ProBlogger Blog Tips – The Blog : @ProBlogger

Written on 5/24/2012 at 6:07 am by Guest Blogger

Use Email to Post to Your WordPress.org Blog

Filed Under: Blogging Tools and Services 8 Comments

This guest post is by Anurag Bansal of Techacker.

Owners of WordPress.org blogs don’t get the flexibility to post by email through a WordPress service. It’s very surprising to see that such a popular platform doesn’t offer a native way of creating blog post by sending an email—especially since WordPress.com owners can update their blogs using native WordPress functionality.

If you have a blog on Tumblr or Posterous (which was recently acquired by Twitter), you know how convenient it is to update your blog using email. It naturally increases the frequency with which you update your blog.

Today I’m going to introduce you to an easy way to post by email to your WordPress.org blog using a service I am a big fan of—ifttt.

ifttt stands for If This, Then That. This service, which was introduced recently on ProBlogger, makes it really easy to do many online tasks, some of which are mentioned below.

How to post by email to a WordPress.org blog

Create an ifttt account if you don’t already have one.
Activate and authorize the WordPress.org blog you want to post by email to. To do this, click on WordPress logo under Channels on ifttt. Then add the appropriate details to authorize your WordPress blog to use with ifttt. Once activated, you will see a similar screen to the one shown below.
Activate the email channel connection to the email account from which you’d like to send posts. All you need is to click on Email icon and enter your email address. ifttt will immediately send a PIN to this email address. Copy that PIN from the email into the box on ifttt. Once your account’s confirmed, you’ll have successfully activated the email channel.
Use this recipe to create a task. While creating the task, you can edit the details shown in the screenshot below to suit your needs.
Once the task is activated, all you have to do is send an email from the email account you confirmed in Step 3 to trigger@ifttt.com with the specified # tag in the subject line. In ifttt terms, that tag says, “if email is received from the account specified earlier, then post it to the WordPress blog set up earlier.”
ifttt will create a post on your WordPress.org blog, using the email details as follows:
1. The subject of the email becomes the title of the blog post.
2. The body of the email becomes the content of the blog post.
3. Tags for the post are specified in the recipe. You can change these in the task details on ifttt.
4. Categories for the post are also specified by you in the ifttt recipe.

There are many other recipes I use to update my WordPress.org blog, including:

I have been able to successfully post many updates to my blog using this process. It’s easy, painless and quick. All it takes to update your blog is an email!

Stop postponing that great blog post idea just because you didn’t have the right tools at the time. Now, there’s no need to install any plugins—just use email.

How do you update your WordPress blog now? Do you think email updates would make it easier for you to update your blog? If you’re already using emil updates on another platform, is it helpful? Let us know in the comments.

Anurag Bansal is a technology enthusiasts and internet addict. He reviews various internet services, Android and iPhone apps and provide tips on many technology related topics on his blog at Techacker. Anurag also releases a FREE Monthly Magazine - THM - on his blog. You may follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Written on 5/24/2012 at 12:03 am by Guest Blogger

5 Lessons Steve Jobs Could Teach You About Creating a Popular Blog

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 12 Comments

This guest post is by Greg Digneo of Sales Leads in 30 Days.

“What can I learn from the business life of Steve Jobs that will help me grow my blog?”

We’ve all asked ourselves the question. Because the public nature of blogging goes against his strict privacy policy, this isn’t an easy question to answer. But it’s one that I couldn’t get out of my head.

There has to be something to learn from a guy who revolutionized multiple industries and created two iconic companies. Look beyond his temperamental management style and the black turtlenecks, and analyze the way he built companies and gave presentations. You will find several principles that you can apply to your own business.

Below are five lessons that Steve Jobs could teach us about creating popular a blog.

“Make a dent in the universe”—Steve Jobs

In Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs, Pepsi CEO John Scully recounts Jobs’s pitch to come work for Apple.

Scully remarks: “Steve’s head dropped as he stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a challenge that would haunt me for days. ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?’”

Apple products aren’t created to make money in an industry. They are created to redefine the way the industry does business. The Apple II gave birth to the PC industry. The iPod and iTunes combination remade the music industry. And the iPhone redefined the way a phone is made.

Likewise, the most popular blogs in the world create a “dent” in their niche.

Ask yourself this: if someone were to read every article you’ve written, how would their life improve one year from now?

Once you answer that question, you will create a higher sense of purpose, and stand out from the countless blogs in your niche.

For instance, one of my favorite blogs is Pam Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation. There are millions of entrepreneurship, marketing, and career blogs on the web, but Pam packages her expertise to create the higher purpose of “helping frustrated employees in corporate jobs break out and start their own businesses.”

So, go ahead and be bold. Find your blog’s purpose. And put a dent in the universe.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”—Leonardo DaVinci

Apple products are famous for being simple and intuitive to use. As Steve Job’s said in Walter Isaacson’s book: “The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.”

The iPhone has only one button on its face. The iPod has only a scroll wheel. You don’t need an instruction manual to operate either of these devices.

When Derek Halpern launched his blog Social Triggers, he took this advice to heart. When you visit his blog, there are only two things you can do:

Read his content.
Enter your email address and sign up for his newsletter.

And the results speak for themselves. In a little over one year, Derek has taken Social Triggers from brand new to over 12,000 subscribers.

Yet so many blogs do just the opposite. They have navigation bars with too many options. The design of the blog is often cluttered, leaving the reader feeling lost and overwhelmed.

