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:

1. Catch a reader’s attention
2. Tell what the article will discuss
3. Give the reader a reason to read the article

Unfortunately, creating a catchy title can be difficult. Writers are typically long-winded individuals, so summing up their entire article in one little title is often a challenge. It can also be tough to encompass all four things into one title. Consider these three aspects and some of the things you can do to help create a great title (not necessarily in this order):

Creating a Catchy Title is as Easy as 1,2,3

1. The How – Catch a Reader’s Attention

There are several different ways you can try and grab the reader’s attention in a title. I think the best way is to add some sort of statistic or breaking news that would surprise people. Every article will obviously not cater to this sort of title, but if you’re reporting on something surprising, put that in the title. You can also help catch a reader’s attention by bringing in a celebrity. For example, “Why Justin Beiber Wins Klout” or “Why John Mayer Doesn’t Understand SEO” will surely bring in a few fans. Even if the article is not entirely about the celebrity, just putting their name in the title and then tying them into the article will help get people excited about the piece. 

2.    The What – Tell a Reader What the Article Will Discuss

A great title let’s readers know what to expect. Titles such as “How to Write a Catchy Headline” or “Top 3 SEO Plugins” are extremely popular because they are clear and to the point. Readers are attracted to articles like this because they sound organized. Being able to glance over an article and see the 3 things discussed or clear step by step instructions is appealing. It lets them know that the article is simple and won’t take up too much of their time.

This alone could catch a reader’s attention, but many editors put the two aspects of headline creation together. For example, you could say “85% of People Prefer to Read Infographics: How to Make Your Infographic Stand Out.” This brings in something that will catch the attention of the reader, yet it still lets them know what they will find in the article. Some will argue that titles that follow this formula are too long, but it is possible to make them work with a little bit of tweaking.

3.    The Why and When – Give the Reader a Reason to Read the Article

Titles that have a call to action usually work well for blog posts. Titles such as “Job Interview Must-Knows” or “Why SEO Will Help You Increase Your Pay 10% Annually” are sure to get some hits. This lets readers know why they need to read the article at that very moment. It also works to put the specific year in the title (like I did above).

Creating a title that encompasses all these components isn’t always possible. Although this is the goal, combining just a few should do the trick.

Photo Credit: buzzbaiting.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to medical billing software. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including document software to small businesses and entrepreneurs for a b2b lead generation company, Resource Nation.

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.

2. Tweeting Everything Under The Sun

Unlike Facebook your tweets won’t disappear from a users timeline if you send out 500 tweets opposed to 4 or 5 good tweets per day, however you might find that less followers are clicking over to view your websites content. It’s easy to “overload” your followers and cause them to either unfollow you or start ignoring your repeated posts. To correct this problem you can either break your tweets up into sub-category twitter accounts, for example if you own the twitter account @blogtime you might also open @blogtimeSEO and @blogtimeAnalytics and then allow visitors to follow your accounts based on the type of niche content they wish to read. You can also choose to hand pick which posts you send to your Twitter account.

I personally suggest that you don’t just auto-tweet the “Post Title – URL” format for each post but rather ask a question or leave a statement such as “Can you believe this happened? Post Title – URL?” This is a great way to gain reactions from your followers. I have also found over the years that Twitter users like to retweet questions and especially statements they agree with.

3. Not Asking For Followers

I do a lot of consulting work for up and coming blogs and last week a client said to me “I don’t understand why we aren’t getting Facebook fans and Twitter Followers, we have follow buttons in our sidebar.” After examining the clients website I realized they didn’t ask for follows! The easiest way to accomplish this goal is to place something in your template that asks for a follow directly after your content. For example “Like this article? FOLLOW US on Facebook.” I have found that an actual ICON for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, etc. works best for getting people to click over and follow. If you’re a bit more tech savvy placing the Twitter Follow and Facebook Fan Page Like buttons directly below your content will give you the highest return on your request. After all if you ask someone to click “Like” for your Facebook page and all they have to do is press a quick button they will be more likely to do so rather then being required to jump over to a different page to reach that same objective.

4. Allowing Your Social Media Pages To Become Breeding Grounds For Links

Nothing irks me more then a social media page that doesn’t try to thrive on it’s own merits. Remember that your social media pages are their own mini-brands for your website. For example on Facebook don’t be afraid to post a question, some interesting thoughts, etc. that don’t link back to content on your website. In Twitter feel free to share your thoughts about major topics you have covered or may cover in the future but that don’t link back to your website. Remember that social media is about being “social” and sometimes that means just reaching out and talking to your followers. The more you can brand your fan pages and Twitter accounts the more likely your followers will be to return and see what your discussing each day.

5. Failing To Interact With Your Followers Own Pages

I have found that nothing is more flattering to my readers then when I stop by their own Facebook fan pages or Twitter accounts and leave comments on their posts, ask them direct questions and otherwise engage with them before they have to engage with me to get my attention. It’s important to remember that many of your social media followers are likely social media savvy and therefore they appreciate people who are sociable with them. Take the time to engage with your top followers accounts. If you realize that John Smith has left you 10 comments take a look at his Twitter feed and perhaps retweet some of his comments and finds and answer questions he has posed. Developing a rabid fan base can help your content go viral and it shows that you really care about your readership and are willing to strengthen your ties to those readers.

The important thing to remember about social media engagement is that it’s not just about throwing up a ton of content and hoping people see it, your social media accounts are mini-sites in their own right and an important part of branding your content off-site. If you ask important questions, engage with users and their accounts and have fun with your social media accounts you’ll reach a better, more engaged, more loyal audience.

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.

Tip One – Sacrifice Something For Writing Time

It is important to find time to write. But it doesn’t have to be that much time. Sacrifice a little something you usually do: one less TV show per night, one less night out during the weekends. Maybe eat out a few times a week instead of cooking to use that time to write something up. There are plenty of ways you can work it in to even the busiest schedule.

