Written on 10/27/2008 at 12:01 am by

The Psychology of Blogging

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

Psychology-Of-BloggingToday Life Coach Tim Brownson from A Daring Adventure explores 6 tips to get your mindset right when approaching blogging.

  • 10 spare hours a week – Check
  • Niche market – Check
  • Basic understanding of SEO – Check
  • Google Adsense account – Check
  • Dummies’ guide to writing great content – Check
  • Burning desire to succeed – Check

There are a lot of great sites, this one included, that can help aspiring writers progress smoothly through the ranks of mere blogging wannabes to the heady heights of ‘A’ listers. To read some articles it would be easy to assume if you follow this A-Z of Blogging success you’ll be basking in the adulation of thousands of subscribers faster than you can say “Really Simple Syndication”.

The reality is that, like people in most industries, few bloggers make a successful transition to the very highest level. Even though they know at a mechanical level what’s needed, they don’t seem to be able to put everything in place. There are a number of obvious reasons such as a lack of focus and/or discipline, inability to write great content and a lack of understanding of the requirements of their target audience, and one less obvious one.

Few newbies take into consideration (or maybe just take for granted) the psychology behind becoming a successful blogger: the ability to roll with the punches and succeed come what may. It’s not enough to just know the technical side of things, you have to be able to stay on track, stay committed and hopefully stay sane. Otherwise you’re likely to burn out quicker than a magnesium candle.

Here are the six tips that, coupled with all the other great advice on offer, will, if not guarantee your success, certainly stack the odds more heavily in your favor.

1. Patience Is A Virtue

If you’re naturally an impatient person you’ll want to curb that tendency when you get into blogging. Otherwise you’re likely to end up very frustrated and very stressed. Wanting to get on with the job in hand is all well and good – but it doesn’t matter how far your veins bulge out of your neck, Alexa won’t be back to your site for a day or two and Google won’t be indexing you on a daily basis to begin with, so let it go.

Do what you need to do to meet your short-term goals and relax in the knowledge that all is good in the world. Be aware of what is within your circle of influence and what is outside it, and then stay focused on the former.

Unless you are very lucky, have lots of spare cash to advertise or have oodles of time on your hands to go on a commenting frenzy, it’s unlikely you’re going to see much of a return inside six months. It can be done, but don’t bank on it

2. Perfectionism Is Pointless

One of the biggest killers of projects is perfectionism in all its various guises. If you are to stand any chance of getting to the stage where all you have to do is switch your computer on to make money, you need to realize that some of your early stuff will be less than stellar.

I thought my early posts were insightful, thought provoking and witty. When I look at them now I roll my eyes and think they were pretentious, self indulgent and forced. It took me over a year to become happy with my writing style and find my niche. Writing is a practice and you’ll improve in the same way as you would if you took up playing the guitar, speaking a foreign lesson or public speaking.

Accept that some of your early stuff will not be perfect and publish it anyway. In fact publish it BECAUSE it’s not perfect. You’ll only really learn and develop as a writer by getting your stuff ‘out there’ and seeing what response you get, or even don’t get.

3. Embrace Failure

I’m sure you have heard the phrase “fail, fail often, and fail quickly”. It makes perfect sense to fail as quickly as you can so that you can learn from those errors and move forward. Ask any ‘A’ lister if they have screwed up at some stage and I’m confident somewhere in the region of 100% will say yes.

That’s life, that is how human beings are wired up to learn and you’re no exception. Of course you should learn as much as you can and avoid the really obvious pitfalls by reading books such as Darren and Chris’s ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. However there’ll plenty of non-obvious roadblocks specific to your area of expertise that you won’t be expecting and won’t foresee, no matter how much planning and research you do.

Embrace these roadblocks, kiss them and thank each and every one of them for turning up. Each one that you overcome is an opportunity to learn and grow. Not only that, but every one that you deal with successfully separates you from the also-rans that have bailed out at the first sign of trouble.

When (and not if) something goes wrong ask yourself one simple question: “What can I learn from this?” If you can take some valuable experience with you, and know that you won’t repeat the same mistake, then it’s been worth it.

Anybody that has failed spectacularly only to go on to bigger and better things will tell you they wouldn’t have it any other way. We need the agony of short-term failure to ensure delicious long-term and long lasting success.

4. Develop A Thick Skin

Benjamin Franklin once said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Unfortunately Benny didn’t have a blog, because if he had the quote would have been “”In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and if your blog becomes popular people will get jealous and want to see you fail.”

It doesn’t matter how brilliant your blog is, how much you pour your heart and soul into it, how genuine you are and what the quality of the writing is like, some people will still want to see you knocked down a peg or two. In fact, the more successful you are, the more some people will want to see you fail. Twas ever thus I’m afraid.

You’ll probably receive abusive e-mails from time to time as well as commenters who want to make you look foolish and/or criticize you. That’s just life as an ‘A’ list blogger. You need to either deal with it or prepare yourself for the day when you’re asked to put on the jacket with the very long sleeves.

Understand your readers do not know you. Some will think they do and may even start to perceive you as a friend. This is cool as long as they don’t start hanging around outside your house and sending you rabbit paws through the mail, but they still don’t know you. Therefore, any criticism that is aimed at you reveals nothing about you. It says plenty about the person that administers it, but that’s about as far as it goes.

You should deal with criticism the same way as you should deal with compliments: with a pinch of salt. Of course we all prefer to receive compliments, but they’re two sides of the same coin. If you take the good stuff too seriously, you’ll not be able to deal with the bad stuff when it arrives.

Whatever somebody says, simply thank them for their feedback. Then decide whether that feedback is useful and can help you move forward. If it can, great, use it. If it can’t, drop it because you don’t need it.

5. Stay Focused

This leads on from growing a thick skin. If you’re too heavily influenced by what others say you’re going to lose focus. Why did you start the blog? What are your goals? Who are you writing for? Get back to basics and re-connect with your real objectives from time to time. Otherwise you’ll start trying to please everybody and end up pleasing nobody.