Do you want the reader to download your ebook? Connect with you on social media? Subscribe to your RSS? Make your blog more intuitive and pick the one thing you want your readers to do.

Be “amazingly zippy”

As Carmine Gallo says in his book Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: “Jobs is one of the few business leaders who could confidently call a product ‘amazingly zippy.’”

He used these types of words to communicate complex products and features to the masses. For instance, when describing the buttons on the screen of the iMac, he said they “look so good you’ll want to lick them.” (Fortune magazine 4 January 2000). He could have described them as having the perfect dimensions, the perfect color, and the perfect gloss, but he knew that his primary audience wouldn’t care.

As bloggers, we often communicate highly complex ideas, and our job is to speak in a language that our audiences can understand. It can be easy to get caught in the echo chamber and forget that most readers who visit your blog have very little knowledge of your niche.

Here’s a simple way to ensure that you create content the majority of your readers will understand. After every post you write, ask yourself this: “Will my mom get it?” If your mom can’t understand it, then there is a good chance that you will alienate large segments of your audience.

“Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life”—Steve Jobs

So began Jobs’s famous Stanford Commencement address.

Steve Jobs was a masterful story teller. Every keynote he gave was a triumph of good over evil. The audience had a problem and Apple was going to save the day.

Before he introduced the iPhone, Jobs explained why current smartphone products were so bad, and how Apple would come to the rescue. For instance, the keys were permanently fixed into the plastic case of the phone. But that wouldn’t happen to the iPhone. The iPhone’s keys were built directly into the software, allowing each application to have the perfect user interface.

By telling stories, Jobs allowed his audience to become a part of the presentation. Bloggers can use this same tactic.

You can use case studies and customers to show how they have succeeded by using your products and implementing your ideas. And there is a simple formula you can use to create an engaging case study:

First, you describe in vivid detail your customer’s life before buying the product.
Then you explain exactly how your customer implemented your product or idea.
Finally, you show how much better your customer’s life is after you’ve saved the day.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

In the 1960’s Jobs read the Whole Earth Catalog, which he described as the Google in paperback. He said “It was idealistic and full of tools that you could use.”

On the back cover of the final issue from the mid 1970s, were the words “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” Jobs’ Stanford Commencement speech concluded with him urging the graduates to do the same.

Part of being a blogger is to have an insatiable curiosity. You scour the web and books for new theories, new ideas, and new innovations that pertain to your niche. Then you take these new concepts and apply them to what we already know.

And you know what? Sometimes it gets messy. Your mistakes are made in public for the entire world to see.

Those of us in the trenches know that we’re going to ruffle feathers. We know that there are times we’re going to be wrong. Often, we need to take one step back before we can move two steps forward. To build a popular blog, you must constantly indulge your curiosity and keep pushing forward.

And one more thing…

Finally, I want to recall one of the stories from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.

Steve Jobs had an argument with one of his engineers about the boot up time for the Macintosh operating system. To quickly resolve the argument, he asked the engineer, “If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?” The engineer responded that he probably could, and wound up reducing the boot time of the operating system by 28 seconds.

Now I turn the question to you: “If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to implement these lessons and improve your blog?” I’m serious.

Your marketing blog can save a business and a livelihood. Your personal finance blog can save a family from going under. Your fitness blog can save a life (literally).

So what are you waiting for? Get started. Right now.

Greg Digneo teaches businesses how to get more traffic and increase online sales in 30 days. Click here to download his free ebook How to Generate 100 Sales Leads in 30 Days.

Written on 5/23/2012 at 6:03 am by Guest Blogger

How to SEO Your Blog Post Series

Filed Under: Writing Content 18 Comments

This guest post is by Keith Bishop of Online Digital Junkie.

Google’s Panda Update, as well as the recent post from Darren about hosting a guest post series, has prompted me to take a deeper look into the implementation and search benefits associated with putting series on my own sites.

What I found tells me that publishing a series can be a good move if it’s done correctly. So let’s look at when a series is a good idea, as well as some of the issues that need to be avoided for the optimal search performance of the series you publish.

When to use a series

A series is best used when you have a lot of material and media that would slow your page load time if you published it all in one article. Long load times can have a negative effect on your search ranking, as well as causing users to hit the Back button before your post ever finishes loading.

You can check page download speeds on sites like Pingdom. My personal goals are to have all of my main landing pages load with 1.5 seconds, and the rest no longer than two seconds.

Another great time to use series is if you find a group of posts on your site that have similar content with overlapping keywords. This scenario causes your own pages to compete with each other and suffer in search rank. Under these circumstances it would be beneficial to rework your content into a series and allow it to build upon itself. The result of this, as I will explain later, will harness all of the combined SEO benefits and push your series up in the SERP.

The last, and probably most applicable, reason to publish series is when you have a lengthy subject that you are covering over an extended period of time. I certainly don’t want to read a 10,000 word article on the same subject—or have it delivered to my email. Everyone needs a little variety.

The negative aspects of series

Series have their downsides, as far as usability and search rank go. The worst part is the increased load time that the user experiences while navigating to each article, instead of having it load all at once on a single page. Most of the time, this is a good trade-off—the only exception being a long text article which will likely load quickly as a single post, and won’t benefit from being split into parts.

Another issue arises when the middle or last part of the series ranks better in the search results than the first part, and that becomes the landing page for search users. This is sort of like showing a guest your home by walking them through the garage first, and it’s something you want to avoid. The solution? Optimizing your series navigation.

