Archive for the ‘Blogging Tips’ Category
by David Peralty on June 22nd, 2009
If you’ve got a blog, you’ve no doubt had to come up with countless headlines for your posts. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes it seems downright impossible to decide on one.
Everyone deals with it, but there isn’t really that much being written about how to write great headlines. Thankfully, Dean Rieck, over on CopyBlogger.com, has written a post about just that, called “9 Proven Headline Formulas That Sell Like Crazy“.
He outlines 9 formulas to follow when writing headlines, and gives some examples to get the juices flowing.
Here’s a sample from the second formula in the list…
One of the first techniques you should always explore is transforming your major benefit into a headline. After all, your number one selling point should be up front. It stands the best chance of selecting the right audience and preparing them to respond. Plus, if they read nothing else, they have at least seen the best selling point you have to offer. If you have trouble writing this kind of headline, it’s a sure sign you need to think a bit more about your product or service.
If you, like me and so many many others, have trouble coming up with the best headlines from time to time, or just want some tips on how to give your headlines a little extra something, check out the full list on CopyBlogger.com.
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blogging, copyblogger, headlines, list
by David Peralty on June 17th, 2009
The concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to be getting more and more pushed these days, and while there are issues I have with it, it’s definitely something every blogger should at the VERY least be aware of, and understand the some basic concepts.
That’s where MarketingPilgrim.com’s post “7-Minute SEO Guide” comes in.
If you’ve got a few minutes (or 7 if you want to be a little more specific…), I highly suggest checking it out. It’s got a lot of great info, and comes in a bite sized format that anyone can quickly get through and end up with a better understanding of what SEO is and how to use it to your blog’s advantage.
Here’s a taste…
1. Structure – the web language used, navigation, and rich media all have an impact on whether the search engines are able to crawl and understand the theme of your web site.
2. Content – search engine spiders are really quite dumb. Your web content needs to match-up with the user’s query or your site won’t be found.
3. Links – the search engines look at the quantity, quality, and relevance of the links pointing to a web site.
It goes into more detail for each of those categories, though it’s still very much a “quick outline” more than a full-on deeply detailed guide to SEO. Thankfully if you want to learn more once you’ve gone through this initial quick-start guide, they link to a couple of EXTREMELY detailed and helpful guides to all aspects of SEO. So if you have some time, and want to learn a heck of a lot about SEO that may well seriously help your site (especially if you happen to be making one of the common SEO mistakes that are easily fixable), I’d suggest checking it out.
It can get a bit complex, but at it’s roots SEO is a fairly simply idea that every blogger should at least have a basic grasp on. Your blog will thank you, in a figurative “get more search engine traffic” kind of way.
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: marketingpilgrim.com, search engine optimization, seo, tips
by David Peralty on June 8th, 2009
In a recent guest post on problogger.net, Maryan Pelland of ontext.com, talks about how easy it can be to fall into the trap of trusting information online.
Here’s a sample from the intro…
Bad and inaccurate information from websites isn’t new. The Internet can be a fabulous tool, but it should not be the sole source of information for any factual writing from blogs, to research for fiction, to magazine or newspaper articles. Anyone can create a website and fill it with text. There’s never a guarantee that information online is accurate or current. That’s why writers and journalists should not rely on the Internet.
I couldn’t agree more that the internet can be a source of misleading information, made all the more dangerous due to how fast information spreads through things like blogs, twitter, etc.
There is a tendency to want to trust sources of information online, and there is good reason for that: There is a lot of great information out there. The problem is simply that literally ANYONE can dump whatever they want onto a website, blog, wiki, etc, and there is often little or no fact checking happening by anyone other than the writer.
It’s all too common to see someone post something to twitter or their blog and then within minutes (or seconds) dozens or more people are tweeting/blogging away about their opinion of the original statement/event/whatever, only to find out hours later that the original poster was wrong, or just seeing who would believe them.