Readers will come and readers will go, that’s just how it is. It isn’t about you and it’s pointless to try and work out people’s motives. I have enough trouble trying to work out what is going on inside my own head without trying to second-guess what other people are thinking. Firstly, you’re going to waste a lot of time and emotional energy and secondly you’re probably going to get it wrong, if not horribly wrong. Let it go.

6. Know Your Identity

Your blog is not you; it’s not your identity. If it crashes and burns that doesn’t mean you do too. We all want a successful blog with people lining up to comment and pay us homage (I know I do anyway), but it’s really not life and death.

Keep some perspective. Go all out to achieve your goals (you have got written goals, right?), but don’t stay attached to the results. Not only will that mean you keep a sense of balance, but conversely it will make you more likely to achieve your aims anyway.

Read more from Today Life Coach at A Daring Adventure.

Written on 10/26/2008 at 12:06 am by

Finding Your Posting Rhythm [Part 2]

Filed Under: Writing Content

Yesterday I suggested 4 tips for helping bloggers to find their posting rhythm:

  1. There is no Right Posting Level
  2. Start out Slow and Work Your Way Up
  3. Monitor Your Readerships Response to Your Posting Levels
  4. Consistency is Important

Today I want to share 4 more tips on posting workflows.

5. Work on Your Posting Workflow – Identify the Blockage Points

One piece of advice that I give new bloggers struggling with this area is to think about their posting workflow.

  • Look at the way that you post – from the idea generation stage through to publishing?
  • Where do the blockages come?
  • How can you put processes in place at those ‘blockage’ points to help free up the flow of posts?

For example I talked with one of our bloggers at b5media recently who was struggling to get posts out. When I asked her to analyze her workflow she identified her main ‘blockage point’ at the idea generation stage. Once she had an idea she could get the post out quite quickly – but was spending a lot of time each day coming up with topics to write on.

Knowing this we were able to develop a simple plan for post idea generation that included getting a notebook for capturing of ideas, setting aside time at the start of each week to brainstorm ideas (rather than doing it just before deadlines), setting out an editorial calendar for the week (so topics were outlined ahead of time) and finding a blog buddy to brainstorm with (two bloggers coming up with ideas for each other).

Another example that comes to mind was a blogger who identified his ‘blockage point’ as what I’d call ‘polishing’ his posts. He loves the writing process but struggled to make his posts look good (finding pictures, coming up with sub headings and the title for his post, spell checking etc). He just found all of this very ‘chore like’. I discovered in talking to him that he had over 50 posts half written in a folder on his desktop!

Once we identified this blockage point the blogger decided that he needed to do two things. Firstly he enrolled himself in a class at an adult education centre – the class was on copy editing. Secondly he gave his wife permission to get on his back about ‘finishing’ posts.

Where are the blockage points in your posting workflow?

Further Reading on blogging workflow:

6. Don’t Post Just for the Sake of Posting

Sometimes as a blogger you face the choice of posting something that is second rate or not posting at all. The temptation is to put a post out there simply to meet a deadline or because you fear your readers reaction if you don’t post something.

The reality is that you can do more harm than good by posting something of lower quality than not posting anything.

Before posting each post ask yourself whether the post will actually enhance your readers lives in some way? Will it help them, entertain them, inform them, educate them, inspire them etc? If the answer is no – strongly consider not hitting publish.

Further Reading on this topic – Does Your Next Post Matter?

7. Batch Writing

One strategy that I find helps me when I need to produce 14 posts a week here at ProBlogger is to set aside time each week to write multiple posts at once. Monday mornings are a a time where I generally camp out in a cafe with my laptop and aim to get 4-5 posts written in one sitting. I also try to do this for a morning later in the week and between the two sessions can usually get one solid post written for each day of the week.

I’ve written more about batch processing previously – it can be applied to many areas of your blogging.

8. You Will Become More Efficient Over Time

Let me finish by giving you a word of encouragement to end on – it gets better! Hang in there.

As I look back on my journey of blogging to when I first started (almost six years ago now) I notice a definite change in my ability to produce content. While it can still be difficult to maintain the posting level that I set myself it has certainly become easier.

One reason for this is that with practice you tend to become a better and more efficient writer. The more you write the better you get at it – particularly if you’re learning from your mistakes and looking to improve.

I suspect also that over time you simply become more proficient with your topic and as you do this are able to draw upon your growing levels of knowledge on the topic.

The other thing that I think I’ve become better at in that time is coming up with topics to write about. I do remember in the early days sitting down at the keyboard and just having a mental blank. However over time you get more used to coming up with ideas – or at least your mind becomes more attuned to capturing the ideas that you get through the day. These days ideas for posts come to me in the most bizarre places (I even recently had an idea while dreaming).

Written on 10/18/2008 at 12:01 am by

Why I’ve Been Offered Close to a Million Dollars for My Blog (and Why I said No)

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

“I’ve always treated the first two years of Digital Photography School as its launch phase.”

This was a statement that I made in a session at Blog World Expo that I’ve been asked about many times since – so I thought I’d expand upon it a little here in a post.

2006-2008: The Launch of Digital Photography School

I launched DPS back in April of 2006 (I first spoke about it here on ProBlogger in one of my first video posts). As you’ll see from that initial post – I always saw DPS as something of an experiment and a long term project. Having built numerous blogs before starting that one I new that building a blog to it’s potential takes a lot of time and hard work.

As a result, I gave myself a goal to get that blog two years to get through it’s ‘launch phase’.

