Doing something of value is a basic motive that drives us in doing pretty much anything in our lives.

Writing is a passion and there is a little art in every piece of content we create, irrelevant of the topic or the reason why we put the words in this sequence on the sheet in front of us. When we talk about blogging, we should consider the value of our texts, especially if we write professionally and there are targets to be reached. Even though blogging has been around for quite awhile, the number of people practicing it who can’t distinguish clearly what is the value of the content they create, how to effectively measure it and boost its engagement is concerningly high.

The art of blogging

Blogging may be considered an art, as it is a way of expression and no matter the topic people write about, they put a little piece of themselves into the materials they are working on. Writers put the words in a certain sequence and structure the information that is contained inside through their own perspective, thus creating a unique material.

Every professional can tell you that writing is the easy part of blogging. The harder one comes with defining the message and pinpointing the kind of value the content brings. The major problem with art and personal expression at all is that, usually, they cannot be interpreted in the same way by everyone or even by the targeted audience, if the message is not presented in an appropriate way. This is why before starting an article, we need to consider a few things such as:

• What are the characteristics of our targeted audience?
• What interests them?
• What value do we, as bloggers, want to bring to them?

By doing so, we will save ourselves time otherwise wasted on unnecessary editing. Further, we will prevent anxiety and disappointment if the published material does not achieve the results we had hoped for during the process of realizing our idea.

Why should we concentrate on value so much?

Blogging is a process of continuous improvement that requires time, dedication and expertise on the topics we cover. For many people, it starts as a hobby that later turns into a secondary source of income and eventually a full-time occupation.

Bringing value to your readers is the only way to make a profession out of blogging. Simply put, if your words lack value for your readers, you won’t be able to build an audience and a community around your writing.

Speaking from the perspective of a journalist who transitioned to blogging, creating a valuable blog article for a specifically segmented audience is much harder than it may seem. For example, when you reflect the news, the way you present the information is pretty simple – deliver the message with maximum clarity and avoid manipulation at all cost.

When I transitioned to professional blogging, the difference became apparent immediately. I started writing in the manner of a reporter, but my target audience’s response was unanticipated. I was writing for a sophisticated audience of project managers in the IT sector, not the masses, and at first, many of the people reading my articles had more expertise than me on the topics I was presenting. As a result, articles that seemed perfect to me, were achieving a lot less engagement and a lower response rate than I hoped. Not to mention my drafts were getting far more edits than I was used to, which was not a pleasant feeling.

The value of a piece of content varies from one person to another

Identifying the value of an article is not always an easy task. Research by the Content Marketing Institute conducted in 2014 shows that roughly half of the B2B bloggers in the United States have trouble pinpointing the value of their content. This is not a surprise because even similar people may find different or no value at all in a given article.

In blogging, the value of an article usually consists of the information that readers take away and can apply at some point. A simple way of creating valuable content is to present actionable advice in a way that is easy to understand by the targeted audience. In other words, offer something that can make a positive impact on the way your readers live or work.

The article should be long enough to go in depth about the topic and yet short enough to keep the reader’s attention up until the end. When planning any form of content, we should be asking ourselves – what will the readers learn from the material and are we going to bring some kind of positive change to their lives with the article we are about to write.

For some topics, the value is easy to point out, while others need deeper consideration

To illustrate the difference, let’s look at the types of projects a tech blogger might undertake. In the first case scenario, she decides to write a review of a certain product. The value for her audience is going to consist of getting to know the advantages and disadvantages of the product, accompanied by advice on whether the product is worth buying, given from a person with first hand experience.

In the second scenario, that same blogger writes an article about a psychological factor connected to the way her readers work. In this case, giving them something of value might prove harder because the reader is provided with subjective advice on a topic that may be related to them.

Knowing that something is valuable is important, knowing exactly how much – even more so

Creating content of value is somewhat easier when you are not keeping up with schedules, because you have freedom to remodel the message of the material as many times as you need, and deliver it only when you have full certainty in its impact on your targeted audience.

Unfortunately, most professional bloggers must adhere to deadlines and maintain a predictable delivery schedule of content to their readers. Even if you know that your content is valuable, you need to know exactly how much and to whom at which time. This will allow you to focus on articles with high value to the majority of the readers and show you how to make more impact with your work on a regular basis. There are many indicators that can help you identify the most valuable pieces of content you create, focused in three categories:

• Engagement metrics
• Social media metrics
• SEO metrics

Among the most important indicators of the value of your content can be found with the help of your website analytics. You do not need to track every single metric that Google provides, but you should target at least a handful of them like page views, time spent on the article, crawl rate, inbound links, and bounce rate.

Social media is of no lesser importance, as it is one of the largest sources of user data in the world. You should be keeping an eye on the reach and engagement of every article you post, as well as the advocacy on your page (comments, participation in polls and, most importantly, feedback).

When referring to SEO, the most important metrics you should follow consistently are your articles’ page rankings in the high-traffic search engines and the keywords that bring visitors to your blog. It is important to know how you rank for words or phrases that are common to the field you write about or the industry you often reference and plan for which ones you will aim to rank better.

Focus on creating more value instead of more volume

To create more valuable content bloggers should have a clear understanding of the details related to the spectrum of topics they cover. By selecting a niche and sticking to it, you will be able to attract more readers with similar interests. This way, you can deliver value to a larger percent of your audience with every post you create. As a result, you will retain a larger part of the visitors that come to your blog.

Focusing on quality instead of quantity will do you a big favor, because when the audience knows that they will get something valuable every time you publish content, they will be eager to read your every word before they’ve even seen the title .

Find an efficient way of working

Last but not least, you need to have an efficient way of work. Blogging is usually not a solo act and we often end up collaborating with different people to be able to consistently create valuable new content and grow the community of peers with similar interests.

The common misconception is that the creative process cannot help but be messy and uneven, that you can’t control inspiration. Although there is some truth to this, a growing number of professional bloggers have been experimenting in developing and adopting process management methods to assess and boost the quality of their work and improve the efficiency of their creative process.

More recently, the Kanban method, typical to the IT and manufacturing industries, has been making its way into the lives of a growing number of professional writers, especially those that specialize in technical blogging. The method began in production, was later adapted for software development, and eventually, started gaining popularity in other professional fields.

It is used to map the workflow of a person or a team on a white board. Each part of the white board represents a typical step of your process, whatever it may be. Tasks are hosted on individual sticky notes that move from the first stage, on the left side of the board, to the final completion stage, on the right side of the board. On the board, you can create a backlog that contains all of the ideas that you generate, but are unable to work on at the moment.

The great thing about Kanban is that it is very simple to apply and yet extremely effective in boosting the efficiency of your creative process because it removes the possibility to lose track of your work and helps you avoid multitasking.

Blogging is a calling, a passion, an art, and a profession for many people across the globe. Creating value should be the main goal of every person who wants to turn their blogging from a hobby into a profession. Learning how to recognize and measure it is of utmost importance to every “pro” out there. Hopefully, by reaching the conclusion of this article, you have been able to find value in this article as well.

Alexander Novkov is Marketing Expert at Kanbanize where he specializes in content marketing and social media. Before getting into the tech world he was an economic reporter for the Bulgarian media OFFNews. Alex is passionate about creative writing and continuous improvement.

The post How to Create Consistently Valuable Content for Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

This is a guest contribution from Sam Wright at techgirlblog.com. 

I’d had my technology lifestyle blog for little over a year when I began working with an influencer marketing platform, connecting brands and bloggers on sponsored collaborations.

Blogging in my region hadn’t become a true income source yet (that has changed in recent months and I like to think I had something to do with it) and a solid nine-to-fiver seemed the “safe” bet, especially as the platform would let me continue my blog.

One year on, I’ve had my job title change almost bi-monthly, I’ve stood in boardrooms and fought, almost to the point of tears, for bloggers, and I’ve also stood in boardrooms and been let down, almost to the point of tears, by bloggers.

The business of blogging is evolving at a rapid pace and I’ve been lucky enough to wear both “hats”, that of the creator and that of the brand on the other side, fearfully giving up creative control of their identity to a blogger.

Playing these dual roles has taught me four key lessons that I now apply to my blog and my job. These insights have allowed me to better monetise my own platforms but also given me the ability to ensure income for other creators. These are my learnings and whether blogger or brand, I’m hoping they can assist you as much as they have me!

Content. Content. Content.

It seems like such a cliche but the truth is everything links back to the content you produce.

Good content builds your audience and invites engagement, which then makes you attractive to brands – who then become interested in paying you to create good content in order to get exposure for their product or service.

Creating great content isn’t rocket science but there are a few additional things I’ve learnt over the years. The first is that good content is subjective. I’ve seen things produced by other creators and thought: “what the hell is that?” and yet it has gone on to do incredibly well with their audience. I’ve also seen really bad content that has little to no creative flair that gets published, getting no response from the targeted audience and yet the brand is over the moon because they liked it.

Sometimes it is hard, as a blogger, to remember that you don’t create content for brands but for your audience. It shouldn’t be hard, but it can be. I have a day job, so for my blog it is easy for me to say no to something that doesn’t sit with me, but I know that when your livelihood depends on the income your little space on the internet derives, it could be easy to think you could twist the content to work. You can’t. You shouldn’t. Don’t do it. All the money in the world won’t make up for the audience you’ll lose down the line.

As a creator myself I can say this with confidence: that audience means more to you than anything and if you’re true to your craft you’ll happily penny pinch to retain them. Long term it will mean less penny pinching because you’ll be far more respected than the blogger who chose to make the quick buck along the way.

Report on EVERYTHING

Vanity stats, the stuff you think no one cares about and then the extra statistics you don’t even understand – make sure they all go in your closing report.

My biggest learning from a blogger’s perspective after my first year at an influencer marketing platform has been that sometimes the blogger in me gets far too caught up in the creative.

The business of blogging has two parts: Blogging and Business. Business needs a return on investment. Lots of eyeballs on some gorgeous flat lays isn’t enough and, in time, we’re going to see even the best creators fall away if they don’t begin to show an accurate conversion. Your blog post or Instagram photo is simply one section of a giant funnel leading the consumer to the point of sale.

Bloggers, when approached to work with brands, need to ask what the goal is and what the measurement criteria is going to be. Don’t do the job if you don’t think you can deliver – and when delivery time comes be sure to over-deliver: track links, track audience demographics, track the keywords they searched to get to the post you wrote. Every little detail is like a tiny golden nugget for a brand attempting to not only target the right consumer but also lead them to a point where they purchase a product.

I’m about to be a little bit controversial now but if I take off my influencer marketing hat for a minute and put on my blogger hat: I know how annoying influencer marketing platforms can be.

I realise that they constantly hound you to sign up with no real promise of reward. I know you think they take the power out of your hands. I feel you. But the truth is, these platforms offer a service to the brand on the other side that bloggers have failed at: they know how to accurately report on a campaign.

Rather than fighting ten bloggers to get any sort of statistic other than “it got 20,000 views”, “there were 35 likes”, “my monthly uniques are…” it is far easier for a brand to pay a fee to a platform to pull the data they need to build their digital campaigns. The truth is we, as bloggers, are selling ourselves short and not delivering on the costs associated with running content on our blogs.

Report on ALL. THE. THINGS.

Blogging is about community – start collaborating

Sometimes during the hunt for money to put food on our table or the obsessive need with growing our platforms I think we forget why we started blogging in the first place. I think we forget that we wanted to have a space to share with like minded people who think like us or feel like us or could relate to us in some sort of way. We forget the conversations with our friends that revolved around theme design or the concept art behind our latest blog.

You’ll notice that most influencer marketing campaigns usually involve more than one blogger or creator. That’s because a few bloggers reach a far larger target market than just one. I’ve learnt to take the business thinking and apply it to my blogging. Working with other bloggers on projects (even ones that don’t make me money) allows me to reach a new audience who might potentially be interested in my blog. It also allows the other blogger to reach my audience. Most importantly though? It makes me happy.

Even if you want to make your blog a fully-fledged business, it should still make you happy. It takes so much of your energy to create, it’s important you enjoy it. I enjoy working with other creatives (usually far better than me at what they do) because I am able to learn so much from what they do and how they work. There’s a reason we flock to a site like ProBlogger and it is because the only people who really understand the passion that goes into maintaining a blog are other bloggers.

It comes down to relationships

In one year I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the biggest brands in the world. I’ve collaborated with some of the most well respected international media and advertising agencies both on my blog and at the influencer marketing platform I work at.

My boss is going to want me to tell you it is because of our amazing technology and the blogger in me wants to say it is because of the incredible, but small, audience I’ve built. There is no doubt that those things play a big role but I’m pretty sure there is one defining factor across that board that results in success: good relationships are built on a foundation of trust.

My blog readers trust me and because they trust me they come to me for advice or read my content for assistance. My “day job” clients trust me when I suggest our tech to better manage their influencer campaigns and report on them because I’ve been able to prove it delivers on what I say it does. My “blogging” clients trust me to look after a brand they’ve cherished, nurtured and built because they trust me (sometimes blindly). Those relationships aren’t made overnight. They’re like any other relationship and take time to nurture.

The first three things I learnt all link directly to the relationships you build: be it with other bloggers, your audience, with brands or even with the influencer marketing platform you might decide to sign up to.

In my time juggling hats I’ve realised the importance of people and of the connections we’re able to make. Ironically, the need to make those connections was the reason I started blogging in the first place.

Sam Wright is a lifestyle technology blogger at techgirlblog.com. She also heads up the software partners division at Webfluential – an influencer marketing technology company. 