If the internet is truly to become a great source of fast and accurate information (and for the most part is CAN be already), we all have to work a little harder at sifting through the river of information to find the nuggets of truth. Hopefully before the misleading info has spread too far.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Opinion
by David Peralty on May 28th, 2009
Darren Rowse, of Problogger.net, has just released a download able workbook called, “31 Days to Build a Better Blog”, based on a challenge he ran recently.
Essentially it’s a book of one action or activity to do per day for a 31 day period, and a lesson around why it should be done, to improve your blog.
Here’s what Darren has to say about it:
The concept was simple: bloggers set aside 31 days to be intentional about improving their blogs.
Each day for 31 days readers were presented with a daily task and teaching to give them concrete ways to take their blogs to the next level – the goal being more readers, higher quality content, deeper reader engagement and higher levels of creativity and energy for the blogger.
Challenges included writing tasks, promotion techniques, methods to deepen reader engagement, creating thinking exercises, ideas for breaking through bloggers block and much more.
Whether you were part of the original challenge or not, this workbook sounds like a pretty good deal. Especially since it’s got a pile of extra content that wasn’t included in the original challenge.
It isn’t free (it’s $20), but considering how much benefit it could have for most people’s blogs, it would probably pay for itself pretty fast. If you’re taking the tasks seriously at least.
I haven’t grabbed it yet, but I’m confident enough in Darren Rowse’s work to recommend checking it out if you want some great ideas for how to push your blog to the next level (or start a new one off on the right foot).
Basically it’s a month long consulting session with one of the most successful bloggers out there, so $20 isn’t too shabby at all.
Once I get through it I’ll likely post a detailed review of the experience, so if you don’t feel like taking a leap, just wait for my full opinion of it sometime next month.
Categories: Blogging Tips
by David Peralty on May 27th, 2009
One issue that tends to be common with all blogs is trying to find and build an audience. It’s especially tough for new and younger blogs, but it will almost never become a non-issue regardless a large or popular a blog gets. There is always room for more readers, and keeping the ones you have is always a struggle.
If you’re looking for some tips on how to get (and keep) an audience for your blog, then a recent post on buildabetterblog.com called “Where do you find an audience for your blog?” might interest you.
Here’s a sample from the Twitter section…
If you’re not on twitter, join now. Use search.twitter.com to search keywords in your niche and find the people who are talking about your topic. Jump in; join the conversation. Follow those people and respond to their questions or contribute to the discussion.
You can also use tweetbeep.com or the alerts feature on tweetlater.com to have emails sent when your keywords are mentioned on twitter.
Make sure your blog posts are being fed into your twitter stream by setting up twitterfeed.com. I’d say about 40-50% of my blog traffic now comes from twitter.
The tips focus mainly on participating wherever your target audience is hanging out. Be in forums, facebook, twitter, or wherever else, and being a helpful member of those communities.
Interacting with your readers is key. If you can interact on their terms, rather than only on your own site, people are much more likely to check out your blog/site/etc.
At the bottom of the post there’s even a bonus audio program called “How to Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Blog.” which is well worth a listen, and it’s free, so there’s no reason not to check it out.
Categories: Blogging Tips
by David Peralty on May 26th, 2009
Long story short, John Chow thinks you work too much, and he wants to help. He started a series a couple days ago surrounding the idea of living “The Dot Com Lifestyle“. In other words, work less, make more, travel wherever/whenever you want, and all that fun stuff.
Great idea, harder to implement. Hence the multiple post series he’s started to try to help people move in that direction. A lot of it so far seems to mirror Timothy Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Workweek, thought maybe not quite to the same extremes.
Unlike most “get rich without a lot of work” schemes, these ideas are geared more towards having more free time than wealth, though of course wealth is a part of that.
Here’s a little taste for you from part 1 of the series…
If your goal is to make a lot of money in the least amount of time possible, then you have to learn to make more efficient. Keep the 80/20 rule in mind. This rule states that most output are created by a small percentage of the population. In your business, you’ll find that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. On the Net, you’ll find that 80% of blogging income is created by top 20% of bloggers (it’s probably closer to 95/5).
