and it includes “care about your readers”, you need to think your post trough one more time, for everyone’s sake. Which brings me to…

2. Lock people up for saying “you need to publish quality content”

Somewhere in the world a unicorn dies every time someone uses this phrase in a blog post. This one piece of advice has been around forever. Everyone knows this by now. You really don’t need to say it.

But I’m sure you did. I know I’m guilty of this too. Thankfully, there’s no blogging police. (Nor do any unicorns actually die.)

3. The rule of “3 strikes and you’re out” for spammers

“You’re out”?! Does that mean “no more internet for you”? Well, some people should really get a lifetime Internet-access ban for spamming in comments. You know—comments like this:

“Great post!” … submitted along with an anchored name of “web design san diego” or something.

Or:

“I find your opinion quite interesting but the other day I stumbled upon a completely different advice from another blogger, I need to think that one through, thanks for posting.” … with a similarly search-optimized name. This is actually a clever piece of spam because it seems legitimate, but you can actually submit it below every blog post in the world, and it would sound equally relevant.

Imagine how much better the world would be if every spammer had only three chances, after which they’re gone forever.

4. Lock people up for saying that “doing what you love is the only way”

No, it’s not, and it shouldn’t be. I love sleeping, for example. Is anyone gonna pay me for that?

Okay, I don’t want to be that harsh, but just bear with me, and try to think of all the possible professions in the world—everything that needs to be done to make the world go round, including things like moving out the trash, cattle breeding, and being a politician.

The reality is that “doing what you love” is only one of many possible scenarios. You can create equally successful career out of “doing what you should do,” “doing what you’ve been taught to do,” and “doing what needs to be done.”

5. Lock people up for publishing “sorry I’ve been away” posts

This is what happens: someone hasn’t been blogging for a while, say a month or two. And then they come back and publish a “sorry I’ve been away” post.

The usual construction of such a post is a short explanation of why the person was away, and then there’s a promise that now everything will change and the person will be posting like there’s no tomorrow.

First of all, this never happens. Chances are that the person will forget about the blog again very soon.

Secondly, no one cares.

6. Lock up everybody who’s just too much of a nice guy

Does everyone has to act like such a nice guy? The blogging world goes deep here. For some reason, many people believe that you have to be nice to everybody all the time. Well, you don’t.

If you’re nice to everybody, how are you going to distinguish someone who you really feel you should be nice to—someone who’s really special? If you’re nice to everybody, then your being nice simply means nothing. Besides, people who are nice to everybody are boring! Lock ‘em up!

7. Give tickets for using clichés or words that are just too big

I love blogging. SkyrocketEngage your readers. You need to be an authority in your niche…

The list of clichés and needlessly big words used by bloggers every day has no end.

Clichés are just annoying. And using big words to emphasize your point is just stupid.

Do you really love blogging? Would you sit in your room and cry if you couldn’t blog anymore? Would you be depressed for a month if blogging had been taken away from you? Do you wake up every day imagining how happy you are with your blog, and then go to sleep in the evening dreaming all the nice things you’re going to do with your blog the next day?

If there’s at least one “no” in your answers to those questions, then you don’t love blogging, so don’t say you do. If you have all “yeses” … touché.

This concludes my blogging police wishes and dreams. What are yours? I’m sure there are some, if you take a minute to think about it. Of course, don’t treat this whole thing too seriously … but I would love to hear what you’d do if you were part of my blogging police taskforce. Share your pet hates in the comments!

Karol K. is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland and a writer at ThemeFuse.com, where he shares various WordPress advice. Don’t forget to visit ThemeFuse to get your hands on some original WordPress themes (warning: no boring stuff like everyone else offers).

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

If I Were the Blogging Police…

• How many active blogs? 45.2% of ProBlogger readers have one active blog, 24.3% of you have two, and 11.6% of you have three blogs. Interestingly 8.7% of ProBlogger readers don’t yet have a blog and 1.6% have more than 10!
• How long have you been blogging? There’s a real spread here. The most common response was 1-2 years (17% of responses) with the next most common responses being 2-3 years (15%), and over 5 years (15%). As you’d expect, the numbers of people who’ve been at it a while have increased as ProBlogger has been going longer.
• How old are you? The most common age range of ProBlogger readers is 31-40 years of age (29%). Next most common was 41-50 (24%), and 21-30 (19%). I hear a lot of people say that blogging is a young person’s thing. Not necessarily: among our readers, only 2.5% of respondents indicated that they are 20 or under.
• Gender. We’ve seen a shift here. While previously just over half of readers were male, this time we saw 56% of readers indicating that they were female. What I did find particularly interesting was that we were able to track responses based on where people were referred to the survey from (email, Twitter, G+, etc.). G+ referrers were almost 70% men and blog readers were 60% men. All other referrals were 60-70% women so there were some real discrepancies there in terms of gender.
• Blog platforms you use. Just over half of those surveyed use WordPress.org. 21% use WordPress.com and 17% use Blogger. The other 12 or so percent were spread out considerably. Interestingly both MovableType and TypePad usage had declined since the last survey.
• Challenges and problems faced. The biggest challenges readers identified as having were finding readers, monetization, and finding time to blog. Not a lot of change here from last time although the “finding time” response was a bit higher.
• Monetization methods. 65% of respondents are trying to monetize their blog (a little lower than last time). Interestingly, the methods of monetization have changed a little. More people are selling their own products, more are doing paid reviews, and less are using ad networks and affiliate marketing, and selling ads directly to sponsors. The most common form of monetization, though, was affiliate marketing (35% of responses).
• Blog design. There was a real spread of types of blog designs being used by ProBlogger readers – but the most common type was buying premium templates. This was one of the big shifts from the last survey to this one—with more and more quality services now existing to design and sell you a great blog template (like my friends at Studio Press, who do all my own blog design) I guess it’s an option that will only grow over time.
• Email marketing. Perhaps the most surprising result for me in this census were the responses to a question asking readers if they have an email newsletter or do any type of email marketing. Around 60% of you don’t collect any email addresses from readers, or do anything with email. As I’ve written on many occasions, email and newsletters are central to my own approach. Email not only drives traffic to my blogs, it helps me make money. I cannot imagine my own blogs without email. If there was one tip I’d give on how to grow a blog it’d be to get serious about this in 2012!

Thanks to everyone for participating in this year’s census. The above info, plus your thousands of suggestions, have given me (and the team behind ProBlogger) a lot of great ideas.

In fact in the coming months, you’ll see a shift in how we run ProBlogger that’s based upon what we heard in this survey. It will impact the topics of posts you’ll see here on ProBlogger, as well as our approach on numerous other levels. Thanks for making ProBlogger more useful!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What 60% of ProBlogger Readers Don’t Do that’s Central to My Blogging Success

By now, it’s been engraved into every bloggers mind that relationships are the foundation of building a successful blog.

Then, there is this “hush hush” unwritten law, “You should build strong relationships with established pro bloggers or blogosphere influences! Their links are like gold; a tweet or Facebook like will bring you a tsunami of visitors to your blog.”

(Don’t get me wrong. This post is not a rebel rant against pro bloggers. I respect them dearly, and the work they’ve done to rise up to that level.)

Yes, it’s true that one tweet or Facebook Like from these super famous bloggers can flood your blog with visitors. However,  there are so many newbie bloggers trying to get the attention of such bloggers. It can be a difficult, if not an impossible endeavor to get on their radars. Even if you get an ounce of their attention, it might still be short-lived.

So, forget the pros (for a moment!)

Kiss plenty of digital babies

I first heard about the term, “kissing digital babies” from Stanford over at PushingSocial. For the benefit of those of you who go astray when you see the word “kissing,” Digital Babies = newbie bloggers.

Srini from BlogCastFM, goes on to say, “Emerging talent is the most undervalued asset in the blogosphere”. I couldn’t agree more.  There are really good undiscovered digital babies out there.

Whenever I see a newbie blogger who offers a different perspective (unlike the same rehashed content we see everywhere!), I don’t hesitate to promote that blog/blogger. I don’t expect anything in return. It’s just my way of saying, “Thank you”.

“Why?” you ask.

Even digital babies can teach you a thing or two

In my post, How Blogging Daddies Got Blogging Advice From Their Adorable Toddlers it was quite evident that even pro bloggers still learn from their kids.

Did you ever think that a pro blogger such as Darren Rowse could learn about blogging from his adorable toddler?

The same principal applies here. A newbie blogger may offer some new inspiration, or maybe you’ll learn a small thing which you had no idea about before. So don’t dismiss a newbie blogger easily.

“Build baby build!”

Seth Godin said, “Build baby build!” In his book Tribes, Seth encourages you to create your own tribe and look for people to join your tribe, rather than trying to join other established tribes.

Be on the lookout for digital babies who are searching for new tribes to join. With every digital baby kissed, there is potential of finding a new reader—a new member for your tribe.

Digital babies can form your new loyal audience

Digital babies will have more time on their hands to engage with you than will a super-busy famous blogger. This will mean that a digital baby will read more of your blog posts and see the value you offer. Who knows—they might even buy one of your products!

On helping…

Having said all this, I need to mention that you shouldn’t help someone with the intention of getting something in return. Help because you think it’s the right thing to do; help because you want to genuinely see the newbie blogger progress further; help because you can use your influence and pay it forward. Surely someone helped you be where you are today?

Hopefully this post inspired you to you to do something nice for a newbie blogger. Before you walk away just take five minutes to find a digital baby you can kiss. Look through your blog comments, RSS reader, guest posts, and backlinks.

See what you can do to help, and how much time you can spend. For example, perhaps you can allocate five minutes each week for a comment, retweet, etc. over the next month. Or perhaps there’s a post that resonated with you, and which deserves a backlink from your blog?

Are you convinced? Is kissing a digital baby better than back scratching a super famous blogger? When developing relationships with other bloggers, what has been your strategy?

Shamelle Perera is a full-time search engine mechanic and a part time blogger. If you are looking for thoughtful, actionable blogging tips with a fresh perspective checkout her blog, Better Blogging Ways Follow her on Twitter @BetterBloggingW, you won’t be bored!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why Kissing a Digital Baby is Better than Back-scratching a Super-famous Blogger

Do you ever feel like it’s high school all over again?

I’m talking about blogging. The whole “turn over a new leaf, do something great, do epic stuff, get famous” sense of it all feels like high school.

You know that feeling. It’s similar to when you’re just starting out, wanting to make a name for yourself, and hoping that some day you’ll become famous and get buckets of cash.

But just like high school, it’s a jungle out there. It’s not completely safe, nor is it any bit as easy as it seems. There are bullies, psycho teachers, cool kids, not-so-cool kids, and geeks.

You need to learn some rules on how to survive, just like in high school. This time around, you don’t just want to get out alive. You want to come out on top of your game.

1. Work hard

In high school, working hard was just about studying for the exams. Nothing more, nothing less. That would be decent effort, and you’d get decent grades.

When you’re blogging, studying is a prerequisite. There are loads of things you need to do to survive.

You need to learn how to multitask. You need to know your trade by heart. You need to sacrifice a lot of your time, and use it for brainstorming, writing, editing, designing your website, marketing yourself and your blog, pitching for guest posts … the list goes on.

2. Get involved

Getting involved in high school meant joining clubs. Lots of clubs, if you had the time and energy. It also included joining school plays, or getting into sports.

In blogging, it’s pretty much the same.

There are loads of clubs/groups/courses/forums where bloggers, writers, business owners and the like can hang out and socialize in their own little space. There’s the Third Tribe, The A-List Blogger Club, The Warrior Forum, and a whole bunch more.

Now when you want to get involved without having to join clubs (and pay for them), there are a lot of other ways to do so.

We’ve all heard of social media, blog commenting, and building relationships. That’s all good, but everyone’s doing it. What else can you do?

Subscribe to newsletters: But not just so you can get on their list. In a way, you’re getting them on your personal list. Not your “making money” email list, but your “talk to this guy about stuff” list.

Usually, the big boys and girls of blogging use their email list to communicate with their readers, right?

Bam! You have their email. Maybe not their personal email, but a contact point nonetheless. Another similar tactic is to use their contact forms, but some don’t really reply to that.

Name-drop: What’s this? It’s when you just talk about the cool kids; you could also opt to step it up by linking to them. If it’s good enough content, and if they notice that you mentioned or linked to them, they’ll think you’re cool and hang out with you.

Does this really work? I don’t know. Ask this guy.