The post 4 things I Learnt as a Blogger Working at an Influencer Marketing Platform appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

From ProBlogger Expert Sam Nordberg.

Online courses are all the rage right now, but sadly, there are some staggering figures when it comes to completion… and not in a good way.

Seth Godin shared on Tim Ferriss’s podcast once that most online courses have a drop off rate of 97%, and even his own courses have a drop off rate of 80%.

80%?! That means that only 20% of the people who sign up for the course actually get through to finishing it.

The thing is, Seth is not alone though.

Studies over the years show that completion rates of online courses are traditionally very low. Here in Australia, Government Statistics showed that just 7% of students who used the VET FEE-HELP loan system, completed their course between 2010 and 2013.

Yes, just 7%.

With all of that in mind, it is important to take some time when planning your course, to consider how you can help your particpants complete it.

Why would you want to increase your completion rates?

Participants who complete your course in full (and with that, implement along the way) are going to get much better results than those who drop out after just the first couple of modules. You get the satisfaction of watching them take what you have taught them, and use it to make changes to their life in some way.

That’s a pretty good reason to want to increase your completion rates.

PLUS

Better results for your participants means better word of mouth referrals for you, an increased number of people sharing your course and better testimonials.

And this in turn, leads to better sales for your next intake.

All good things, right?

Increasing your participants’ completion rate isn’t just great for you participants (they actually learn something and get good results) but it’s better for your business.

So how do you increase your completion rates?

Lack of motivation, life getting in the way, getting stuck somewhere, and feeling like they are all alone are some of the key reasons why participants might purchase a course and then never get around to completing it.

With those things in mind, below are just some of the strategies you can look at increasing completion rates for your courses. You don’t need to use all of these. Instead you can go through and select the methods that best suit your course and your participants.

• Break the content into tiny steps
  Overwhelm can be a key component to students giving up on a course. They see the amount of work they should do, or the sheer scale of things that they have to learn, and decide (even subconsciously) that it is all far too much work.
  Make sure that you break all your content down into tiny little steps, so that each step is easily actionable, and participants can get small wins quickly.
• Drip feed the content
  Another way to help reduce that sensation of overwhelm, is to drip feed your content to your participants. This means only giving them access to one bit at a time, with content released each day, week or month depending on your course.
  While this helps to reduce overwhelm, it also stops those who are doing well from pushing through faster, which can be a bad thing.
• Drip fed email support
  If you are going to provide all of the content up front, consider drip feeding email support instead. This can be an automated series of emails that touches base with the participant, reminding them of where they should be up to by now, and what support is available to them if they get stuck.
• Include less content
  One of the most common problems I see when people are creating their own courses, is in their desire to give massive value and over deliver, they send huge amounts of content out.
  More content isn’t always the best way to help your participants… in fact, less really is more.
  Focus on sending smaller bits of content that are easily actionable, rather than feeling the need to send them everything you know.
• Get them to take action as they go
  Have you ever put something off? And the longer you put it off, the bigger the task seems?
  The same is true for your audience. This content is new to them, and possibly a little scary. The longer they wait to take action and implement, the worse it is going to seem.
  Every time you send out little tiny steps, get them to take action and implement.
• Increase they ways they can engage with each other
  Online learning can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. Allowing your participants to get to know each other gives them a real sense of community, an opportunity to connect with each other, and even support each other through the course.
  This engagement can come in many forms, including group calls, a forum or even a private social media support group.
• Increase the support on offer to them
  Sometimes people just need help. Simple as that.
  This support might come in the form of Q and A sessions, coaching calls, emails, phone calls, or even just questions answered in a forum.
  Make sure your participants know how much support they have available to them and make it easy to find.
• Badges or certificates for each module We all like the feeling of instant gratification. Rewarding your participants at the end of each module or activity can be a great way to keep them motivated, especially if it is a long course. This could come in the form of badges which unlock on their profile, based on how much they have completed so far, or even just downloadable certificates for important modules.
• Certificates on completion
  Sometimes, it’s all about the paperwork. This is especially true when your participants are studying towards something specific, such as a certification or recognised role.
  It doesn’t have to be that formal though. YouTube issue certificates to people who complete courses within their Creator Academy. It gives you a nice feeling, something to show off, and a reason to start and work towards the end of the next course.
• Surprise bonuses along the way
  Working towards something that you know is there, is all well and good, but isn’t it nice to be surprised along the way? Look at ways in which you can reward those who are particularly active, who engage and who implement. This could be automated, for example, everyone who gets to the end of module 2 gets a reward they weren’t expecting.
  Or this could be spontaneous, such as a reward in your Forum or support group for someone who has gone above and beyond.

Online courses don’t have to have terrible completion rates. Using a combination of different strategies and methods is the best way to help your participants get the results they wanted when they first signed up for your course.

Are you using any of these?
Got any other ideas for helping increase your completion rates?

I’d love to hear from you.

The post Increasing Your Completion Rates – How to Get Participants to Finish Your Course appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

As the editor of ProBlogger for the last three years, you can imagine I’ve seen every. pitch. ever. when it comes to guest posting.

The most I see (and immediately delete) are the ones that are copied and pasted straight from a template, with a couple of ProBlogger links inserted, and obviously emailed to all and sundry in the hopes something might be successful.

Things I often see that are a complete turnoff:

• Pitching to “webmaster”
• Starting with “I recently stumbled across your blog” – I can’t be sure you’ll write a great post tailored to our audience if you haven’t bothered to read our blog or get familiar with it first
• Writing “I really enjoy reading your blog http://www.problogger.net/” – I know our URL! Including it in your pitch isn’t necessary
• Telling me you’ve read a post on x topic on our site, but it was missing a few things and you’ve magically written a better one and did I want to post it? No thanks!
• Poor spelling, grammar or otherwise unfamiliar with English
• Wanting to post solely to get backlinks to your site without offering any kind of useful content for our readers

Honestly, I could go on and on.

On the flip side, I’ve seen some fantastic pitches that make me feel like I’m talking to a real person, who cares about our site and wants to produce a mutually-beneficial transaction. They’ve taken the time to read and get to know us, and have made the effort to tailor the pitch appropriately. Their ideas are well-thought-out and genuine. These pitches make me happy.

We’ve written over the years on guest posting and how to do it well (because when it’s done well, it can do wonders for your brand awareness and your traffic). Posts like How I Turned a Guest Post into 3 Million Visitors and Over 150,000 Social Media Shares, Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for Other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events, 5 Ways to Creatively Brainstorm Guest Post Ideas, and alllll of these. We teach you how to do it the right way with posts like: Why You Have a Better Chance of Landing a Guest Post Than You Think (and How to Do It), Are You Making These Mistakes With Your Guest Posts?, Looking to Guest Post on Authority Sites? Here’s How to Find the Best Blogs. Guest posting can’t just be dialled in, but it doesn’t have to be impossible.

We all love hearing success stories though, so decided to ask where you’ve guest posted and what was it about your pitch that got you over the line? What has been the result of your guest posting on bigger sites in your niche? What would you recommend to newbie bloggers just starting out with guest posting?

The post Community Discussion: Guest Post Pitching Strategies appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

As November winds up (and plenty of you are still enjoying what’s left of the Thanksgiving weekend), Instagram continues to roll out Snapchat-style changes, we have some epiphanies courtesy of Seth Godin and Unsettle blogger Sarah Peterson, and thinking from the point of view of our customers (those of us who have them!). The internet never sleeps!

3 Ways to Incorporate Key Stakeholders Into Your Podcasts (and Benefit From It) | Entrepreneur

There’s no shying away from podcasts and their popularity these days, and getting your lineup right can really give you a boost.

How to Repurpose Content for Maximum Social Reach | Hootsuite

A friendly reminder that you should definitely be doing this – particularly if you want to have a break over Christmas!

The 5 Words That Changed My Content Marketing Strategy | The Huffington Post

I love any post with literary references and humour – but that aside, this is a pretty powerful message.

Mapping Your Customer Journey – Capturing the Complete Customer Experience | Milk it Academy

If you’re moving into selling products and services on your blog, you’re going to want to make sure your funnels are top notch. I always love Alita’s insights, she breaks them down well.

New Ways to Share in the Moment | Instagram Blog

Well it seems not much is standing still in the microblogging world these days – Instagram has now rolled out live video and disappearing stories in Instagram Direct. Hm.

Forget Filling Ad Breaks; Some Marketers Make the Podcasts | The New York Times

A new twist on sponsored content/native advertising – where the brand creates the message, but barely mentions the product. It’s innovative and interesting – and I wonder where it will lead, and what impact it will have on traditional advertising and podcast sponsorship models.

How to Improve Your Writing Speed and Quality Simultaneously | Jeff Goins

Why do one at a time when you can do both? Do you do NaNoWrimo?

How to Stay Creative in a Distracted World | Copyblogger

That’s me! I’m distracted! But I want to be creative.

10 Facebook Marketing Tips for the Holiday Season | Social Media Examiner

From content calendars to stunning visuals, we all need a little extra help standing out in such a busy time of year.

The powerful seduction of ‘powerless’ | Seth’s Blog

“knowing that we can connect, publish, inspire, lead, build, describe, invent, encourage and (especially) teach, means that there’s no one better than us and no time like right now.” YES YES YES!!

What’s caught your eye this week?

The post Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately? appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

In September, I had one of the best conference experiences of my life.The atmosphere was friendly, supportive, motivated. The talks were top quality, innovative, engaging. The delivery was trendy, slick, seamless. The event, of course, was ProBlogger Event.

Now, despite the motivation, the enthusiasm, the drive, I still heard the same thing, over and over again, from attendees.

“I need to do more. More writing, more video, more podcasting. But I just can’t fit it in…”

As that big hairy guy (or was it the one who drew him…?) tends to say: it’s a tale as old as time. And time is the issue, we never seem to have enough of it.

Perhaps that’s why a particular part of my own talk generated such a buzz: it was around an approach to doing more with less.

More content with fewer ideas.

More mediums with less effort.

More visibility in less time.

It’s a subject I talk about in Podcasting all the time, but it works just as well in blogging. It’s Seasons.

We’re Not Talking ‘Winter is Coming…’ Here Are We?

Nope, not the seasons of the earth, but the seasons of your show.

You’ll be familiar with the approach on TV. A season is a collection of ‘episodes’ that tells a story, or follows a theme. Hopefully, it covers a full arc from start to finish, although some shows are frustratingly bad at this (Hello Lost!). It can be any size, from a 10 episode “Game of Thrones” to a 24 episode season of… well, 24 (Jack Bauer is my hero…).

In our own backyard, this generally translates to coverage of a particular topic within your niche, or themeing a set of episodes so that they’re related.

Seasons have long been a part of Podcasting, and the concept of a blog series is not new. However, the vast majority of content creators aren’t using the format. Perhaps it’s because it’s still not familiar. Let’s fix that – what is a season in the world of online content?

What Does a Season of Content Look Like?

Here are some examples from my own content:

• Mountain Bikes Apart Season 2: Customising Your Bike
• Podcraft Season 5: How to Monetise Your Show
• UK Business Startup Season 1: The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Business

Think of it as a course on one particular subject within your topic.

Often you’ll start with a question, eg. How do I monetise my Podcast? You’ll then break the answer down into component parts:

1. Sponsorship and Advertising
2. Selling a Product
3. Selling a Service
4. Affiliate Marketing
5. Etc….

With just a little sketching out, you end up with a season of content, based on just one question.

I’ll bet you already have a dozen commonly asked questions running through your mind right now. Think it through: how would you break down the answer? How would you cover each element, in-depth?

Once you start thinking, you’ll realise that it comes easily because you’re explaining this stuff every day.

What’s So Good About Seasons?

Ok, here’s where it gets interesting. There are a couple of obvious benefits and a good number of under-the-radar bonuses. Let’s go through them.

1. Squeeze Every Ounce of Juice out of Each Content Idea

Once upon a time, I would have taken the ‘How to Monetise a Podcast’ question and recorded an episode on it. Perhaps I would write a blog post too, or at least some shownotes. And that’s about it. Not much to show for a good content idea.

In our new ‘Seasonal’ world, I think more granular. Much more like a teacher:

• How does this break down?
• What are the elements of this answer?
• What are the (sorry about this…) Learning Outcomes here?

Each ‘episode’ should cover just one ‘thing’, one aspect of the answer. That’s how you teach and that’s how you get people to take action. By giving them ONE thing, in-depth, and asking them to take action on it.

In breaking down your content idea, you get much more juice from that content orange. You can also create much more effective learning for your audience.

2. Take the Planning & Anxiety Out of Your Weekly Grind

This is a pure benefit: seasons make the content planning process a breeze. It saves oodles of time because you plan out your full season in just one session.

Thanks to the ‘breaking down’ process above, the planning session is quick and easy. Take your question, break it down, break it down again and, without much effort, you have perhaps 5, 10 or 15 episodes.

Take another 30 minutes to add some bullet points to each episode. Flesh them out to give them some structure. When you’re in the groove, doing 10 to 20 episodes of planning is a fast and fun task.

The end goal is to arrive on Monday morning, and say, “Right, let’s craft some content.” This replaces the cold-sweat inducing idea creation and planning session. Instead, you simply pick up your notes, glance at the next episode, and start writing/talking/presenting. Your plan is there, you simply have to create.

3. Oh, You Don’t Have to Think of New Ideas Every Week?

Yep, worth highlighting this! When I ask creators what they’re struggling with, one of the top three answers is always: “Coming up with new ideas, week in, week out.”