How to link your series for greatest SEO and usability

Proper linking is accomplished by using the [link] element in the [head] section of the post page. This hints to Google that the page is part of a series, and also indicates the position of the document within the series.

To accomplish page ordering, we use the [rel=”prev” and rel=”next”] attributes that in the [link] pagination. This will ensure that the first part of your series will almost always be the one to show up in the search results. Note, though, that Google says “almost always” when it discusses this, so there must be occasions where the search engine likes an article deeper in the series for some reason.

Pagination is easy in WordPress, and there are probably some short codes for the other content management systems that will make it easy to implement in those as well.

Let’s imagine that you want to publish all the material in a series at once. All you need to do in WP is to put the entire series of articles into one post, then add [] wherever you want to break the content up into separate pages or parts. You can then modify the look of your pagination links with CSS.

If you want to drip-feed your series to users over an extended period of time—perhaps in weekly installments—use a head injection plugin that will allow you to add the [] information to the series manually as you publish each article.

A good WordPress plugin that takes care of this is HiFi (Head injection / Foot injection).

Hand-coded blogs will need to have this information added manually into the head section. Here is an example of what the code looks like.

<head>

<title>Your Page Title</title>

</head>

Naturally, the first page in the series will not have a [prev] attribute and the last page will not have a [next] attribute. This is how the search bots know where the series starts and ends. Clickable navigation links will also need to be coded at the end of each article in the series.

The most beneficial reason to use the [prev/next] attributes is that the search engines will count the series as one article and funnel all the SEO benefits from the series through to the page that’s shown in the search results.

This means that all of the likes, G+, tweets, and links back from the entire series will count together, instead of competing with one another. I don’t know about you, but that gets me excited.

What not to do

You may still find information about this online, but what you do not want to do is link your series using the [rel=”canonical”] attribute on your links.

This method will prevent the wrong post (e.g. a later part in a series) from ranking higher than the one you wanted (the first part in the series), but it also tells the search engine that this is duplicate content and it shouldn’t be indexed. The canonical attribute was used in the past under a slightly different set of circumstances, and is no longer applicable to series.

Too bad there isn’t some way to certify our content so that we could get the SEO benefits from our content when it gets scraped or syndicated. That would be awesome, but it is likely a dream for another day…

Keith currently writes for Beauty & Bandaids and is currently obsessed with his new outdoor adventure watch. Watch obsession to new blog is OCD at its finest.

Written on 5/23/2012 at 12:03 am by Guest Blogger

The “On Fire” Blogging Success Formula [Case Study]

Filed Under: Blog Promotion 25 Comments

This guest post is by Stephen Guise of Deep Existence.

It was July, 2011. My personal development blog, Deep Existence, was flying high. Every new post I published would get at least 20-30 comments and a good number of social shares. Not world-class blogger numbers, but pretty good for a young blog (five months) and with solid forward momentum.

Later that month, a spider bit me, and a chain of health problems ensued. I also got a full-time job. Between the two distractions, Deep Existence wound up being mostly ignored for the next seven months.

When I was ready to jump back in, I figured I just needed to post consistently again to reignite the community.

Wrong. So wrong.

No matter how fantastic I thought a post was or how many hours I spent researching and crafting it, the response to my blog was tepid at best—not even close to the “good old days.”

Even when I revamped the site to be more attractive (including a pricey new logo), and initiated a consistent one-post-per-week schedule, it didn’t matter. Finally, I understood why.

Quality can’t fend for itself

If anyone tells you that great content attracts readers, they’re fibbing. There is false information out there that says if your content is good enough, people will come.

I will dispel that myth with a simple, hypothetical example. Let’s compare ProBlogger to Papa Joe’s blog.

ProBlogger: Thousands of people are visiting, sharing articles, and commenting every day.
Papa Joe’s blog: A few dozen people per day find his articles, and notice that they are not commented on or shared.

Now imagine if exactly the same, high quality article was posted on these two sites. The ProBlogger article would go viral. Papa Joe’s article might be tweeted once (by him).

And what if the next 300 articles were duplicated in the same way on both blogs over the next year? The results would stay mostly the same. Papa Joe would be ignored as ProBlogger soared.

The difference is that ProBlogger is sensitive to quality (a good thing) because this blog has high exposure and a favorable perception. But Papa Joe’s article quality doesn’t matter much. Visitors don’t know who Papa Joe is and he sure doesn’t seem popular, so his content will get an unfair docking. And yet, his articles are amazing. Poor Papa.

The blogging success formula

My blog fell from success to failure, and then I failed to return it to success. Through this process, I discovered the false belief that continues to circle in the blogosphere today: that quality content is good enough.

Even if you have a decent number of readers, it’s not enough.

There’s a reason this article isn’t on my blog. I am Papa Joe right now. The quality of my content has remained high, but people forgot I existed when I took a lengthy leave of absence. This is fascinating, considering that by then I had more subscribers and traffic than ever before.

In hindsight, I noticed something interesting about how my blog became popular the first time. The response to my articles was directly related to my activity outside my blog. And as I gained greater exposure, the perception of Deep Existence changed for the better, and people began to give my content a fair chance (and they liked it).

The perception shift was critical, but it grew rather methodically with my consistent exposure—just like a fire as it’s just getting started. But before too long, the flames were building upon themselves. So even when I stopped seeking exposure, the fire was strong enough to be sustained by quality articles.

But a fire without fuel dies, as did mine.

I stopped writing, and the fire faded lower and lower until Deep Existence was just a firepit of cold ashes. Months later, I began to add firewood—quality content—to the cold ash pit, but there was no flame to consume it. I needed a spark.