Tip Two – Plot During The Day

I do some of my best thinking when I am in the shower or out for a walk. But I can’t very well write during these times, which is why I keep a little notebook and pen with me when I am out, as well as my phone that has a voice recorder program. This allows me to jot down ideas or even record passages of text no matter where I am. You can do the same thing and cut out a lot of the time necessary for creating posts.

Tip Three – Wake Up Early

A lot of people find that they have their highest energy and most clarity in the morning. It is also a great time to get your writing in, especially in time to get your post out there for readers who are early risers or in a different time zone. All it takes is getting up a half hour early, so maybe going to bed a half hour earlier than usual is in order.

Tip Four – Write Before Bed

For those who are the opposite, there is always night writing. Some people do their best work at night, as they try to shrug off the stress of the day. When I write at night, I am able to really settle my mind down and focus on what I am saying. I tend to schedule the next day’s post that night, so it is waiting to launch in the morning.

It isn’t as hard as you might think to gather enough time to practice blog writing on a daily basis. Do you have any tips? Feel free to post them in the comments section.

Olivia blogs for PsPrint, an online printing company specializing in brochure and poster printing among other popular services. Follow PsPrint on Twitter and Facebook

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:

Top 5 Changes a Blogger Needs to Make When Flipping a Blog for Profit

1.    You are no longer writing for only yourself, so your focus/topics may change.

I think that many people who blog for fun enjoy putting out their own opinions. They want to see what others have to say and they want to get out all of their thoughts. In a sense, this is exactly where blogging started. Unfortunately, your opinions don’t always sell. This is a great way to spend your time blogging, but it won’t necessary make you any money. If you really want to profit from your blog and make blogging your career, you are going to have to do research and identify your target audience. You will want to make sure your blog has a clear focus and the random rambling is kept to a minimum. Some blogs with content all over the place are profitable, but not many.

2.    You will need to guest post on other sites.

You want to make sure that your blog has a high Google PageRank (PR) so you can attract investors and more experienced writers and readers. In most cases, the higher the PR the higher you will appear on a Google search engine page; thus driving more traffic to your site. One of the ways to make this happen is to guest post on other blogs and then link back to your blog. This sounds simply enough, but many bloggers quickly realize that this is a lot of extra work and the results come to you slowly. You will also need to follow the guidelines and topic categories for the site where you’re hoping to guest post, and this can be difficult for bloggers who are used to writing whatever they want.

3.     You will need to edit and accept guest posts

This is not completely necessary, but it is extremely beneficial so most bloggers want to take advantage. Accepting guest posts on your blog gives you more time to guest post on other blogs and brings in a new audience. Chances are your guest writer will share his/her article through social media and give your blog some great publicity. Nonetheless, this is more work than most anticipate when they decide they’re going to try and make money from blogging.

4.    You will need to find and speak with potential advertisers

This is something that is usually foreign to those who have a blog for fun. You will need to prepare facts and statistics to try and sell your blog to these potential advertisers. It’s a world of rejection and frustration, and the process is very slow. You must have an authoritative blog (high PR) before a good advertiser will even want to speak with you. It is important to realize that this is where you make your money. This means that you will have to work very hard to create something and then you will be able to make your money.

5.    Social media will be more important

Most bloggers are fairly social media fluent. The only difference when you’re trying to earn a profit is the idea that you will have to connect with powerful people. This will improve the credibility of your blog. In many cases, bloggers create separate social media accounts for their now profitable blog. This is, therefore, twice as much social media work than before.

When deciding if you should try and be a full-time professional blogger, being passionate about blogging is one of the driving factors.  However, it’s important that you realize some of the challenges that full-time bloggers have in front of them before quitting your day job.

Did you go from blogging for fun to making blogging your career? What challenges were you unprepared to face?

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to background checks. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including voip phone systems to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading lead generation company, Resource Nation.

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:

To setup your account so only images you have loaded from your blog to instagram show up you will enter a “User ID” in the “Target Photos” section.

Once you have targeted the account you want to use the rest of the steps are pretty self explanatory, for example you will choose to display new pics every day, create a static Twitter background, show new photos, popular photos or random photos and even choose the size (small, medium, large, custom) for each photo.

Quick tip: i find that “No” for spacing is the best looking option as it creates a nice collage look.

Once you have clicked on the ‘Preview’ button you’ll notice the preview pane filled in on the right side of the screen, simply click on the “full size” link and you will see something like this:

Once you feel comfortable with your background you can set it to go live. The live background will then update daily if you have chosen that option and you should have a display that looks something like this:

By incorporating your blog images into an Instagram account and then incorporating InstaBG into your Twitter account you have now created a dynamic and ever changing social media account for your blog with very little work outside of uploading photos to Instagram and very little initial Twitter background setup.

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.

The Benefits of Press Releases

As a blogger receiving press releases, they have three key benefits for you and your site:

1. Alerting You to Relevant Stories: Many of the press releases you get probably won’t be important to your site. However, some can alert you to important stories you’ll want to cover. Though you don’t want press releases to be your primary means of learning about stories (they are inherently reactionary) they can be useful, especially in a small niche.
2. Providing The Sender’s Viewpoint/Quotes: With a blog post, you generally want to incorporate as many viewpoints as you can. A press release is a great way to get the opinion from a stakeholder in a story and even have a good quote from them.
3. Provide Additional Information: A good press release, in addition to stating the sender’s position, will also provide additional links and information regarding the story, helping with research. Though, obviously, such research should be treated with a grain of salt, it can be useful if done well.

In short, press releases are a great way to add an additional perspective and other information to a story. However, they are dangerous because of their inherent bias. After all, press releases are a product of a PR department and, as such, are going to be biased in favor of their sender and attempt to put them in the most favorable light possible.

As such, you have to be careful how you use them, but that’s no reason to shy away from them.