With a seasons approach, as soon as your fingers hit the keyboard, that plan is there, guiding you through the post.  Furthermore, you need fewer ideas over the course of a year, because you’re breaking them down into so many more. Seasons become an idea generation machine.

4. Automatically Generated (& Massive!) Evergreen Resources

This is a big one.  Every week, you’re building part of a big, new evergreen resource that’s tailored directly toward your audience.

Look back at the subjects I covered above in the example. Since that season completed, I now have a guide for my Mountain Biking audience that takes them through every aspect of customising their bikes. I have a guide for podcasters (amongst many others) that delves deep into monetisation. I also have a guide for aspiring freelancers to start their own business, thanks to that first season of UKBS.

For each of the seasons, I’ve recorded audio and written text. These have now been turned into eBooks, audiobooks, online courses and more. Some are sold on Amazon, some are used as lead magnets and some are given to my audience as simple gifts.

These are all huge assets and authority builders which have been  built up through normal weekly content creation activities. You’ll not achieve this, half so easily, if you’re writing about something new every week.

5. Recurring Content

This is  an obvious one, but it often slips under the radar.

Seasons based content increases engagement, visitors and fan building. A lot.

Think about it. Your content is linked. It’s contiguous. Because of this there’s a solid and compelling reason to come back for the next episode. Every time a reader returns, it builds engagement and trust, taking that reader along the path to becoming a true fan of your work.

6. Better Teaching, Better Learning, More Action, More Fans

There’s another reason that seasons based content tends to create more fans in the long run: it creates more success.

Your aim is to delve into a subject, break it down and guide the reader through it’s individual elements. That activity, step by step, is an extremely effective and logical way to teach.

That is possible in a single blog post, sure, but it’s the regular, habit-building effect of learning each week that really levels up the effect. Your readers can achieve quick wins and make good progress with every post, and this amplifies the audience-building power of seasons.  

7. It Makes Your Life Better

Finally, there are a few great benefits that relate to you directly

First, you can take a break!  Have you ever felt like you’re on a content treadmill, running as fast as you can to keep up, but the damn thing never switches off? With seasons, you have a good reason to take a break. Finish the season, let your audience know what’s going on, and then rest for a week or two.

You’ll come back refreshed, happy, more motivated and dying to dive back in. Happiness and motivation can only lead to better content!

Second, that break can be useful in another way: evolution. Take the opportunity that a natural break gives you to get in touch with your audience. Make an event of your time off, with a season-end audience engagement festival or perhaps a competition. Ask your audience what they liked and what they didn’t like about the last season. Ask them what format suits them, what questions they would like answered and what they want next. Knowing this, design the next season based on the feedback. Imagine the boost in engagement you could see when your audience becomes involved in creating the next season!

Finally, batching. This is a trendy topic, I know, but it’s a good one because batching can save a lot of time. Once you’ve planned out an entire season’s worth of content in advance, there’s no reason you can’t create 4 episodes simultaneously . I do this with Podcraft. I record 4 episodes on the bounce, taking between 1 and 2 hours to complete. Once it’s done, I have a month’s worth of content created. Easy!

Make it Your Own

Seasons can work for anyone. They can improve your content, make it work harder for your audience, and bring a variety  of benefits to you as the creator. Give it a try and start Season 1 today with your next content idea.

Remember, the point of seasons is that you change things up, and do it regularly. If it doesn’t work for you, then season 2 can go back to your old style, and nothing is lost. But, trust me, once you get used to the ease of planning and the results it brings, you’ll never look back. Bring on the season of change!

Colin Gray and his team of media evangelists help Podcasters and Vloggers grow their own legion of fanatical fans over at FanFission.com. FanFission is a community that helps anyone create great audio and video, whether for entertainment, education or profit. You can also find a huge range of free advice about podcasting at ThePodcastHost.com.

The post How to Grow Fans and Save Your Sanity by Changing the Season appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

Black Friday is almost upon us, with Cyber Monday right around the corner – the ‘silly season’ has started and before you know it we’ll be panicking about the holidays and whether we’ve ended up on the Naughty or Nice list!

Here at ProBlogger we’re busy working on some exciting plans for 2017, but paused to think about what we could do for you to round out 2016. Last year we did some great discounts on our eBooks, but then we realised that there’s one thing we create each year that most of you miss out on – the ProBlogger Training Event here in Australia.

It’s actually the best thing we create each year, with our 2016 attendees giving it the most excellent rating the event has had in all its seven years. The content is outstanding and, unsurprisingly, 10 of our top 20 rated speakers of all time were from this year’s event.

This year we brought back a virtual ticket so more of you could access the amazing content our speakers share with us. So, for one week only we’re offering access to the 2016 event content for an unprecedented price of USD$129 – a 44% discount on the full price of USD$229. We’ve also got an exclusive bonus for you – video recordings of five of our keynotes. This is the first time we’ve offered video as part of the virtual ticket and we’re excited to offer you a taste of what it’s like to be at one of our events.

If you were ever going to buy one of our virtual tickets, the 2016 event is the one to choose!

What do you get?

• We have 45 sessions to offer, which will set you up with nearly 40 hours of audio recordings so you can listen and learn at your own pace.
• Audio can be streamed, downloaded or saved to your iTunes account
• You’ll also get the presentation slides and any materials provided by the speakers
• For our five main keynotes, you’ll get the videos too!
• Some of our speakers have also provided special offers
• Join our networking and accountability group on Facebook to support you to take action on something before the end of the year

However, we think the best thing you get comes when you actually take action on all the learning. It was a big focus of our event this year – take action! Make a list and take the first step that will have the most impact for your blog or business. It has been great to see some of our attendees share their successes with us since the event:

We also had some great feedback from our event survey:

Great speakers, actionable advice, motivation and inspiration to finally turn my hobby blog into a business and realise that actually, I CAN do it. It’s given me a renewed sense of enthusiasm and excitement for what I do. Also, Daniel Flynn was particularly incredible.

Loved meeting other people passionate about blogging; but the highlight this year would have to be all the practical tools, tips and strategies I gained. Really impressed by how generous presenters were with their knowledge. Also loved hearing their stories – found them particularly inspirational as they didn’t just share the good things, but also covered the bad days, and the failures and disappointments. Very authentic. 10/10 would recommend!

The presentations really hit the mark for me. A good mix of mindset and skill development.

We love seeing you make progress and celebrating successes big and small. Getting feedback from our attendees and the wider community on how we’ve helped them makes my day – actually, it makes my year!

2016 Virtual Ticket is on sale for $129 from now until 30th November

Get Access Now!

The post 44% Off the Best Thing We Created in 2016 appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

By ProBlogger SEO expert Jim Stewart ofBloggersSEO.

You’ve no doubt seen the subject of HTTPS in the media recently – the importance of applying it to your blogging website in order to preserve your Google rankings has been widely reported. But what does it mean for you?

Do you have to drop everything and start the process of moving over right away, or will it pay to wait a few months? For some smaller blog owners it won’t make a lot of difference in the short term, but if you’re involved in eCommerce or the exchange of information, the HTTPS conversation is one you’re very much going to want to be involved in.

What’s All the Fuss About?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, or HTTPS for short, is an extra layer of protection between a website and a reader, creating an encryption in the data that’s transferred between the two.

Without it, all the information sent to a site — login details, information on forms and even passwords — can be stolen at some point between the user and the server. HTTPS encrypts the information, so only the reader and web server knows what’s in the information.

If someone does hack into the site, the only information they will receive is that you went to the site, not anything that was shared while you were there.

Google’s Push for HTTPS

In 2014, Google announced that it would include HTTPS as a ranking signal, identifying it as one of the ways for bloggers to increase their rankings. Google’s move to increase the security of the Internet has so far been voluntary, but the benefits are obvious. Not only will you have a more secure site, giving your readers a greater sense of security, you’ll also get a boost in rankings and a net increase in organic traffic.

This past September, Google announced they were going to make another change to Chrome in the near future. Starting in January 2017, Chrome users will see a warning if they land on a site without HTTPS — if that site accepts credit card details and login information — and will get a warning stating that the site may no longer be secure.

Bloggers without credit card transactions or login details may think they’re safe from harm to their traffic, but it’s only a temporary feeling of security. Google has announced that this is only the first of many changes they’ll be making, with a gradual push toward complete security on the Internet.

In the future, all sites will be subject to these not secure warnings for users on Google Chrome.

How Does This Affect Your Blog?

The added benefits of better security and higher Google rankings are nothing to ignore, just as the possibility of your readers coming upon a big red warning label on your site is something you’ll want to avoid at all costs. However, switching to HTTPS isn’t as simple as buying a certificate for your site. You’ll likely end up with duplicate pages, causing duplicate content errors among other problems to your site.

Instead of just leaving your site the way it is, you need to redirect the old pages to the HTTPS version, and then remove all the links to the old HTTP site. You’ll need to check for links in obscure spots such as:

• Images
• Video
• CSS and JS files
• Internal links

After all your links have been updated, the next step is to update all the existing redirects in place to make sure they’re all pointing to the new HTTPS site address. If you’ve done any configuration in the HTTP Search Console profile, you’ll need to mirror the information for the HTTPS Search Console profile.

Once you’ve finished with this you’ll need to do a full crawl of the blog to make sure there are no redirect changes. Also, look to make sure there are no HTTP references left. When all this is done, it’s a good idea to monitor your traffic for a few weeks to make sure there are no issues.

Pro Tips

Back-up any file that you edit. Moving to HTTPS may require some code editing, and you’ll need the original files as reference in case any of the new changes breaks anything.

Be extra careful when working with .htaccess. This is the base file responsible for the switch to HTTPS, and one mistake in the code can stop your site from loading.

Update your Google Maps listing, social media accounts, and business listings. Old backlinks won’t cause you any trouble, but new ones will speed up the new search results.

Jim Stewart, CEO of BloggersSEO, is a recognised digital marketing expert. Jim is ProBlogger’s SEO expert and will share his vast SEO knowledge to equip you with the systems and skills to optimise and monetise your blog using tried and tested techniques. What Jim doesn’t know about SEO and blogging isn’t worth knowing

*A previous version of this post showed an incorrect Google warning screenshot. We apolicies for the confusion. 

The post Should You Move Your Blogging Site To HTTPS? appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

Facebook Says It Found More Miscalculated Metrics | The Wall Street Journal

Whoops!

Three Different Ways to Name Your Blog or Website | Aliventures

It’s such a big decision! And sometimes we need all the help we can get.

How Often to Post on Social Media? [Proven Research from 10 Studies] | CoSchedule

We read this sort of thing every time, and plenty of it does come down to when your audience responds best. But it’s also pretty interesting to see a cross-section of answers from multiple research projects.

The Magical Content that Gets Links and Shares – New Research | Buzzsumo

At the end of the day, there’s not getting out of it – good content is what gets shared, good content takes time and effort. There’s no overnight diet for awesome shareability!

3 SEO New Year’s Resolutions | StewArt Media

Say what now? Yes, it’s almost 2017. And with some big Google changes, you might want to re-think your strategy for next year.

Letting go of Gratitude | Potential Psychology

I especially notice this time of year where people haven’t quite hit the goals they set for themselves, or something else has happened with their blog where they feel they’re not where they want to be. Ellen gives is a great reminder to count your blessings and remember what you do have, and what you have achieved. Not necessarily for gratitude, but to balance out what you think are the failures or negatives.

How to Create Keyword Maps and Avoid Cannibalization (The SEO Variety) | Inbound

I had no idea cannibalization (of the SEO variety) even existed! But this sure was an eye-opener – a very helpful one.

Are You A Social Media Team of One? This Toolkit Can Help | Hootsuite

I am! I am!

Be Consistent and Small. That’s How You Win at Business | By Regina

And to be honest, it’s how anyone gets anything done. Really beautifully written, and a great reminder.

Now Even Twitter is Copying Snapchat | Mashable

Oh why not, everyone else is! Now you can follow someone on Twitter using QR codes, just like Snapchat has always done. Keep up, ok?!

What’s caught your eye this week?

The post Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately? appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

This is a guest contribution from Susan Finch.

Landing lucrative contracts from job boards that goes beyond paying your bills and actually sustains your lifestyle – it’s what every aspiring and highly experienced writer dreams about.

You may even dabble in applying for positions on job boards and experience mixed results. Maybe you’ve landed a few random clients, but have no idea if you just got lucky or hit on a winning technique. And as you accumulate more rejection emails than positive responses, you start to think finding success on job boards is a unicorn in the world of freelancing.

But in reality, landing work on highly competitive job boards is well within your grasp. I would know. I’ve landed several high-paying clients on the ProBlogger Job Board and similar sites. In fact, my last application on ProBlogger beat out 200 other freelancers and I won the job 45 minutes after I applied.

I don’t win these jobs because I’m more talented or smarter than the rest of the crowd. It’s because I take the time to figure out how to stand-out from that crowd and position myself for success. Here’s how I do it.

1. Devour the Job Posting

Thoroughly digesting and understanding a job posting is one of the easiest ways to beat out your competition on any job board. I’ve also hired freelancers from ProBlogger for my clients, and there’s an overwhelming trend in the responses. Freelancers seem to gloss over the most important parts of the job posting.

If a post talks about trying to increase a company’s content marketing and lead generation, then you need to talk specifically about that topic at length. Running through a laundry list of your skills, who you’ve worked with, and where you’ve been published tells a client almost nothing about how you can actually help them with lead generation. Connect your experiences and skills directly to what a client wants.