So here I am, striking the flint once again. Does anyone have a lighter?

Use sparks of blog exposure to…
Ignite the flames of improved perception.
Build firewood made of quality content to keep your blog on fire!

Has this formula of blogging success matched your experience?

Stephen Guise exists in real life and on twitter. He is now a doubleblogger™ at Deep Existence – Personal Development’s Deep End and Irrational Humor – Moderately Good Website. Stephen speaks in 3rd person fluently.

Written on 5/22/2012 at 12:00 am by Darren Rowse

7 Hot Posts on My Blog this Month, and Why They Were Successful

Filed Under: Writing Content 22 Comments

I always find it fascinating to look at which posts go viral (or at least, which get shared the most) on my blogs. It isn’t always the ones that you expect!

Here are a few of the recent posts on my dPS blog that have done better than others over the last month, along with some reflections on why I think they were successful.

1. How to photograph babies: 9 tutorials

I’ll be honest: this post was one of those “panic posts” that I do on occasion. A post that I had lined up ready to go from one of our authors didn’t come in on time and I just had to publish something. So on the spur of the moment I decided to write this sneeze page (more on sneeze pages here).

While I knew it was a good topic, as we do get a lot of questions on it, I didn’t expect a lot from the post. Today it ended up on one of Google’s Cool Links lists and is getting heaps of traffic.

2. Posing guides

We published this series over the last few weeks. It contains posing guides for different portrait subjects:

The first post went crazy, so we commissioned the next three (and hopefully a couple more). The key I think is that they’re list posts, they’re visually rich with lots of illustrations, and they’re useful—many of our readers said they’ve printed them or are saving them for shoots that they’re planning.

3. Are you practicing these 5 natural light tips?

After our posing guides, this post has been our most popular this month. Why did it work?

Again, the post is visual (but then all dPS posts are visual—it’s what we do!). I think this one worked partly because of the title (I find question titles perform well, and this question makes people curious to see if they are doing what the article suggests), but also because it was on the theme of natural light that we’ve been exploring throughout the month, as part of the launch of our new Natural Light ebook.

While not a series of posts, this one is on a topic we’ve already sparked interest in through previous posts.

Another post in this series that did well was 5 tips for controlling natural light.

4. 31 [+10] Cool photography tutorials, tips, videos, hacks and how to’s from around the web

This post is a wrap-up of some of the best links from other photography blogs from around the web over the last month or so. These posts tend to perform well for us partly because the the links are genuinely good, partly because a few of the sites we link to then share the post in their networks, and partly because they’re list posts.

We also include ten of our own links in the post to drive internal traffic (another quasi-sneeze page).

5. Portrait tip: don’t fill the frame

This post was a quick one that I wrote that I think did particularly well because it is actually the opposite of the advice that most people are given.

Most people hear advice to fill the frame with their subjects, but in this post I take the opposite view and talk about the beauty of shots where you place your subject in the context of a larger scene.

It was also visual (I probably spent more time looking for example shots than writing the post itself), and it tapped into a problem that I think a lot of amateur photographers have—the comments on this post show how many people fall into the trap of zooming in too much.

6. Is camera lust destroying your photography?

This post went crazy. Perhaps it was having the word ‘lust’ in the title (a little provocative), or perhaps it was I took a slightly humorous spin in the intro.

Actually, it was probably more to do with the topic itself, which I know aways sparks debate and discussion. People love to debate how much gear plays a part in photography, and as you can see in the comments on this one, this post was no exception.

The post also tapped into a personal issue for many photographers and came from my own personal experience, too.

7. 7 Secrets every street photographer should know

This post again has a title that just begs to be clicked. The “secrets” and tips that “everyone should know” intrigue readers and grow their curiosity.

The post itself is well written and helpful. It’s also on on a topic that is pretty hot right now—street photography seems to be having something of a resurgence, and is really sparking interest at the moment.

Shtuff people say to photographers also got a guernsey. This one is all about humor—we had tens of thousands of visits to it. Make people laugh and they’ll pass the post on to others.

What were your hot posts over the last month, and why do you think they were successful? Share them with us in the comments.

Written on 5/21/2012 at 6:07 am by Guest Blogger

How to Use Data to Enrich Your Content

Filed Under: Writing Content 14 Comments

This guest post is by Conor Powers-Smith of Factbrowser.com.

Blog posts, whitepapers and other shareable content rely on supporting data—not because people just love a good color-coded pie chart (though they are pretty), but because numbers give stories shape. They add scale. They provide perspective. They quantify that something meaningful is happening.

Think about it: which statement would you rather share?

Teenagers are texting like crazy, more than ever.
The average teen sends 60 texts per day, up from 50 in 2009 (Pew Research Center).

The second statement tells you that there’s a behavioral trend happening and that the trend has real implications for business, communications, and a number of other fields.

But you can’t just throw a bunch of stats into your content and expect instant gravitas. Finding and interpreting facts to support your argument takes thought, and they should add depth, not clutter, to your point. Here are the essentials you need to know to use data wisely and effectively.

Speed up your research

Finding the right data to support your content can take a lot of time. The good news is that there are a couple of free tools that can streamline the process and make sure you’re well-supplied with fresh research:

Google Alerts: Set up an alert for keywords from your desired topic area plus words like “data” “study” or “report.” You’ll have to play around with the right keywords and phrases to get your alerts delivering exactly what you need, but it’s a good way to stay on top of new data as it rolls out.
Factbrowser: Factbrowser, where I work, is a free research discovery engine that aggregates all of the latest research on business and technology, making it easier to find just the facts you need without having to wade through long reports. When you find a topic you’re interested in (like social media or mobile, for example), subscribe to the RSS feed for that topic to see highlights of the latest research.