Personal army: This is sort of risky. I’ve gotten permission from Martyn Chamberlin of twohourblogger to talk about it. Martyn had his friends pinged Brian Clark to ask him to retweet a post. Long story short, Brian Clark got annoyed but now they’re buddies.

There are a lot of ways to get someone’s attention; this is one of them. It worked.

3. Be on-time/present

You might be thinking “Not this again.”

You see, in high school, if you were always tardy or even absent during class, you’d get demerits. But those demerits aren’t that deadly.

With your blog, if you’re never showing up when you’re supposed to, it’s deadly for your image.

This does not mean having to post every day. You don’t want to force out below-par blog posts. No. You want high-quality content, with a story to tell.

So what else is being present and on-time about?

A hundred tweets a day isn’t presence. It’s annoying. Like a mosquito flying around near your ears.

Presence is when you reply to readers’ comments on your blog posts. It’s when people send you emails through your contact form, and you actually reply. Not your virtual assistant. Not an automated robot. But you.

4. Do your homework

High school. Homework. Important, although not life-threatening. But you still had to do it if you want to survive all the way through.

When you’re writing great content, you don’t get it by  just churning them out like a machine. Do your homework.

There are plenty ways to research for information to put in your content.

Surveys: A common website/tool to use for making surveys is surveymonkey.com. You can sign up for a free account, and it’s a decent tool for getting information from people.

Direct email: You can email anyone: bloggers, writers, journalists, friends, strangers … anyone. Don’t have their email? There’s social media to help you out.

Call interviews: This doesn’t have to be through phone. You can use Skype, Google Voice chat or Google Hangouts.

Split testing: This ranges from writing styles, tone, formatting, blog design/structure and more.

Blogging is hard work. Still with me? Good. Let’s continue.

5. Make a diverse circle of friends

In high school, you could get away with sticking to a single circle of friends. If you wanted to stand out and get recognized, you’d have to reach out to a lot more people.

The same goes for blogging.

Remember the age-old advice that the “veterans” talk about, like making friends with people in your niche? That’s great, but you could make it even better by making friends with people from other niches. Why should you bother doing that?

Think of it this way. If you have ten pals who blog about blogging talk about you, that’s great. If you have 30 people from all sorts of niches and industries willing to vouch for you, that’s massive. Think of them as your personal army.

How do you do this?

• By getting involved with other people’s blogs and activities.
• By replying to people who comment on your posts, reaching out to their blogs. Circling them on Google Plus.
• Talking with people who comment on the A-list blogs, since they’re talking, might as well jump in the conversation. Some might find you intrusive, but if you do this with 100 people you’re bound to make at least ten friends.
• Keeping in mind that one day, they can be your personal army who will vouch for you when you mess up.

6. Keep your locker stacked

We all had lockers back in high school, right? It’s where we put our things just in case we’ll be needing them soon.

In blogging, your locker can be your CMS, whether you use WordPress, Blogger, Hubpages, etc. How do you keep it stacked?

Always have backup posts written, proofread, formatted, and ready for publishing. If you need places to look for ideas, here are some examples that the cool kids don’t preach:

The Bible: A lot of people don’t talk about this as a source of inspiration for their writing because they’re afraid to sound all religious-like.

You’re missing out on a lot.

And if you’re not into the Christian faith, think of this book as the biggest piece of fiction that has inspired countless generations. More than all the Stephen King, John Grisham or Chuck Palahniuk books combined.

Kids’ entertainment: Again, a lot of people don’t talk about getting inspiration from kids’ shows because they don’t want to sound immature.

They’re just scared.

If you want to talk courage, here’s a post from a guy who wrote an amazing, inspiring blog post about courage using a character from the storybooks.

Again, these are stories that had inspired generations. They may be childish, but these stories have enchanted more people than any “mature” show like Mad Men.

7. Be excessively happy

Highschool gives you a lot of stress. Not from classes, but from people.

It’s the same in blogging.

You write your blog post, and expect to get massive traffic, but nothing happens. Why? People will be people. They flock to where the good stuff is. And to top it off, they don’t know you even exist.

Don’t go whining and quit. Hang in there, and smile. Be excessively happy. Crazy happy. Nobody likes to hear people whine all day. Or take out their frustrations on other people.

When someone comments on your posts, be happy. Reply to them in an awesome way. Stop being so uptight. Be more like Ayo Olaniyan. When he replies to comments, it’s like he’s always smiling just like his picture. Crazy happy.

8. Stay focused

Make lots of friends. Get involved. But remember to stay focused on what you’re blogging for.

Write down your goals on a piece of paper, and stick them somewhere in your desk. Someplace where you can see it whenever you’re working. Make your goals specific and tangible. Also, add the element of time restriction.

Here are some goals you can write down:

• guest posts on X
• ebook on X
• interview with X
• email X about X’s post about X

Writing specific goals lets you know what you need to do, and the deadline helps you avoid procrastinating.

9. Go out on dates

Yes, plural.

If you went out on a lot of dates back in high school (or at least tried to), you’ll know what’s coming when you’re pitching other bloggers for guest post opportunities.

Guest posting is just like dating.

As Sean Platt would say it, you’re going to be wooing other bloggers with your bouquet of words. And unless you already have a solid reputation, it’s going to be hard.

Those who’ve made a name for themselves through guest posting know the feeling of getting dumped. It happens. But you have to be persistent and get better. Get a better bouquet and try again.

People like Leo Babauta, Brian Clark, and Danny Iny all went crazy guest blogging. Jon Morrow teaches a course all about guest blogging. It’s that crucial to success.

10. Get in the yearbook

Getting featured in the yearbook back in highschool meant that you did something great. Something that made other students look up to you.

In blogging, there’s no physical yearbook. But there are blogging roundups, like the ones on ProBlogger, Copyblogger, Write to Done, and a bunch of other sites that give recognition to other bloggers at the end of the year.

It’s not biggest achievement that you could get with blogging, nor does it mean you’re the best out of all the other blogs not featured in them. But if you’re in one, you must have done something fascinating and remarkable, right?

Marcus Sheridan of TheSalesLion talked about this on his blog:

I’ve written my share of these types of posts in the past simply because I enjoy shedding light on great people who are blessing others through their work. This, in my opinion, is a very good thing and will never grow old.

But it’s also time we all understood and defined our true individual metrics of success, as it’s this vision that will carry us through the good and bad times that come with all the hard work, effort, and deep passion that is blogging.

When asked about what he thinks other bloggers could do to “get noticed” and grow their blog, he says:

I read the a-listers, and if they something I feel strongly about, for or against, I write about it. I’m not a blind follower. And I don’t want others to blindly follow me. I think A-listers respect you more if you disagree with them, but do it tactful. I’m not a jerk. I don’t demean. I think people demean A-listers too much, and that really bothers me. We’re all imperfect.

Keep in mind, I’ve been at this 2 years now. I’ve never written less than 9 articles in a month. I’m extrememly consistent, and show up to work everyday. A-listers notice up and comers, but they don’t necessarily embrace them right away (nor should they) because so many folks come and go in this business. Once they see someone who is talented and consistent, then they’re much more likely to notice.

I also did a quick interview with James Chartrand of Men with Pens, as she was also featured in a roundup at Copyblogger. Here’s what she had to say:

What’s really important to me (beyond having my hard work and efforts recognized) is that by having my name on the list, people can discover my blog and find helpful advice they need.

That’s always been my personal mission. I’ve been writing advice for writers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners for years because I want to help these people earn more money and more clients.

So it’s fulfilling to hear from people who’ve applied my advice and seen positive results. They’re changing their lives for the better and reaching their success goals. I feel good about being part of that!

But she also said this:

I think people should actually stop blogging until they have something to prove that their knowledge helps other people accomplish goals or that they’re achieving important milestones and can share proven techniques with others. Many bloggers don’t actually know what they’re doing—they’re faking it until they make it.

I feel that recognition comes from the ability to show results—and results come from working hard, putting in the effort, being willing to take risks and having a strong drive to succeed.

Getting included in these roundups is great. Your name and your brand gets more exposure to people who haven’t heard of you yet. That being said, getting featured in these roundups at  the end of every year shouldn’t be your ultimate goal.

It’s great and all, but achieving your personal goals as a blogger, like getting clients, selling your books, and so on, is way better.

Survival isn’t the end-game

Surviving highschool wasn’t the end-game. Nor is it the same for blogging.

After you’ve established yourself and your blog, there’s a whole new ball game.

It’s going to be about continuously delivering content that inspires people, and helps them in some aspect in their lives.

Are you up to challenge of surviving the blogosphere? What other tips can you add to the list above? Share them in the comments section below.

Josh Sarz is a Freelance Writer, Blogger and the founder of Sagoyism, a blog which talks about Epic Content Marketing and Storytelling . He also likes punk rock and metal, among other things.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How Successful Blogging is Just Like Surviving Highschool

“What should I write about?” It seems such a silly question. Of course you know what to write about!

In fact, you could argue it’s even impossible to write about the wrong thing. That’s like ordering the wrong iPod! Whoever heard of such a thing? As you know, if you write long and hard enough, someone will listen.

An audience of five is great if you’re just blogging for fun. But what if you’re trying to build a profitable business? Can you get enough people listening to make a business?

The answer is yes, if you’re in the right niche. The problem with many failing entrepreneurs is that they’re in the wrong niche. Here’s a list of symptoms you’re one of them.

1. You’re building a big list but you can’t sell anything

In your zeal to rebel from your day job, it’s easy to pick a topic that’s utterly foreign to what you’re good at. But it’s hard to make real money in an area you know relatively little about.

Forget about monetization. Businesses don’t monetize. They sell things. What are you selling? If you don’t have a clue, you’re in the wrong niche.

2. You aren’t becoming an authority in your niche

If nobody’s commenting on your prose, sending email, buying your stuff, and becoming clients, you aren’t an authority. If you’ve spent a year of hard work without anyone acknowledging your expertise, you’re at a dead end. It’s time to move on.

This isn’t always your fault. You can be the greatest parody IT blogger, but if not enough people care about parody IT, you’re stuck. It’s safer to go with a demand that people have proven already exists.

3. The people in your niche don’t spend money

If your niche doesn’t spend money, you’re in trouble.

I know a fine art painter who returned to his day job because his titanic audience wouldn’t buy enough work. Don’t pick a field where people are looking for a quick laugh or a brief diversion. They won’t pay your bills.

4. You never enjoy writing about your topic

Have you gone six months without loving your subject? Does the very thought of hitting “New Post” make you cringe?

The best content comes from writers who are compelled to write. You can’t enjoy this excitement every single time (we all have our bad days), but you should feel it regularly.

5. You’re measuring everything in immediate dollars and cents

If money is all you care about, you’ll be too sane to stick when it’s tough. You won’t be passionate with tasks that have little immediate revenue.

To build a thriving blog, you have to be dedicated to your community. This means dispensing free advice to strangers for the greater community. If you want every single decision to be data-driven and money-making, you’re in the wrong niche.

6. You’re copying other people’s ideas outright

There’s no such thing as 100% original content. It’s okay to get inspiration from other people—in fact, it’s important. But if you don’t even try to edit other people’s ideas, if you mimic their entire ideology with tasteless apathy, you aren’t built for this niche.

Eugene Swartz once said he never knew a company that built its success from copying a competitor’s ad campaigns. Content marketing holds the exact same principle. You can’t expect success when you’ve got nothing original.

If your imagination doesn’t takes control at some point, you’re destined to burn out.

What should you do?

You don’t have to start out a genius. You don’t have to be a perfect writer. You don’t even have to completely understand your business model.

But you can’t be in the wrong niche.

Take a hard look at your blog.

Then pick yourself up and get good at something people pay for.

Martyn Chamberlin can take your WordPress site to places you never dreamed with the Genesis Framework. He blogs at Two Hour Blogger.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

6 Fatal Symptoms You’re in the Wrong Niche

Students should be worried about their job prospects. I am. Competition is rife and the top advertised jobs receive hundreds of applications. Our work experiences are not just being challenged by a surge of candidates, but our very degrees are being questioned. Surely only post-graduate degrees now hold credibility?

I began blogging in 2005 (my promoted blog was founded in 2009) and have never looked back. As I reached maturity it became clear that blogging was no longer for the weird recluse yearning for a better life; instead, it’s a practical application for furthering a career.

Yet, despite my personal successes, I am still finding it difficult to convince fellow students to blog.

Here are eight reasons why students should join the blogosphere.