How to Use Press Releases Correctly

The problem with press releases, historically, has been that many lazy journalists would just copy and paste from them liberally to create their stories. While the companies sending the releases were happy to have their language used in such a manner, not only is this a form of plagiarism, but it also lets the bias of the press release through unfiltered.

The best way to use a press release is to treat it exactly the same way you would an interview you had performed with someone at the company. You can quote it, you can cite it and even reference facts in it, but always be clear about where you got the information.

When possible, you should independently verify any information given in the press release before treating it as simple truth and, when you can’t verify something, make sure you’re clear where you got the information from.

Finally, if possible, you should try to get quotes and information from those on an opposing side (if there is one). As usual, posting only one side’s views in an article, even if presented accurately, can be another form of bias. So, it’s worth your time to find a statement from a different viewpoint if at all possible.

If you can do these things, most likely, your use of press releases will not pose a serious problem for you or your readers.

How to Get Press Releases

If you are a blogger, eventually you’ll likely find yourself on press release distribution lists whether you want to be or not. It simply comes with the territory of growing and finding an audience.

However, if you want to be on a list and you’re just starting out, the easiest way to get on them is to ask. Simply find the companies and organizations most relevant to your topic and then visit their press page. There, you should be able to find their press contact email, which you can write a short letter to asking to be put on their distribution list. It’s as simple as that.

If the company doesn’t have a press page, it may be possible they don’t actually send out any press releases. If so, look for a regular email newsletter that you can subscribe to, especially if it’s low volume. Failing that, you can always write the company directly and ask to be put on any distribution list they have.

All in all, the process should only take a few minutes and, if you’re smart about how you filter press releases, it shouldn’t be a major burden on your email. Best of all, getting on these lists can provide you with a great deal of external perspective to help make your future posts that much better.

Bottom Line

In the end, there’s no reason to be scared of using press releases in your blogging. Though you need to be careful and mindful of the source of information, press releases can be a valuable tool to help you research and integrate additional viewpoints into your posts.

If used well, integrating press release content will actually help make your posts less biased and more fair than if you weren’t to include the viewpoint at all. The key is to simply be careful how you use the content and that you’re always honest about the source.

If you can do that, your readers will actually benefit from the inclusion of press release content and your site will be much stronger for it.

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.

1. Posting Only A Video

Check out videos on Yahoo (known for posting video only posts lately) and read all of the complaints for users who don’t want just a video. While a first hand account of an accident or other visual event may help your story it’s not the end answer. The reason for this is simple, many users today are not sitting at screens where video viewing is often easily accessible. For example a mobile user in an area with slow network connectivity doesn’t want to sit around and wait for your video to buffet, however if you have written an article supporting that video they can at least read the entire story or at least the major points you choose to report on from the video.

2. Writing Poor Content To Support The Video

So you’ve made the jump into video+written content creation, however if you’re heart isn’t into the written portion you’re going to end up with unfocused, keyword lacking content. Remember that search engines haven’t quite figured out how to index words spoken in a video yet which means your video does little good if you still don’t do your keyword research homework and figure out what keywords and long-tail keywords best fit your content.

3. Placing Video Before Your Content

Here’s a little trick that will help your “on-site” time average. Write really great content and then sprinkle in video as required. If a user does see a video at the top of your post and then views that video there’s a good chance they jump off your site and onto the next story before bothering to read what you’ve written. It’s that whole idea of “I’ve seen the movie, why bother reading the book now.” However if a video appears in the middle or towards the bottom of a post the reader may feel there is more to the story and choose to view the video. I personally like to lead into videos through text. For example I might say “here’s more information:” then show the video. Even if the video only showcases a tiny bit of new information it will provide my readers with reason to continue.

4. Posting Poor Quality Video

If you write breaking news stories sometimes poor quality video (smartphone videos, shaky handheld amateur videos) is your only option. However if you run a “how to make money blog” and you create your own videos they should be of decent quality to showcase your production skills. A cheap HD camcorder can be purchased for around $200 these days and they offer your readers better audio and picture quality. Remember video is suppose to engage your readers just like text based content and therefore it should be clear, concise and well thought out.

5. Posting Video On Every Single Entry

When visitors to my various web properties pay a visit I want them to read as much content as possible, this allows me to receive a unique visitor while also pushing up my pageviews and pushing down my bounce rate. If you post 10 minute videos on every single post you create however there’s a good chance a reader will find your content a bit to long and you’ll end up with a bunch of comments that read “td;lr” (too long didn’t read). I find it funny that the “didn’t read” comment comes up on VIDEO posts but the point is well taken. Remember that video is meant to show readers something they need to see or to engage with them occasionally on a level of contact they don’t normally receive from blog creators.

The underlying trick to using video so it doesn’t kill your blog is simple, remember to present written text to your readers, use videos when it makes sense to do so and don’t overuse videos since viewing them isn’t always a simple option for your readers.

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).

Step 1: Word of mouth

Immediately when the website goes live, you want as many visitors as you can get! Even if the traffic is not all relevant, what you get from the visitors is invaluable learning’s on key areas which are working and which aren’t doing so well. Using social network, text messages, shouting from the roof, you need to get visitors on to the site and monitor their interaction.

Step 2: Free Advertising

Get your website onto every free listing website around. Creating profiles around the web will start to create an online profile, and is a helping hand with the SEO methods. If you are selling a service, local citations can be very useful in ranking for the geographical terms, such as ‘Copywriting Leeds’ or ‘Printers Doncaster’.

Be wary however when doing this not to put your website profile onto websites which look ‘spammy or untrustworthy. This could have a negative impact on your SEO.

Step 3: Paid Advertising

If you are selling a product you should immediately look into Google AdWords. As we all know, Pay Per Click or PPC advertising can be a very profitable way of getting visitors to your website and generating sales.  This does not always work so well for service providers and measuring the effectiveness can become somewhat of a headache.

Be very careful with PPC advertising. If you are not strict with budgets and timescales you can quite easily spend a fortune for very little return.