That might seem like a long time to get a blog up and running but for me the ‘launch phase’ meant more than simply getting the blog designed and announcing it – for me the ‘launch’ is all about these sorts of things:

  • building a foundation of solid content (the blog now has 713 posts, most of which are ‘how to’ or ‘tutorial’ style content)
  • getting an initial design up (I launched with a free design and quickly upgraded to a purpose built one. It’s now dated and we’ve outgrown it – but it has served us well).
  • building a loyal readership and subscribers (the blog is now read by around a million readers a month and subscribed to by over 100,000. The forum has around 200,000 visitors a month.)
  • building community (this takes time. Initially I did it with a Flickr group and then leveraged that to start a forum – now with 23,000 members).
  • building a ‘list‘ (at the heart of DPS is a newsletter which drives traffic and builds community. It is sent to around 48,000 subscribers per week).
  • establishing a publishing routine (I started off posting 3 times a week and have built it up to posting 7 times a week)
  • building a content creation team (originally I wrote every post – now the blog is written by a team of 5 paid writers (each doing one post per week) and a number of regular guest contributers)
  • building a team of community leaders (the forum is moderated by a wonderful team of voluntary members)
  • building relationships with other bloggers and partners (something I was slow doing, mainly due to being time poor – more recently however I’ve been more intentional building relationships with others in the industry)
  • experimenting with monetization – (making money from the site hasn’t been high on my priority list to this point – rather in this launch phase it has been more about working out what types of monetization works and what the community responds to. The site does make money, but more importantly I’ve been learning about monetization)

Most bloggers probably don’t see a lot of this as a ‘launch phase’ – but for me it has definitely been more about building foundations for what is to come than seeing anything I’ve done so far as an ‘end result’.

While I’m really happy with (and surprised by) what we’ve achieved so far at DPS – seeing it as being in it’s launch phase reminds me to keep lifting my sights and to keep on building and dreaming.

One of the Results of Building Good Foundations

Over the last few months I’ve been approached on 3 occasions by potential buyers of DPS. It has actually been quite strange because they all came very quickly and quite out of the blue. The offers ranged quite considerably in terms of numbers but a couple were tempting.

In each case the potential buyer commented that they wanted to buy DPS because it was ‘solid’. Each one was less interested in what the site was making in terms of income or how much raw traffic it had than other factors. They were looking more at things like brand, community, reader loyalty, influence, reader morale and user participation.

In fact what surprised me is that the valuations that they put on the site (very high six figure sums) were not based upon what it was currently earning at all. They made offers based upon these other factors – factors that made their offers much higher than a valuation based upon traffic or monthly income alone.

What Will Phase 2 Look Like?

While a couple of the offers were very tempting I realized as i deliberated that the potential for DPS was far greater than what it had yet achieved. I’ve only just begun. To sell now tempted me (and I probably would have sold at the right price) but I realized that for me to take it beyond where it has grown to will see it rise exponentially in value.

It has been 2.5 years now since officially launching the site – so it’s now time to move into the next ‘phase’.

I’m not ready to fully announce all of the details of the next phase of DPS – however it will involve a redesign (hopefully to go live around the end of the year) and a fairly significant ‘expansion’. In essence the way I’m viewing the last 2.5 years is that I’ve been building foundations and that now it is time to expand and leverage what has already been built.

To do so means significant investment back into the site financially but with the solid base of readership, community and relationships that I’ve been working hard to build I’m pretty confident that Phase 2 will be successful. I’m also really excited about what’s coming!

Build Solid Foundations

When I speak with many bloggers I get the feeling that all they’re really thinking about is growing traffic and subscriber numbers as fast as possible. While these are definitely things to work hard on I attempt to convey to them that there are other ‘foundations’ that need to be built into a blog than just traffic.

Most bloggers put a lot of energy into building blogs with high readership – but how about setting goals and strategies in place for some of the other areas mentioned above?

  • Take a long term view of your blogging
  • Take your time to build strong foundations that go beyond traffic and income

As you do these two things you’ll put yourself in a position to build a site of significance.

Written on 10/16/2008 at 12:01 am by

13 Tips to Recession Proof Your Blog

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Miscellaneous Blog Tips

How can I prepare my blog for a recession or economic downturn?

Recession-Proof-BlogImage by Rednuht

Yesterday I asked my Twitter followers what they wanted me to write a post about on ProBlogger and this question (and variations of it) was asked repeatedly.

So today I want to suggest a number of ways that bloggers, particularly bloggers making a living from their blogs, can prepare themselves to ride out the economic downturn that we are having.

I’ve also asked my Twitter Followers and Facebook Friends for their tips on the topic and have included some of their responses (there were too many to use in the end so I’ve used about a third of them).

How to Recession Proof Your Blog

1. Focus Upon Content

Don’t become distracted from building quality content. While it is shaky times in some of the Web 2.0 industries and technologies people continue to go online more and more to find information that will enhance their lives. Your primary activity as a blogger needs to be on creating useful content that will solve problems, enhance lives and fulfil needs. This needs to be your core activity – recession or no recession – don’t become distracted from it.

The last thing I’ll say about content is that I suspect ‘how to’ or ‘advice’ content is particularly important in times like these. There is a general sense of uncertainty in the air at the moment and while people are always searching for ‘tips’ and ‘how to’ type content I suspect in economic downturn that searching for this type of content will only increase.

  • @nathanrice suggests – ‘keep writing. great content doesn’t take a lot of money to produce. It just takes time and patience.’
  • @dcrblogs suggested – ‘Make sure the blog adds value to people’s lives in some way.’
  • @HollyJahangiri suggests ‘offer timeless content for free’ – I think this is a wise move. Don’t just write for the hear and now but write the type of content that people will still be searching for in years to come. This type of content can drive traffic (and build income) for years to come.

2. Build Networks

‘It isn’t what you know but who you know’ – I have a feeling that this mantra will only become more important in times of economic downturn. I think a wise use of time in coming months would be to invest into your existing networks and to work on expanding them. Both online social networking and real life networks can open up great opportunities and provide you with support in tough times.

Perhaps working with another blogger (or a group of bloggers) to support each other and to promote one another’s work could be one way forward through this tough time. Together we know and can achieve so much more than we can individually.

  • @lucio_ribeiro suggests – ‘Cooperation works on recession. Team up with another blogs for promotion of mutual content ‘

3. Don’t Panic

I met a few bloggers at Blog World Expo who within 30 seconds of meeting them had almost worked themselves into a lather of worry, stress and panic as they talked about their blogging future.

I’m not saying the times we live in are not reason to be concerned – but panicking is not going to do you (or those around you) any favours. Do what you can to have a level head and to look logically at the situation – if you can’t, find others who can and give them permission to slap you in the face next time you go into panic mode.