1.Your blog is your portfolio

When I submit my resume to potential employers, I always keep my blog’s address at the top of the first page as a contact detail. It is my online portfolio, which I can give as an example to organizations before I’m even at the interview stages. It is not only a way for me to stand out from the crowd, but it speaks a thousand words more than my two-page resume will allow.

University courses vary but you will certainly find a blogging format to suit you well. A blog can be used to do all of the following:

• Post images of your latest photography, graphic designs, animations, architecture plans, 3D models, etc.
• Post videos to present the brilliance of your last feature film project. Friends of mine have posted client work showing advertisements and band music videos.
• Post written content which delves into industry matters and theoretical musings, or demonstrates practical experiences.

Your blog doesn’t just have to act as a portfolio of content; it can also present links to your social networking profiles. Control your online presence and stand out from the crowd.

2. Blog to control your SEO

What will the first thing your potential employer does when they receive your resume? Either bin it or type your name into Google. When I worked for Microsoft last year as an intern, members of the team took great pleasure in finding information on candidates outside of their resume. Fortunately for you, your blog will be the top result because, through you blog, you can control your SEO.

WordPress is arguably the best blogging software available, especially for those of us who enjoy self-hosting. A variety of plugins are available for WordPress blogs to enhance your SEO:

• All in One SEO: This plugin is ideal for amateurs and professionals alike. Simply activate it on your WordPress setup to optimize your site for search engines.
• Google XML Sitemaps: Create an XML-compliant sitemap for your blog to help search engines. I highly recommend that once you have activated this plugin that you post your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.
• W3 Total Cache: Yes, this is a caching plugin designed to speed up your blog. It is still entirely relevant to SEO, though. Speed matters in terms of page rankings.

The art of improving your SEO is a subject for another blog post. The above plugins will prepare you though. Make sure when your potential employer is searching that they click on the link you want them to see.

3. Network with industry professionals

A couple of months ago I published a review on my blog for a book called Social Media Analytics. Within a few hours of posting it, the author, Marshall Sponder, got in touch thanking me for my kind words. An industry professional made first contact with a student! Yes, I did him a favor, but that was partly in a bid to gain his attention. It worked.

In terms of networking, a blog cannot be used alone. Twitter is still one of the best online networking resources available. Couple your Twitter profile with your blog and you could be playing more seriously. You can gain the attention of industry professionals by:

• writing reviews of their books
• writing a reactionary blog post to something they have written
• offering to guest post for their blog (like I’m doing here!)
• simply mentioning them in a post with a link.

There are countless methods. Use your own creativity to think of something different.

4. Blogging shows your determination

Make no mistake, blogging is tough. To be successful requires quality content, frequent posts, and networking clout. My blog won a college advisor award in 2010, today I look over the list to find a year later barely half of the blogs are still active. You don’t want your employer to be gazing upon a graveyard of a portfolio.

My current blog has been active for four years now. In that time, I have written 310 posts, which approximately total to 160,000 words. This easily out shadows a measly 10,000 word dissertation. Such a task can only be driven by passion. Only a few blogs reach such a high publicity level that you could consider yourself a minor online celebrity—mine has yet to do so.

In essence blogging is about sitting in your room, with a large mug of tea, which is being drunk by a very determined individual (some say he is mad). Blogging will be worth your time. Plan blog posts ahead. Remember, you are preparing yourself for a marathon and not a sprint.

5. Build a reputation before you hit the workplace

Your professional reputation no longer starts once you have found yourself your first job. It starts based upon the information on the internet people discover. Build your reputation upon the strong foundations of your blog.

My uncle could be regarded as old-school. He has a top job in a worldwide recognized media agency, a result of working his way up the ladder. If you type his name into Google, you will find a dozen news stories written about him by reputable magazines. Never has he needed to build his reputation online first; his reputation leaked online due to his “real world” efforts.

The year 2012 is different. Competition is high among students and so you should be building your reputation at all times, even before you study at University. Here are a number of ways in which a blog can help build your reputation:

• Focus on your blog’s branding. What do the images and colors say about you?
• Feature references from industry professionals. Let their endorsements give you credibility.
• Show off your knowledge of the industry by providing insights and advice.

Reputation is everything.

6. Blogging expands and tests your knowledge

Blogging can be an excellent way to expand your knowledge by testing new ideas out publicaly. On a few occasions visitor’s comments have provided me with fresh angles in order to tackle information. Ultimately the result not only expands your knowledge but allows you to effectively tackle debates and tune your mind to thoughts in your chosen industry.

Don’t forget about comments. Whilst the main content serves as an important resource, comments can provide practical feedback (or nonsensical drivel) to take into consideration.

7. Access traditional media opportunities

In the recent post written by the inspirational Chris Brogan he explains how we should view ourselves as media channels. This is exactly what blogs are; frame them as your media channel. If you do then other, more traditional media channels could become available to you.

Over the last year I was fortunate to become a “rent-a-mouth” for a number of BBC radio stations (including their flagship BBC Radio Five Live). It was an opportunity driven by the content they viewed on my blog. Blogging is by no means a perfect media channel as its audience depends upon your activities. Journalists who work for radio stations and newspapers can give you the credibility of opinion, more exposure, and perhaps even endorsement for work you have produced.

This is a priceless reason to blog. Don’t ignore it. Get noticed.

8. Earn money

How could we not include money on this list as a reason? In my experience it is possible to make money from blogging but don’t think it is easy to earn a living from it.

In the past I have accepted sponsored posts from organizations, but only if they are willing to pay me. Eventually I stopped because posts were lacking detail and shamelessly back-linked to their content. The posts were not useful, informative or entertaining—they were useless. Bloggers need to protect their real estate.

There are number of ways to earn money from blogging. If you chose a path then it may buy a few pints as a student. Don’t expect the income to cover your rent. In my opinion earning money is never a goal, only a side effect from doing something you enjoy.

I hope I have inspired a new generation of students to begin blogging. At the same time I may have just harmed by own job prospects … how selfless of me!

Are you a student who is currently blogging? What have I missed in this post? Add to the debate by leaving your comments below.

Michael White is a British public relations student who studies at the University of Gloucestershire. He was a CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) representative in 2009 and completed an internship with Microsoft last year. He regularly updates his blog Musings of a PR Student.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

8 Reasons Why Students Should Blog

It’s been said countless times in the blogging world that in order to be successful we need a plan. But how do we create this plan in a way that will help us reach our goals?

Do we scratch it onto a piece of loose paper?

Do we grab a crayon and write it on a napkin?

Do we create a text doc on a PC and save it in some folder filled with hundreds files?

No. We create a roadmap.

When I first started blogging I had one goal in mind: to grow my audience. I was a nobody (and still I pretty much am a nobody) in this busy world of blogging, but I want to be a somebody, someday. So I created a roadmap to get there. You should too!

Recognizing the problem most new bloggers face

What’s the problem we all face when we start out blogging?

Too many great ideas at once.

We’ve all been there, right? That first idea pops into your head, and then another, and then, oh my, you’re already thinking of redesigning the layout of our blog, but you also have that ebook you want to start, and you’re supposed to have a newsletter out at the end of the month! Your to-do list keeps growing and growing and there’s no end in sight.

Every new blogger who does any amount of research on how to gain blogging knowledge has certainly found themselves here at ProBlogger; the problem is that it’s too good a resource!

Every day there’s a new post telling us to do something with our blog. Maybe what to do if your niche blog fails to make money, or that you should have built a newsletter opt-in box before you published your first post.

Regardless of what we’re learning, these posts always will generate new ideas for us to apply in our own blogs—I mean, that’s what they’re there for, right?

When it comes to planning your blog’s future, we need to put all this information in an organized spreadsheet that we can glance at. This way, we’ll and know exactly what we need to get done in January and what will be done by October.

Creating a roadmap

Organization is probably the most vital skill in the blogging world. You might not have to have all your papers in line and all your photographs in perfectly named folders, but your plans should be organized.

This is precisely where a blogging roadmap will come in handy. You might ask, “John why do I need a roadmap? Won’t a simple to-do list do the same thing?” Here’s my answer.

A roadmap gives you:

1. an organized layout
2. a clear-cut timetable
3. accountability (optional).

Let’s break this down a bit further shall we?

A list is a great way to start your roadmap, but ultimately you’ll want a plan that’s visual. When we have multiple projects spread across many months, if not years, a simple list can become an overwhelming thing to look at. At that scale, it’s definitely not informative.

So, sure, a list can be a great starting point, but at some point it’s necessary to break that list into chunks—I broke mine up by yearly quarters—that reflect the things we want to accomplish in a given timetable. To give you an idea, here’s a screen shot of my 2011 – 2013 roadmap for Phogropathy.com.

What you want to make sure you do when you create your roadmap is to spread things out. You don’t want to have a roadmap that ends next month: you’re building your blog for the future. So let’s make sure we plan things accordingly.

Once your to-do list is in roadmap form, you’ll have a few years of targets planned. Now you’ll be able to visually see how all your blogging efforts fit together and ultimately, that will help lead you to successful growth.

How? The clear-cut timetable gives you the ability to predict when you need to buckle down and get your work done on a specific project. For example, if you want an ebook ready to be published by Q3 of this year, you’d better start the final draft by the end of Q2, and the pre-marketing campaign sometime in early Q3.

I made accountability an optional advantage in the list at the start of this discussion, and that’s mainly because some people like to be more secretive about their overall plans. But if you do choose to publish your roadmap, your readers will know exactly what you’re planning and when these things will take place. This means that you’ll be more likely to meet your deadlines, so that you keep your readers happy. But regardless of whether you share the information or not, with a roadmap, you’re always accountable to yourself.

Planning ahead is key when you’re the only one driving your blog. You don’t want to get lost and you certainly don’t want to drive off a cliff. So make sure you create a blogging roadmap, and never leave home without it.

Do you already work off a blogging roadmap? What’s your major goal for 2012?

John Davenport is an avid amateur photographer and blogger. He shares daily photographs on his blog Phogropathy.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Feeling Lost? Let a Blogging Roadmap Lead You to Success

Being the best blogger on the planet is just so mainstream. Why would you even aim for that?!

Why not aim for something much easier to achieve, and be the worst blogger the world has ever seen?

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, people follow different steps in reaching this goal, but I think these 13 will do the job well enough. So here we go, how to be the worst blogger in the world in just 13 easy steps.

Disclaimer: this is pure entertainment, don’t take it seriously. These steps are exactly the opposite of those you should put into practice.

1. Do no research whatsoever before writing a post

Who needs research? Research is overrated. It just takes time. Chances are no one will be able to notice that your posts are written with no information backing them up anyway.

Simply starting to write whatever comes to mind is a much more effective approach for the worst blogger in the world.

2. Don’t spend more than 30 seconds working on your headline

Headlines are just an evil internet marketer’s way of convincing people to do nasty things! Don’t be a part of the practice.

Make sure you’re on the light side of the force. Don’t use pitchy language that might just be able to arouse some interest in your readers. Be honest and make it clear from the get go that there’s nothing interesting in your posts.

3. Write drunk

What’s your usual behavior when you’re drunk? Talking about strange, unrelated things, maybe? And acting like you’re the biggest expert in the world?

This is exactly the way you should be writing your posts. Remember, the more ideas you touch upon in a single post, the better. Posts about just a single idea are simply lame. The more unrelated information you give, the better.

By the way, did I tell you about my great Chili Con Carne recipe? You take one large onion, some hot peppers, slice it up and put everything in a pan. After about ten minutes you take 0.5 kg of ground beef and put it in the pan too. You season it with some salt, hot pepper, cumin, cayenne pepper, and basil. After about ten minutes you put in some fresh sliced tomatoes, and one can of chopped tomatoes. Then wait another half an hour and put in some red kidney beans. Ten minutes later your meal is ready.

Anyway, what was I..? Oh yes: blogging.

4. Use long paragraphs

If your paragraphs are too short, people will start to think you have nothing to tell them, that you have no knowledge and that you’re not really a good writer. A good writer can manage to write long paragraphs with no sense to them whatsoever.

Here’s how you write a long paragraph. First, you take a thought and basically run wild with it. You start by introducing the thought with a single sentence. Then you create at least ten more sentences explaining the thought even though everyone, and I mean everyone, was able to grasp that idea after reading just the initial sentence. Hold on, I’m not done yet. Then you take a second thought and start talking about it mid-paragraph. Finally, you break the thought in half and continue talking about it in another ridiculously long paragraph.

5. Write as if you were writing to yourself

Whether someone else will read your post or not is irrelevant. It’s not your concern. You only need to make sure that the post is understandable to you.