Make sure your data is credible

There’s a reason Mark Twain’s “Lies, damn lies, and statistics” adage is so well known. It’s easy for facts to be misinterpreted, and tools like Twitter have only increased the speed at which facts travel. Often, this means stats travel without their original source or context.

How can you test whether data is well-founded? Check these elements of the fact you’re reviewing:

Sample size: The very first thing you should do to determine whether a fact is well-founded is to look at the sample size represented in the study. The sample size that’s needed for the data to be reliable will vary based on the type of the study you’re looking at, but for most purposes you probably want to look for a sample size that’s over 400. In most cases, a sample size of more than 400 people will give a confidence level of about 95%.
Source of the report: Government agencies and market research companies aren’t the only sources of data out there. Often, a specific company will make its own data available for public consumption. For example, email service providers often release studies about open-rate benchmarks and email trends. Understanding whether research is sponsored—and by whom—is key to interpreting its credibility. Just because a company is financially tied to the topic doesn’t mean the data isn’t good. In fact, it can be some of the most interesting data out there—especially if the source has a unique and proprietary way of generating the data in the report. But be wary of sponsored surveys that have a clear commercial agenda, though.
Date: How recently was the study conducted? Sometimes a year can make a big difference. If the stat is outdated and no longer rings true, don’t use it.
Gut check: Also known as the sniff test—if something seems off or exaggerated, research it. Make sure you have the context around it and see if you can find similar information to corroborate it.

Cite the data’s source properly

On the web, citing a source is a little different from the citations of your AP history papers—but it’s just as critical.

Content on the web tends to be easily transferrable, and short-form, so it’s easy for a fact to lose its citation. Try to make sure you chase your fact back to the original source, not just a blog or article that mentions it.

I suggest you name the source of the information, either in-line or in parentheses after the fact, and link back to the original report. The Mobiledemystified blog did a nice job with this on a recent post, but for more detailed tips see Georgina’s post on using links to cite external sources of information you’ve used on your blog.

Additionally, if a report is located behind a form on a landing page, it’s a good practice to link to the form page rather than linking directly to the PDF report.

It doesn’t take much to stay up to date with the latest research on your topic area—just an ongoing curiosity and a couple of good research sites.

Whether you’re tweeting out your perspective on a new stat or threading a series of data points throughout your posts, good research will always make your content sticker and more consequential.

Do you use data in your posts? How do you find, check, and cite that information? Share your tips with us in the comments.

Conor Powers-Smith is a content manager at Factbrowser.com, a research discovery engine for the latest facts, stats, reports, surveys, and studies on business, marketing and technology. In addition to his work at Factbrowser (RSS), Conor works as a freelance journalist in Massachusetts.

Written on 5/21/2012 at 12:02 am by Guest Blogger

Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to Call Your Readers to Action

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars 12 Comments

This guest post is by Sean Davis of SDavisMedia.com.

Blogs do not produce income. Simply writing and publishing content does not increase your bank account balance.

The idea that money is a direct result of blogging is a myth that the best bloggers have dismissed, but most choose to treat it as a law of the blogosphere.

What a shame.

Many new bloggers will jump out of their online careers just as quickly as they jumped into them when they realize that it’s not enough to simply create content.

There is, however, another goal for creating content. It’s not until you understand this goal that you will know how to make money from your blog.

The goal of blogging is not to earn money. It’s to earn attention—the attention of those who will, in turn, provide the revenue you’re looking for.

Why you need to focus on attention

“If you build it, they will come.” We can argue all day about whether this is true or not. No matter what, though, we should all agree that just because people come to your blog doesn’t mean that they will buy your product, sign up for your email list, click your advertisement links, or whatever it is you need them to do in order to produce income.

As a personal testimony, I created an infographic about four months ago that seemed to be pretty popular on the internet for a day or two. The blog I published it on was only about three months old, and the infographic brought me over 1,000 visitors in one day. For some, that’s nothing. For me, it was the attention I had been dreaming about.

Take a wild guess at how many email subscribers I earned from that infographic.

If you guessed zero, you’re wrong!

The answer is actually one. One lonely person out of over a thousand visitors signed up to my free newsletter, which, by the way, offered a free gift for those who signed up.

This is when I learned that blogs have the power to bring attention, however, it’s what you do with that attention that matters most.

Introducing Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

If you’ve ever taken a college-level language course or a speech or communications class, chances are you’ve been introduced to the art of persuasion.

Simply put, in the business world, whether it be brick and mortar or internet marketing, you have to know how to persuade people to take action—especially when they are visiting your blog.

Almost a century ago, Alan Monroe of Purdue University introduced a persuasion method that takes the human mind through a natural cycle of establishing a need, developing a solution to satisfy that need, and then becoming enthusiastic about implementing that solution.