Working more efficiently mean spending most your time with the 20% and less time with the 80%. In my case, I would say spend all you time with the 20% and screw the 80%. The goal here isn’t to make more money. The goal is to make more time.
Typical of John Chow, the posts are full of great information and ideas (and videos of him spending time in the park with his daughter). He’s just posted part 2 of the series, and I highly recommend checking out both parts, and checking for future posts in the series. If you think you work too much (and who doesn’t?), you’re bound to get something useful out of it, and if nothing else, maybe shave a few minutes off your work-day.
Categories: Blogging Tips
by David Peralty on May 19th, 2009
Thanks to @problogger, I found out that Eyetrack III had released a study, a few years ago, that you might be interested in if you want to know how your readers are likely viewing your site.
During the study, they “observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content.”
The results are pretty interesting, and a bit surprising in a few places. They talk about the effects of homepage layout on how people read the content of the page, the best placement for images, using font size to increase reader focus and avoid having them quickly scan through text rather than reading it all, and even the effects to paragraph length on how/where people’s eyes drift around the page. It’s all pretty damn cool.
Especially important might be the results of what happens when people get to a break in the text (say, from an ad), that could cause some people to rethink the layout of their ads, and site in general. They actually go into pretty good detail about advertising. The study is worth checking out for that section alone if you run ads on your site.
There is also a bit about navigation placement that could help some sites struggling to get people to drill down into their site past the initial entry page.
All in all, if you want to learn a TON about how people are likely to be reading your blog, and get a lot of tips about how to control the flow of their attention, I’d highly suggest reading through the Eyetrack III study. It’s a bit lengthy, but it’s so packed with useful info that it’s well worth it.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Interesting
by David Peralty on May 13th, 2009
This is a question a lot of bloggers ask themselves at some point, and ProBlogger.net just published a great post about it.
From the ProBlogger post…
When I first started blogging 7 years back it was not uncommon to see bloggers attempting to add an income stream to their blog with some kind of a donation button or invitation on their blog. Often these buttons were tied to a PayPal account that enabled the readers of the blog to send the blogger a little money as a thank you and/or as an encouragement to keep blogging.
Many bloggers tried the reader donation model as a way to make money from blogging but few made it work.
They go into some serious detail about the pros and cons of donation based monetization model, and outline some tips on how to successfully pull it off.
It’s pretty interesting stuff, especially for new bloggers, and bloggers that have not yet monetized their blog.
Categories: Blogging Tips
by David Peralty on April 29th, 2009
Weblogtoolscollection.com just posted a list of 9 ways to make your blog “Smart”, and though the list is definitely targeted at WordPress blogs, many of the ideas can be implemented for any blog.
There’s a lot of great ideas, such as showing a custom “about” text for new visitors, how to deal with people using adblocking, and some ideas of how to increase user interactivity with your blog.
Out of the 9 tips, I say my personal favourites are the ones dealing with selective advertising and returning customers, but they are all pretty good ideas depending on the situation.
Are there any ideas you’d add to or remove from the list?
Categories: Blogging Tips, WordPress Tips
by David Peralty on January 29th, 2009
Over on Website Host Reviews Firewall blog, they’ve written out a great little article relating to StumbleUpon, and why you might not being seeing any traffic from the traffic pushing community.
It covers voting practices and trends, being banned, and how to avoid being banned. With each section broken down into the basic ideas, it sounds simple enough, but remember, attempting to “game” or influence traffic and voting patterns can almost always lead to having your account negatively effected. That might not mean banning, but instead, just a lack of power when it comes to voting.
Here is one of the reasons why you might not be getting traffic:
Self-serving. If you’re submitting your own articles and nothing else, then you’re over promoting yourself, which SU frowns on. It’s not very sociable.
If you enjoy StumbleUpon and the traffic it provides, your best bet is to write great articles, and learn the demographic of the users within the site. Check out Why Isn’t Stumbleupon Sending My Site Any Web Traffic? on Website Host Reviews.
And as always, feel free to submit any of the posts from Blogging Pro to StumbleUpon. I won’t mind.
Categories: Blogging Tips
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