2. Follow Every Direction

Don’t skim your job postings. Savvy clients often request that you reference a code word in the subject heading. They also bury very specific details about what to do when applying. I won a job as the Managing Editor of a popular podcast because the client asked applicants to record a short video of themselves discussing their skills and posting it to YouTube. Despite hundreds of applicants, I was among the handful that actually followed instructions.

Clients aren’t just doing this to see if you’re capable of recording a video or following directions. They know they’re going to get a huge influx of responses and are purposefully weeding out the majority of applications. It makes their lives easier when someone doesn’t follow directions. And I guarantee they will not read your application anyway based on how talented you seem.

3. Research the Client

It’s tempting to think you can digest everything the client needs just by reading their job posting. But in reality, you know almost nothing about them except they’re hiring a writer or content manager.

Spend five minutes looking at their website or LinkedIN presence. Browse through their blog to see what type of content they’re publishing, and figure out how you could make it better. See who else they’ve worked for to get an idea of what they focus on. For example, a client who has worked extensively in graphic design, but is now running a content marketing firm is probably going to fixate on visuals. Include lots of information about the infographics you researched and created, as well as the high-converting Pinterest pins you designed.

4. Match their Tone

It only takes a few minutes to figure out your client’s brand personality by looking at their website, blog or LinkedIN presence. What type of language are they using? Are they friendly and sassy? Is their content highly journalist and in-depth?

You can seize upon that tone and match the style in your own applications. This can give the impression you are the absolute right fit and voice for the job. However, this isn’t about faking your personality. It’s simply about bringing relevancy and personality to your applications.

5. Offer Immediate and Actionable Suggestions

It usually takes me minutes to figure out if I can actually help a client. The job I won in 45-minutes was an easy assessment. I could see exactly where the holes were in his Pinterest strategy, precisely how I could help with content tweaks to gather more subscribers, and other easy and actionable tips. So I told him what I thought. Nothing I suggested was proprietary information that he couldn’t figure out on his own. But freelancers are there to make clients’ lives easier. Period.

I ended my email by telling him to run with any of my suggestions, even if he felt I wasn’t the right fit for the position. Why? Offering up your ideas to anyone who wants them commands attention, is generous, and can tip the scales in your favour. And if you don’t get the job after all? That person will remember your unique approach and think of you for positions down the road.

6. Make it Super Easy to Say Yes

Potential clients need to know how to best use your talents. They’re not going to study your resume, clips and online portfolio and figure out how to piece it all together. So just tell them how you can help and why. Share the results you’ve seen with other clients or your own personal projects.

When the time comes, tell them your salary expectations and terms. And let them know this can be re-evaluated in 3-months or a time of their choosing. Tell potential clients you can get started right away, and which initiatives or responsibilities would be the easiest and fastest to tackle. Make them see the value in hiring you immediately. Don’t make them guess.

With a little practice and refinement, you can dramatically increase your hiring rate from job boards and win big. The trick is staying persistent enough to nail down a winning formula that works for you.

Susan Finch is a freelance writer and content strategist that teaches you how to rock the job boards and find invisible clients at FreelancersGuidebook.com.

The post How I Beat Out 200 Applicants on the ProBlogger Jobs Board in 45 Minutes appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

By ProBlogger Expert Nicole Avery.

If you follow even a few blogs as well as this one, you will know that within a few weeks from now there will be numerous posts about setting goals for the New Year. Goal setting is an essential tool to successful blogging, but before you can set a goal, you need to take time and look back over the last 12 months and review your progress. Now is the perfect time to do it!

There are two components two a blogging review that I recommend you undertake:

1. Quantitative review

This is your typical standard yearly review. You measure your performance against any goals you set for the year, plus a review of your key blogging metrics and analyse the results. The exact blogging metrics you are focusing on may differ to other bloggers, but the ones listed below will provide a solid foundation to analyse the health of your blog, especially if you haven’t done this before.

Blog statistics

For these first statistics I have used Google Analytics latest terminology. While the exact wording of the statistic may differ in other analytics packages, the metrics should still be easily found:

• Sessions – a session is a group of interactions that take place on your website within a given time frame. You can read more about sessions here. What is the trend for the year?
• Acquisition – this refers to how visitors came to your site. Within this you can find out who your top referring sites and social media channels were. This data is important to know so you can make decisions about where you invest your time with activities like guest posts and how much time you spend on a particular social media for example.
• Average session duration – measures how long visitors are spending on your blog. Within this data set it is important to note the behaviour of different sources of traffic. Pinterest referrals may be your biggest referrer of traffic for example, but they may actually stay on your site for the shortest duration, bouncing quickly away from your site, giving you eyeballs but not engaged readers. This analysis allows you to place a more holistic view of the quality of the traffic you are receiving from differing sources.
• Popular posts overall – this will show you what posts are evergreen for your blog. By looking at these posts you can generate ideas for future content.
• Popular posts for 2016 – as with your evergreen content, finding out what has resonated with readers this year can help with ideas for content for the New Year. (You may need to do a manual analysis to collate this list of popular content.)

You can see Darren’s post on 17 Statistics to Monitor on Your Blog if you want to look into this area further.

Newsletter statistics

The next statistics to look at are your newsletter statistics. If you don’t have a newsletter for your blog then that should definitely be on your list of key actions to do this week! To see why it is so important to have a newsletter read these posts from Darren 8 Reasons to Add a Newsletter to Your Blog and 4 Pretty Pictures to Illustrate Impact of Email Newsletters on Traffic.

If you have a newsletter take time to review these stats:

• Average open and click rate – to see how you compare to industry averages you can use this table as a guide
• Average subscribe rate – this looks at what your monthly average subscribe rate for your newsletter list. If there are months where you had higher subscribes, look to find the cause and see if you can replicate it.
• Annual subscribe percentage increase – while monthly subscribe rates are useful, it is good to see a longer term trend and know how your list has grown over the year.
• Average unsubscribe rate – look at what campaigns where above the average and try and identify what factors may have caused the increase. See if you can make changes to your campaigns to prevent it from occurring again.
• Popular campaigns via open rate for the year – like your popular posts on the blog, analysing the data can help you create content that will resonate with your subscribers for the coming year
• Popular campaigns via click rate for the year – if click through is something you are focusing on for your newsletters, then examine this stat, looking at what type of links get people clicking through to your blog and replicate it where possible.

Social media statistics

For those social media networks you are active on, it is important to analyse their performance over the year. The purpose of having a presence on social media networks may be different for each blogger. For some being on social media is key to amplifying blog content and having people click through to blog. For others it is about building community, engagement and trust. How you analyse the statistics of each social media platform will therefore depend on your purpose:

• if click-through is your purpose, then you will need to dig into your Google Analytic referral stats to see which networks are performing the best for you and what posts are gaining the most traction on your networks. You will also need to examine the reach you have on each network and what the trends have been over the year.
• if you are using social media for community then looking at engagements and growth stats would be your focus to assess if the time you are spending on the networks is giving the results you are after.

Monetization statistics

If you have monetized your blog, then you will also need to review this aspect of your blog’s performance for the year. A base review should include the following:

• Percentage changes from previous year in revenue, expenses and net profit – look at why the changes occurred and take this take this into account for your plan for 2017.
• Revenue make up – analysing key sources of revenue and their trends. This means breaking down revenue into streams like advertising, sponsored posts, product, freelance work, affiliates etc.
• Most profitable revenue streams – while revenue in raw total maybe high for a particular stream, once expenses including your time are accounted for it may not be the most profitable revenue stream. For most bloggers time is a key restraint, so working out where you are getting your best return for time invested is important.

2. Qualitative review

Once you have completed the number based review, it is important to undertake a qualitative review of your blog as well. This allows you to take a bigger picture look at the performance of your blog for the year. The blogosphere is fast moving and changes rapidly. So you can capture all of what you achieved, not just the numbers that fell out at the end, there are some questions you can ask yourself:

• What were your key achievements – you may have failed to achieve some of the goals you set yourself, but you may have scored your first speaking gig that you hadn’t set as part of your goals. It is important to take time to acknowledge your successes that cannot be measured by a stats package.
• What challenges did you overcome – blogging will have thrown you many challenges over the year. What did you face and overcome? Your blog might have been hacked, you might have lost some freelance work from one source but pitched for new work and won it.
• What did you learn – there is always so much we can take away from the challenges we face, so take time to reflect on what you learnt and how you can apply it to improve you blogging for the year to come.
• How do you feel overall about your year – some years are definitely better than others! How did this year feel for you and what does that mean for how you want to approach your blogging in 2017?
• What are your initial thoughts for the New Year – without even having thought about goals or targets for the New Year, you may already have a feel for how you want to tackle 2017. Is this the year you ramp it up and go full time? Or is it a year where you want to reclaim your nights and not work so much on your blog?

Once you have completed your annual blogging review, you will be in a much better place to be able to set a goal for your blog for the New Year; a goal that will truly reflect where you are and where you want to go.

How has your blogging year been for you?

Nicole Avery is a Melbourne mum to five beautiful kids aged seven to 17. She is the master organiser behind the popular parenting blog Planning With Kids and the creator of the Planned & Present e-course, a step-by-step guide for mums on how to organise the chaos of family life while still leaving space to enjoy it.

The post How to Conduct Your Annual Blogging Review appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

By ProBlogger Expert Jerry Low.

Google traffic is lucrative – there’s no doubt about that. Often, the most effective way to attract targeted traffic is to make sure your site is optimized for Google searches. As you may have already learned, winning that targeted traffic is one of the top strategies for making money on the web.

However (and this is a big however), depending solely on Google organic search is not a good business model. Google frequently issues algorithm updates. This can lead to webmasters/bloggers losing all their traffic overnight. You need to diversify the ways that you draw online users to your site. Sure, Google search is a big part of that process – but it isn’t the only way to do it. You can still rely on organic search, but don’t make yourself vulnerable to another algorithm update before you have time to optimize for it.

In fact, Google just released another Penguin update on September 23rd. Penguin 4.0 is supposed to be the final update of its kind. That’s because the algorithm will now run in real time, which means it will actually be updating on a continuous basis. How this may affect websites across the board remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Business owners need to grow without being entirely reliant on the traffic from Google search.

This is the perfect time to revisit my previous post and explore more ways to grow without Google traffic.

What Happened to Me in 2012 Penguin Updates

I know firsthand how a business can be affected by an update to the Google algorithm complex.

My site, WebHostingSecretRevealed.com, was hit badly during the Google Penguin update in 2012. This forced me to rework everything from scratch again on a new domain: WebHostingSecretRevealed.net. Since then, I have been experimenting with different ways to pull in targeted traffic outside organic search.

You can read how Darren lost 80% of his traffic overnight and what he did about it here.

In previous posts, I have talked about some of the tactics I’ve learned and used to build a Google-less approach to attracting blog traffic.

In this post, we are going to dig wider and deeper for more Google-less traffic strategies.

Tactic #1: Content Swap

Previously, I’ve discussed how guest posting is the best way to build sustainable web traffic. This concept is still valid two years after I first talked about it.

Here’s an example:

I published a guest post on Blogging Wizard in April two years ago. The post somehow gained popularity, and Mari Smith tweeted about the post. This led to some new traffic and Twitter followers for me – not to mention building my authority in the niche.

The trick, again, is to guest post at the right place – Google PageRank or Domain Authority is never my main concern. What we want is influential blogs with real readers who will read and engage with your content. Guest post to build web traffic and your personal brand – not for Google PageRank.

Never underestimate how effective it is to reach out to peers and influencers. Getting the word out about your own blog is much easier to do when you can collaborate with other bloggers.

At this point, you might be thinking “But wait – researching for the right blog and reaching out to the right bloggers for guest posting opportunities requires lots of work!”

Well, what if we can speed up that process and write more (and eliminate a lot of that work)?

This is when Content Swap becomes the best tactic to use – the one that will help you to get the most from your efforts.

So, What Is Content Swap?

The idea of Content Swap came from Ken Lyons of Measured SEM.

While Ken was suggesting swapping guest posts to build links, it may also work as a great way to bring more traffic to your blog. Without Content Swap, you must reach out to each blog and ask for a guest posting opportunity. This can be a tedious and time-consuming task.

When you employ Content Swap as a tactic, you are in the driver’s seat.

Guest posting opportunities will come to you instead of you being forced to seek them out endlessly. All you need to do is select the sites that meet your specific quality thresholds: You determine such details as the amount of traffic that meets your needs, how many social media followers the site should have, and other relevant factors. Then, choose those blog sites that fit your criteria.

Steps to take for getting started with Content Swap:

Set up a proper “write for us” page on your blog.

Explain clearly what types of guest bloggers you’re looking for (and make it clear that you want to swap content with them).

Share the page on your social media pages and forum signatures to increase the chances of being seen. You can also promote the page on Facebook to a specific audience (namely, those who own blogs).

Sit back and wait for guest posting requests.

(Self-plug #1: If setting up a “Write for Us” page is too much for you, you can swap content with us at WHSR.)

Tactic #2: Influencers Marketing

Now that you know about the importance of exchanging content – and how much easier it is to do this by using the Content Swap method – you’ll still need to do some footwork while you wait for guest bloggers to respond to your “write for us” page. The kind of blogger outreach I’m talking about now involves targeting influencers. Doing this is a bit more time-intensive than placing a call-out to other bloggers on your own website. The time you invest in this strategy can yield repeated returns for you, however. It’s also a way to identify which bloggers might be the best to swap content with once those offers start coming to you.