There are actually five steps to this sequence:

Attention: The first step is to gain the attention of the target audience. You can do this with a story, a thought provoking question, or anything that makes the audience stop what they’re doing with curiosity and focus.
Need: This is where you explain to the target audience what their need is. This can be an obvious, well-known need, or a need that you create on the spot. Often, a need is established by giving an extreme example of some unfortunate event that should never happen again.
Satisfaction: Now that your target audience understands the need, it’s time for you to fly in like Superman and save the day. Provide a solution to erase that need and prevent the aforementioned unfortunate event from ever happening again.
Visualization: Tell your target audience exactly how your solution can be implemented and how it will solve the problem. Also, tell them how things will progress (that is, get worse) if your solution is ignored. This is where you would provide proof—preferably a previous instance in which your solution was implemented—that convinces your audience that your solution will work. Politicians do this a lot when referencing what other nations have (or have not) done, and why it is important that we make the same (or different) decisions.
Action: Get the target audience involved. You’ve already explained to them what the need is, how to satisfy that need, and what things will be like for them once the need is satisfied. Now, you have to convince them that they play an important role in making that change happen. In other words, you introduce an action that they can take to implement your solution.

If you take a step back and thoroughly observe TV commercials, political campaigns, sales pages, etc., you will notice that the most persuasive ones follow this sequence. Why? Because it was developed to follow your own natural thought patterns.

It was developed on the basis of human nature.

How to use this persuasion technique on your blog

What if you could use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in every area of your blog?

From the content you produce, to your blog’s unique design, you can follow the steps in the sequence to lead your readers down a path that causes them to take action.

Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com enlightened me a few weeks ago on why he doesn’t write the typical “17 Things You Can Do To Blah Blah Blah” articles on his blog.

He said that he encourages the reader to focus on one action to take with each of his articles. As a result, his readers leave his blog with something they can actually implement instead of a list of options—something that’s been shown to be less effective at prompting action, by the way.

Considering Derek builds email lists like crazy, it’s safe to say that he understands human psychology and what makes people tick online.

Does he use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence? I don’t know. But imagine the results you could produce, article by article, if you focused each one of them on one specific action to take, as Derek does, and you used Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to do so.

Are the ideas flowing yet? I hope so.

Remember: blogs don’t earn money. Blogs earn attention. Once you have attention, which is nothing more than a visit to your blog, you have to know how to guide the visitor down a path that leads them to an action you’d like them to take.

Whatever your goals for your blog, you can start using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence right now. Simply break something you want your visitors to do down to one single action, and then follow the steps of the sequence.

Take a few moments to think about communications you encounter every day and how they follow this sequence. And imagine the possibilities for your blog if you can master this technique.

Sean Davis is an internet entrepreneur dedicated to constant growth and helping others. Check Sean out at SDavisMedia.com and follow him on Twitter @SDavisMedia.

Written on 5/20/2012 at 12:00 am by Guest Blogger

Video Starting Points: Make and Share Your First Video

Filed Under: Blogging Tools and Services 30 Comments

This guest post is by Neil Davidson of My Web Presenters.

In November of 2011 David Hsieh, VP of Marketing at Cisco famously stuck his neck out by proclaiming that 90% of internet traffic will be viewing video in three years’ time.

The actual figure is already 51% of traffic, and it’s climbing fast. For bloggers like you and I, this has consequences. You can either bite the bullet and get started with video, or you can hide under the sheets and hope the storm passes.

For this post, I am going to assume that you are firmly in the “get on the train” camp.

At first sight it may seem that moving into video content production from textually based content is very difficult, as it requires a very different skillset. Also you may need to speak out loud or, worst of all, show your face on camera!

However, getting into video production and marketing is actually a natural progression for a blogger. Here are some ideas on how you can get started.

1. Video production

Use smartphones for impromptu interviewing

Hands up if you’ve got a smartphone. Many smartphones now have high-quality video cameras built in—some even have HD video. These can be highly effective for taking advantage of unusual situations…

Imagine that you’re at a blogging event and you find yourself standing next to Darren Rowse. You strike up a conversation that gets interesting. Suppose you were to pull out your smartphone, ask him a few questions on video, and post it to your blog. If the “interview” went well, chances are that Darren would be happy to tweet and share that content for you.

Suddenly you would be catapulted out of nowhere into the limelight—all through a chance five-minute meeting. A traditional interview would take a lot longer to capture, as well as to prepare and write up, and the chances are that busy people, like Darren, may well have to refuse an interview request. Compare these two approaches:

“Oh, wait a moment, I am really enjoying this conversation and I know the readers of my blog would love it too, do you mind if I just video you answering that question again?”
“That’s really interesting, do you mind if I just go and grab a pen and paper and note down the conversation that we are having?”

Use screencasting videos to show how something is done

Another very accessible form of video is screencasting. Essentially, this technique makes a video of your computer screen and films the actions you’re taking on it. This is very similar to the concept of a screen grab for obtaining a static image of your screen.

Screencasting videos are fantastic for making “how to” videos. They allow you to visually and verbally take your viewers through a process to show them how something is done. Here are some ideas from Camtasia, the makers of video software, on how their technology can be used. In this video, they explain how the tool can be used practically:

Camtasia costs $99 for lifetime usage so it certainly won’t break the bank! Perhaps the second most popular screen casting tool on the market is ScreenFlow, which this costs the same as Camtasia and has pretty much the same features. The best thing to do with these products is to download them (both offer free trials) and practice using them to make videos.

One tip that will help you get up to speed more quickly is to write down a list of the steps that you will follow in your video and have it on the desk in front of you whilst you are making the video. With a written blog post it is natural to pause and think, and to go off researching something mid article, but with video, the research must be done beforehand. You need to film to a plan.

Be strict. If you’re not happy with your video, delete it and start again. It gets easier and easier—you will be very surprised by how quickly you speed up and improve your abilities. Before you know it, you will actually be enjoying it, wahey!