Come on, it’s your blog, so you should put yourself in the center. You, the author, are the most important person here, not the readers.

Remember, you have a basic understanding of the thing you’re writing about, so you don’t need to explain some of the more basic stuff that’s quite obvious to you. Focus on the interesting, difficult stuff only.

6. Use complex language

Like Shakespeare-complex:

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.

Or academic-degree-complex:

This paper argues that all evaluation has significant rhetorical dimensions, which are often overlooked. This is particularly dangerous where there are high stakes for evaluation and assessment, as in educational assessment and workplace evaluations.

The possibilities are truly endless. Remember that the more complex words and expressions you use, the more likely you’ll be seen as an expert.

7. Don’t edit

Editing is simply a waste of time. Just like researching.

The initial draft of your post is always good enough. Not once in the history of blogging has anyone ever found that any changes need to be made to the original, first draft of an article.

Your first version is always perfect because you are perfect.

As a matter of fact, take this even further and…

8. Don’t even profreed

Typos or grammatical errors are not really that important. Your text is perfectly understandable even if it contains some typos. Chances are people won’t even notice, and if they do … well, you shouldn’t even care anyway, you’re writing for yourself (see point #5).

9. Post as irregularly as possible

One day, publish two posts one after another; then wait a full two weeks before publishing another post.

Then wait one more month and write a post in which you explain why you’ve been gone, thinking that anyone even noticed. And don’t forget to promise that you’ll be posting more often now.

Then forget about it, and write another post three weeks later like nothing ever happened. Then repeat the whole process by publishing two posts in a day.

10. Don’t respond to comments

Remember: your blog, your rules. No one else matters. Responding to comments is a sign of weakness.

Most importantly, never ever respond to comments where someone asks you a question. The best approach is to never approve such comments in the first place.

11. Don’t ever respond to emails

This is even more important than not responding to comments. If someone asks you something via email, well… tough luck.

You are a highly busy blogger and don’t have time for email. Even if it’s not the case, you still need to act as if it was. Busy important people don’t have time to talk to small and unimportant people. That’s the rule.

12. Don’t tell anyone about your blog

Well, you are writing it for yourself anyway. Besides, people will find their way to your blog on their own, since it’s so great.

You are viral from day one. Expect to have massive success with no promotion. Remember, content is always king, and nothing else matters.

13. Complain when you get no traffic

No traffic? Not your fault. It’s because the space is already crowded, and the people who have been around for a while have it much easier.

Your content, even though so great, has managed to remain unnoticed due to an A-list bloggers’ conspiracy.

14. Get the count of your list posts wrong

Remember, you don’t care about the readers. No one will notice anyway, since you have no actual traffic.

That’s it: a complete guide to being the worst blogger in the world in 13 (or 14, whatever) steps. Feel free NOT to comment cause I don’t even care. And don’t send me any emails, for goodness’ sake!

…actually, please do comment. I’m curious about your opinion on this “reverse” tutorial!

Karol K. is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland and a writer at ThemeFuse.com, where he shares various WordPress advice. Contrary to what you might think, he doesn’t want to be the worst blogger on the planet. Don’t forget to visit ThemeFuse to get your hands on some original WordPress themes (warning: no boring stuff like everyone else offers).

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

13 Steps to Being the Worst Blogger on the Planet

I came across this interesting quote from psychologist Alexander Lowen:

“To experience joy, one must be free of anxieties about letting go and expressing feeling. Or to put it differently, one has to be carefree and innocent as a child.”—Alexander Lowen

Image copyright stock.xchng user bluegum

I first got into writing because I felt this explosion of feeling, like I could release everything I was on the page and fill it with beautiful and terrible truths. Sometimes I get so excited about writing, my eyes fill with tears. It’s a great experience.

This is life experienced to its fullest. But then I look at my pageviews and my game face goes on. All I care about is the numbers. Immediately, my joy fizzles out like soda gone flat.

Lowen continues, “Narcissists are neither carefree nor innocent.” Have I become a narcissist? Here are four narcissistic blogger tendencies:

1. You worry about your image

Is my design interesting enough? Will viewers bounce immediately after seeing it? Are my tweets funny enough? Do I post/tweet too much? Do I post/tweet too little?

2. You attempt to get people to respond to you the way you want them to

Why aren’t people commenting? How do I get them to comment more? I need more comments!

3. If you’re not in control, you become panicky

My views were supposed to go up this week! Why are they going down? Why aren’t people sharing my Tweet? It was really funny! Why the heck aren’t people commenting?

4. You look for ways to make people do what you want them to do

Read my blog. Comment on my blog. Share my blog. Like my blog. Tweet my blog. Please retweet. If my views don’t go up, I’ll be an insecure wreck.

Do you have any of these tendencies? I know I do.

True confession: One time I went to a party with some friends just after publishing a really great blog post. When I got there, I didn’t have a deep connection with the divine. Instead, I felt, These people are lucky to have me. I’m a really good writer. What a great resource I am for them.

I cared more about my image than spending quality time with the people I loved.

Not quite five tips to become less narcissistic and experience more joy

The truth is that I’d like to give you five tips on how to be less narcissistic. I’d like to give you seven bullet points on how to be a more loving, less self-conscious, more joyful person.

But I’m not sure it would help.

My all-time favorite TEDtalk is from researcher Brene Brown. She said, “We don’t need more tips. We pretty much know the right way to live. ‘How to’ isn’t working.”

Instead, I’m going to give you just one.

Be real.

We don’t need more tips on how to live more joyful, less narcissistic life. Instead, we need openness, honesty, and vulnerability. The secret to fighting shame and narcissism is to feel your feelings, to share them without concern of getting hurt (you might get hurt, by the way).

There is no secret. There is no key to effective non-narcissism. There is no tip to experience joy.

There is only yourself. You as you really are. Unhidden and unashamed.

Do you struggle with blogging narcissism? Do you want to be sophisticated? Share your own true confession here. Feel free to comment anonymously if it’s too personal.

Joe Bunting is a professional writer, fiction editor, and platform consultant. You can follow Joe on Twitter and download a copy of his eBook, 14 Prompts, for free.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Confessions of a Narcissistic Blogger

But one area that I think is too often overlooked is outbound links.

Hello, it’s called the “web”

Image copyright stock.xchng user lusi

There was no central starting point. Each page contained hyperlinks that referenced other pages that were relevant.

There were no search engines and directories were fairly small and specialized. The only way that you could get to a page was if you knew the URL, or followed a link from another page.

In those days, the idea was to provide access to information. The internet was not a commercial place back then.

But then things changed…

The nature of links has changed drastically in the past few decades. Instead of being a helpful way to share relevant content with our readers, we’ve come to view them as a way to increase our SEO. We’ve become stingy with links because we want to keep our readers on our own pages, viewing our AdSense ads and buying through our affiliate links.

We allow links in the comments, but we nofollow them so no link juice escapes. We’ll put the odd blog in our blogroll, if we even have one. But how many of those are owned by us as well?

No, our focus is all on how we can get links back to our own site and build ourselves up in the eyes of Google.

It has to change

All of us need to change our mindsets about linking. We need to get back to the original mindset of the web.

That’s not to say that getting backlinks is bad (provided you’re not spamming to do it—that’s another article altogether). Nor should you ignore the SEO benefits of internal links.

But we need to get back to the idea of sharing links simply because the information is of value to our readers.

As the search engines get smarter, and the value of comment links, forum links, and social media links drops, the value of in-content links (i.e. links from within an article itself) will rise.

Who else thinks this way?

Am I the only one thinking about this? Not at all. Some A-list bloggers have written about this topic.

Brian Clark of Copyblogger wrote Why Linking to Other Blogs is Critical back in 2007. He even suggests linking to your competition—you’ll have to read his article to find out why.

And if you look through the list of trackbacks, you’ll find Linking Out Instead of Link Building to Rank in Google as a recent entry by Tad Chef at SEOptomise. I especially like one thing that he said: “Linking out is a strategy you have to embrace holistically.” Read the article to see what he means.

Dawud Miracle wrote on Lorelle on WordPress Why You Want to Link to Other Blogs where he explores more than just the page rank/traffic benefits.

And to help you find interesting stuff to link to, check out Ben Yoskovitz’s Blog Hack: Link to New Blogs and Get More Readers.

You’ll also find articles here at ProBlogger that talk about how to use outbound links. Kimberly Turner’s Monthly Trends + 10 Tips for a Flawless Linking Strategy touches on the subject, for example.

And don’t forget Darren! He wrote about this back in 2009 in Outbound Links—An Endangered Species? [And Why I Still Link Up].

Explore the trackbacks and links found in those articles and you’ll find lots of people writing about how important linking out is for your blog.

So, what’s a blogger to do?

Excellent question! I’m glad you asked.

We all need to adopt a mindset that includes outbound links in our articles—not necessarily every article, but I think it should be 25% at a minimum. I think you’ll find that as you intentionally look for and link to quality articles, you’ll be able to link out in almost every article you write. This one has six (if you don’t count the blatant plug back to my own site in mu bio!).

I’ve actually come up with a list of six guidelines for outbound links. You can find the list at the end of this post. Maybe you can think of some other guidelines to add — feel free to share!

Above all, remember that Out is the new In when it comes to links.

Bill (LoneWolf) Nickerson is a programmer, web designer, trainer, writer and all around nice guy. He has several blogs on the go and loves to tinker with plugins and themes (more than he should). You can see what he’s learning about blogging and online marketing at LoneWolf’s List Marketing Adventure.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

A New Linking Strategy: Out is the New In

He says the most important fuel for this growth was writing quality content. You already know about that, yeah? So in this interview, I dug deeper to find out the specific tactics David uses to make his content interactive, clickable, and sharable.

Here are three tricks that help Raptitude get more visitors.

1. Join a small group of bloggers

This was probably the smartest thing I ever did with my blog… I found a little group of beginner bloggers, there were six or seven of us that had all started in the last couple of months.—David Cain

During our interview, David twice emphasized the importance of joining a peer group. He says that not only does it hold you accountable to continue and give you a forum to bounce ideas off, but also provides a “starter community” to comment on and share your work. This is especially useful early on when the small inner circles of your peers can magnify your efforts. Once your community has this lively base, new visitors can participate by commenting or sharing as well.

Here are three suggestions for finding your support group:

1. Google Groups: try searching at www.groups.google.com for “blogging”, or “beginner blogging”
2. Facebook Groups
3. Ask around: new bloggers are lurking everywhere, so see if you can find allies within your existing network.

Action Step: Join a group of bloggers at a similar experience level. Have a loose rule that if you like each others’ work, you’ll share it with your circle of family and friends.

2. Make your post titles clickable

Every headline has to say “if I read this post, then what’s in it for me?”.—David Cain

David stressed the importance of a good title for your posts. He says that on the internet there is so much information, someone could read it their whole life and never get a fraction of it done. That means that your potential reader might encounter hundreds or thousands of links in a day, and it’s only your few select words that affect whether or not they click on yours. You can leverage that decisive moment by having a headline that you yourself would click on.

Check out how David names his posts:

• Literal: Raptitude’s most popular post of all time is a list of 40 quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche. They are pretty powerful, like #33: “A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.” A literalist might have named this post something like, 40 Quotes by Nietzsche. Kind of boring, yeah?
• Clickable: What did David actually name this post? 40 Belief-Shaking Remarks From a Ruthless Nonconformist. Here, “belief-shaking” poses a challenge to readers, “remarks” sounds cooler than “quotes”, and with “nonconformist” being a little bit of a buzzword, many potential readers already identify with it. Another advantage is that when you search Google for “nonconformist quotes”, David’s post is on the first page of results.

Action Step: For your next post, brainstorm a few titles, and decide which one stands out as the most clickable.

3. Post link bait

It’s worth including posts geared towards people wanting to share them.—David Cain

David admits that sometimes he mixes list posts into his work because they are more sharable on social media. He says posts like 7 Ways to Do X or 88 Truths I’ve Learned About Life are easily digestible. This means that a wider variety of people can enjoy this writing, than say posts with a long discourse about human suffering.

Alright, the term “link bait” may have negative connotations, but it doesn’t mean you have to deprive your blog of dignity. On Raptitude, list posts are still very much in line with the pursuit of understanding the human experience. Do your best to ensure that your link bait maintains the quality of your blog—and yeah, people will share it!

Action Step: Try posting link bait. Maybe a list post, photography, or other work that expresses creativity.

What about you?