Start by identifying the influencers who are blogging about topics that are relevant to you. You can build a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. You’ll find a wealth of blogs on every imaginable topic at a site like Alltop, for one. Just enter a keyword in the search box on the Alltop home page. That should produce a page with several blogs and subtopics that you can browse. Once you find bloggers who seem like suitable choices as influencers, use an analytics tool to find out how much influence they have on social media. One analytics site I’ve had success with is Klout.

What can you do once you find the influencers you want to contact? Invite them to be interviewed by you on your blog. Ask them to collaborate on blog posts. Suggest swapping blog posts with them – as well as swapping links to your respective sites.

Real life examples –

“Making friends” is often under-rated in blogging world. Michael Pozdnev reached out to 63 industry leaders and wrote this incredibly long post. It was the fourth post he published on his blog IWannaBeABlogger.com and the post has obtained more than 2,000 social media shares and comments to date.

All of these actions will help build traffic to your site, and you won’t need to worry about where you rank on results pages.

Tactic #3: Pour Oil on the Fire

You can look closely to your existing traffic for more ideas on how to grow it.

Previously, I covered five different tactics: 1) Blog commenting 2) Freebies marketing 3) Crowd sourcing post 4) Creative social media marketing and 5) Leveraging Q&A platforms.

Are you using any of these strategies? Did any of these work particularly well for your blog? Look into your Google Analytics and find out how these tactics have helped your blog to grow in the past. Figure what is serving you well, and double up your efforts on the tactics that work.

A Real-Life Example – Pinterest

In the first half of 2015, we noticed that posts focusing on mom bloggers were drawing a lot of Pinterest traffic. Thus, we built more topics for this demographic; we then hired a part-time Pinterest marketer to help us promote our posts on Pinterest. The results were a 160% increase in Pinterest referrals and 40% percent more newsletter signups from this traffic source.

How do you like 160% more Pinterest traffic and 40% better signup rate?

What you can do:

Look into your Google Analytics, and examine your top 50 traffic sources (follow this search path): Dashboard > Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium > Show rows: 50 – Can you see a particular type of traffic source that is working exceptionally well? Do you know why it works so well? Can you invest more money, time, or manpower in that source to make it better?

Tactic #4: Building an Email List

Darren recently talked about the importance of building an email list:

“Turn a visit into a regular weekly reader and you are effectively getting 52 readers a year.”

Darren started out with only 17 subscribers (four of those were his family members and himself). Today, he manages a list of 700,000 subscribers. Imagine the amount of traffic you could get from a list that size!

Like Darren, you can build a list of loyal subscribers by converting one-time or occasional visitors into weekly followers. Here are a few tips:

Make visitors want more

Publish compelling content, so people who just happen upon your site will want to stay connected to it. Provide users with valuable information that they will want to access on an ongoing basis.

Media rich content

Back up that text with audio (such as podcasts) and visuals (such as colorful infographics and videos) to keep your visitors interested.

Place an opt-in form in plain sight

Make sure that your visitors see your opt-in form on every page of your website. They may not always want to sign up for your list on the first page they land on, but they might want to do it after browsing for a while. Don’t let them miss out on that opportunity – make it available in the sidebar of most of your pages (if not all of them).

Give them an offer they can’t refuse

If you want people to subscribe to your email list, offer them something in return (like an eBook when they register).

Don’t stop at the initial registration offer

Once you start building your list, keep the momentum going by offering your subscribers more content they can use. Send enticing content in your newsletters, such as monthly webinars or discounts on products.

Tactic #5: Leveraging Facebook

I don’t think you need me to tell you that it’s extremely naïve to ignore Facebook.

(Fun fact: At last check, Darren posts 3 – 5 posts per day on Facebook.)

Facebook and the Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most popular social networks worldwide. Facebook could actually send more traffic to your blog than Google. At least, that’s what’s happening with Parse.ly’s network of 400 digital publishers.

Here are two very effective Facebook advertising tactics you can try:

1. Revive Old Post Carousel Ads

Below is a carousel ad I did recently to promote my evergreen blogging tips.

The ads cost less than 50 cents per click, and I am drawing hundreds of visits per week to my blog. When you are targeting the right audience, the advertising cost on Facebook is relatively cheap. When you consider how huge the impact can be, you almost can’t afford not to advertise this way.

(Self-plug #2 – By the way I compile our best blogging tips in this page).

You may also use carousel ads on Instagram, which Facebook bought a few years ago. By telling a story in this type of ad, you can compel viewers to learn more about your business. They may then click on the link that leads to your website. Now, you have just attracted traffic without depending on the Google organic search function to do it.

Here’s another reason to create this type of ad to market your business: According to Digiday, carousel ads get 10 times the clicks of ordinary Facebook ads – and they drive 10 times the amount of traffic to the websites of their advertisers. That means that the ads are helping you to work smart instead of work hard, and they’re saving you some serious advertising dollars.

2. Influence the influencers: Ads targeting Facebook Page admin

Do you have some handy tips or experiences to share with Facebook page administrators?

Can you create some to target this group of people?

The idea here is to influence the influencers.

If you market something effectively to Facebook page admins – be it a post or a product – you can get far more traction from your campaign than if you were to just target ordinary users.

Why is this? Because a Facebook page admin has the “power of publisher”. Page admins usually have a group of followers themselves. If you manage to win them over, they could help you to amplify your message. Do you see how much more efficient this is as a marketing technique than conventional methods that have been used by everyone?

Here’s how you can target Facebook page admins (follow this search path): Facebook Ad Manager > Power Editor > Create Saved Audience > Detailed Targeting > Digital Activities > Facebook Page Admins

This is just the beginning…

As mentioned in my previous article, appealing to web traffic is only part of the game.

You Will Also Need to Focus On…

Conversion

Once you get people to your website, you’ll then need to turn those visits into conversions.

You must optimize your landing pages to turn site visits into leads and leads into sales. Make the pages easy to navigate, so visitors can quickly move on from them when they want to explore your website. Run A/B testing and analytics so that you can improve the aspects of your landing pages that are not keeping people on your site.

Creating opportunities to remarket

By collecting emails via your opt-in forms, you can reach out to the site visitors that you didn’t convert the first time. Remarketing also enables you to maintain long-term customer relationships; you can make repeated sales to those customers; and ultimately, that is one of the best ways to keep growing your brand.

As a blogger, you need to optimize your content in order to get targeted traffic.

This absolutely includes optimization for Google search results. However, building an audience involves a lot more than getting traffic from organic search. Don’t leave your blog vulnerable the way that mine was a few years ago. SEO is only one strategy among several that can help you achieve your blogging goals. By swapping content, reaching out to influencers, developing an email list, and taking advantage of the tools on Facebook, you can draw targeted traffic and grow your blog.

Jerry Low is the founder of WebHostingSecretRevealed.net (WHSR). A geek dad. SEO data junkie. Web marketer. Investor. He has been building web assets and making money online since 2004. Follow Jerry on Twitter.

The post More Ways to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic Without Google Search appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

It can be argued that getting traffic is the number-one priority for just about every blogger – for reach, for influence, for authority, for sales… it’s what we all aim to grow.

Over the years here at ProBlogger we’ve discussed traffic and how to get it over and over again. We’ve talked about how content is king (and also so is being useful), getting traffic without advertising, optimising for SEO, leveraging your Facebook presence, small tweaks for big results, and how not to kill your traffic.

It’s been a huge part of sharing how and what we do here, and it’s one of the topics we get asked about the most. I even wrote a post a few years ago about how I doubled (and went on to triple) the the unique visitors on my blog.

What I have learned over the years is that although some things work consistently and almost universally for all (great, consistent content, proper SEO), everything other option is hugely varied according the person performing them. Email works well for some, whereas Instagram really drives traffic for others. Personal networking helps, and there are a few still making Twitter work for them. There are yet another section absolutely killing it on Pinterest, geting the bulk of their traffic from the visual powerhouse.

We wanted to know what works for you? If you were to give one tip to a newbie blogger for growing their traffic, what would it be? What’s worth your time and what’s not? Feel free to share and discuss in the comments below.

The post Community Discussion: Traffic Growing Tips appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

Well now, wasn’t that an eventful week? I don’t know about you but it’s been hard to get my head around work and usual processes when everything has been shaken up so much. Social media was in its element (both good and bad, really) with election news, but regardless of what’s going on at the top, we have to keep on working and making our projects the best they can be.

I hope these posts will help you do just that this week!

33 Writing Tweaks That Will Turn You into a Copywriting Master | Quicksprout

I find these types of posts beneficial for those who started a blog as a hobby and soon realise they want to level up. Or perhaps people who want to start blogging to make money but are insecure about their writing.

The Most (And Least!) Effective Types of Marketing Content | Meet Edgar

It’s not waffles?

How to Spy on Your Competitor’s Facebook Ad Targeting | Entrepreneur

It’s only a little hack, but it does give insight into others’ targeting parameters – will it be useful to you?

How to Customise MailChimp Sign Up Forms (so people feel really, really welcome) | Dotti Media

Couldn’t agree with this more! It takes a bit of time to set up, yes – but don’t all good things that help you stand out from the crowd? Especially now with everyone’s inboxes filled to overflowing.

FAQ: All about the Google mobile-first index | Search Engine Land

Google will now create and rank its search listings based on the mobile version of content, even for listings that are shown to desktop users. I know, I’m confused too. This article spells it all out.

3 New Business Tools I’m Switching To (And Why) | Natalie Sisson

I’m always super-interested in how other people go about their business, getting systems in place so they can work smarter, not harder. And it’s good when other people iron out the kinks for you!

StackAdapt: Google’s New Native Ad Partner Shifting The Way Brands Monetize Content | Forbes

It’s so interesting to see what those at the top are doing, as it does tend to trickle down and affect the rest of us. What does this mean for our future monetisation efforts?

How to Self Publish Your Book #5: 11 Ways to Market Your Book | Web Hosting Secret Revealed

For those of us dipping our toes into the world of self-publishing – we can’t all wait until a book deal lands in our lap!

5 Tips to Get Off the Content Marketing Struggle Bus & Create Content Your Audience Will Love | Moz

And sometimes it is a struggle bus – unless you’ve got millions of ideas and all the time in the world, it can be hard to churn out quality content day after day. Especially when it’s just you doing all the work!

Ads in Facebook Messenger are officially here | Marketing Land

Hmmmm interesting….

What’s caught your eye this week?

The post Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately? appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

By ProBlogger psychology expert Ellen Jackson.

You will become way less concerned with what people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.

I wrote my first blog post two years ago, after a seven-year hiatus from writing.

It was not an intentional hiatus – it was fear-induced. I was scared of feeling. Of feeling inadequate. Feeling incompetent. Feeling like a failure. Feeling judged.

I wrote that first blog post quickly. I didn’t edit. I didn’t think. I just wrote. When the writing stopped flowing, I hit publish and posted the link to a Facebook group.

I had started.

It’s not you. It’s everyone.

The fear factor in blogging is big, and not just for newbies. Experienced bloggers still wonder how their thoughts will be received. They feel the fear, but do it anyway.

Putting your work and words into the world is terrifying. You’re vulnerable. You’re exposing your soft underbelly, flinging your arms wide and saying, ‘Here I am. Judge me.’

But what if no one is judging you?

What if that judgement, that fear, those feelings, are all in your head?

Stop reading minds.

We’re all mind readers. We’re forever in other people’s heads, planting ideas in their minds, putting words in their mouths.

‘They’re going to read this and think: ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

‘Everyone has written on this topic before. They’ll know I don’t have any new ideas.’

‘They’ll think I’m an idiot if I write about that’

But you know what? They’re not thinking about you. They’re too busy thinking about themselves.

Psychologists call the assumption that others are critiquing us a ‘thinking error’. It’s a form of cognitive distortion. We believe we know what others are thinking based on our own fears, thoughts and ideas.

It’s not reality. It’s your belief and perception, and it’s not helping you. Spend too much time imagining what others think of you and your words and you become paralysed by your fears. You think and overthink and worry and procrastinate.

You’ll never get that blog post out there.

That’s what I learnt from my long break from writing. That my fear was perception, not reality. I was feeling inadequate and feared failure, but that was about me. It was not about anyone else and playing make believe was frustrating and limiting.

To get over it and get my writing out there I remind myself that:

1. No one will die. It’s a blog post, not neurosurgery.
2. There’s a lot of information on the internet and whatever I write will sink eventually. If I write and publish, my ideas might have their moment in the sun. They may help someone else. If they sink without a trace, the only thing lost is my pride.
3. What if I succeed? A great blog post is a small step on the road to success. Why not start here? You have to start somewhere.
4. You can’t please all the people all the time. Nine out of ten people might hate what I write. But what about the one person who reads it and says, ‘Wow, that is so helpful?’ That’s the person who needs me to write.

If you’re new to blogging and you’re hesitating, worried about what others will think do this: Write quickly, write from the heart and hit publish. Don’t read minds. No-one’s judging. I promise.

Ellen Jackson from Potential Psychology is a psychologist who does things differently. She writes about people and why we do what we do. She coaches, she teaches and she helps workplaces to solve their people problems.

The post New to Blogging? Ditch the Fear of Judgement appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

This is a guest contribution from Larry Alton.

Blogging is something that we all know we need to do. But as a busy professional with a weekly schedule consisting of non-stop meetings, conference calls, project deadlines, and personal responsibilities, actually making time for blogging can seem impossible.

The good news is that it’s possible to blog without inconveniencing your schedule too much.