2. Video publishing

There are two places on the net where your video really needs to be:

on your blog (or website)
on YouTube.

Initially, you should publish the video to Youtube. If you use Screenflow to make a screencast video then you can publish straight from the platform to your YouTube channel. From Camtasia, you can go straight to Vimeo.

The reason that it is important to publish to Youtube is not just because it is so much larger than the other platforms and is so closely tied with both Google search and Google+, but also because it easily enables your video to be openly used by other bloggers through the video embed code shown here:

Once your video’s on YouTube, anyone who has a website can grab your embed code and plonk your video on their website. This gives you additional exposure via their audience and also gives you a link back to your YouTube video. A side note here is that the number of embeds of a video is factored into the ranking algorithm of videos on Youtube and Google.

When you’re posting your new video to YouTube, there are a number of tweaks that you can make to enhance its visibility both on YouTube itself, and within search engines. Here is a detailed overview of basic video SEO for YouTube.

Once the video is up on YouTube, you can then grab the embed code and put it onto your blog simply by pasting the code into the HTML of a blog post. Don’t forget to write a short textual piece around the video to explain the content of the video and encourage visitors to actually watch it. This little blurb will also enable search engines to understand the context of the video file, since they can’t read video files themselves.

3. Marketing your video

This is where your experience in marketing textual blog posts really comes into play. Great content is essentially great content, and the people you want to reach, whether you’re creating video or textual content, will not change.

There are however, a couple of new tools that will help you market your video effectively.

Oneload

Oneload (a.k.a. Tubemogul) is an online video distribution tool. The tool allows you to upload a video once and publish it to over 20 video platforms in one go.

Prior to your first use of Oneload, you’ll need to identify all of the video platforms that you want to submit your video to, and go and create accounts with each of them. You can then link them all to your Oneload account for easy distribution.

Realistically, you’re looking at around a day’s work to set up 20 accounts on video platforms and to enter your profile information, but once it’s done, it’s done.

Other distribution tools

Finally I will just go over some tools that you’re probably more familiar with, and highlight how they can be used to market your video content.

Hootsuite: This social media management tool allows you to manage your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn communications all in one place. You can therefore submit your video to your Facebook page, plus your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts through this tool.
Shareaholic and Addthis: These two tools allow you to bookmark content to multiple social networks and social bookmarking sites with ease. They are also perhaps two of the most popular social sharing button plug-ins for WordPress. Install either one as a browser plugin (they work on all major browsers), then select the social bookmarking sites that you are interested in, and you have a one-click way to share your video posts on these platforms.

A word of caution here: don’t expect instant results. You need to build up a presence and some relationships with others in your niche who are active on these sites so that you content gets a kick-start once you submit it.

A wide variety of techniques are available to market your videos solely within YouTube, both to build up a following there and to push these people back to your site. That will have to be saved for another day though, as it’s a huge topic. If you’re interested, though, look into the topic of video annotations with links to other videos.

It would be fantastic to hear some tips from others who have experience with video blogging, as the starting points I’ve covered here really are just the tip of the iceberg. Let us hear your advice in the comments.

Neil Davidson is the Founder of My Web Presenters, who are a leading Online Video Production specialist. They create and market compelling and emotive video that helps businesses to grow. You can keep up with their video marketing blog here.

Written on 5/19/2012 at 12:00 am by Guest Blogger

Blog Better by Slowing Down

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 68 Comments

This guest post is by Timo Kiander of Productivesuperdad.com.

Are you afraid that you’ll never reach blogging success? Are you working your backside off on top of your day job to produce articles, ebooks, videos, and podcasts, and learn everything about Pinterest (or any other social network for that matter)?

Do you feel you are running on a blogging treadmill like a hamster but never giving yourself time to rest and recover?

If this is you, then welcome to the club! I have been there, done that, and I can relate. It’s not a very pleasant feeling to experience. However, things don’t have to be that way: there is a solution for this situation.

Burnouts, broken relationships, and abandoned blogs

Let’s face it: working harder and longer hours on your blog doesn’t necessarily make you more productive.

In the short term it might do that, but in the long run you are going to burn out. You are going to lose the fun of blogging too—even on the topic you’re passionate about.

On top of all that, you also put your relationships with your closest ones to danger. When too much of your blogging time is prioritized over the family time, you are soon in a situation where you have to make a decision: you can choose either your blog or your family.

They’re to blame (and you too!)

It’s a lot easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility for your own actions, but in this scenario there are really two responsible parties: them and you.

No matter which blogging hero (or productivity hero) you listen to, they keep telling you that more is better. Create more. Engage more. Be everywhere!

They say, “You cannot build a successful blog without working like crazy, taking massive action, and producing solid, shareable content on a frequent basis. And if you can do it all on a daily basis, that’s even better!”

So, you look up to your blogging hero and think, “Well … s/he must be right. I’ve got to get my act together and work more, do more, engage more. Otherwise, I’ll never see the blogging success that I want or the six-figure income that I’m dreaming about.”

You believe the stories they tell you. It’s virtual peer pressure at its worst—and you take the bait.

Time to slow down

I have been blogging since 2010 and I have consistently produced material for my blog twice per week. That includes written content and videos, and at some points I was even doing podcasts.

In addition, I have guest posted on big blogs and produced couple of ebooks as well—all while having a day job, a family (my wife and a son), and some time-consuming hobbies (I’m a triathlete and a marathoner).