Any other advertising that you feel would be relevant should be looked into at this point. Again we are looking to get as many visitors to the website as we can and begin to create an online profile.

Facebook advertising campaigns can be a great way of targeting very specific user groups. For example if you know that women between 20 – 45 years of age wear a certain item you are selling, you can tailor a campaign to just target these demographics. Again this is getting you infront of a highly relevant audience.

Step 4: Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is becoming widely recognized by most webmasters and online business owners as the future of marketing.

To begin, you could read up on some basic SEO tactics, and try to make your website more SEO friendly. This will save you time in the long run and could help to speed up the optimization process.

Then you will need to allocate a budget to an SEO specialist to carry out the work for you. This usually starts from around £500 per month. Search Engine Optimisation is very much an investment, so don’t expect results within a few weeks, but remember, this is a marathon not a sprint.

Following these steps are certainly not guaranteeing your company will survive online, but being proactive and chasing the audience will certainly give you half a chance.

SEOptics are a leading Digital Marketing company offering startup and exsiting business search engine optimisation

Quite simply, link building the hell out of your site is great, but in reality it can only get you so far. The overall aim for a website owner is usually to keep visitors engaged or make them convert. If you secure number 1 positions for a bunch of key terms but your site is full of awful syndicated content, the visitors are going to bounce and the overall objective for your website is going to be completely overshadowed.

Keeping It Fresh

When it comes down to it, if you’re looking for search engine optimisation longevity, you need to cement yourself in a position of high authority. This is so that you can spend more time on your own content and make your seo strategy for long tail key term visibility a lot easier. Three of the main takeout points from Google’s freshness updates is the fact that content written about dynamic releases or events, annual events or content regarding trending news stories is likely to be rewarded. Whereas a year ago you may have been able to get away with producing fresh content for your site bi-weekly, if you really want to maintain your positions long term, you should now be looking at updating content every other day.

Making A Plan

The very first thing to do is to map out a content strategy at the very start of the year. Grab a calendar and start mapping out any significant events within your industry that you know you should be providing content for. Focus on one regularly occurring event or release each month and have that as your starting point. Next up, think of some fresh ideas on articles about your industry that nobody else is yet to cover. Your blog should be like a book, and no book is the same. Nobody want to come onto your site and read the same or similar article to one they read on the last site they were on. They want to read a fresh perspective. So you should now map out a monthly article which is completely unique and that no other site will be covering.

Lastly, in order to take advantage of fresh, trending topics, you really need to be on the ball and reading about industry topics on a day to day basis. That’s the only way you’re truly going to become an expert and going to be able to produce expert articles. There’s no substitute for putting in the hard work and research and becoming an industry leader.

The overall benefit of putting together your search engine optimisation content strategy is that you’ll gradually establish yourself in a position of authority and somewhere down the line that should make it a lot easier for you to pick up new visitors through long tail key term traffic associated with fresh news and events. This means you’ll have more free time to spend on building up your social profiles and dedicating time to building social signals to your squeaky fresh content.

Scott is a writer who is looking forward to the fresh changes in SEO for 2012.

But if you don’t have time to either go back to school or wait for practice to improve your work, there are actually a few things you can do right now, in a matter of minutes, that can drastically improve the quality of your writing.

So, if you’re looking to create better written blog posts tomorrow, here are just a few things you can try to help spruce up and clean out your blog writing habits.

1. Cut 10% of Your Words

When writing, most people tend to be wordier than necessary, even on shorter pieces. All things being equal, shorter posts are generally better as they are easier to read and finish.

As an exercise, the next time you finish a post, go through it and trim 10% of the words from it without changing the meaning (or potential meaning) of anything. Immediately, your writing will improve and, with time, you’ll begin to spot the obvious extra words and avoid writing them in the first place.

That may make trimming the fat a lot more difficult later, but that’s only because your writing will be much more lean in its first draft.

2. Break Your Posts Apart

Going back to point one, shorter posts, or posts that appear shorter, are generally better than long ones and are also easier to edit and refine.

So, break your posts apart. Rather than doing a 1,500 word piece, break it up into two 750-word posts or even three-part series of 500 words each.

If you can’t do that, break your post apart using subheads, as with this post, to make your work easier to skim and edit. A post that’s faster to read, gives better information and is easier to edit usually winds up being a better post.

3. Use Shorter Paragraphs

High schools and colleges often teach a four-sentence paragraph structure that’s designed to convey a full thought every paragraph.

Forget it.

Journalism teaches us that shorter paragraphs are easier to read, make text look more approachable (less gray) and, once again, easier to proof.

While the journalism standard may have come from the narrow columns newspapers have, it’s a remarkably effective and simple way to make your writing easier to read and better all-around.

4. Stop Writing Formally

It’s importent to remember that your blog is not an academic essay, a job application or a newspaper article, you can stop worrying about writing formally.

Feel free to use “you” and “I” in your posts, talk directly to your readers from time to time and don’t hesitate to use common language such as contractions.

Very few blogs call for a formal writing style. If you’re not writing for an audience that would expect it, don’t use it. The writing will be friendlier, warmer and easier to edit as plain language has a lot fewer rules.

5. Don’t Write and Edit at the Same Time

Many people, when writing a blog post, have a tendency to try and edit what they’re working on as they are putting words on paper.

Unfortunately, that is much like trying to drive a car by pressing the brake and the gas at the same time. It makes it so that you don’t do either very effectively.

Write your blog post as quickly as you can, focus on getting words on the screen as quickly as possible and keep your editing work to a minimum. If you’re stumped on a section, move on to another and come back or simply change the post to eliminate the need.

When you’re done writing, take a break of at least 10 minutes and walk away from your writing. Then return, put on your editing hat and get to work.

Given how hard it is to edit your own work anyway, it doesn’t make sense to add another complication to the process.