Time: The Single Biggest Blogging Challenge

A few years ago, Darren sent out a tweet asking readers of ProBlogger to share the biggest challenges that they face. He got more than 50 replies and many of these responses had to do with time.

• “Time. It’s hard to carve out productive hours while homeschooling a 6, 4, and 2 year old,” Amanda Espinoza wrote. “Night hours are best right now.”
• “Finding/creating time to write amongst day-to-day client work, paid work, unpaid biz dev work…,” said Simon Mossman.
• “Time. There just isn’t enough time,” Tamara Watson emphatically wrote.

If you were to think about the biggest challenge you face today, wouldn’t time be near the top of the list? While a lot about the blogging industry has changed since 2013, the truth remains that time is still the single biggest blogging pain point.

“Finding time to blog is something that all bloggers struggle with,” Darren said at the time. “Whether you are just starting out and blogging as a hobby, blogging as a part time job while juggling work, home, and a social life or even blogging as a full time business amidst other demands such as up-keeping of social media accounts, responding to comments and emails etc. – finding time to write is a consistent challenge.”

What Does Your Lunch Break Consist of?

Now let’s diverge from the topic of blogging for a moment and ask a simple question: What does your average lunch break consist of? While some people power through and don’t take a lunch break at all (not a very good idea), the majority of us do take some time during the middle of the day.

According to a survey from OfficeTeam, 48 percent of workers say their typical lunch break lasts for 30 minutes or less, while 49 percent report taking 31 to 60 minutes (or more). So, for the purpose of this article, we’ll assume that most people take a half-hour to one-hour lunch break.

But what are people doing during their lunch breaks? Approximately 42 percent of survey respondents report socializing with workers, 29 percent spend time working, 27 percent surf the internet or spend time on social media, 25 percent catch up on personal phone calls and emails, 25 percent run errands, and 18 percent exercise or take a walk. (A small percentage read or do nothing other than eat.)

What are you doing with this time? While there’s something to be said for stepping away from work and socializing or exercising, this isn’t always the best use of your time. You can do that before and after work. When you’re in the throes of the workday, you should be focused on productivity.

There is, however, something to be said for stepping away from meetings, conference calls, and other monotonous tasks and instead focusing on something creative and hands-on.

You already know where we’re going with this. If time is your biggest blogging challenge – and you can’t seem to find room for it in your daily schedule – then why not try to fit it in during your lunch break? This 30-minute to one-hour stretch of time is already set aside. Make the most out of it!

6 Tips for Efficient Blogging During Your Lunch Hour

What would happen if you suddenly spent your lunch break blogging? At the end of the month, you would have roughly 20 blog posts written. At the end of the quarter, you’d have more than 60 posts to your name. By the end of the year, you’d have somewhere in excess of 240 posts. Imagine the size of the audience you could build with this sort of volume and consistency – not to mention the personal branding and SEO benefits that come along with regular blogging.

But how? How can you realistically blog during a lunch break that only lasts for 30-60 minutes? Well, you need an efficient plan – and we’re going to help you develop one. Just read through the following tips and you’ll get a better idea of how it works.

1. Conduct a Monthly Brainstorming Session

The key to blogging during your lunch hour is to spend the entire time writing. You only have a few precious minutes, so you can’t afford to spend this time thinking about topics, researching them, copyediting, and publishing. That’s why you have to begin by conducting a monthly brainstorming session.

Set aside one hour near the end of each month – perhaps on the 30^th of every month – and use this time as a brainstorming session for the next month. (Note: This is the only hour all month that you’ll have to spend on blogging outside of your lunch break.) During this hour, you will come up with a list of 20-25 different topic ideas.

Neil Patel, a successful entrepreneur who has written thousands of blog posts over the past few years, has developed an efficient method for zeroing in on topics and it should work well for you, too. He starts by asking five questions and then jots down a few ideas for each.

• “What excites, intrigues or stirs passion in my readers?”
• “What are common challenges my readers go through?”
• “What character traits do my readers possess?”
• “What do your readers love about your niche?”
• “What do your readers hate about your niche?”

If you can come up with four or five different answers to each question, then you should be able to develop some blog post ideas. Create a catchy headline for each post and develop a spreadsheet. Next, take these ideas and do some research. Look for a handful of other blog posts, articles, and interviews that you’ll use for supporting information. Toss these links into the spreadsheet and jot down a few notes about the direction you’ll take.

Finally, map out which post will be written on which day – as well as when it’ll be published and shared on social media. Bam! In just an hour, you have a content calendar for an entire month.

2. Put Blogging Into Your Schedule

The next step is to actually put blogging into your schedule. This is partly to keep you honest, but also tells other people to leave you alone. If you have a schedule that’s shared by others, make sure they know you’ll be spending your lunch hour writing.

Reference your content calendar and write the topic that you’ll be blogging about into your daily schedule. This simple exercise allows you to see the topic first thing in the morning, which will have you subconsciously thinking about it in the hours leading up to lunch. Thus, when your break arrives, you’re already teeming with ideas.

3. Turn Off All Notifications and Shut Your Door

If you’ve done everything suggested up until this point, then you’re ready to blog. The only thing that can knock you off track is unforeseen distractions. Want to avoid them? Start by turning off your notifications.

Exit out of your email application, silence your phone, and close your door. You can even leave a note on your door that says something along the lines of “do not disturb.” This will keep outside distractions to a minimum and will allow you to make better use of your time.

4. Don’t Forget About Lunch

You have to remember that this is your lunch break – so food has to be present in this equation. You obviously can’t afford to go out and grab something to eat or even join your coworkers in the cafeteria, though. You need something quick and easy to eat.

This will require a bit of planning on your part. You’ll need to make your lunch the night before. If you work in an office, this will mean packing it and putting it in the break room refrigerator. If you work from home, you should still have everything ready to go.

Make things that are easy to eat while working. This means sandwiches, wraps, and other finger foods. The last thing you want is to be eating something messy. You’ll spend too much time eating, wiping your fingers off, typing, and repeating.

5. Use a Blog Template

While blogging is very much a creative pursuit, you’ll have to develop some formulas in order to consistently produce high-quality work within such a limited time frame. Some of the more successful bloggers actually use templates.

Take successful entrepreneur Michael Hyatt, for example. Hyatt has a template that consists of six components: compelling title, lead paragraph, relevant image, personal experience, main body, and discussion question. He also has a set of rules he abides by: make the posts short, use short paragraphs, keep sentence short, use simple words, and provide external links.

Hyatt’s template provides just enough structure to keep him on track while allowing for plenty of creativity. Over time, you should be able to develop your own template based on insights you’ve gathered from previous posts.

6. Pay Someone to Edit and Publish

Since you only have a limited amount of time for blogging, you have to dedicate as much time as possible to writing. What about editing, formatting, and publishing, you may ask? Well, this is one area where it’s almost always cost-effective to hire someone.

For just a few dollars per post, you can have a professional copywriter deal with all of these time-consuming tasks. While you may be reluctant to spend money, remember that there’s an opportunity cost associated with editing and publishing. Sure, you could do it on your own, but you’d be forced to cut into your writing time or do it after work.

Piecing it All Together

Everyone’s lunch break looks different. Some of us are self-employed and work from home, while others spend time in a traditional office working in a cubicle alongside 50 co-workers. This means you’ll have to develop a plan that works for you. However, the point of this article is that anyone can make time for blogging by consistently utilizing their lunch break, which is already set aside for doing something other than normal work tasks and responsibilities.

Try it out for a month and see what you think. You’ll like the results!

Larry Alton is an independent business consultant specializing in social media trends, business, and entrepreneurship. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post How to Make Time for Blogging During Your Lunch Break appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

Mark Manson is arguably one of the hottest bloggers in the world right now. Over two million people visit his self-improvement blog each month and his new book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life has gone off in a big way, recently hitting The New York Times bestseller list.

Mark started blogging in 2008 in the dating space, before pivoting to personal development in 2011. He attributes most of his success to the fact that he is very seriously dedicated to the craft of writing. In this interview Kelly Exeter chats with him about his writing process, monetising his two million monthly readers, and why vulnerability in blogging is over-rated.

—————

KE: First things first. My current obsession with the show Suits obliges me to slip a gratuitous reference in wherever I can at the moment. So, tell me – do you watch Suits and has anyone ever said you remind them of Harvey Specter?

MM: Hah, never seen it. And though I’ve heard the name Harvey Specter before, can’t say anyone has told me I remind them of him.

Seriously? They’re basically the same person

KE: Ok, now we’ve gotten that out of the way … Your most recent post, The American Dream is Killing Us, took six months to write. It’s a long, well-researched, highly-considered piece about where the USA is today and how it got there. How do you build out a piece like this? Do you start with a base premise in mind – or does that emerge? And most importantly – you nailed the ending. How hard was that to get right?

MM: I always start with a base premise. That’s true for any article, but especially for a piece this long and complex. You need to have a strong overarching argument in mind going into it, otherwise you’ll just get lost in the brush and forget what you’re writing about after a couple thousand words.

With the American Dream piece, I knew the overall point I wanted to make from the very beginning. It took a couple throwaway drafts to get the message right (the ‘lemonade stand’ metaphor), and from there it was just a matter of assembling a lot of the history and data into the right spots to back up the main argument. Then you have the ending — which, thank you, by the way, I’m thrilled you loved it, as it was a huge struggle — which took another 2-3 rewrites to nail by itself.

I should note here though, so people don’t get super impressed or anything: I wasn’t writing the entire six months. It was a couple weeks in the beginning, then me taking a big break from the piece because it burnt me out and I had a book coming out, then coming back to it and spending another week or two to finish it up. But yeah, it is definitely one of the most difficult articles I’ve ever written. Many of my articles get written in a single afternoon. Most others in a couple days at most. This one seemed to drag out forever.

KE: How does one go from penning a dating blog to writing pieces like The American Dream is Killing Us and An Open Letter To Brazil. What does that journey look like?

MM: Before I started my dating advice blog back in 2008, I had been arguing about politics and culture and music and technology on internet forums for years. That’s really where I developed as a writer, actually. I was that obnoxious internet forum guy who would spend entire afternoons writing three-page replies to people explaining, in detail, why they were wrong about something. I know: ‘What a dick.’ The point is, these kinds of topics and ideas pre-date my business by quite a bit. You could say they were actually my original passion.

My business started out in 2008 specifically being about dating advice and after working on it for a couple years, it was clear that the only thing that distinguished me from other people in the niche was my writing. So, when I focused on that [the writing], the business became fairly successful as a result.

But dating advice gets kind of boring. I mean, there are only so many ways you can tell people not to text creepy things. You can only give people three hot first date ideas so many times before you want to stick a frisbee in your mouth and commit seppuku. So, after a few years, the business began to feel stale.

I think the way I was able to successfully pivot out of dating is that ultimately, what made me stand out in the dating advice niche wasn’t simply good advice, it was that I looked at common dating/relationship problems in ways people hadn’t considered before, and in ways that were illuminating and simplified the struggles they were going through. Put bluntly: they liked how my brain worked, and so when that same brain applied itself to culture or travel or happiness, they gladly stuck with it.

The post that give rise to his bestselling book.

KE: I once heard you say you judge the strength of a piece, not on pageviews/shares, but on whether it moves people to email you. By this standard, what’s been your ‘strongest’ post and why do you think it connected so strongly with people?

MM: I look at and consider everything — traditional analytics like pageviews, bounce rate, shares, etc. — as well as qualitative feedback: how many emails I get about a piece, how positive/negative the comments are, how long people still email me about an article after it’s published, even how many people mention an article to me when they meet me in person.

When you put all these things together, you get a really interesting perspective on your content. Some articles perform fantastically in terms of analytics, but they fizzle out quickly and don’t have a lasting impact on the site. Other articles perform poorly in terms of traffic and shares, but I’ll get a steady stream of emails telling me how much they loved the article and how important it was for them. When I look at my archive, I want every article to have some sort of value for the site and business. Some articles are much better at grabbing people’s attention and maybe getting them to stick around for a bit. Other articles aren’t as glamorous but they seem to have a really deep impact on people. Other articles are useful for very specific topics like how to handle long-distance relationships or how to get better at writing. These aren’t going to appeal to everyone, but they’re going to have an extremely high amount of value for a minority of readers. Ultimately, I see my entire archive as one collective work. And every article should be adding something useful or interesting to it. If an article isn’t, I will often remove it from the site.

KE: You’ve been blogging for nearly 10 years now. What’s easier now than it was 10 years ago (for bloggers)? And what’s harder?

MM: It’s easier to start now, mainly because the tools are so much better. Pretty much anybody can open up an account at Medium, write something, post it on Facebook, and within a day have a couple dozen people reading their ideas. Back in the day, not only were things more difficult technologically, but getting those first few dozen readers (not counting your friends and family) felt almost impossible. I think I blogged for a year before I ever had more than 100 people come to my site.

What’s harder these days is that the internet is much more crowded and there’s almost too much information out there. So, while it’s easier to get your work in front of people, it’s also that much harder to make a meaningful impact on them and hold their attention.

KE: Your development as a writer and blogger over the past 10 or so years has been very iterative and organic. Do you feel people entering the blogging sphere these days are in too much of a hurry to achieve ‘success’ and forget that it takes time to develop their craft?

MM: I feel like a lot of people start blogging because they want to start an internet business, but they have no idea what they want to do or sell, so they figure they’ll just start writing and see what happens. On the one hand, that’s better than doing nothing. Blogging is a good way to test out ideas and see if they’re sticking.