Lately, I have felt like that hamster on a treadmill—I keep running and running but I never have a chance to relax or recover. Nor have I had time to study, do more research, or truly connect with other bloggers.

That’s why I decided to slow down my blogging pace. I’m not leaving blogosphere. I’m just cutting down the speed a bit. By doing this I aim to grow my blog even bigger than it is now.

In practice, slowing down means posting every other week instead of on a weekly basis. This change gives me more room to breathe, and allows me to do more reading and testing, and to create more new material.

For instance, for a couple of months I have wanted to build my own time management system, but I had to postpone the project because of lack of time. Or what about learning photo reading? That’s yet another project that I had to postpone. Interviews, tests, experiments, case studies … I guess you already know by now why I have never started with these projects, though they’re all on my list.

Some people are scared of this change and think that slowing down is like regressing—that if you slow down, you won’t be on everyone’s minds and lips anymore.

Well, maybe. But look around. There are many big bloggers who don’t follow a daily blog post pattern, and they’re still doing well! Derek Halpern and Glenn Allsop and Jon Morrow come to mind (and by the way, check out this video to learn why Derek is posting so infrequently).

In my opinion, slowing down is not regression. Actually, it is the best thing that has happened to me for a long time.

How to slow down successfully

Slowing down may sound easy, but in reality it’s not. One scary word keeps most of the bloggers working the same way they always have: fear.

They fear that if they change their routines and habits, they are not going to reach blogging success. They are also afraid of missing something crucial if they don’t follow to the letter what the gurus are teaching (advice that so many other bloggers are following).

But if they’re brave enough and decided to get through that glass wall known as fear, a new world would emerge for them. Are you one of these brave ones? If you are, here are five steps to follow that should make the transition much easier:

Acknowledge your current situation. You are stressed or burned out by blogging, thus you want to spend more time with your loved ones. Things cannot continue this way any longer.
Listen to external signals very carefully: Are you working too much and taking the common time off from your family? Are you working like a madman, but without any remarkable results? These clues should give you indication that you should slow down your blogging.
Make a decision to test the blogging slowdown. Shift to blogging once per week instead of every day, for example, and see what advantages and disadvantages it has for you.
Hire some professional help if possible. In fact, my decision to slow down was greatly affected by my blogging coach. Although at first his suggestion of slowing down sounded foreign, I have learned to appreciate it and I feel grateful for this advice! That’s really the power of having an external person looking at you: they have the ability to give powerful, objective advice for your benefit.
Connect with other bloggers and ask them to write guest posts for your blog. That way, you get content almost without any effort, and you can free up your time even more. And don’t forget interviews either. They are great a way to generate valuable content with less effort.

Don’t get me wrong: it is fine to learn from gurus, but be sure to adjust their lessons to your unique situation! You are the only one to say if you are capable of producing epic content every day, or only once a week.

Over to you now: have you slowed down your blogging pace because of increased stress, weaker relationships with your close ones, or just plain burning out—even when blogging about something you are passionate about? Leave your comments and share your experiences below. Let’s support each other to slow down!

Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD superdad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.

Written on 5/18/2012 at 6:01 am by Darren Rowse

What Blog Tasks are You Embarrassed to Admit You’ve Overlooked?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 17 Comments

Over the last few days we’ve been talking about taking your blog to the often-elusive “next level.”

We’ve seen tips for developing your voice and message, creating stronger calls to action, and increasing traffic.

If you’re already working on those aspects of your blog, and are happy with your approach, you’ll probably be hungry for other ideas, looking to the future, and trying to predict what will be most successful tactics for you.

I know I do this myself—I’ll get an idea like the QLD blogging challenge and throw myself into making it happen.

That’s great—one of the best things about blogging is that it lets us pursue our passions!—but I have noticed a tendency to let things drop off my To Do list as these new ideas pop up. An example was pointed out by Ed Boyhan on my Google + post. He wrote:

“Seems kinda odd: here you are providing some useful info on how some use G+, but nowhere on this page is there a “+1″ button to let me share with a circle I have for future reference. Makes me doubt your involvement in the G+ community.”

This is a valuable comment for two reasons. First, it’s a reminder of something I need to do, which dropped off my list. Whoops! Second, it explains what the implications of that oversight are—how that looks to my readers, which gives me motivation not just to get that task back on the To Do list, but also to actually act upon it and make that change to my blog.

But I know I’m not the only one who hesitates or overlooks small blogging tasks that, logically, I have no excuse not to have done!

Take a look at the comments on Kelly Crawford’s recent post, If Your Email Newsletter Isn’t Generating Cash You’re Doing Something Wrong.

Many of the people who responded to that post admitted that they hadn’t tried out some of the most common, and proven, newsletter marketing techniques for one reason or another, even though they knew they should, and wanted to.

All this makes me wonder if we wouldn’t see some big advances on our blogs if we just got through some of those little, should-have-done-it-ages-ago tasks that we keep pushing aside (even if we have good reason for doing so).

What if each of us put a day aside in the next week to knock as many of those little tasks off our To Do lists for good? What difference would that make to our blogs over the longer term? If nothing else, it would probably give each of us a much more solid platform from which to try to climb to the “next level.”

At the very least, let’s start by admitting some of the things that have slipped off our To Do lists. Don’t be embarrassed—I bet the things you’ve neglected aren’t as basic as my G+ sharing oversight!

What do you know you’re not doing, that you should be doing? Admit it in the comments. (You might even help remind the rest of us of other things we’ve forgotten we should be doing…) Even getting a small task off your list could be a big step in the right direction for your blog.