6. Get an Outside Editor

Here’s an unfortunate truth. You can’t edit your own writing with 100% effectiveness. It’s almost impossible as your mind knows what you were trying to say and will often fill in blanks or cover up mistakes that others will stumble over.

Even more unfortunate is that editing is a very specialized skill and the people who are good at it rightly command a lot of money for their services. So, hiring a professional editor is probably out of reach for most bloggers.

However, generally, you don’t need to hire an expert to proof your blog. A friend, a family member, your significant other or even an avid member of your community can do the job for you. After all, what you need most isn’t grammar expertise, but an extra pair of eyes to catch what yours fail to.

Anyone can fill that role and the hardest part is finding someone who can perform that task every day you blog.

If you can’t find someone, automated checkers such as After the Deadline and Grammarly can help a lot, though Grammarly, and ones like it, may be a bit intensive for more casual language (though you can adjust the settings).

Bottom Line

Becoming a master writer and/or editor takes years of practice, study and hard work. Unfortunately, if you have a blog and a post due tomorrow, you don’t have that kind of time.

So, while you might not be able to make yourself a better writer overnight, by changing the way you write you can greatly improve the quality of what you create.

The truth is that most of the best bloggers aren’t great writers. They’re solid or even mediocre writers who work hard at their craft and focus on promotion and finding great topics to cover.

So, if you aren’t a great writer, don’t worry about it to much. Focus on the things you can change and move forward. You can build a great blog presence quickly if you spend your time doing things that improve your site and not wasting time over things you have no control.

One thing that is pretty specific to the blogging industry, however, is the idea that a blog is a one man operation. For some reason, bloggers are very territorial over their blogs. I think this is because it sometimes takes blogs a long time to grow, and in many cases someone manages a blog while still working full-time somewhere else. In other words, blogging is a one man operation for a long time. However what bloggers need to realize is that if they’re good, a day will come when the blog is bigger than the owner.

Therefore, it is very important that a blogger understands when it’s time to ask for help. Most bloggers will admit they need help when they feel overwhelmed by reading guest articles and posting them onto the webpage, but the worry usually stops there. While this is a great reason to get some help with a blog, there are other reasons that need to be considered (and not continually ignored).

Top 3 Other Reasons You Need Blog Help

1. When some of your social media networks are being ignored.

Most bloggers are fluent in social media, so they don’t feel like they need the help of someone else. Connecting with readers and other bloggers is one of the best parts of blogging, so many don’t want to give it up. They may admit they need help because guest articles are piling up, but they simply won’t admit that they need help managing social media accounts. However, the truth is there are so many social media accounts available that it should be hard for one person to keep up! If you have an account on several sites and are finding that some of your accounts on those lesser known sites are being ignored, it’s time to ask for help. It’s never a good idea to have a static account on a social media network no matter how un-popular it may be. This will eventually give your blog a bad reputation.

2.    When there is a big moment coming up in your life.

Bloggers often have another job, so the workweek often exceeds the typical 40 hours. While this may work for a while, it simply won’t work as things begin to get more hectic. If you have a major event coming up in your life—having a baby, getting a new job, getting married and moving out—those 40+ hours per week will be extremely difficult. Although it may make sense to put your blog on hold for a short period of time, it’s important that the blog does continue strong overall if it’s making you money. Therefore, it may be a good idea to cut back on the work hours and hire someone to help keep your blog managed. If you try and do it yourself and find that the blog is slipping, you could lose readers forever.

3.    When you don’t have time to write articles for your own blog.

The point overlaps a bit with the “too many guest articles to read” point, but is important nonetheless. Many blogs that are entirely based on guest posts are successful, but it’s generally best to have a few regular writers and a few articles from the editor. This gives the blog something unique. A blog full of guest posts can seem very random, but a blog where you can get advice from a certain person time and time again keeps things consistent. Not only do readers like hearing from those in charge, but blog owners are typically happier when they get to share their voice.

How Do You Begin Finding Blog Help?

Bloggers often try and tell themselves they don’t need help because there is no one that understands the blog as well as they do. This is certainly true, but it doesn’t mean that someone can’t learn certain aspects of the blog such as what you expect out of a piece of content or what you expect out of social media. There are two different ways you can find someone to help with your blog:

• Consider asking one of your regular contributors. This is the ideal situation because you have seen his/her work and they have a good idea about the focus of your blog. You likely already have a strong relationship with this writer, and in most cases they would be happy to help.
• Put out an ad just as a traditional company would. You will likely get a lot of interested candidates, so you will be able to narrow down your favorites. Looking at resumes is important, but when it comes to blogging the best thing you can do is look at just that—a candidates blog. Check out how they manage their blog, their writing ability, and how active they are on social networks. Once you interview a few people, do a basic employee background check and you’ll have yourself a great helper.

The most important thing to remember is that you are still in charge. You built the blog from the ground up, so you should want the blog to continue to grow. Many blogs have continued to be successful because the owners enlisted the right help at the right time. In other words, if you find that you might need help with your blog, take it as a great sign that you created something and are moving it in the right direction.

Photo Credit: spiritwomen.blogspot.com, meetcoco.com, en.wikipedia.org

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to credit card processing. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including document software to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

I’m often asked how our readers should go about choosing which sites to submit guest posts to and the answer is actually quite simple. If you’re going to write you should write what you know about and target your own vertical/niche. So exactly how do you go about doing this? Here are some simple steps you can take to prepare for submissions and when investigating potential guest post destinations.

1. Understand the Vertical you Plan to Target

If you’ve just started a technology blog it wouldn’t hurt to understand exactly what type of technology you plan to target, for example if you plan to focus on advances in web hosting technology it would make more sense to target other web hosting reviews and web hosting technology blogs. If however you have started a gadget blog you will want to focus on gadget blogs and specifically you will want to target gadget blogs that focus on your same subjects (tablets, smartphones, Apple products, etc). The reasoning behind this thought process is simple, if links pointing back to your website come from hyper-focused blogs that match your own goals you’ll receive more authority when Google realizes those websites target the same keywords as your own blog. Before guest posting write 15-20 articles and then examine your keywords for each article, determine what your focus is early on and then target partnerships with sites that share your focus by conducting a quick Google search of your keywords and noting any sites that regularly appear for your search terms.