Related to this – don’t panic publicly on your blog. There are plenty of bloggers around whipping their readers into a frenzy about the economic downturn – why not do something different and provide a positive place?

  • @JonSymons suggests – ‘Write posts that focus on feeling good, and are proactive, not negative.’
  • @jonathanmead suggested – ‘Market to people re-gaining power of their lives. Make them feel in control when they powerless.’

On a related note – blog with a little sensitivity and knowing that your readers might be doing it tough.

  • @CraneFactory suggested – ‘humility and sensitivity. in a recession when ppl are doing it tough reading about John Chows $500 dinners might put ppl off.’
  • @juliemarg suggests – ‘Don’t Be Snarky (my tip) remember that sarcastic/cynical personal commentary could alienate potential collaborators’
  • Nicole Ouellette wrote – ‘Be positive in your blogging. People are tired of reading the negative in this economy. Bonus if you can teach them something with your post. Empowerment is an empowering thing!’

4. Build Your Own Products/Services

Finding it harder to find advertisers for your blog? Why not advertise yourself? Bloggers that use their blogs to sell themselves, or a product or service that they sell add another monetization stream to their blog.

5. Build Authority

One of the most powerful things that you can do at any time as a blogger is to work hard on building up your profile and perceived expertise and authority in an industry. This is especially powerful in times of uncertainty where people are looking for leadership, advice and stability. Build relationships and be the most useful person that you can in these times and you’ll position yourself as a leader in your field.

6. Backup

It strikes me that over the coming months we might start seeing companies that we rely upon for services as bloggers go out of business. For example what if your hosting company was to go under – or the company you use to store your video or podcasts online? Might be time to backup – just in case.

  • @adamtaylor suggested – ‘be even more rigorous with backups incase someone goes bust!’

7. Diversify Your Income

If your family’s income and livelihood relies upon your blogging it might be a wise move to think about how you can build multiple income streams rather than just relying upon one. This could happen in a number of ways ranging from not just relying upon Advertising income but using affiliate marketing, having multiple blogs, doing some freelance writing and even getting a 2nd part time job (offline).

  • @EcoAussie suggested – ‘maybe u need another blog or niche to diversify.’
  • @lizzy7577 suggests – ‘Make sure you have a variety of blog income sources to depend on.’
  • @WayneHurlbert suggests – ‘Make sure you have a variety of blog income sources to depend on.’
  • @jonathanfields suggests – ‘Assess whether your readers’ information/entertainment needs have shifted. If so, adapt your content to stay insanely relevant’
  • @deniseoberry suggested – ‘Diversify around your core topic. Watch the 80/20 ratio of interest. As the 20% evolves, your writing should focus on that area.’

8. Look for Opportunities in the Negative

I was given this advice by an older family friend recently. He said – ‘In Recessions some industries boom – position yourself in them’. While many industries shrink in times of economic downturn others grow. I was at a search engine conference recently and one of the presenters said that there had been a sharp increase in search traffic around topics related to financial advice, budgeting, employment advice etc. Starting blogs in these types of topics could be a wise move at this time.

  • @ncheapskate suggested – ‘Write about fugal living. That’s working for me.’
  • @cyberpunkdreams suggests – ‘aiming the blog at freelancers perhaps? Freelancer numbers are expected to go way up.’

9. Find ways to Expand and Improve your Blog

I’m no economist, but from my limited study of economics and entrepreneurship it seems to me that while most companies take defensive positions in times of recession – certain companies and individuals see these sorts of times as opportunities to expand and position themselves for the future so that when the economy expands that they are ahead of their competitors.

I think expansion in times like these needs to be done smartly and responsibly (don’t spend your life savings if your family depends upon them) but I personally am planning on expanding my blogs in the coming months by adding new features, improving design etc.

  • @collegegourmet suggests – ‘Spend some money on ads and PR. Most people blow budget during good econ. but when times are bad is when u need it most.’

10. Track Track Track

I’ve been on a bit of a ‘metrics’ binge lately – examining the statistics that Google Reader (and other stats programs) are giving me on how my blogs are performing. While there is a danger in becoming obsessed by stats (at the expense of other important elements of writing a blog) it is amazing what you can learn about improving your blog by analysing how people are already using it.

Look at what people are searching for to find your blog, what they are searching for while on your blog (a tool like Lijit can give this information), what posts are most popular, what pages are leaking most readers, where people are clicking on your page (a tool like CrazyEgg helps with this) etc – all of this tells you how your blog is being used but can reveal ways that it can be improved.

11. Work Hard and Work Smart

There is no escaping it – building successful blogs takes a lot of work. I’m yet to meet a successful blogger who doesn’t put significant hours into their blogs development. Having said that – many bloggers also waste a lot of time. Identify core activities that you need to do to keep your blog on track and stick to them ruthlessly. Learn how to manage your time, eliminate distractions, identify goals and objectives (both short term and long term) and keep focused.

While doing all of this – take a long term view of your blogging. Blog rarely hit it big overnight – you’ll need to still be building your blog up in 2-3 years if you want it to reach its potential – so have a long term view and settle yourself in for the journey!

  • @GrantGriffiths suggested – ‘recession proof by focusing, focusing, and focusing. Dont try to be everything to everybody. Concentrate on your niche.’

12. Cut Costs

When times get tough another way to get through them is to cut down on unnecessary spending. Go through your expenses (credit card statements and paypal history) and look at what you’re paying for. Often as bloggers we sign up for small recurring services that don’t cost much but which we hardly use – perhaps it is time to eliminate some of these costs that are not important and/or to find ways to cut back.

  • @jonathanfields suggests – ‘analyze recent server loads and see if you might be able to scale down to a more modest hosting plan.’
  • Frerickus Willliford suggests – ‘Use wp-cache to save on bandwidth by reducing server load every bit counts.’

13. Experiment with Income Streams

One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that different income streams are really behaving quite differently on different blogs.

For example I was chatting with a group of bloggers recently who told me that their AdSense earnings had drastically dropped. As we were chatting another blogger came into the conversation and told us that his AdSense eCPM had almost doubled in the last 2 months.