I’d love to hear from you: are you proud of a particular post title? Created some link bait you can share here?

Michael Alexis is the producer of WriterViews, where you can learn the specifics tactics and strategies that worked for successful writers. Follow him on Twitter at @writerviews.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

3 Traffic Generation Tactics from an Ordinary Human Being

You’ve got it! You’re officially a Have in a world of Have-nots!

What do you have? It’s probably not money, fame, or tax-write-offs disguised as corporate jets. It’s something more powerful.

You have a blog. And a darn fine one at that.

If you’ve said before that you’ll never give up blogging—surprise! You’re probably right!

Giving up a good thing is next-to-impossible. So it’s not a surprise to discover that blogging isn’t the sort of thing you just stop doing. In fact, anyone would be hard-pressed to give up blogging once they’ve discovered just how rewarding it can be.

1. You have freedom of expression. We all claim to want to be able to say our piece, but most of the time we’re just lamenting to our journals or blabbering on to a significant other who probably agrees with everything we’re saying. But with blogging, you can say what you want to say as often as you like without censure. You’ll reach an audience, too.

2. People listen to you. Good or bad, once you start blogging, people start tuning in. It’s amazing to feel like people are paying attention to you and that they consider what you have to say valid.

3. Your thoughts are more developed. People who think their thoughts have fuzzy ideas of what they believe in and why. But bloggers have to fully develop a thought and include support if you’re going to put it on a blog. This helps you formulate concrete ideas and opinions. Skip the fuzzy thoughts forever.

4. Your education continues indefinitely. In your cube-based job, you learn how to do your job and you might catch some gossip on the front page of the paper. Bloggers, on the other hand, are surrounded by news and ideas all of the time. They are constantly growing and learning—if not to keep up with the niche they enjoy, then to ensure that their blog continues to grow.

5. You learn to type more quickly. It’s a small thing, really, but the moment you realize that you type faster than all of your friends, you’ll feel that sort of pride that threatens to overwhelm you with a sheer manic force as you yell, “Ha! I am so much better at this than you!”

6. Your ego can take a beating, and keep on ticking. Putting your thoughts and ideas out there for strangers can be daunting. But as others tear your ideas apart, you get to argue back and strengthen your own viewpoint—or you can change your mind as your knowledge grows. Either way, having someone knock your ideas makes you a better, stronger person.

7. You take risks and see rewards. Being online is risky on a good day. Being a blogger and courting public exposure makes you practically a rebel when it comes to risk-taking. You’re not hiding behind an email address and fuzzy cube walls. You’re out there sharing and growing—building a community. Your risks online pay off, and that’s heady business.

8. You meet new (real) people. We’re in a global community here, but how many of our neighbors still just exist in the block where they live and work? Bloggers are out there in the global environment interacting with other real people who enjoy the same thing we do. No fake profiles and pictures—this isn’t a dating website, after all. We’re the ones who are really doing the work of globalization.

9. Creativity regenerates. It’s sad, but true—creativity is beaten out of us as children. As we grow, we lose almost all of our creativity through standardized tests, college courses and work programs. Blogging is an excellent opportunity to take back your creativity once and for all—to get serious about being original. Of course, you probably are already.

10. You think more clearly. Not only do your thoughts become stronger, the more you blog, the more clearly you begin to think the thoughts that appear in your head every day. It’s as if you mind converts itself to WordPress and you’re able to compact thoughts, provide some bullet points and provide a catchy headline for every mundane thought that passes through your head.

11. You can amuse yourself. There’s nothing more powerful than humor, and bloggers are some of the funniest people around. Perhaps it’s the global exposure or maybe it’s just the type of people who enjoy blogging, but you’ll become so good at finding humor in the world around you for others on the blog that you’ll soon realize just how much there is outside of your homepage as well.

12. Your vocabulary will improve. While blogging is really just a form of internet journaling, the amount of reading you do in your favorite areas will provide you with the newest lingo and as you start to revise your blogs, you’ll catch areas where you can improve your word choice. Often, this is just the opportunity your brain is looking for to start sucking in some new words and phrases.

13. Internet shortcuts become your highways. How long does it take you to update your blog? If you were to line up three of your closest friends and all try to find a picture to go along with an article, who would win? You would, of course! You know all the good photo spots, the best places for graphics, for themes and for videos. You’ve got the inside track.

14. You grow cocky. Being online, being read by others, and knowing that we do a good job with words and phrases turns us into the worst kind of internet animal—we’re cocky. We know what we’re doing and we’re not afraid to let others know it. And, quite honestly, this level of confidence and coolness isn’t something you’ll enjoy losing.

15. You learn how to make money. Growing up, you probably learned the same things we all did. To make money you 1) finish school. 2) Get a good job. 3) Work there as long as possible. And perhaps 4) Change jobs a few times and play some politics to earn a good raise or two along the way. If you were lucky you might get a bonus every so often. Those of us with blogs, however, have learned the ultimate truth—you can make money any time and any way you want. Just write something and throw up some ads.

16. You are your own boss. This is a biggie—it’s hard to become a humble servant to another boss when you know that at home your blog is generating some nice revenue and gathering up a few good visitors. Being your own boss, even if it’s just in the evenings, is confidence boosting and might be just the outlet you need to go back and live in your window-less office again in the morning.

17. You can monetize anything. If you can make decent money with a blog, you can make money with anything. Once you figure out the perfect combination of traffic, visitors, ads, and upsells to turn a profit on your blog, you’re on your way up.

18. The cutting edge comes to you. It only takes a few weeks of blogging to realize that being online in a meaningful way—not watching videos or just tweeting with your best college buddies—makes you a leader in the ways of trends. You know the trends before they ever arrive. You see the blog posts and the conversations between those in the know, and it amuses you when suddenly the public is wild for Snuggies, ShamWow, Pillow Pets, and Acai berries a few months later.

19. You’re brandable. Blogs are definitive and you develop a certain style over the months and years through which you add material. As your blog grows and becomes more branded by you, you become more branded yourself. It’s nice to be able to explain yourself in what amounts to a slogan (perhaps even the same slogan you have on the site right now).

20. Change is constant. Every so often you just know it’s time for your theme to change. And with that constant change and improvement online, you’re more comfortable making changes to your personal life as well. Blogs are never stagnant and neither are bloggers. Ask someone who’s retiring after 35 years in the same job if he can say the same.

21. You get freebies. It may be beta invitations or perhaps some new products to try for a review. Whatever it is, blog long enough and the freebies start coming your way. And who doesn’t love free stuff?

22. You feel productive. We know productivity is a good thing, but most of us turn off the productivity engine as we step away from our desk at five or six in the evening. Not so with dedicated bloggers. We’re productive almost every waking hour—adding to the blog, finding new features for the blog, or just reading up on other blogs to stay current.

23. The blogging network is deep. There may be millions of blogs out there, but there are only a handful of dedicated bloggers in a particular niche or area. Once you’ve been around for a while, you’ll be impressed with how knowledgeable and approachable these bloggers are. Your network is not only wide, but deep as well.

24. You can justify cool stuff. When you blog online, you need to be connected. Being connected means you need important things like new computers, tablets, iPads, and plenty of accessories for all of the goodies. Even if you don’t actually need every single gadget and gizmo you bought last year, you can put them all to use and even write the cost off if your blogging is part of a business or even remotely profitable.

25. You’re never lonely. Bloggers have friends in every time zone, and when you feel like reaching out to someone, you can—no matter where you’re located.

26. Your passion is worthy of notice. We all have passions and things we enjoy, but many people don’t have the opportunity to really dig into an area of interest and allow it to enrich life in a meaningful way. Bloggers are able to indulge in passions every day—even if just by reading and reporting on new areas of development.

27. You’re motivated. How often do you drag your feet going to your office or trying to figure out how you’re going to make it through another Monday? Start your day with a quick blog post and you’ll be off and running in no time.

28. You can build up from a blog. A blog is an easy way to get started with a new idea. Then, if you like your new idea, you can build out from your blog to develop a more comprehensive business or just continue to use the blog as a marketing home base.

29. You can flesh out a real resume. Jobs can be tricky right now, and if you happen to be an expert in a particular field, you stand a far better chance of finding a job that is well suited to you. Additionally, having a long-running blog is a sign that you’re all the things employers look for—dedicated, knowledgeable, hard-working, and passionate.

30. You have a useful following. Those who have subscribed to your blog or who are faithful readers often can be counted on for many other things. They can help you win contests. They can help you find new jobs or interview subjects. They suggest topics. Those same followers can often be convinced to try new things—especially if it’s something you’ve made and are considering selling.

31. You can scratch what itches. Everyone needs to vent from time to time, and having a blog and a bunch of willing readers is a great place to do it. What’s the fun of complaining about terrible service at your favorite store if nobody cares? Your dedicated readers will care and they might even take action on your behalf. On the other hand, if you’re just dying to get feedback for your stab at song lyrics, scratch the itch and let others check them out amongst your other posts.

Blogs and bloggers are understandably varied—some are in it for the money, some for the entertainment and others just because it feels good. But whatever the reason you’re blogging, if you’ve been doing it long enough, you’re probably in it for good. It’s just too hard to walk away from something this rewarding.

Uttoran Sen is a travel blogger who likes to travel places from around the world, and write about his journeys on his travel blog. Follow him on Twitter or join his Facebook page and stay connected.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

31 Unexpected Perks of Blogging You’ll Never Want to Give Up

If you visit your favorite blogging tips and marketing tips blog today, you will come across a lot of tips, ranging from tips on writing well to tips on building an audience.

The reality is that a lot of new blogs spring up every day, and the majority of these blogs are bound to fail right from the beginning. It’s not because there is something wrong with their approach, but because they fail to neglect something really important: their wellbeing.

Do you know that blogging is not only a physical challenge? It is also a mental challenge.

There are a lot of things we bloggers go through every day that no amount of practice will help make easier, but by focusing on being okay in every aspect of our lives (mental, emotional, physical, etc.) we’ll find those challenges easier to deal with.

In this article I’ll be touching some subjects bloggers hardly discuss online, and I’ll be giving tips to help you deal with them.

Dealing with criticism

Do you know that one of the major dangers of being a blogger is being exposed to criticism? If you’re still a new blogger you might not have noticed it yet, but in over two years of blogging, I have seen several clear examples of blogging criticisms. In fact, I have seen bloggers been sent death threats, and I have seen several bloggers quit because of that. Why? Because they chose to give value to the world through their blogging.

If you think blogging is a bed of roses, or if you think everybody will be your friend, then you need to think twice. There are hateful people online hiding under the cloak of anonymity. There are also people who are ready to vent their anger on you as a result of some personal problem they’re facing. The best way to deal with this is to be prepared, and to get ready for the worst at any time.

Blogging has a great emotional connection to it, and a lot of bloggers these days are starting to pay the price of being celebrities. You need to realize that there are people that will come and vent their hate against you for no reason whatsoever, and you should be ready for them.

I’m not trying to say you should fight back. Instead, I’m telling you not to take it personally. You need to realize that their reason for criticizing you isn’t because you’re the problem. You should also know that not all criticisms are bad. Naturally, there are healthy and unhealthy criticisms, and it is your duty to be able to differentiate the healthy criticisms from the unhealthy ones, and to improve where necessary.

Dealing with failure

Another problem you have to deal with as a blogger is failure. It can get really tough when you plan to achieve something in six months and can’t achieve it in one year—especially when you see another blogger getting better results with what looks like little to no effort in the same time span.

The first tip I have for you is to try to avoid jealousy. You need to realize that failure is part of the game, and that we all have our own challenges and our ways of dealing with them. Don’t be jealous of another blogger’s success. Jealousy is always unhealthy. Instead, take a look at what that blogger is doing, what approach he or she is taking, and start viewing the person as healthy competition.

It’s also very important not to allow your fear of failure prevent you from trying. You need to realize that failure is part of this game, and that not everything is bound to work. If you’re afraid of failing, you will have a hard time succeeding. Your first step is to eliminate every fear of failure within you, so that you can easily try new things no matter what the outcome might be.

Eating well

Do you know that the food you eat can have a great impact on several aspects of your life, including how you think and solve problems, and how you react to emotional challenges?

Have you ever woken up and found it difficult to work hard or get motivated for the day, even though you had a normal sleep the previous night? While sleeping and resting regularly is great, it is very important for you to realize that the food you eat will to a great extent influence your physical activities.