2. Look For Websites That Update Regularly

Google loves to crawl, then recrawl, then recrawl again any website that regularly updates its content. If you write a guest post on a blog that has daily posts there’s a good chance that as the site is crawled by Google daily your article will be spotted repeatedly and your links will send a Google bot your way for indexing. Regularly updates websites also tend to feature a more active userbase since visitors know they can find new content daily or in the least weekly. A more engaged userbase means they like your vertical and will be more likely to look for other sources of information such as your website.

Along the lines of regular updates it’s important to find sites that don’t simply aggregate news and other information but also provide well thought out original content. Not only does your content look better on these sites but search engines love original content and are more apt to reward your in-links because of it.

3. Look For Websites With Regular User Engagement

This step goes hand-in-hand with #2. If a site is updated regularly and the owners of that blog are engaging with their readers and receiving engagement back in return you have the opportunity to build your community off-site. For example let’s say you write a blog post on a new type of Cloud Hosting service, perhaps 10 people engage and ask you questions about your post, if you take the time to answer their questions and invite them to find more information on your own website about the topic you have just managed to merge community members from your guest post to your own website.  I have literally seen people build 99% of their community off-site and then develop that community on-site during the early stages of a websites development.

4. Size and Traffic of the Website.

A site with 10,000 posts means the owner has been updating the websites content frequently, this is a good sign that you won’t post a guest spot and then 10 days later the site is shut down. Remember the more links you have over time, especially in your vertical/niche the better your own search ranks will remain, consistency and growing link numbers are important. With that being said it doesn’t hurt to have a site with high traffic numbers. Always remember that the more people who see and share your guest post content the better chance other people have of finding your content. This goes hand-in-hand with search indexing as well. For example if your post is shown to 10,000 people and 50 of them share your content, that’s 50 more links for Google search bots to follow and index not only your guest post but also the links you placed in your article back to your own website.

I always leave size and traffic for last since little sites can often be more targeted. Just look at Mashable, that site use to be hyper-focused on Social Media but has grown to include gadget news and other off-subject topics.

When all is said and done it’s important that you feel comfortable with the sites you place your content on. Find sites that have an engaged community searching for the type of content you have built for your website or plan to build for your website. Remember to engage with users off-site and always look for websites with regularly updated content.

But difficult doesn’t translate into impossible, by any means. You don’t have to worry about competing in the beginning. Instead, what you have to be focused on is knowing how to generate a high traffic site by taking baby steps toward that end. That can be done in several key ways that are less complicated than you might think.

Accept That It Can Take a While

Time is the key ingredient to any blog’s success. You can’t just expect to put up a couple of posts and have everyone flock to see them. There is content to build, and there are connections to make, reblogs to receive andmarketing tactics to try. Even just leaving it there while you continue to add more content will work, but again, it all takes time.

Realistically, it will be a year or so until you start seeing real traffic, much less revenue from AdSense. The point of change will begin after a couple of months, where you notice more spam comments. This is actually a good sign, and soon you will see genuine visitors reading.

Communicate With Others in the Niche

Other blogs and forums are a truly indispensable resource when it comes to generating interest in your own site. The first thing you should do is start commenting regularly, both on well known and lesser known blogs. But make sure they are good comments related to the post, offering a perspective or comment worth reading – nothing spammy or copy/paste.

Before long you might be able to exchange guest posts with a few of them, which can give you a whole new pool for traffic. Not only will you get your name and content on their blog, but you will draw their readers onto your own by having another writer there providing occasional posts.

Forums will help you to build up a relationship with other members, and give you a platform for finding new readers.

Reduce Setbacks

You want to have a blog that is on a reliable host, through a paid domain and with a backup in case things go wrong. The best thing you can do is find a good, well known place to put your blog, put it on automatic payment and backup regularly.

If you want to make some of this easier, including reducing the risk of the site going down and getting fast backups, install WordPress. It was designed to take a lot of the hassle out.

Post Regularly and With Fresh Content

You don’t have to post every day, or even every weekday. But you should set at least three times a week to do regular, well written and thorough posts. If you can find the time, try to post smaller things in between to give you a good boost through the week. Having fresh content is the fastest way to get noticed.

If you don’t have the time to really write yourself, hire others to manage the blog for you. Freelancers are a dime a dozen, and most have very fair prices.

Post Some News, but Not All News

News posts are a great way to alert users to changes in the market, and possibly get onto Google News. This will really increase your traffic. But even mainstream media sites don’t post news all the time, so you have to find the correct balance between what is too much and what isn’t enough.

I would suggest setting aside two days a week for news posts, even more than one. If you want to do it more regularly, feel free. But make sure you also do regular blog posts that aren’t time sensitive or unlikely to lose popularity.

Remember that AdSense Funds Build

Don’t, for the love of all things holy, click on your own AdSense ads. Also, don’t ask others to click on them for you. This is a breach in the terms and conditions, and will earn you a lifelong ban from Google’s AdSense program. All for a very small amount of cash.

Believe it or not, AdSense works, but only over time. Within a year or so you should start seeing a check. But you have to wait, or you won’t end up with anything to show for it.

Conclusion

Running a successful financial blog is far from impossible. But it takes a little bit of time and work to get it going. Be patient, post regular and high quality content and network with other bloggers. You will notice things getting better and better by the month.

Sonia Tracy works as the content editor for PsPrint‘s blog and website. When she’s not working, she’s usually making nerdy “Star Wars” references or mastering her downward-facing dog pose in a yoga class.