In some industries CPC advertising is on the decline, in others it is on the rise. For some affiliate marketing is just not converting any more (as people have less disposable income) yet on some topics it is doing better than ever.

The key is to experiment and test different income streams, even old ones that you’ve previously written off might now be performing.

  • @degeeked suggests – ‘Up usage of click-based revenue streams (i.e. not affiliate programs) like AdSense. People still click during a recession.’
  • @ncheapskate suggests – ‘Use affiliates that offer freebies. Logical Media is one that does it all the time. It’s win-win for you and your reader.’
  • Dave Konig responded – ‘Don’t rely on one type of affiliate program, diversify not only your programs but your link types.’

What Would You Add?

You’ve heard a lot of opinions in this post about how to recession proof your blog – but what would you add to the opinions and ideas expressed above?

Written on 10/8/2008 at 12:01 am by

5 Ways To Optimize Your Blog and Capture More Repeat Visitors

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

Today Rich Page shares five tips on how to optimize websites to capture repeat readers.

You may be a blogger that thinks they have a pretty popular and well created blog – if so, well done. But remember every blog is a work a progress, and there is always room for improvement. Here are 5 great ways to help optimize and improve your website, and inspire new visitors to become repeat visitors:

1: Track your Internal Search Results

One of the easiest ways to gain insight into your blog and improve it is to track your internal search results. You can easily do this using Google Analytics (learn how to track this), or use this cool wordpress plugin. It’s very important to identify your top searched keywords – it helps you identify what’s popular with your visitors (write more content relating to these), and also, just as importantly, what visitors are failing to find on your blog (look for keyword searches that have zero results and create a post about them – as long as you can make it relevant to your blog). The more relevant internal search results the user finds, then the more chances of them signing up to your feed and coming back for more!

2: Reduce the Bounce Rate of your Articles

The best way to stop someone from leaving immediately after reading your blog articles (i.e. bouncing) is to expose them to as much of your blog’s great content as possible, or by getting them to sign up to your feed. And what is the best way to do this? Immediately after the visitor is done reading the blog entry they arrived at (and remember, most visitors don’t arrive at your homepage – they get deep linked in from search engines or other blogs), at the bottom of the article place prominent text links to subscribe and links to read related content (problogger.com actually does a great job of this). Just don’t fail here and bury these important links away on the right hand column, or at the bottom of your comments, like I see so often.

3: Survey and Learn from Your Website Visitors

What’s another great way to improve your blog? This one is simple, yet many blog owners don’t do it – you need gain feedback from your visitors! Simply sign up for a free survey tool like 4Q, and get to know your visitors better. It allows you to ask your visitors questions in the form of a non-obtrusive pop-up survey. Here are the 3 main questions you need to ask your visitors in order to gain insight for optimizing your blog:

  • What was the reason you came to this blog?
  • Did you find what you were looking for?
  • What else would you like to see at this blog?

Asking these questions allows you to gain some real insight into your visitors and their needs – and remember, a blog that doesn’t meet the needs of visitors could spend all the money in the world to get new traffic, but it wouldn’t get many repeat visits (way cheaper) because the visitors aren’t finding what they want. And don’t just survey your visitors – act on what you find! It can often be very revealing…

4: Build a Community into your Blog

Want to get as many repeat visits as possible, without having to rely on RSS feeds to pull visitors back? Then build a community for your blog, and engage not only yourself with your readers, but allow your readers to engage with each other. This is particularly a great idea if you are niche blogger and you have a small but captive audience. There are a number of ways to create this community for your blog – the basic way is to setup and install ‘MyBlogLog‘ or ‘BuddyPress‘ as a widget on your blog. The more advanced way to build a community is to create a social network around your blog using Ning or KickApps. Both of these are free and allow you to fully customize, brand and create your own community, and use your own blog feed as a main ingredient of the community. Win-win situation for you and your readers!

5: Setup Goals and Begin Testing to Improve Them

Lastly, one of the most important things to remember for blogging success is to set goals and try and beat them. And for blogs, your goal is likely to get as many readers as possible. But be more specific and actionable. For example set a weekly goal for new readers, i.e. 100 new subscribers per week. Then, test elements of your website (using Google Website Optimizer) to try and improve your subscribers and reach your goals. One of the best things to test is the ‘subscription’ area, usually found to the top right of your blog – where your RSS feed links and newsletter signup form usually is. Test different calls to actions, different images and different copy. See which one drives the most goal conversions. And for the goal conversion to work, you will need to tag your thanks page with tracking code (which is easily done if you use AWeber to manager your feed readers). Here is a cool plugin to help you use Google Website Optimizer on your blog. Also, if you are selling a product or giving away something like an ebook on your blog, you can track that as a goal and test to improve sign up rates.

So there we have it. And remember, don’t ever think your blog is ‘done’ – always keep striving to improve your blog. If you don’t, before you know it, a competitor will appear out of nowhere and start stealing away your beloved visitors. For more ideas on how to help improve your blog (and websites in general), and to find ways to stop wasting so much money on online marketing, consider checking out my new free ebook all about this.

So, what are you waiting for? Use these tips and start improving your blog right now – and who knows, it may end up being as successful as ProBlogger one day!

Written on 10/2/2008 at 11:01 am by

Google BlogSearch Adds Meme Tracking

Filed Under: Blogging Tools and Services

Today Google released an update to their BlogSearch service – and it isn’t just cosmetic.

Google Blog Search

The update is all about tracking what’s hot around the blogosphere and presenting stories ranked in 11 different categories according to how many other blogs are linking to those stories. You can then drill down and see the blogs that link to the story and a chart of how many did over time.

Blogsearch-Drill-Down

It isn’t a new concept – TechMeme, Technorati, Blogs.com and others have been doing it for years – however what strikes me here is just how comprehensive Google’s results are. While TechMeme only indexes a limited number of blogs Google’s BlogSearch has been indexing millions (?) of blogs for some time now and will be able to provide a different perspective to what is happening in the wider blogosphere (instead of just the cool gang).