Most things we do as bloggers require us to think and plan effectively, and we also have to deal with the results emotionally—whether good or bad—which is exactly why it is important for us to eat good food to help ourselves be more effective. In other words, eating junk foods makes you dull and emotionally weak, and as a result you will only create poor work that brings bad results. The results will also deal you a massive blow since you’ll likely be emotionally weak.

If you’re emotionally strong, you can easily turn even the worst of problems into a lasting solution, so being careful with what you eat should always be a priority as a blogger.

While you might think you will make a lot more money and get fast results by “saving time” by eating junk foods, you’ll often discover you find it difficult to focus and concentrate because you aren’t in the right frame of mind to do quality work.

Improve your diet, and you’ll be amazed at how much your blogging will improve.

Exercising regularly

Do you know that regular exercise has a lot of benefits, including helping you gain energy and making you more emotionally stable?

I have observed carefully what I can do on a day when I exercise compared to a day when I don’t. I’ve noticed I can get two times more work done if I spend around two hours a day exercising compared to when I don’t.

Are you in a bad mood after waking up in the morning? Do you want to get some serious work done in any given day? Spend at least one hour exercising every day, and you will be amazed at what you can achieve.

To be honest with you, exercising isn’t that easy if you haven’t done it before, so start with ten minutes a day, and then scale it up till you can do one hour a day. Trust me: you will want to do more of it when you see the benefits.

I think, as bloggers, we have a lot more to worry about than our content and marketing ourselves, and we also have to be taking regular measures to ensure we’re physically and mentally active. The above are a few tips that can help you! I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments.

John is an expert weight loss blogger who teaches people how to lose weight on WeightLossTriumph. He also gives the best nutrisystem coupon code and medifast discount code on his blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why Most Bloggers will Fail, No Matter How Hard They Try

Are you a blogger? Are you also a Mum with school age kids? Or a stay-at-home Dad?

If you’re like me, you might find it really difficult to manage your time—and your life—to get some writing done. You are talented, you are persistent. If only you could be really productive, so you can get some work done.

And you can be! All it takes is smart use of your time. This is what I recommend. Feel free to take what gels and discard the rest.

It’s okay to lie to people who don’t “get it”

Have you ever tried to tell your son’s school teacher that the reason why you can’t volunteer at the latest fun raiser is because you have to blog?

Apart from the blank stare that you’d most likely get, you would then have to explain yourself, become defensive and go away feeling very guilty, or carry a list of stuff that you ended up saying yes to.

Try telling the teacher you have other commitments that you simply can’t get out of.

One of your not-so-close friends is having a casual get together? Tell her you have some work-related stuff to do.

If the world is going to pretend that I, as a blogger, don’t have kids, I am going to pretend I have imaginary work-related commitments.

Think of the whole process as trying to save yourself the guilt trip and spare others trying to understand what blogging is. Tell people who do understand, by all means; they probably will get it anyway.

Appliances are your best friends

I don’t have a dishwasher in my house. For one, I don’t have the space for it, but the real reason is that I really don’t mind doing the dishes. This is almost a mind-cleansing activity for me.

The fact that I don’t have to use my brain to wash the dishes keeps my hands occupied while I have the time to clear my head and sort through things. I often get my best ideas when I am doing the dishes, and often go away (happily at that) to jot ideas.

But you might hate it! And that’s even more the reason to get a trusted dishwasher, if you haven’t already. While you’re in the process, get yourself a dryer, a weekly cleaning service (if you can afford it), kids’ car pools etc. Do your grocery shopping online. Let kids become a part of the solution—assign them some basic chores.

Outsource as many things that don’t require you personally to get done. This can save you valuable time.
My most favorite—TV, of course! Although use it with caution, and use sparingly. A close second is take-away one week night so I don’t have to worry about cooking for that night.

Get some help from Dad

Nothing beats a hands-on Dad. Get his help with various chores and kids activities.

Get him to cook one night of the week. Ask him to take the kids for their weekend sports. Ask him to do the night-time-bath-and-story-book thing once a week. Is he naturally more chatty, more outgoing than you are? Swap roles of being a “school mum.”

Is he stronger than you? Of course he is—remind him of this when he is grumbling about mopping the floors!

Be flexible

The only way a mum can survive as a blogger is to be as flexible as possible. You will miss out on a lot if you don’t.

There will always be things related to your kids and your household that you would have to do first. You won’t be able to write if your four-year-old is screaming for Spaghetti Bolognese right now. You won’t be able to write if your kid is at home sick—or your partner is home sick behaving like one.

Making an occasional batch of cupcakes with your kids will earn you serious brownie points and will go a long way in creating a harmonious relationship. Hopefully, they will then take a long time to eat those cupcakes as you sit down to write.

Just relax and look at a problematic situation differently. And be flexible.

Live one life

If your blog permits it, bring your children in the picture. Let them sprinkle their magic on your blog.
Then turn around the do the same for them—let your kids see you work. Show them you are as proud of your blog as you are of them. They may not understand it if they are little, but they will get used to see you do other things beside cook and clean.

Just the other day, my four-year-old told his older brother, “stop blogging me!” That lead to great laughter all around. He might not know what blogging is—he probably thinks it a synonym for “blocking”—but at least he is aware of the lingo. Many adults still aren’t.

Put on your oxygen mask first

How many times have you heard that happy parents make for a happy household?

Well, that is in fact the truth. Taking care of yourself is just as important as taking care of others. Do the things that really make you happy. This doesn’t make you selfish. Think of it as an investment. When you invest in yourself, your family reaps the rewards.

If blogging inspires you, by all means do it. Remember that you would have to prioritize some time for yourself, otherwise you will never be able to get it done.

Every time I complete my blogging goals for the day, I feel on top of the world. I am a happier mum, I am a joy to be around, and my kids love me even more.

You don’t have to be a poster parent

Resist to be a contestant for the race of being the Best Mum in the world. There are plenty of things you can do without:

• You don’t have to bring adorable, homemade snacks to your kids’ school. Realize that you can buy cookies from the supermarket and nobody will really care.
• You don’t have to have your house in tip-top condition. Well in case nobody ever told you, kids are messy: they make a mess everywhere they go! Must you clean after them all day long? Avoid doing activities that lead to even more messes, especially when you are running short on time.
• Ironing your family’s PJ’s? Hello!

A blogging parent and pedestal parent are not mutually exclusive. Stop comparing yourself with others. Aim for “good enough.”

Focus

It’s about the quality than quantity. Be present. Be truly present in the moment, whatever you are doing. Whether it be playing with your kids, or writing that next blog post that goes viral. If you are distracted and spread yourself too thin, you will end up totally exhausting yourself.

• Plan your day well ahead of the schedule. If there’s one thing every blogger mum or dad needs, it is to manage their time. You have to become extremely organized and self-disciplined—and you need an organizer.
• Create more detailed to-do lists.
• Plan weekly menus.
• Organize your outfits for the week if you work outside the house.
• For a clutter-free house, give something away when you buy something new. It’s a great lesson to pass on to your children as well.

Take this advice, and you’ll have more meaningful time to spend with your family, and even some left over for yourself. Best of all, you won’t feel so guilty about the time spent blogging.

Find a great blogging partner

While it sounds fantastic to have some real-life friends who are mums and bloggers on top of it, it’s very unlikely you will magically discover them.

I am very lucky to have a best friend who actually encouraged me to take up blogging in the first place. She is the most wonderful person to talk about my blogging “habit,” as even my husband struggles be understanding sometimes.

Find yourself other blogger mums online, take your time time to get to know them and then befriend one or two as real friends—not just the networking sort of friend. You will sleep better knowing you have one person who “gets it!”

Blogger mums and dads, what tips and tricks can you add to this list? Share them with us in the comments.

Marya is a communicator of ideas – writing for bloggers, writers and content creators. Catch more of her posts at Writing Happiness. Grab her FREE 29 page ebook How to Write Blog Content that Works – Get Noticed Online (and elsewhere!). Follow her @WritingH, she is very friendly.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Blogging With Kids: 9 Tips and Tricks to Keep You Sane

As 2011 comes to a close, now is a better time than ever to evaluate your blog, its performance, and most importantly, what you can do to improve your blog in 2012!

A point I always like to drive home is that you will never find blogging success by turning into an “eternal student”, one who always consumes information but never creates or takes action.

Image copyright mipan - Fotolia.com

So check this list out, bookmark it for later (or tweet it out to your fellow bloggers), and make sure you go through and see what quick actions you can take to improve your blog!

1. Optimize (or start) your email list

Had you email list become stagnant, with a slow trickle of subscribers rather than a huge flow of new signups? Have you not even started building a list yet?

Now is the time to take action, because your mailing list is the most important aspect of your blog’s long term success. So if you haven’t already, create one now.

If you have a list, let’s think of a few ways to optimize it…

1. Make sure sign-up forms are in the best locations (sidebar, feature box, at the end of posts).
2. Create a “toolbox” of freebies that only subscribers get access to (think of it like the free ebook strategy, only kicked up a notch).
3. Create newsletter only content just for subscribers (makes the newsletter more worthwhile for them).

Last but not least, make sure there is an option to subscribe on the pages of your site with the most traffic. I’m talking about your intro/about page, your resource pages, and any other pages that visitors often visit from your homepage.

Start building your list now the right way. You won’t regret it in 2012!

2. Make a list of every blogger (who writes quality content) in your niche

You might be wondering why bother to do this. Certainly if you at the intermediate stage of blogging, you already know about the power of guest blogging and the kind of traffic and subscribers it can bring you.

The thing you have to realize though is that as powerful as guest blogging is, it is only one part of being good at networking in your chosen niche.

In order to truly succeed as a blogger, you are going to need important people who are truly rooting for you. The best way to do that? Network.

Most bloggers are afraid to start, so by creating a list like this, you are already on your way, and it takes far less time than you might think. Simply use sites like AllTop and Technorati, along with the blogs that you regularly read, and create a comprehensive list of the best ones in your niche.

Plan on emailing each one, maybe breaking the ice with a completed (and awesome) guest post. From there, stay in touch, actively support the other bloggers in your niche, and in time, you’ll find yourself getting links naturally, it won’t take a guest post for your fellow bloggers to mention you…

They’ll be doing it because they support you. And that is an essential ingredient to growing a popular blog.

3. Re-evaluate your blog’s unique offering to readers

What about your blog makes it distinct? What are readers getting there that they simply cannot get on the hundreds to thousands of other blogs in the same niche?

For 2012, you should take a look at your blog, and really evaluate what you are adding to the web that nobody out there is doing exactly the same.

The key word there is “exactly”, because your blog doesn’t have to be a totally unique experience that is doesn’t compare to anything else, it just has to be a twist on existing topics.

For instance, there are a lot of blogs for people who love blogging, but how about people who love Tumblr? Heck, your twist can just be what medium you use to create content.

For instance, there are a lot of personal fitness blogs that use video, that makes sense. But what about a finance blog that uses a lot of video? What about craft blog that uses a lot of video? How about a marketing blog that focuses on podcasts? How about a personal development blog that utilizes SlideShare?

The point is: it’s not too hard for you to put a “twist” on your niche, making it something that adds value and that also helps you stand out from the sea of others.

4. Try new content types to keep your blog fresh

Speaking of different content media, a lot of bloggers get so overwhelmed with different traffic methods and writing techniques that they fail to realize that they could be putting their efforts to a medium they might be better (or more comfortable) at.

Maybe writing posts really is the thing you feel most comfortable at, but I’d definitely suggest giving a few other mediums a try. They can bring extra traffic from being hosted on the parent site (like YouTube videos) and can give your blog a appeal by creating content in an unusual form.

Here are some great content types you can try:

1. video (on YouTube or Vimeo)
2. audio on SoundCloud (or by starting a podcast)
3. ebooks
4. slideshows on SlideShare
5. workbooks
6. infographics
7. webinars.

See if some of these suit you better from time to time, and you’ll likely be one of few blogs in your industry doing them!

There’s also another great post idea I want to discuss…

5. Interview someone influential in your niche

Interviews are a blog kickstart technique that seriously work for any niche—at least, I’ve yet to encounter one in which they don’t work well!

Interviews are great for a few reasons:

• The person you are interviewing will notify their following of the interview, bringing you traffic.
• People will respect you more for getting the thoughts from an influential person, and be more inclined to check out your self-made content.
• Interviews add instant social proof to what you are saying, and if you can even add small parts of an interview to back up your own claims, readers will appreciate it.

Scared to ask someone for an interview? Don’t be! Research has shown that people are more likely to help you out than you think.