But the truth is, a blog requires years of work to get to the place where you can even consider making money. As a business plan, blogs kind of suck. You need a great brand and great ideas and be a great writer, all at once, and then you have to do it for at least a year non-stop, and then, maybe, you can start making some money off of it. It’s not going to be practical for the vast majority of people.

It’s for this reason that I always advise people that if they’re going to start a blog, it should either a) be because they love writing about something so much, they can’t help but do it anyway, or b) the blog should be supporting some other internet venture they’re starting. There needs to either be passion or purpose there, otherwise past the honeymoon of the first six months or so writing, there will be nothing to keep you excited about blogging.

KE: Your writing philosophy is ‘be so good they can’t ignore you’. Have you always taken this view? Or was it a mental shift you made somewhere along the way? And what exactly do you do to ‘be so good they can’t ignore you’?

MM: I’ve never been one to half-ass anything. Whenever I get into something, I get obsessive about it and want to be the best I can possibly be. That’s always just been an aspect of my personality, and also a part of my personal ethic: if you’re going to do something, strive for excellence in it, no matter what. As the famous MLK quote goes: if you’re a street-sweeper, sweep the streets the same way Shakespeare wrote poems or Picasso painted.

On top of that, let’s be honest, a large percentage of the content on the internet is absolute garbage — lots of lazy copy/paste jobs and scammy marketing. In that sense, developing your own writing ability is practical to differentiate yourself and your content. If you and three other bloggers are saying the same thing, then people will gravitate to whoever says it best, whoever can communicate with the most power and clarity. This is incredibly valuable in the long-run.

As for how I got good at writing: I think I just took it very seriously much earlier than most bloggers. Back around 2010, when I decided to get serious about my blog, I went out and bought half a dozen books about writing and how to improve at it. I started reading famous non-fiction writers such as David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson. I started reading literature by greats like Hemingway and Tolstoy. I started dabbling in fiction and poetry in my spare time. On the blog itself, I began to experiment with different forms and styles, longer posts about a wider variety of subjects, and became much better at editing — as that’s 90% of what good writing really is: good editing.

KE: With great power (i.e. over 2 million readers a month) comes great responsibility. How seriously do you take this responsibility/how does it sit with you?

MM: I try to make it clear as often as I can to my readers that I don’t have all the answers. I reject the “guru” model of self-help — where someone stands on stage with all the answers. I write most of what I write not because I have all the answers, but rather because I’m struggling (or have struggled) with the same questions as my readers. In that sense, I see my writing as a very public form of therapy.

The ‘cover blurb’ on Mark’s home page.

KE: The sub-title of your blog is ‘Personal Development That Doesn’t Suck’. And that’s a pretty accurate summary of what you write about. I’ve always wondered if the fact you’re not a psychologist allow you to say things about self-improvement you wouldn’t be able to if you were a psychologist? And whether you consciously leverage this?

MM: Not really. My language may be more colourful, but the underlying principles are the same. A lot of psychologists have told me that they recommend my articles to their clients — which always makes me feel good.

KE: You have two guys working for you who have their Masters in Psychology. Do they ever pull you up and say ‘Hey Mark, you can’t say that’ or ‘it would be irresponsible to say that’? How much influence do they have over what does and doesn’t get published.

MM: They occasionally keep me in check and make sure I don’t say something that’s out of line. But at this point, I’ve done so much research over the past five years that their value is less in teaching me things about the subject and more in helping me understand specific research or data I come across. They’re trained to read research in a way that I’m not.

KE: Vulnerability is the tool bloggers tend to use to create a connection with their readers, yet there is a real absence of personal vulnerability in your writing. Is that a conscious choice? How do you create connection in its absence?

MM: I actually think most bloggers, especially when they’re starting out, have a tendency to write about themselves too much. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to be open and transparent with your readership. But ultimately, if you’re sharing something from your own life, that story should be driving some larger point that is going to be relevant to your readers’ lives.

I’ve learned over the years that people respond much better when you talk about their problems directly, rather than hinting at them through your own experiences. My own experiences are nice, and sometimes I share them when they’re relevant (my book has a lot more personal stuff than my blog), but if I can get a point across without inserting myself into it all the time, I find it more effective to do it that way.

KE: As mentioned previously, you have over 2 million people reading your blog every month. How do you monetise that readership?

MM: Two books (one self-published, one traditionally published), online courses, and I’m experimenting with a subscription model where people can get access to extra content for a small monthly fee. That’s still a work-in-progress, but it’s going well so far.

Mark’s unique, on-brand call to subscribe.

KE: You’ve said the main reason you went with a publisher for The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was because you felt that would introduce your work to readers you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to access. Has this panned out?

MM: It definitely has. I’ve been on the radio and in a number of newspapers, hit the NYTimes bestseller list, and promoted in hundreds of book stores around the country. I’ve sold way more copies of the book than I ever would solely through my email list. So, I’m very happy with the decision.

KE: What’s next for Mark Manson? More pieces like The American Dream is Killing Us? Next book? 

MM: I will start writing another book early next year. That one will likely come out in 2018. As for the blog, every time I finish a book, I find myself feeling the need to stretch out and dabble in other topics. That’s why there have been a number of posts this year about culture, politics and technology. Some of them have been better-received than others. So, we’ll see how it goes. But with my writing, I aim to always be moving ahead, always experimenting and exploring. A repetitive blog is a dead blog.

—–

Kelly Exeter is a writer, editor, and designer who’s endlessly fascinated by the power of the stories we tell ourselves. She explores these on her blog and in her books Practical Perfection and Your Best Year Ever. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post The Subtle art of Successful Blogging – an interview with NYT Bestseller Mark Manson appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

New emojis have given me cause to celebrate this week, as has the encouragment of early sucking – read on!

The Importance of Sucking at a New Job for a Year Or Two | Ross McCammon

I can’t stress the importance of this! Even if the “new job” is your blog. You need to suck at it, and suck at it early so you can get better at it faster! Don’t be afraid of doing something other than perfect.

8 Ways to Have More Time | Chris Gillebeau

Again, because time is the one thing we all say we lack – I LOVE all of these rules.

Why Instagram Captions are the New Blogging | Select All

Someone said to me the other day “Instagram has killed blogging”, and for the first time, I agreed. Not killed it entirely, but definitely helped shut down the camaraderie and closeness the blogging of yore used to encompass. Not bad, just different. And I’ve definitely seen people soar to great success with this method, yet don’t really have much traction on a traditional blog.

The iPhone is finally getting a facepalm emoji | The Telegraph

*Does a happy dance*

Six Questions to Assess if You May Be Addicted to Social Media | Psych Central

I know, we have to be on social media all the time in this business. But it’s not great to be on the “addicted” side of too much. Have you crossed that line?

Social Media “Influencers”: A Marketing Experiment Grows into a Mini Economy | The Washington Post

“In other words, while influencer marketing rose to prominence as a raw, credible antidote to the slick world of television and glossy magazines, it has metastasized into something every bit as calculated” – for some, this is so, so true. But as usual, plenty to think about.

5 Reasons You Need a Content Marketing Strategy Right Now | Entrepreneur

You can only go so far without a plan!

Plenty of Room on the Island | Seth Godin

Can’t agree with this more.

Using Instagram to Sell Products Just Became That Much Easier | Hootsuite

Hooray!

How to Repurpose Your Snapchat Stories | Social Media Examiner

Sometimes my best work is where the least amount of people see it. Well, no more!

What has caught your eye this week?

The post Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately? appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

Unless you’re writing instructions or technical copy, writing is a creative process. When writers are in the flow, they work in bursts of energy, hammering out paragraphs without stopping to think about editing.

Unedited writing is, in the words of Annie Lamott: shitty. And so it should be. If you’re stopping every three words to check what you’re doing, you’re going to take days to write a disjointed, awkward piece. That’s where using an editing checklist comes in.

Editing is a misunderstood practice

A common misconception is that editing is looking at the spelling and grammar. Maybe in the days before word processors, that’s what it was, but now we have Grammarly, Google Docs and a wide range of tools to help us fix common errors in seconds.

What’s important for the post-Grammarly editor is style, fact-checking and readability. Some of these elements are technical, and you can reduce them to a formula, but as I’ve learned since being the gateway everything on the Process Street blog goes through before publication, you can’t ‘teach’ style.

In this article, I want to share with you an internal process I’ve developed for editing articles and hope that it helps you, too. It includes:

• Copy editing
• Editing for SEO
• Optimizing your visuals

Part 1: Copy editing

Since this part is going to take the most amount of time, it’s best to get it out of the way right now.
Before focusing on the finer details (SEO and visuals), make sure that the words are correct. Let’s get into it.

Analyze the article’s structure

We know this one from school.

An article should have an intro, where it gets the reader’s attention, conveys the value of what they’re about to say and sets expectations.

Then, it should go on to make a series of structured points, all living up to the promises of the title and intro.

To wrap things up, you need a conclusion to summarize your points, call the reader to action and leave them with something to think about.

(Source: Lotem Design)
While reading the article, think about whether the article follows a logical sequence, all the way through.

For more information about article structure, check this out (which, of course, has a great structure).

Check spelling and grammar with Grammarly

As I was saying, editing isn’t only spelling and grammar, but it is part of it. It’s the bare minimum, and will catch the most obvious mistakes in the eyes of the reader.

Check you’ve corrected all the words and phrases flagged by Grammarly.

Grammarly isn’t perfect, but it’s the best tool around. It’ll catch incorrect comma placement, confused words and all spelling errors, but it doesn’t compensate for that alchemical ingredient — style.

After reading through the article once with Grammarly and making corrections, move onto fact checking.

Check for inconsistencies without Grammarly

Grammarly can’t flag everything up. As pointed out by Ian Luke on ProBlogger, some terms like ebook / e-book / eBook are a matter of taste, not concrete.

Grammarly or another spell-checking tool could miss that, so you have to turn it off sometimes and let your brain do the work.

Fact-check the article

This step is far more important for news pieces than personal blog posts, but you do always need to make sure you’re backing your facts up. A good method of catching opinion presented as fact is by asking yourself “how do you know this?” for every statement you read.

Check all numbers, facts, quotes and percentages have a source link.

A good way to find a citation for unsourced statements is with Google Docs’ research toolbar. It brings up a mini-version of Google search in the right-hand pane and you can search keywords to find a source to back the claim up. Ideally, however, your claims will come from sources in the first place.

Remove filler words (especially adverbs)

There are, there is, however, regardless, perhaps, possibly, rather, a bit, well.

Filler words make it sound like we’re nervous about what we’re writing, and adverbs don’t often add anything to the sentence.

Here’s a list of the scoundrels: 297 Flabby Words and Phrases That Rob Your Writing of All Its Power.

It’s not reasonable to expect you to check for all 297, but check that list of filler words while editing to get a feel for the words to cut.

Convert from the passive to active voice

The passive voice is unclear. It either clouds the facts of what you’re talking about or sounds long-winded.
According to The Daily Post, you can recognize passive sentences by looking for these things:

• A form of the verb “to be”
• A past participle (usually the -ed form of a verb)
• Optionally the word “by” followed by a noun

Passive: The window was broken.

Active: Ben broke the window.

Passive: The ice hockey match was hosted by Russia this year.

Active: Russia hosted the ice hockey match this year.

Seek and destroy passive sentences.

Cut out the cliches

If you condense Orwell’s fantastic essay “Politics and the English Language” down to just a few points, a major one would be:

What do I mean by cliches? I don’t think I could do a better job than this huge list of 681, to be honest. So, let me give you a few examples and leave it at that.

• avoid like the plague
• take the bull by the horns
• on a roll
• wake-up call
• pull your punches

When you read a cliche, your brain shuts off and doesn’t cognate the meaning because it’s seen the phrase so many times. You don’t want your readers to switch off, do you?

Weed out weak verbs and adjectives

One strong word can replace three weak ones with ease. Instead of padding writing with adverbs, adjectives, and extra fluff, use strong words to convey meaning.
Example:

• Think up a plan —> Devise a plan
• Go and see the world —> Travel the world
• Not very good —> Atrocious
• A bit of a pain —> Excruciating
• Quite interesting actually —> Fascinating

A good way to CTRL+F for these is to search for ‘very’, ‘quite’, and other useless modifiers.

Don’t stress over commas, but be consistent

I know, I said already to use Grammarly early on to catch grammar mistakes, but one debatable rule concerns commas.

Since we’re writing to be read, not to pass an English exam, ensure the writer uses commas to help the text flow. The AP Stylebook advises against it, whereas Oxford University demands it, so pick your side.

As long as you’re consistent in your usage, it doesn’t matter. A writer’s aim is to put their thoughts into words. If you’re going mad working out whether to adopt the Oxford comma, ask yourself the question: “Will it help the reader understand my point?”. There are many cases where it does.

To use Grammarly’s example:

1. “I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty”
2. “I love my parents, Lady Gaga, and Humpty Dumpty”

Which is less confusing?

Type like you talk

Convert your cognitions into words befitting of the common vernacular. Write using everyday language. If you’re trying to think of more intellectual-sounding synonyms, don’t bother. You don’t become an authority by alienating your audience. Type like you talk.

For a solid guide on this topic, read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

Self-editing? Leave the article for at least a day

Writing is a draining process. If you’re anything like me, you’ll not have the energy to edit after the wide-eyed coffee-fueled writing process.

You’ll also be too attached to the piece to be objective. After a day, when you re-read the article, you’ll find parts of it that you hate, and it’ll be obvious passages need rewriting.

