Archive for the ‘Blogging Tips’ Category
by Amanda DiSilvestro on February 8th, 2012
Everyone knows that readers scroll down a blog until they find a title they like. I do it all the time, and why shouldn’t I? A title is supposed to let me know what the article is about, and I am not interested in spending my time reading a bunch of articles that don’t interest me. Ironically enough, this is the attitude that I as a blog editor try so hard to counteract. As a blog owner, you want every article to be of interest to someone who comes to your blog. You want them to see that catchy title and decide that the article is worthy of their precious time.
In other words, the title matters. The title is the first impression of the article. Think about how important it is to make a good first impression on a job interview, on a date, when someone pulls up to your house. It matters, and a title follows these same rules. The title of all your blog posts should do four things:
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Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blog post titles, catchy headline
by James Johnson on February 7th, 2012
Building a brand around your website isn’t a simple process, not only do you have to create amazing content that readers want to engage with, you have to work off-site to spread the word about that content in a manner that peaks the interest of readers.
Unfortunately many new bloggers and even some seasoned writers fail to properly use social media properly, destroying the work they put into their posts before they have a chance to go viral.
In this section we’ll examine some of the ways you can destroy your blog by become over zealous about the use of social media.
1. Destroying Your Facebook Engagement Score
I’ve written about Facebook engagement numbers in the past. Many bloggers love to throw up 5, 10 or even more posts on their Facebook wall each day without realizing that your posts display to a decreasing number of Facebook page fans if your past posts show no or very little interaction. For example if you have 1000 fans but only one person likes a post, shares it or comments on it your engagement for that post is just .1% which means Facebook will find your posts to be lacking in content readers want and will therefore only show your next Facebook post to a few of your 1000 fans (typically better then 1.5% engagement is best). To correct this problem you should create engagement statements or questions around only your best posts while pushing your readers to ask questions, leave statements and share those posts. As your engagement score increases the traffic you drive to your website will increase with it. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: Blog Engagement, engagement, Reader Interaction, Social Media
by BP Guest Blogger on February 6th, 2012
Blogs are a dime a dozen. Seriously, take a few minutes to type “blog” in Google’s web search, and you will get an unbelievable number of results. Those are only the ones that have kept the keyword somewhere in their SEO results. There are millions of blogs, some successful and some not-so-successful. Some are based on images and others on writing. You will never be able to get a very good picture of just how many are out there, but the thought is a little overwhelming.
The best thing a blogger in today’s over-saturated market can do is carve out a nice, little piece of cyber space and keep it locked down. But it takes skill to do this and to build up a good number of loyal readers. Since it isn’t a matter of bringing in new traffic, but rather keeping the readership you have first and foremost.
You can do this with hard work, plenty of content and – most importantly – a lot of writing practice. Which is why you should practice being a blogger daily, keeping up with your posts and making sure you don’t fall behind.
But you have a busy life, and it might seem like an impossible task to blog every day. Use these helpful tips to pull it off. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: Blogger, tips
by Amanda DiSilvestro on February 1st, 2012
Many do not realize that there are two types of blogging: Blogging as a hobby, and blogging as a career. Aside from sharing the same name, these two types of blogging are quite different. They each require different skillsets and different mindsets. Unfortunately, many bloggers have the mentality that if they blog for fun then they can make blogging their career. While this is very true in many cases, this decision could go very wrong, very quickly.
Being a great writer and having experience writing for a blog is absolutely the foundation when hoping to start a career as a blogger. This, however, is not always enough. Maintaining a profitable blog is difficult work and requires constant upkeep. Below are some of the things that will change when you go from blogging for fun to blogging for a profit:
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Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blogging for free, blogging your career, flipping a blog for profit
by James Johnson on January 31st, 2012
As a visual person I like to create content on my websites that not only allows for a good read but also provides my readers with visual stimulation. However once my readers begin to engage with my content offsite I have found in the past that my content didn’t live up to expectations. To be honest I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to constantly tweak my social media sites to offer nice graphical interfaces.