They key: keep your emails short and your requests reasonable. Also, never send the questions in the first email, ask for permission first!

I’ve used interviews with people like Brian Gardner (owner of StudioPress) and popular musicians on my electronic music blog to get, literally, thousands of new visitors in days, not weeks or months.

And this is on entirely new blogs!

Trust me, finding a good person to interview (an interesting or unusual expert is always good) and creating great questions for the interview will likely be a huge benefit for your blog. It’s a must-try technique in 2012.

6. Clean up your sidebar: show what matters

If there is one part of a blog that typically turns into a complete mess, it’s the sidebar in the typical content/sidebar blog layout.

Bloggers (especially newer bloggers) are tend to add way too many widgets and sections on their sidebar, and instead of making their site better, they end up making it far worse!

How? The first thing is site speed. I’ve written about how to speed up WordPress before, and the conclusions you can draw from other website owners and SEO experts is this:

1. People won’t wait for slow loading sites, general wait time is as little as a few seconds (that’s single digits).
2. Site speed has an impact on SEO, affecting your rankings.
3. A fast-loading site is apart of a great user experience, and users appreciate fast page loads far more than you realize.

Those are some pretty important reasons to be concerned about your site speed… But there are even bigger concerns that you should be worried about!

In addition to slowing your site down, the results from this research study have shown that too many choices can actually decrease conversions!

What that means is that a cluttered sidebar is likely to decrease your conversion rates on new subscribers! This is bad, bad news for your blogs potential success.

Fortunately, this can be fixed quickly, by scrapping all of the junk in your sidebar and including only the essentials, which are:

• sidebar opt-in (must be at the top!)
• list of popular posts (shows readers your best content, right away!)
• resource sections (these sections showcase a lot of info on a single topic, or including things like what blogging tools you are partial to using)
• …nothing else!

Honestly, having only these three items in this list might make you think I’m crazy, but hear me out: those really are the only essentials!

Of course, if you blog offers a product, service, or advertising, these need to be included, but for most people, the three I mentioned will increase your conversion rates after you get rid of the junk.

Unless your blog as 1000+ posts, you don’t need a search bar, categories—none of that stuff. What you do need is a fast loading site that converts well, so make it happen.

7. Improve your knowledge of SEO and SEO copywriting

If you are running a WordPress blog, understanding the fundamentals of WordPress SEO is essential to succeeding as a blogger (I’d highly recommend starting with SEOMoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, it’s a great read that’s highly detailed and includes great visuals).

More importantly though (and non-platform-specific), you need to learn more about SEO copywriting if you don’t know about it already.

The process of effective SEO copywriting is far less confusing than you think. In fact, even if you just learn the basics of good interlinking habits (linking to old posts of yours in new posts, naturally) you’ll already be more skilled than most bloggers in your niche.

It is essential to understand good SEO copywriting as a blogger because it allows your site to do better in search rankings, offers a better user experience for readers by involving your old content in a natural way, and adds a new skillset to your blogging knowledge—one of great importance.

8. Add social proof where it matters

Bloggers sometimes get too caught up in social networking proof, rather than what social proof really means (and when it’s actually useful).

Social proof can be as simple as quote from one of your readers/fans on what a great blog you are running, how you helped them, or how your content has benefited them in some way. This type of social proof is often as powerful as a big Facebook following, and it’s much easier to get legitimately!

Here are a few easy ways to get a powerful statement for your blog:

1. Ask! Ask one of your readers if they’d mind giving you a quote to use on your blog as social proof. Most people will be glad to provide one!
2. Use a comment. Take a comment from a reader on your site that states something positive, and use it as social proof.
3. Quote someone else. Has anybody else mentioned your blog or writing before? Quote them, whether it’s from Twitter or their own site, people will usually have no problem with you quoting them for social proof.

Okay, so we have some ways to get social proof that’s outside of a big social networking following…

Where should we put it? Here are the two best spots to put social proof:

1. anywhere there is an “opt-in” form
2. anywhere you ask users to purchase something.

Simple, clear use of social proof boils down to this: any time you need someone to trust you (to opt-in to your list or to buy something from you), social proof is king, and those are the locations in which you should use it.

9. Start a “post ideas” journal

I’ve discussed the importance of using journals (or some storage device) in order to break through writer’s block, as they can serve as a growing list of ideas (that may come at any moment) you can access when you need to write a new post.

Writing down great posts ideas as they come in your head will not only benefit your own blog, it will help with writing all of those guest posts to get your name out there!

The thing is, great posts ideas could come to you at any moment. The problem? You are not always in a position to expand on those ideas or to see if they’d really make for a great post. The solution? Write any decent ideas down, and save them for another time.

This way you can keep any ideas that you might have lost if you relied on your memory, and you also get to work on great ideas later that might turn into dynamite posts.

10. Guest blog using the “funnel” technique

If you are going to utilize guest blogging to build your blog (and you definitely should be), you should start approaching your guest posts with an actual strategy, rather than relying on blind writing.

The best (and easiest!) strategy to try is the “funnel” technique of guest posting. The funnel method involves writing a guest post that has to do with one of three big aspects of your blog:

1. your blog’s unique offering (discussed above)
2. a free ebook/guide you’re giving away
3. an opt-in webinar or course you’re offering.

How and why does this work so well? Simple: you are priming readers with a post about a specific topic. Then, you offer them additional content (via your email list) by offering one of the three options listed above.

In case you still don’t get it, think of it like this: I’m a personal fitness style blogger, but I only focus on writing about high-intensity interval training (HIIT for those familiar with the acronym).

So, it would make sense for me to post on fitness blogs, but to focus on writing an article like “5 Reasons Why HIIT is the Best Form of Cardio.” The reason this makes sense is that anybody interested in Fitness and HIIT would go to check out my blog, where they would be greeted with more content on the subject. This would make them more likely to subscribe.

This also works with the other two methods: offering a freebie such as an ebook or Webinar on the topic that my guest post was about. Try this and I guarantee your blog will see maximized conversions for all of your blog posts in 2012!

11. Evaluate your social media buttons

What do I mean “evaluate” your social media buttons? Simply put, you need to take a step back from your blog and look at the buttons that you are using on your site.

Many bloggers just plaster up whichever buttons they can without really evaluating what’s been working in their niche. The key point here is that you most likely don’t need all of those buttons! It’s been proven time and time that too many options can decrease conversions, and this applies to social sharing too.

The reason bloggers get misled is because they see big sites like Mashable using every button under the sun, but what they don’t seem to get is that Mashable is about social media, so a majority of their traffic and “subscribers” are social media users.

It makes sense for them to have tons of social media buttons, but for a blog like yours, which is most likely concerned with growing a stable and profitable email list, you need to evaluate which buttons work best for your audience.

For instance over on my electronic music blog, I immediately removed the LinkedIn and Google+ buttons when I found out that they weren’t being used. It made sense, but I wanted to test things out first.

The thing was, my audience was younger, and not interested in tech or business aspects as much as most LinkedIn and Google+ users are. Generally, they stuck to Facebook, and used Twitter slightly less.

So I updated the social sharing buttons to include only those two, and guess what? My traffic didn’t drop by a single visitor. In fact it increased, all while I was speeding my site up!

Make sure your social buttons are actually being used by your readers.

12. Utilize the most powerful social network of all

When most people think about networking these days, they tend to think about social networks.

While social networks (especially those like Twitter) are indeed extremely useful for establishing connections, in reality they better serve as icebreakers for real planning on the most powerful social network of all…

Email.

That’s right. All of your guest post submissions, all of your interview requests, collaborations, joint ventures, product launches, everything will be happening behind the scenes through email (or at least the important stuff!).

What else will you be doing to revitalize your blog in 2012? Share your plans in the comments.

If you are a blogger who wants to tap into the psychology of successful content marketing, you need to check out Sparring Mind, where Greg prefers to write about what works (backed with research and data) and avoids the fluff. Find out more here and start marketing your blog the right way.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

12 Essential Tips for Revitalising Your Blog in 2012

These are 20 people who stood out to me this year. There is no ranking, nor is there a competition. If you are after more variety, I’ve included links to other round-ups at the end of this post.

Do you know of someone that has really stood out in 2011? Let us know in the comments, or create and link to your own list post. Enjoy!

Maria Popova

Maria Popova describes herself as “interestingness curator and semi-secret geek obsessed with design, science, storytelling and combinatorial creativity”. She is the editor of the much-loved Brain Pickings, which she described as a “a destination for indiscriminate curiosity.”

I love Maria’s work because talented curators are needed in this cluttered blogosphere. Maria goes beyond the collection of links and ideas, and provides a narrative that just enchants you. In the aforementioned interview, Maria said that “curation is all about pattern-recognition, seeing how various and diverse pieces of content fit together under the same taste umbrella or along the same narrative path, so the guiding principle has to be the sole storyteller with a strong point of view.”

I think Maria will be an influence on curators for years to come.

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, online marketing consultant, and social media enthusiast that blogs at Kikolani. She has  become famous for her weekly resource posts, Fetching Friday, and is a prolific guest poster on many high-profile sites. Her work is highly regarded in the social media community and she was recommended multiple times in the comments section on last year’s list.

Her book, Blog Post Promotion, is extraordinarily in-depth for a book at its price point, and is something I’d strongly recommend to those who need help getting more attention for their posts. You guys may also enjoy her post about making money online through blogging and writing.

Corbett Barr

Corbett Barr is someone I’ve been watching for a few years. He had a popular blog, Free Pursuits, but focused on creating a legacy rather then just being a blogger. He started Think Traffic in 2010, and quickly built a solid reputation for building quality content. In 2011 he created the Million Dollar Blog Project and launched his case study blog, Expert Enough.

I like Corbett because he’s one of the people who evolved with the challenges that blogging presented, rather than giving up. Some of the best discussions of 2010 came from his blog and I believe that the Million Dollar Blog Project will result in a few more bloggers to watch.

Marcus Sheridan

Marcus started a swimming pool company in 2001. Thanks to his blog, and inbound marketing, it grew to be one of the biggest companies of its kind in the world. Marcus had amassed a large amount of knowledge about content marketing and created The Sales Lion to teach others about the power of community.

I love his blog. He isn’t a pseudo-guru testing his theories—he only teaches about stuff he’s personally experienced. He also has a talent for community engagement. Many of his posts contribute to the conversation surrounding many facets of our industry, which encourages related companies to adjust their model to serve bloggers better.

Hands down, Marcus is one of the coolest guys online. He helps so many of us when he already has a successful business and doesn’t need the social validation. I hope we’ll see a lot more of him in the coming year.

Alexis Grant

Alexis Grant is a publishing powerhouse. She describes herself as a “journalist, blog & social media strategist and a budding entrepreneur.” She has been experimenting with digital products and micropublishing, such as her popular eguide on building a Part-Time Social Media Business. She’s also the managing editor of the Brazen Careerist blog.

I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with her for past few months, and it’s been fascinating watching her grow. She has a unique work history, starting out in traditional journalism and evolving until she landed a job editing a popular blog. I think we will learn a lot from her experiments in digital publishing, especially during the latter part of 2012.

Colin Wright

Colin Wright intrigues me. He runs a popular blog, but I wouldn’t called him a blogger. I don’t think anyone really knows what to call him. Every four months, his readers vote on the next country he’ll move to. He has an everlasting ebook called Exiles, runs a T-shirt shop called I Have No Shirt, and has published six ebooks.

I like Colin because of his constant experimentation with micropublishing and entrepreneurship. He closed eBookling because he’d achieved what he had set out to do, despite having a profitable model. He was one of the first in my community to experiment with Kindle publishing. He’s a genuinely cool guy with a thirst for knowledge, and a desire to improve on existing creations. I think that’s an attitude we all can benefit from.

Torre De Roche

Torre De Roche is the Fearful Adventurer. While overseas, she “fell for a 31-year old Argentinean man who had a humble sailboat and a dream to set off exploring the world.” She accompanied him on his trip across the South Pacific which led to her blog and later, a book about her journey. Within two months of self-publishing her book, she landed a big publishing deal. Her book, Swept, will be out in 2013.

I think that Torre will be one of the writers that will really stand out over the coming years. She has such a natural talent, yet is still a bit of an unknown in the blogosphere. I’m confident that will change over the next year and I think that we are in a fortunate position to watch her evolve.

Deb Ng

Deb is an accomplished blogger. Previously she was the founder and owner of the Freelance Writing Jobs network of blogs, as well as the community manager for Blog Talk Radio. Now, she is employed as the conference director of Blog World Expo and has released her first book, Online Community Management for Dummies.