It’ll be interesting to see how their results compare over the longer term and how they’ll deal with spammers and those trying to manipulate the service – but at a first impression I like what I see. I just wish there was a way to subscribe to the top stories in each category (I’m surprised that there is not… or am I missing it?).

Further Reading

Written on 10/2/2008 at 7:52 am by

10 Prolific Bloggers Share Tips on Generating Conversation on Blogs

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

Yesterday I gave 13 tips for having great conversations on a blog. As a followup to that I shot an email to a number of bloggers that have a habit of having active comment sections to ask them how they make their blogs more conversational.

As expected – their responses were rich and full of goodness! Here are their responses.

Leo Babauta

Leo.jpg

“Conversation on Zen Habits is as important or more important than the posts themselves. The readers on my blog have really formed a positive community and I am deeply grateful for such a great readership.

A few things I’ve done to foster conversation at Zen Habits:

1. Write posts that go beyond the usual and provoke a little thought and some sort of response from readers. If your post doesn’t generate some kind of emotion in your readers — whether that’s inspiration, motivation, anger, laughter, whatever — you need to look at ways of being a bit bolder while still being true to yourself and your readers.

2. Ask for thoughts at the end of the post. Ask them to post their ideas, thoughts, experiences in the comments.

3. Always, always be grateful for comments, and don’t attack commenters. This is huge for me. Even if a commenter is negative or even a bit rude, I thank the commenter. I try to find the nugget of truth or wisdom in the comment and ignore the rudeness. I never reply in anger. I try to be grateful for the feedback, because it helps me to get better. And I try to learn from my readers instead of thinking I have all the answers.

4. Sometimes it’s better to step back and let readers converse. Conversations don’t always have to be between the reader and the blogger. Conversations between readers can be lively and enlightening. Don’t feel you have to respond to every comment — let others handle things sometimes, and only step in when you have something valuable to contribute that others couldn’t contribute themselves.”

Gala Darling

Gala.jpg “People always say that you need to start conversations on your blog in order to foster community, but one of the main problems is that some people try to do it just because they think they should — out of some sense of “blogger obligation” (blogligation?!), rather than an authentic desire.

The most important thing in blogging, I think, is to be genuine. This applies to getting people to comment, too. If you don’t actually care about what your readers have to say on a given topic, that comes through pretty clearly, & you’re not going to get the response you’re hoping for. People can smell your lack of sincerity, & they won’t bother!

All that aside, I find that the best tactics for stimulating conversation are to…
a) talk about something which everyone has an opinion on
b) ask for people’s real life experiences
c) share something personal & invite others to do the same
d) request advice or help — people love to help others!

Of course, the more positive energy you put into your writing, the more likely it is that people will bounce that back at you… So if you make an effort to write with a sense of fun & delight, your readers will respond positively in their own charming, utterly individual way!”

Duncan Riley

Duncan.jpg “By making commenting as easy as possible, and by facilitating conversations where people want to have them. We use the commenting 2.0 service Disqus (although there are a number of players you can use), and the first advantage is that Disqus users can immediately leave a comment without having to enter their personal details, encouraging more spontaneous commenting. Further to that, they can track comments they’ve left on Disqus and easily comment again on the same post in response to other comments left where as in the past, a comment may have been a one off without followup. We’ve found that using a service such as Disqus delivers more comments, and increases the levels of engagement and repeat traffic, and it’s why I’ve been more than happy to evangelize the commenting 2.0 space.

On the broader conversation front, we also incorporate comments from FriendFeed, both in importing FriendFeed comments in, and allowing people to make comments using their FriendFeed account on the site itself. We often see far more discussion on FriendFeed than directly through comments on the site. People are going to have those conversations anyway, so if you can incorporate FriendFeed comments on your site and give people a choice to use their FriendFeed account as well, its a win/win: a win for your site, and a win for your readers.”

Liz Strauss

Liz.jpg “I do a few things to keep the conversation going. I try to write my blog posts complete, but not too thorough so that readers can add something to what I’ve started. I also try to learn rather than teach — that’s a hard one. When I end a blog post with a question, I make sure that it’s one that can be answered and that I’d be able to answer it myself. In the comment box, I look at who’s talking and answer to that individual. I’ll often continue the dialogue by ending my comment with another question. Sometimes it makes sense to stay back and let readers talk with each other. They discover and uncover even more ideas if I’m not in there talking all of the time.

Mostly though, I make sure that everyone knows that their ideas are respected and protected. There’s one rule on my blog, “disagree all you want, but be nice.” Saying “thanks,” doesn’t hurt either. “

Timothy Ferriss

Tim.jpg“-Ask questions at the end of the post — ideally ask for not just facts but opinions. Few people feel qualified to offer facts but everyone has opinions.

-Do not try and be comprehensive on a topic. Offer your strongest position and don’t hedge or steal others’ thunder; let readers add their perspectives.

-Identify and thank commenters on occasion in main blog posts. Make them famous (even for one post) and make it clear that you’re reading the comments, especially to those who have never left one b/c they assume you don’t.”


Jason Falls

Jason.jpg “I foster conversation on my blog by taking a stand on issues. Sure, that can be polarizing, but that’s the point. Nothing gets people either yelling, “Amen,” or, “You S-O-B,” better than drawing a line and saying, you’re either with me or against me. Pick one.

But I would caution you to make sure you’re ready for it. Thick skin, a healthy dose of humility, a sense of humor and the ability to disagree without being disagreeable are required.”

Jeremy Schoemaker

Jeremy.jpg “I try to inspire conversation on my blog by asking a questions throughout the post.”


Chris Garrett

Chris.jpg “There are three types of conversation that I see on blogs.

1) Inter-blogger conversation – Bloggers talking to each other through their blogs

2) Blogger-Reader conversation – Bloggers and their readers discussing topics through posts and comments

3) Reader-Reader conversation – Readers creating conversations in the comment area

The last one is the least common and for those who want to build community, it’s the holy grail.