“The professional writer says, ‘It is almost certain that most of what I write will not resonate with most people who read it, but over time, I will gain an audience who trusts me to, at the very least, be interesting.’” — Seth Godin

Part 2: Editing for SEO

Writing with SEO as a key concern is the simplest way to… write slow, awkward articles. Others might disagree, but I find that on-page SEO is much easier to edit in than to keep as a consideration all the way through. Maybe you’re writing an article with a keyword already in mind? That should be more than enough preparation because the whole article is what you’re targeting.

After the copy editing, it’s time to add in on-page optimization for search. Backlinko recently updated its mega-guide to on-page SEO with an amazing infographic, so let me break that down into action steps for editors.

Put the keyword at the start of your H1 title

Search engines put more weight on the keyword in line with how early on in the title it occurs. While it’s not an exact science, it’s best to put the keyword in the first half of your title.

For example, instead of ’10 Checklists for to Help Your Startup With Employee Onboarding‘ edit this to ’10 Employee Onboarding Checklists for Startups’.

Additionally, your title should be in H1. This is very likely a default if you use WordPress, but check and make sure in the HTML of your article in preview mode to see that the title is wrapped in <h1> tags.

In Chrome, right-click on a page and go to Inspect Element. You should be able to hover over the article title and see which H tag it’s wrapped in.

Make sure the slug is only your target keyword

Instead of your slug (everything after your domain.com in the article URL) looking like this:

example.com/blog/catgories/editing/checklists/2016/01/editing-checklist-for-content-marketers-and-their-mothers

Set it to be just this:

example.com/editing-checklist

Not only does it look better and is easier to remember, search engines prefer it.

Include images, videos, infographic, embeds

As well as not boring your reader to tears, multimedia increases time spent on the page, which signals to Google that the post was interesting enough for the user to stick around. A 2-minute video could increase the time on page by that time, for example.

Plus, media breaks up the text and makes the post scannable. A reader scrolling further down the page is another signal to Google of quality content.
What’s better?

Straighten up your subheading hierarchy

With your title tag in H1, you need to make sure that your subheads are in H2 and any sub-subheadings in H3.

As a general rule, you can never use an H2 without an H1, never an H3 without an H2, and so on.

This should come naturally if you structured the article properly in the first place.

Use your exact keyword 2-3 times in the body

Your keyword should appear in the body 2-3 times. It’s important that one of these occurrences is within the first 150 words of the article. This will also force you to cut the intro down and get to the point, which never hurts!

To check this, CTRL + F your keyword.

Use 2-4 outbound links every 1,000 words

It’s well known that outbound links (to sources or further reading) increase the authority of the article because Google knows it’s well sourced. A new guideline from Brian Dean gets more specific. Brain recommends you use 2-4 outbound links in every 1,000 words you write.

If you’re writing a well-sourced piece of work, you shouldn’t have to work hard for this.

Internally link (like Wikipedia)

Golden Age SEO Joke: How do you get 10 backlinks in one post? Internal linking, my good mate!

Believe it or not, even Wikipedia has an SEO strategy, and internal linking is a big part of it. Why? Because link juice flows through your pages according to where they link to. So, if you get backlinks to a page with plenty of internal links, the authority passes to the pages you linked internally.

Internally linking both the keywords of the target pages, plus leading phrases like ‘ported to several other platforms’ (begs the question ‘which other platforms?’), helps both SEO and reader engagement on your site overall.

Part 3: Optimizing Your Visuals

Visuals increase people’s willingness to read your content by 80%. Garbage visuals, however, do you no favors.
Get rid of any pictures that look like this:

Which brings me to my first point.

Please… Get rid of those stock images

At Process Street, we have a general rule that helps our blog posts not look godawful.

All images should either be custom graphics or screenshots. Just take a look at this collection HubSpot put together of 13 hilarious stock images. Want your blog post to look like a non-parody version of that?

As Kathryn Aragon says, images should not be:

• Inserted willy-nilly, just to have an image.
• Trite or overused stock photos.
• Thought of only as share-bait.
• Boring or irrelevant.

The point is, stock images are shoved in for the sake of it. What could a clinically smiling guy with a briefcase be illustrating to the reader? (Apart from ‘the person who wrote this hates good things’.)

Make sure your media fits full-width

There’s something visually pleasing about aligning your text with your media by keeping both the same width.

Depending on the column width of your blog, make sure your image will fit. For a visual reference, the column width of Process Street is 800 pixels.

You want your images to look like this:

Not this:

(sorry, quaint farming blog :( )

Use a wide range of visuals

This might seem like I’m assuming you all have no attention span, but seriously, a variety of visual stimuli is better for reader engagement. Try to balance between:

• Gifs
• Videos
• Infographics
• Screenshots
• Other embeds (like checklists, hint hint)
• Custom graphics (we use a range of templates and custom SVGs)

With a range of media, you’re more likely to keep readers on the page. If you’ve got relevant podcast episodes or audio of some sort, these are also great to embed using a service like Soundcloud.

Optimize your titles and alt text

It’s important to optimize your image titles and alt text for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it aids your on-page efforts as I talked about earlier. If you have supporting alt text in line with your keyword choices, then it boosts the optimization of your page.

Secondly, you get the chance to rank your images in Google Images. People don’t often talk about image backlinks being important, but Process Street consistently gets a few solid links per month thanks to custom image attribution. If those images weren’t properly optimized with alt text and titles, the linker wouldn’t have known they exist.

Keep custom graphics consistent

At Process Street, we have a selection of backgrounds and SVGs, used in conjunction with three main colors and one font.

That keeps our images consistent, but not uniform enough to be boring. This step stems from the need for having a solid visual style guide for your brand and blog.

For more information about the power of visual content and how to create it, check out this infographic from Digital Information World.

If you don’t have brand guidelines to refer to, you can create some. They don’t have to be fancy 30-page PDF documents like this one (screenshot below) but use those for inspiration.

Having resources like that for writers to refer to will save plenty of time in the editing process on your end.

You can’t edit a bad post into a quality post

After all this, there’s something to be wary of — you can’t edit a bad post and turn it into a top-notch post. Editors traditionally start as writers because editing is harder. It takes a keen eye, great taste, and strong analytical skills. If you’re an editor working alongside a junior writer, the best course of action while running this checklist is to add comments (either in Google Docs or screenshots with annotations) to help the writer improve.

Editing in silence doesn’t help the writer get better.

Get this post as an interactive editing checklist

Click here to get this guide as a checklist you can run through for every post you edit. It’s handy for teaching new writers, and also training yourself to be a tougher editor.

Bear one thing in mind…

Did you find this post useful? Do you have anything to add? Let me know in the comments, and we can have a chat. :)

Benjamin Brandall is the head of content marketing at Process Street. When he’s not at work, he runs obscure entertainment blog Secret Cave. Find him on Twitter here.

The post The Ultimate Editing Checklist for Content Marketers appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

This is a guest contribution from Matt Clough.

There’s nothing like the rush of a new idea forming in your mind, the adrenalin that comes from suddenly have a clear focus and direction. This is as true with blogging as it is anything else.

If you’ve got an exciting new blogging project, it’s very tempting to get the not particularly exciting stuff – hosting, blog platform selection – over and done with as quickly as possible in order to move on to truly bringing your idea to life.

But wait! As hard as it can be to put the brakes on an idea and take a slightly more measured approach, it is absolutely critical to do so if you want your new idea to survive the initial burning passion phase. By not looking to the future and failing to plan for the route your new website may take, you can seriously impede its ability to thrive – particularly in terms of SEO.

SEO – short term actions for long term goals

It’s a tried and tested truism that to be truly successful when it comes to attracting organic traffic from search engines like Google, you have to be willing to stick at it. Some people see results in weeks; many have to wait several months to really begin to see any significant traction.

However it’s a common mistake to assume that because SEO is a long-term traffic strategy, the actions you take to get the ball rolling can be spread out over a long period of time, too. In fact, some websites can be left rueing decisions taken in their first days and weeks of existence years later when their SEO potential is restricted.

So what are some of the key choices that are imperative to get right if your blog is to become an organic traffic success story?

Hosting

Hosting is important from both a site speed and a reliability point of view. Whilst it can be tempting to find the cheapest hosting solution, paying a little more can lead to a site with much faster server response speeds that can relied upon to keep running consistently.

Site speed is an important piece of the on-site optimisation puzzle if you’re to encourage Google to reward your site with strong rankings, and no amount of tweaking aspects of your site can ultimately overcome a slow server.

Site reliability and SEO have an obvious connection. If your site struggles to deliver on what it promises visitors from search engines, they’ll inevitably return to their search, informing the engine at the same time that they’ve bounced back. Search engine crawlers will also take a dim view if they repeatedly find they can’t access a page.

Domain URL

Choosing a URL is one of the more fun set-up tasks, but it also has a significant impact on your SEO.

The main part of your URL should follow your branding, rather than chasing rankings with an exact match domain. Domains centered around your target keywords have had a decreasing effectiveness within Google’s algorithm for some time, meaning they’re no longer the potent SEO tactic they once were. Additionally, going after one specific niche or keyword can act as a limitation when you want to expand your blog’s horizons in the future.

The TLD (top level domain) part of your blog’s URL – where you decide if you want a .com website or a variation such as .net – is also important. If you’re blogging from somewhere with a country-specific TLD, such as the United Kingdom, you should think long and hard about your audience. If your content will only ever be relevant to that country, consider using the country TLD for added trust from users. If, however, you think your blog will be applicable to readers the world-over, don’t commit to just one country’s code, which makes it much harder to make an impact upon foreign rankings.

CMS

Unless this is your first time at ProBlogger, the chances are you will have read the comprehensive guide on how to start a blog. Here the importance of selecting a blogging platform that suits your needs is stressed, and the guide will serve as a fantastic resource to help you make the right choice.

Your CMS, or content management system, is essentially the engine that powers your blog. Not only is it where you create your posts and pages, it’s also what allows you to connect with new plug ins and add functionality to your website. Of the hundreds of options out there, WordPress is by far the most popular choice for blogs.

The key thing for preserving your SEO potential when choosing a CMS is to leave your options open for the future. If there’s a possibility of branching out into selling products from your blog, for example, choosing an out-of-the-box option that offers no eCommerce support will have serious ramifications.

Most CMS nowadays offer a strong degree of SEO-friendliness, but where problems arise is when a site has to change their CMS in order to continue to grow. Replatforming a site is a project brimming with pitfalls and can be a major undertaking for someone without development and SEO experience.

Permalinks

Of the four areas we’ve covered so far, permalinks tend to be the easiest to change (if you’re using a CMS such as WordPress), however that’s not to say that they don’t still pose plenty of future headaches if you don’t set them up in an optimal fashion. Google likes permalink to follow a consistent and easy-to-understand pattern. If faced with two identical pages, one of which has the URL www.example.com/example-product-name and the other which uses www.example.com/1223334444, the search engine will have an easy decision to make.

As Richard Richsh talks about here, there are a dazzling array of different permalink structures you can use. While there are some golden rules to follow to make your links SEO-friendly, there are plenty of options to decide which structure fits your site best.

As with picking your CMS, the key thing from an SEO perspective is to choose an optimised taxonomy for your URLs that doesn’t restrict your options in future. For example, if you plan on introducing keyword-optimised landing pages in the future, then it’s best to avoid using very short URLs on early blog posts – you may need these for later.

Changing a permalink structure, like your CMS, isn’t impossible. However, it can throw up a lot of problems, and it’s always a nerve-wracking moment when you press the button to change the URLs for all your ranking pages!

Keyword targets

While it can seem a bit early to think about keyword targets when, in all likelihood, you’re not sure exactly what direction you’ll end up taking your blog in, conducting some research here can be invaluable.

Even if only implemented upon your homepage, getting into the habit of identifying keywords that you want to target is never a bad idea. The keywords utilised on your homepage also play a role in helping search engine crawlers to understand the main theme of your blog.

If, for example, you ran a makeup review blog but didn’t mention keywords such as “makeup review” on the homepage, then search engines would potentially have a tough time deciphering whether your aim was to review and inform audiences or if you were selling or promoting the products you were covering.

Post structure

Similarly to permalinks, post structure isn’t something that you’re tied to forever once you’ve chosen it. That said, it can be a huge pain to go back through hundreds of old posts and laboriously change them, one by one, to a new style.

Generally speaking, it’s great to keep all your posts consistent from a structural point of view. It helps readers move from post to post with greater ease, makes your older posts look less dated and gives your blog an overall more professional feel.

If that’s not enough to convince you, it also has an SEO benefit. Structuring your posts with the correct headings will make them much easier to understand for Google and other search engines.

Perhaps the most common error on post structure is multiple uses of the H1 tag, called ‘Heading 1’ in WordPress. Ideally, you only want one H1 tag per page. Many blog themes will automatically turn your post title into an H1, meaning you shouldn’t use the main heading option anywhere in the body of the post. There are no limits on how many H2 tags, H3 tags or any other denomination that you use, but aim to use them in a logical manner, with headings as H2s, sub-headings as H3s, and so on.

Conclusion

When it comes to blogging, it’s never too late to make some major changes, whether it’s to your hosting, your platform or your post structure. However, it can be a major upheaval. The downside is that for many, without making certain changes, your blog’s potential to rank for big keywords may be permanently hindered.

By making sure that certain boxes are ticked with the information above, you can save yourself countless headaches in the future and spend your time focusing on the important stuff!

Matt Clough is the Head of Search at Kubix Media and has written on marketing for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, The Next Web, and others.

The post Don’t Kill Your SEO Chances Before Your Blog Has Even Begun appeared first on ProBlogger.