In 2012, she’ll be just as busy. She’s authoring her second book for the Dummies brand and planning is already well underway for Blogworld in New York.

I love her work, and her contribution to the industry. I especially enjoy her blog, Kommein,  where readers are fortunate enough to get an insight into the work of someone whose career spans multiple areas of the blog industry.

Jen Bishop

Jen is mostly known as the publisher and editor of Dynamic Business magazine in Australia. Part of what makes the magazine so successful is its prominent web presence, which feature a wide range of bloggers. But I’m not including her because of that.  I’m watching her based on her work at her new blog, Interiors Addict.

Interiors Addict is a blog that curates a lot of the best information her passion, interior design. She’s leveraged her skills as a journalist to get access to industry news and interviews, and has turned her hobby blog into a very prominent force.

One of my favorite trends this year is how journalists are dabbling in creating their own digital presences. I believe they enjoy a lot more success, and learn more, when their blog is based on an obsession rather then just their personal brand. I’m also enjoying how Tumblr is aiding bloggers that focus heavily on curation.

Derek Halpern

Derek runs Social Triggers, a site that “breaks down psychological research and business case studies into simple, actionable steps that can help you improve your online business.” His content isn’t the reason I’m watching him, although it is high-calibre and he only publishes his best work. No, the reason he’s gotten my attention is because of how he got noticed.

Early in 2011, he did blog reviews of popular sites such as Chris Brogan, Think Traffic, Smart Passive Income, and David Risley. He showed both the blogger and those who watched the videos how they could increase conversions, which resulted in massive word of mouth from both the readers and his peers.

2011 was the year he spent working hard, and getting attention. I’m curious to see how he leverages his brand in 2012.

Jenny Blake

Jenny Blake is an author, blogger, life coach, and sought-after speaker who helps others “Wake up, live big! and love the journey.”  Jenny recently took her own great leap by leaving Google after five and a half years to pursue her passions full-time.

I’ve enjoyed watching Jenny evolve as she released her first book, Life After College, and expanded her digital offerings. She is fast approaching the end of her first year of self employment, and I think she’ll really start to shine during the latter half of 2012.

Yasmine Surovec

Yasmine is the creator of the popular web comic Cat Versus Human. She documents the everyday realities of living in a multi-cat household via a series of hilarious drawings. In late 2011, she released her first book, Cat vs. Human.

I read a lot of web comics, and I enjoy the fact that they don’t do many of the things that bloggers typically recommend. She has a cat’s bottom in her sidebar, a self-deprecating about page and a contact page that had me hunting for tin-foil. I think that we can all learn from her example and poke more fun at our work, while maintaining a growing brand.

Molly Mahar

Molly Mahar is the founder of Stratejoy, a positive corner of the Internet that provides thousands of women the tools, strategies, and camaraderie to lead authentically joyful lives. There are many career blogs targeted at people in their twenties, but hers is focused on helping people through their “quarter-life crisis.”

I think her blog is fantastic. She invites a number of people to blog for her for a “season,” so that readers can follow their journeys over a five-month period. It’s a great way to build community, encourage new voices and make sure her content is always interesting to that demographic. I’ve heard so many good things about her blog, and how it’s helped people.

Kristin Glenn and Shannon Whitehead

Kristin and Shannon started {r}evolution apparel, a sustainable fashion company based in America. They came up with the idea for their fashion line but knew they had a lot of work before it could reach the market, so they decided to blog about their journey. Thanks to their blogging and networking efforts, they’ve had massive success with their fundraising to launch their first product. At the time of writing, they have reached double their target for their kickstarter campaign and still have a week to go.

They focused on building their community while building their business. As a result, they had a lot of people willing to help them when they asked for support. Their story shows that you don’t need to wait until your product is ready to get your message out there.

Young House Love

Young House Love chronicles the story of two DIY dorks who are turning their house into a home, and sharing every detail as they learn. The content is great, but what I really loved was how they delved into their personal lives and shared the personality behind the bloggers. Their stories are compelling and somewhat harrowing, such as the details of their daughter’s traumatic birth.

I love how they’ve transformed a personal blog into an amazing resource. Look at how they changed the sidebars for the mood board section. They are incredibly savvy. Their work highlights the potential to build your brand beyond a blog, and shows how you can leverage your archives.

I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to discover Young House Love. I plan to spend many hours delving into the archives after finishing this post.

Lingerie Addict

Treacle is the founder of The Lingerie Addict. She started her site in 2008 because she couldn’t find any resources for people like herself—women on a budget who wanted honest, objective lingerie advice, reviews, and suggestions. She has since turned it into the #1 resource in her niche, attracting over 100,000 readers a month. In October, she quit her job to offer her consulting services.

I think Treacle has done an amazing job empowering women to embrace their body shape and buy underwear that makes them feel gorgeous.

Nerd Fitness

Steve Kamb is the founder of Nerd Fitness: a community for nerds, desk jockeys, and weekend warriors looking to level up their lives. He built up a strong following and has since expanded with Nerd Fitness Message Boards, a clothing range, and several useful products. He is a natural leader—just look at how he doesn’t pressure people to join his rebellion.

I enjoy his work because he is incredibly savvy, yet has a very friendly/casual tone on his blog. He makes new visitors feel very comfortable in a niche that can feel rather alienating.

Sarah Peck

Sarah describes herself as a storyteller who communicates ideas through words, pictures, and other visual media. Her blog, It Starts With, started as a column about making the transition to the professional world and finding out what’s important for you and your career. It has evolved into a blog on business, generating ideas, entrepreneurship, management, and design. She also leverages blogging for her professional work, and is the founder and editor of Landscape Urbanism.

Sarah emerged in the blogosphere early in 2011 and is shaping up to the one of most unique and inspiring voices online.  Her content is always thought-provoking and will force you to confront the challenge of executing your best ideas. She studies where great ideas come from and help individuals and businesses do great work. Every blogger has a tipping point and her post on 28 in 52 Notes made Sarah a blogger to keep an eye on 2012.

Tara Gentile

Tara Gentile is the editor of Scoutie Girl, a daily zine with the aim of getting you thinking about your creative life and the changing world around you, and the owner of a boutique web design business. She quickly built a reputation as a DIY lifestyle design expert. She has transitioned to consulting and writes about the philosophy of the new economy, creativity, social media, value and meaning, and wealth.

I really resonate with Tara. She has empowered a huge segment of the creative community to take pride in the marketing of their work. Her work has affected an entire industry. I can’t wait to see what she does in 2012.

Joel Runyon

A year ago, Joel was just a guy with an inspiring blog. He wasn’t satisfied with that. He expanded his original blog to create Impossible HQ, a hub that incorporates a separate motivational community, a T-Shirt line, and a manifesto. He also created a separate site, NerveRush, to cater to the adrenalin-seeking segment of his audience.

I think Joel is just getting started with what he has to offer. He is always adding new ways for his community to engage with his site and, as a result, is creating an increasingly passionate readership. I’m really excited to see where he takes the ‘Impossible’ brand in 2012.

More bloggers to watch

Want more? Take a look at these blogging round-ups:

•  A-List Bloggers Are Boring – 5 People Whose Blogs You Should Be Reading
• 20 Brazen Young Professionals to Watch in 2012
• 10 Global Women with Gusto

And don’t forget to give us your suggestions in the comments!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

20 Bloggers to Watch in 2012

Wearing the 6 Thinking Hats on your blog helps in generating valuable, interesting and diverse content.

What are the 6 Thinking Hats?

Dr. Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats is a simple, effective parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved. And once they’re learned, the tools can be applied immediately!

Image copyright Lisa F. Young - Fotolia.com

De Bono identifies six distinct states in which the brain can be “sensitized”. In each of these states, the brain will identify and bring into conscious thought certain aspects of issues being considered.

His 6 Thinking Hats are:

1. the White Hat, which calls for information that’s known or needed: “The facts, just the facts.”
2. the Yellow Hat, which symbolizes brightness and optimism; under this hat you explore the positives and probe for value and benefit
3. the Black Hat, which is judgment—the devil’s advocate that spots the difficulties and dangers, and where things might go wrong; this is probably the most powerful and useful of the Hats but a problem if overused
4. the Red Hat, which signifies feelings, hunches and intuition; when using this hat, you can express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves, and hates
5. the Green Hat, which focuses on creativity, the possibilities, alternatives, and new ideas; it’s an opportunity to express new concepts and new perceptions
6. the Blue Hat, which is used to manage the thinking process; it’s the control mechanism that ensures the Six Thinking Hats guidelines are observed.

How to wear the 6 Thinking Hats on your blog

Blogging is a testimonial of an individual’s thoughts, creativity, and literary expressions. And the quality of the content you create on your blogs is directly linked to the quality of your thoughts. Given that de Bono’s principles focus on mindful thinking, the Thinking Hats concept is highly relevant to blogging.

In my journey as a blogger for more than two years, I have published 1000+ blogs and have been featured in several forums, communities, and reputable sites. And when I look at the body of work that I have created, I realize today that I have consciously and unconsciously worn these many hats in my blogging.

The Six Thinking Hats can help you create diverse content on your blog, keep it vibrant, enjoy blogging, and create a meaningful relationship with your readers. Here’s how.

The White Hat

Ensure that some content in your blogs are based on hard data and facts. This can be information that you personally know, or links to articles, research, and literature available in published sources.

This is important because:

• You tend to read and learn about key data and facts before you can blog about them
• Sometimes the data itself can alter your and others views, comprehension, opinions, judgments, perceptions, and conclusions on a subject
• you have logged this data for your future reference, and also the reference of your readers
• you build credibility when you support your views and opinions with hard facts and data
• readers place more value on the content you generate, since your blog is not purely based on your thoughts and feelings
• the chance that you’ll be quoted or referenced in other places is significantly higher than if you never wore the White Hat.

The Yellow Hat

Ensure that some content in your blogs gives a positive, bright and optimistic view. This is important because:

• when you write positive stuff, you tend to think and feel positively
• when anyone reads your blog, they take-away a positive thought, message or emotion
• readers are more likely to share a positive post in their sphere of influence—the positivity just spreads and magnifies along the way! And it all started with your blog!

The Black Hat

Ensure that some content in your blogs highlights the difficulties, challenges, risks, dangers, and negatives of your topic. This is important because:

• this is the reality of life and it needs to be reflected in your blogs; otherwise, you may appear to be in your own dream world, far from reality
• having all positive, data-driven content does not give the real holistic picture for any topic, hence it is imperative to wear this hat.

The Red Hat

Ensure that some content in your blogs articulates your feelings, hunches, and intuitions. This is important because:

• it makes you think, introspect, and feel
• it also gets your readers to think, introspect, and feel
• it makes you connect within—to draw from your creative imagination
• it makes you acknowledge, recognize, and appreciate the power of your sixth sense.

The Green Hat

Ensure that some content in your blog is creative, innovative, novel, and radical. This could present your own views or thoughts or something you’ve read and would like to share with your readers. It’s important because:

• when you read and hear such things, they transport you to a different plane—a different world in which you are able to view the world through a very different lens; this usually gives you a radically different perspective on any topic, and on life itself
• when you immerse yourself in creative, innovative, novel and radical readings, thoughts and ideas, you tend to dream and visualize beyond the realm of the known.

The Blue Hat

Ensure that some content in your blogs is about processes. This is important because:

• it makes you clear in your own mind about processes that should be followed
• it gives you an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and understanding on subjects which you are aware of and strengthens your own personal brand.

Do you wear the 6 Thinking Hats on your blog?

You can wear the 6 Thinking Hats on your blog for many purposes:

• to choose a topic that you will blog about
• to write the title of your post
• to create the actual blog content itself

You can wear one or many hats in a single blog post. But ensure that over a period of time—a month, for example—you wear at least four of the hats in your blog. We all wear the different thinking hats at some point, so the more you wear, the more likely you’ll be to meet the varying needs of your readers.

Do you wear all six thinking hats in your blog? Tell us in the comments.

Nischala Murthy Kaushik currently works at Wipro. She blogs at VERVE: The Quintessence of my Life, Nischala’s Space, Thoughts & Expressions, 12Most.com, PaulWriter, Wipro & Mindblogs. She has completed her MBA from IIMB, one of the premier Business schools in India. She takes pride in being a mother, philosopher, writer, scholar and guru of life for life. You can follow her on Twitter @ nimu9.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why You Should Wear The 6 Thinking Hats On Your Blog