To foster the first, you have to get into a link bait state of mind. Which approach is going to get a reaction, how can you press topical or emotional hot-buttons? Many bloggers drift into snark territory with those. It could, though, be as simple as linking to other bloggers with an interesting and unusual question that you would like to see answered.

Most people know what to do with the second. Getting readers to comment is about leaving the opening, inviting a response, and creating the appropriate environment. In marketing terms this would be a “call to action”. At the end of your post ask for comments in a way that anyone can answer without fear of looking stupid.

For readers to comment to each other takes that commenting environment to a new level, and also requires that you get out of the way a bit. So while you answering comments encourages more comments, answering too often discourages readers answering each other. You have to balance the need to make commenters feel valued and welcome, with the need to open up the floor for other readers to jump in and respond to another comment.”

John Chow

John.jpg “The best way I’ve found to foster conversation on my blog is to ask for feedback from my readers. If you want something, you have to ask for it. I got a free Macbook Air at IZEA Fest because I asked for it. You’ll be amazed at what you can get if you simply ask.

Once you get the feedback, the next thing you need to do is to reply to it. Fostering conversation is a two way street. If your reader took the time out to make a comment on your blog, please reply to it.”

Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle.jpg “While I believe conversation and interactivity is the key to the definition of a blog, I find the issue of blog conversations fascinating. Not all blogs need comments. Not all of my blog posts need comments either. The conversation can happen on the blog or in someone’s head and I’m still happy. But when I want to get the conversation rolling, it rolls because of the community created by the blog’s overall theme, content, purpose, history, and historical climate of trust.

While many will tell you the basics of opening up the blog conversation by writing open ended blog posts, asking questions of your readers, and leaving room for them to enter the conversation, I believe that people contribute their thoughts to my blog because they already feel like I’m their friend. They trust me. We’ve created a relationship. They feel like they know me, thus feel safe leaving a comment. We’re family.

Creating a safe space for comments doesn’t happen with your first blog post. It might not even happen with your 1000th. It begins with trust. Your blog showcases your history and expertise in the subject matter. Your blog post publishing history speaks for your passion for the subject, enthusiasm, and consistency – you’ve been there and you will continue to be there. When you show you care about the readers, and you are blogging for them and their needs, they tend to open up the conversation with you more than you open it up for them.

The synergy of like-minds keeps the conversation going. You don’t have to respond to every comment, but you must let your community think that you do. When you show you care, they care back, and together you create the content on your blog.”

Written on 10/2/2008 at 12:01 am by

Blog Tips from Blog World Expo [VIDEO]

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips, Video Posts

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to play

Last week at Blog World Expo I had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of bloggers of all topics, backgrounds and levels of experience. One of the things that quickly became evident as I spoke with these bloggers was that collectively the bloggers who had gathered together in Vegas for those few days had a vast amount of knowledge.

I decided to do my best to capture some of this on video and used my new Flip Mino Series Camcorder to interview 15 or so of them. Here are the first 3 interviews – Chris Brogan, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman and David Peralty.

Thanks to Business Week Exchange for sponsoring this video.

For a larger version of this video see it on YouTube, MySpace, Revver, Blip.tv, Facebook and Viddler.

Get more tips on blogging in our Blog Tips for Beginners series of post.

Written on 10/1/2008 at 12:07 am by

13 Tips on How to Have Great Conversations On Your Blog

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Miscellaneous Blog Tips

Lately I’ve been suggesting 11 points to take a little extra time in the posting process on a blog. We’ve looked at everything from choosing topics, to crafting titles, to calls to action, to promoting your posts.

The point of this series is simply that when you take a little extra time at each of these points in the process you add depth and increase the effectiveness of your blog post.

Today I want to share one last point to ‘pause’ – it is as important as each other point in the process (if not more so) and can take a ‘good post’ into ‘great post’ territory.

It’s all about the Art of Conversation

ConversationImage by b_d_solis

It is easy to see the point of hitting ‘publish’ on your blog post as the ‘end’ of the process of posting – however more often than not the real action and fruit of a blog post happens once it’s ‘live’ and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. To hit publish and move on to the next post at this point is an opportunity gone begging.

2 Benefits of Fostering Conversation on Your Blog

For me the main two benefits of a blog with great conversation are simply:

  • it adds depth to posts – my belief is that together we know a lot more than any one of us. As wise as you might be as a blogger – when your readership adds their knowledge to your posts in the comments section – it’ll generally become a better resource to future readers.
  • it builds community and reader loyalty – increasingly people are going online not only to find ‘information’ but to find community and places to ‘belong’. A blog which regularly has good conversation where people’s ideas are heard and valued is a place that people will want to return.

13 Tips for Growing the Conversation On Your Blog

Let me start by saying that this post is not about ‘how to get comments on your blog’. I’ve written previously about 10 techniques to get more comments and would recommend that post as a primer for this one.

What I do want to focus on in this post goes beyond getting comments and how to grow ‘conversations’ (something that I think is a little deeper). There is some overlap – but I hope this post goes beyond that previous one.

1. Set Time Aside for Conversation

The biggest conversation killer in my own life is simply that I’m too busy. This is true in ‘real life’ as well as blogging. If you don’t set aside time to have conversation it is highly unlikely to ever happen because it takes time.

Again – I’m not talking here about leaving comments (leaving a comment can take a second or two) – but actually engaging in conversation means listening to what others are saying and thoughtfully responding in a way that goes deeper, adds value and says something meaningful – this takes time and if you don’t prioritize it you’re not likely to fit it in.

2. Ask Questions

As mentioned in my post on how to get comments, ‘asking questions’ is a powerful technique for starting off a conversation. If you want people to respond to your posts include questions within them – it’s key to get the comment thread started, however it’s also a great technique for keeping the conversation going.

One way to add depth to a conversation and to draw out more from those commenting is to take their comments and ask questions of them that elicit a second response. Rather than just responding to someone’s comment with a ‘great point’ type comment – why not go a little deeper with a question that draws them into extending their idea.

3. Answer Questions

Not only is asking questions powerful – but so is answering those that readers ask. This can be challenging when you get a lot of comments on your blog (I’ve had to hire someone to help me manage this lately) but it makes your posts more meaningful and helpful to readers who come away wondering about some aspect of what you’ve written.