Image credit: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Simply explained an “A-List” article is a post that features information from various articles you have posted on your website.

Some websites exhibit these lists on a daily basis, for example Engadget loves to write “what you missed today” posts. Other websites like to offer weekly and even monthly A-List type posts.

Regardless of what A-List time schedule you choose to keep a properly organized A-List article can help increase SERP on your past articles and allow your readers to better engage with your sites offerings.

Here are a few simple tips that can help you create a quick and effective A-List type post.

1. Title – It’s All About The Keywords and Linking

When writing a short summary of each article you would like to highlight It’s highly recommended that you place your targeted keyword directly by the start of the linked article. If you’re original title already uses the keyword close to the start of the title (you should be doing this anyways then you can simply link the title to your article.

As an example if I was focusing on “Bounce Rate” for a post on BloggingPro.com I might use the following link:

Bounce Rate and How To Combat it

Notice that “Bounce Rate” is at the start of the article and I have then linked into the original article, this allows search engines to realize that the link points to “Bounce Rate” and therefore gives that term more weight on BloggingPro.com and for SERP.

To add extra weight you can wrap the linked title with keyword selection in bold text or the <strong> HTML header.

2. Implementing ALT TAGS for Linked Titles

Once you have a strong title for your highlighted article and you’ve linked it, it’s important to make sure you have developed an ALT TAG that is also strong. I don’t recommend simply using the title again in the ALT TAG but instead implementing a quick sentence that describes the content. Think of the ALT TAG as a very short summary that tells your readers and search engines what your article is about, once again implement the keyword early in the ALT TAG and provide search engine friendly information that is conscience but still accurately describes your article.

3. Optimize Your Summary For The Article

It has long been known that articles linking to similar articles in breadth will rank higher in the eyes of search engine spiders, this makes sense since linking from one Google Android article to another is a natural progression. It’s for this reason that you should provide keyword focused, concise summaries for each article. If you write about 10 different topics your entire A-List article may not be about the “Bounce Rate” as our example above shows but if part of your summary is about that topic it will help your SERP. Remember to start your summary with the keyword being linked and if possible end with that keyword or an off-shoot of the keyword.

Remember that A-List articles should still follow natural language processing since Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines use natural language processing to determine the feasibility of a good article. Don’t simply cram in keywords and hope for the best but instead provide enough information to readers so they will want to click over to your articles. If your A-List article ranks well in search engines and receives links from other sites that pagerank can then be passed off to the sites being linked to, which in turn means better rankings for each of your articles in the list.

So, whether, you’re looking to get in shape, save money or start a new hobby with the new year, you may want to look at adding a few resolutions aimed at helping you grow your blog and online presence.

Best of all, these are resolutions that are simple and easy to keep, meaning that they may stick around long after you’ve abandoned some of you other well-intended changes.

So, if you’re looking for easy ways to improve your site in 2012, here are just a few suggestions you can commit to right now.

Resolution 1: Maintain a Posting Schedule

Between now and the New Year, you have time to reflect and decide what your posting schedule should be and make a commitment to it. Whether it’s posting every day, once per week or something in between, you can find the rhythm that is right for you.

It’s important, when setting this pace, to focus on a schedule that you can maintain easily while keeping the quality of your work high. It’s better to have three great articles per week than 6 mediocre ones.

Take a look at your writing style, your topic, your life and how it all fits together to find the clip that’s right for you.

Resolution 2: Get an Editor

Looking back to the first resolution, while you’re focusing on quality it may be a good time to turn over a new leaf on your posting style and shake things up a bit.

One great way is to simply bring in an extra pair of eyeballs to help you read your posts and improve them. Best of all, it doesn’t have to be a professional editor or even a very talented writer, you just need a third party who can spot your mistakes and let you know what’s confusing.

In fact, in many ways it is better if you don’t have a professional writer as you want the opinion of someone who represents your readers, not another writer. So, feel free to ask a friend, a family member, an active member of your community or even a stranger to look over your posts before hitting “Publish”.

Failing that, automated services such as After the Deadline and Grammarly can also help a great deal, even if they aren’t perfect.

Resolution 3: Get a New Theme

Looks aren’t everything but they are definitely important. You have three days between now and January 1st so you have plenty of time to either find a brand-new look for your site or tweak the theme you have.

Make the most of it. Not only will a new theme, possibly, reinvigorate your site but it may boost your interest in it as well. There’s nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make something old feel new.

Resolution 4: Get Serious About Blog Promotion

If you’re like most bloggers, you’ve probably gotten at least a little relaxed about blog promotion. You’ve let SEO optimization, keyword research, leaving comments, networking and all of the other little things that bloggers have to do in order to keep their site growing slide. It’s easy to to do this when time gets tight.

Make it a point to change that in 2012.

Set yourself a schedule. For example, you can reintroduce yourself to one or two new bloggers a weeks, leave a few comments per day and write at least one keyword-researched post per week.

If you make promotion part of your blogging routine you’ll keep doing it and if you set trackable goals you’ll have the ability to push yourself harder to make it get done.

Resolution 5: Get Into Audio and Video

Blogs aren’t just about text anymore. Multimedia is becoming more and more valuable as a blogging medium as it allows you to not only improve variety on your site, but also tap into large built-in audiences on most video and podcasting sites.

The new year is a great chance to get into multimedia. Start a video series or do a podcast. Don’t feel like getting in front of the camera or microphone? Consider doing screencasts that don’t require your voice or face. You can also get a friend who’s more comfortable being recorded to help out.

All in all, 2012 is a great year to get involved with multimedia. It may seem to be a bit late to the game, but in reality, there will always be people who are behind you and, furthermore, the field is still very much growing both in terms of participation and audience.

There’s a lot of room for new talent and the next hit could be you.

Bottom Line

In the end, there really isn’t anything special about New Year’s Resolutions. January 1st is just another day and you could make any (or all) of these resolutions on any day of the year with the same impact.