That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when the team at InstaBG approached our team about a new program that allows users to automatically cull images from Instagram and feature them as Twitter backgrounds. The best part of the program? It can change your background daily based on the Instagram criteria you provide.
To start using InstaBG users simply click on the large “Sign in with Twitter Account” button that appears on the InstaBG.com front page.
Once you have authorized the account the following setup options will be shown:
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Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: InstaBG, Instagram, twitter
by James Johnson on January 31st, 2012
Back in the good old days when blogging first started all you needed to do was WRITE great content and you were set. These days however the web has come a long way, making it simple for bloggers to create dynamic content that can grab a users imagination both on-site and off-site.
Whether you’re writing a political blog, a blog about technology or managing a site about healthy eating these five types of content can help better engage your audience while providing more ways to reach new followers.
1. HD Video
I recently purchased a new HD (1080P) camcorder from Samsung for $250 and it’s the best investment I’ve made in years. These days readers want to put a face with content and if possible they want to see example for what you write about (sweeping landscapes for a travel blog, tech reviews for a technology website, etc). HD video allows users to become even more engaged since they are likely to watch your videos in full screen mode which means they are giving you their full attention.
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Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blog content, Blog Content Types, Content Creation, Types Of Content
by Jonathan Bailey on January 25th, 2012
If you blog long enough and get enough traffic, you’ll inevitably find yourself on the mailing list for various companies that send out press releases. This moment comes with a strange mix of emotions as it is both annoying to be getting a lot of seemingly spammy email and flattering to be thought of as important enough to target.
However, as someone who came from a journalism background, I had been trained to distrust press releases. To many journalists, press releases are only useful for lazy reporters who don’t want to do their own reporting or can’t find out about news themselves. Instead of using the company’s press release, you were supposed to call and get your own quote.
But while that approach is certainly ideal, and maybe even practical for reporters at major publications, it certainly isn’t feasible for most bloggers. Not only do most of us lack the access to trivially call up a relevant company and get a quick response, but if we do the response is, usually, the exact same one in the press release.
The reason for this is simple. While companies want to engage bloggers and other thought-leaders, there’s just too many of them to sit down and answer questions from all of them. So, if you want to be alerted to the latest news in your field and have multiple viewpoints in your posts, you need to learn to stop worrying and start loving press releases. There simply is no other way. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips
by James Johnson on January 24th, 2012
First it was strong written content, then it was killer podcasts and now it’s video. The web and specifically blogging is still in an infancy period and for that reason bloggers tend to jump from one type of medium to another in terms of how they present their content to readers.
The truth is while video is great for supplementing a post and podcasts can be taken on the road and to various other locations there’s still no substitute for the written word.
Using video as part of your content creation won’t kill your blog, however if utilized incorrectly video can become an annoying hindrance that drivers users away. Let’s take a look at several ways video can kill your blog. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: video, Video Blog, Video Blogging
by BP Guest Blogger on January 23rd, 2012
A question which is asked quite often is: ‘When my website goes live, how do I market it?’ As we all know, getting visitors to your website within the first 3 – 6 months can be an uphill battle with very little reward.
We are going to talk through the steps needed to get your website seen by the most relevant audience, from offline marketing, all the way through to search engine optimisation (SEO). Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: Facebook, Web Marketing, websites
by BP Guest Blogger on January 16th, 2012
The Panda update way back in April has reminded us all of the importance in websites offering high quality content in order to retain good positions in the SERPs for highly competitive key terms. But what exactly is high quality content? How often should you be publishing content? How many words are in a high quality article? These are all questions which are still relatively up for debate. But there are some common sense practices that you can put into place today in order to help you put together a robust content strategy for 2012. Those already affected by Google’s Panda update and slowly recovering should only see it as a warning as there are likely to be continued updates which will affect the way in which you produce and publish content. The freshness update at the end of October 2011 is the first indicator that plenty more is yet to come. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: content strategy, seo
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