4. Track Offshoots of Conversation

The beauty of blogging is that posts that one blogger publishes can inspire other bloggers to write posts on a similar topic on their own blog. While the comments section of your blog might be the place that most of your readers interact with your ideas – a good post might inspire multiple conversations in all kinds of places in the blogosphere.

It is important to be aware of these offshoot conversations and to participate in them. Start a vanity folder in your news aggregator to help track them and when you find them visit the blog and add value to the conversation there. Don’t feel you need to drag people back to your blog – but add value on that blog. In doing so you will build a relationship with the blogger who has posted about your idea but also potentially could find yourself a few new connections (and even new readers) among their readership.

5. Add Value and Depth

I’ve talked many times about writing blog posts that are useful and unique (the secret to great content) – however it struck me recently that the same advice actually applies to comments. If the comments that YOU leave (either on your own blog or others) are not actually useful (if they don’t add value and/or depth to the conversation) and if they are not simply echoes of what others are saying (ie unique) then there is little point in leaving them.

One of the best ways to kill a conversation is to respond to something that someone else has written with a generic comment like ‘great point’. Before you comment, consider what you’re writing. Does it add something to the conversation? Will it elicit a response from others? Is it unique from what others are saying? If the answer to these questions is ‘no’ – work on your comment until it does.

6. Listen, Listen, Listen

As a blogger who has just published a post you’ve been doing most of the talking and your readers have been doing the listening – so when it comes to the comments section of your blog turn the tables and become the listener and let others do the talking.

Conversation is a two way street and if you take the ‘monologue’ approach into comments then you’re unlikely to develop a culture of conversation on your blog.

7. Play Devils Advocate (with Care)

One way to stimulate conversation is to throw into the conversation an unexpected and opposing point of view. Playing Devils Advocate (when done well) can be a powerful tool to draw out responses in your readers and extend a conversation into a place that it might not have naturally gone.

The key with this approach is to do so with care. Writing something controversial just for the sake of it and in a hostile tone can actually kill a conversation (or take it into the realm of a flame war). A better approach might be to make it clear what you’re doing with an ‘I agree with you – however some might argue….’ type comment.

8. Promote the Conversation

I find that when a good conversation emerges on a post it can actually be very effective to promote the ‘conversation’ (as opposed to the post itself) in some way. For example I occasionally will use Twitter to alert readers to a comment thread with a tweet that says ‘there’s a great conversation emerging at www.xxxx….’ – these tweets tend to get a fairly good level of people not only visiting the post but coming over with an openness to respond.

9. Protect Your Comments Section (Moderation)

The comments section on your blog is a really important space on your blog and can both add to and take away from the perception of others towards your blog. If your comments section becomes a comment spammers heaven or always dissolves into a place where trolls flame one another it will not draw genuine readers into conversation.

As a result I advocate that you not be afraid to protect your comments section and set some guidelines in place for people to interact there. Ultimately it is your blog and your rules need to apply. If people step outside of your rules then they need to be willing to have their comments moderated.

10. Model the Behavior you Want

What about trolls and comments sections that get too negative? My theory is that the majority of blogs that have highly snarky comments sections will generally have bloggers posting to them that display their own fair share of snakiness in the blog posts that they write. I’m sure there are a few exceptions but I find that most blog readers take the lead of the blogger on a blog when interacting in comments.

As I’ve previously written on this topic:

“If your blog is written in a positive, optimistic, helpful and inclusive voice then I find that those commenting generally respond with a similar tone. Write in a snarky, negative, rant dominated tone that makes fun of others and you can expect a very similar vibe in your comments.”

11. Bounce off Comments with New Posts

One of the weaknesses of blogs over forums is that conversations can have a limited life simply because the post that they happen on falls off the front page of the blog as new posts are published.

One way to keep a hot conversation going is simply to write a follow up post that extends upon ideas in the first. One approach is simply to elevate some of the comments on the previous post into a new post to stimulate an extension of the conversation. This not only keeps the conversation going but also rewards those who’ve previously participated with a moment in the spot light. This is what I did recently on DPS with this post on video on DSLR cameras.

12. Use Email

Another of the challenges of blogs is that often readers will leave a comment and never return to the post to continue the conversation. You can ask them all the questions in the world but if they don’t come back to the blog they’ll never see them.

There are a variety of commenting tools to help overcome this (I use a ‘subscribe to comments’ plugin which helps a little) but one effective way to keep conversations going is simply to follow up those who’ve commented with an email. For example – if someone asks you a question and you respond – shoot them an email after you answer their questions to let them know. The same technique works if you have asked them a question in comments.

13. Empower Your Community to Lead Conversation

One of the challenges that faces bloggers as their blogs grow and become popular is to genuinely and actively participate in every conversation happening on their blog. I personally struggle with this quite a lot across my two blogs which on any given day can have a total of 150-500+ comments.

One thing that can help is to try to develop a culture on your blog where the conversations are not dependent upon you alone. This takes time to achieve but unless you’re a conversation freak and/or can keep a million balls in the air at the same time (like Gary V, Liz, Scoble – each of whom leaves me shaking my head at the amount of conversations they participate in) you’ll need to do something to help you cope with your comment section as your blog grows.

One way to grow this community driven culture of conversation on your blog is simply to model it yourself and when questions are asked in the comments section on your blog to invite others to answer rather than feel you need to be the only one answering. As I say – this takes time but as you see your readers answering one another’s questions thank them for their comments and even elevate some of their answers to actual posts.

Lets Talk

OK – so this is where I invite you to comment, to add what you’ve learned about having conversations on your blog.

I’d love to hear what you do to foster conversation on your blog?

Do you use any particular techniques? Are there any tools that you use to help manage it? What’s the hardest part about generating great conversation on your blog? What’s worked for you?

PS: Tomorrow I’ll be posting some more tips on this topic from a few bloggers that have runs on the board when it comes to building blogs with great conversation. I’ll include a few of the tips left in comments below also so have your say and some of your ideas might be included in the next post!