The main advantage of New Year’s resolutions is the psychological impact that the rolling over of the calendar has on all of us. Even if you aren’t superstitious or otherwise prone to making emotional judgements, there’s still something cleansing about a fresh calendar and the way it marks the passage of time.

Still, if you ran across this post on January 2nd or some other day of the year, don’t let it discourage you. Today is just as good of a day to start as any other.

After all, what’s important isn’t the significance of the day you start on, but the importance you place on the resolutions themselves. If you do the latter, you can begin in the middle of June and get better results by December than someone who started on January 1st and cut out part way in.

While websites use to be able to rely on static content that very rarely left the website, these days that’s simply not the case. When attempting to have your content read, ranked and distributed you really need engagement, thankfully there are some really simple writing and blogging devices we can use to increase your websites overall engagement.

1. Ask For User Engagement

You’ve just written a 2,000 word investigative piece on New York City corruption and while you’ve received a few thousand hits on the piece there’s still no comments to be had. So where exactly did you go wrong? It many cases bloggers simply don’t ask their readers to engage. At the end of my posts, whether there about New York City politics or a new gadget from Sony I always ask a question that was either unresolved in my post or that I believe will generate left/right chatter from groups that don’t necessary agree with one another.

Admittedly simply asking questions at the end of the post mostly helps sites with a regular reader base since those people are already more invested in your blog.

2. Always Ask For Social Shares

Have you noticed how many big name sites ask you to share an article after the content area? I’m not simply talking about placing a bunch of social share buttons on the bottom of your post but rather they will ask “Did you like this article? Please Share it with your friends” then provide links.

In my personal experience I have found that a better approach is to tailor your share request to the type of site you are running. For example a news based site might say “Find This News Interesting? Share It With Your Friends” while my humor network is more relaxed and simply says “Share The Funny With Friends.” By tailoring your share request for your site it reminds readers that what you do is specific and might benefit their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other network followers.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Shares In More Than One Spot

I once had a developer email me and say he would like to “Fix” my website because I asked for social media shares in three spots, something he called “crowded.” The truth was he was 100% wrong (The site was receiving over 1000 shares per day at the time of sale). While yes I agree you can turn your website into a social ticker wasteland there are simple ways to make shares readily available on all parts of your pages without annoying your readers.

First start with social shares at the bottom of your post, directly below the content, these can be smaller buttons since your reader is prone to see them as they near the end of your article.

Second, install a share bar at the bottom of the browser. I personally like Meebo because of their ad supported network however Wibiya and other free options work just as well. Typically I use this bar to highlight just the top networks where site shares are coming for on each of my particular sites.

Third, add a floating sidebar. If you use WordPress I highly recommend ShareBar which is both easy to install and easy to move around your site as needed. ShareBar also allows for display only when certain resolutions are available. If that resolution is too small you can have icons appear instead at the top or bottom of your content. I personally like a floating sidebar that follows the user as they scroll because it send a gentle reminder the entire time that your content is available for sharing.

4. Always Include An Email Button for Article Sharing

Always, always, always include an email button somewhere accessible on your page. I know it sounds like 1990 all over again but recent studies have shown that some articles can receive up to 80% of their shares through copy and paste “hey check this out” type emails. If you offer a simple email button you’ve already urged those users to share your content. With that being said an email option that only shares part of your article (an excerpt for example) and then urges users to visit your site is always better than someone copying and paste your entire article with no second user site involvement.

There are plenty of ways you can engage with your users but in my 10 years as an online content developer I have yet to find a better way then simply asking for engagement.

[Social sharing image via BigStock.com]

All of this includes a great deal of exposure, even if you are just starting out. Changes in search engines have brought the smallest of blogs onto everyone’s radar.

Most of your concern is going to be divided between content and marketing. These two factors will dictate whether or not you are being followed by a large-enough number to make it a business. If you are a freelancer of any description, it could also be what makes all the difference between getting and not getting that dream project. It is your livelihood at stake.

But it isn’t the only concern. Organization and discipline are two must’s of running a blog; otherwise you see unprofessional jumps and gaps in both quantity and quality of content that can ruin your chances of developing a dedicated following. That is the death of any mainstream blog, no matter the niche.

The trick is knowing what else should remain a priority. One of those elements to put on your to-do list is the creation of an editorial calendar.

What Is an Editorial Calendar?

As a blogger, there is a good chance that you have heard of this before and that you are asking the most common question: Isn’t an editorial calendar only used by advertisers who place ads on your blog?

This is a common misconception that trips many people up. Although an editorial calendar is the method of organization found to be very useful for advertisers looking to customize content running alongside posts, there is a greater implication for both the writer who maintains
the site and the readers who read it.

Essentially, an editorial calendar is a schedule that shows when you will be running certain posts, when and what topic they will cover. Not only does it make it easier to keep up with a series, space out content to work over time and give you a way to tell what is coming up, but it forces you to use discipline in the running of the blog. It might also keep you on track, if you have trouble establishing a content flow.

The Pros and Cons

Besides those listed above, there are other pros of using an editorial calendar. A lot of it has to do with finding the motivation to get work done while establishing a set schedule that requires a certain number of hours per day.

For example, say you want to run a series and have that series feature one article every other day for two weeks.

You would be able to write them ahead of time, knowing what you had planned, and then schedule them for publication on those days. This would cover two weeks worth of content, with writing only a couple of days a week to handle the work flow.

As for your readers, they can have the benefit of knowing what is to come. More and more blogs have been putting notes about “coming soon” articles on the bottom of current posts, especially if they are part of the same topic. It is much easier to remain relevant to the same content and give your readers consistency using this method, which in turn is a positive for them.

There are some cons to this process, however. The biggest one will always have to do with creativity and flexibility vs. the strict following of any schedule. Some writers find deadlines restrictive, and they end up compromising quality in order to keep to it.

You should never be tempted to follow so closely to an editorial calendar that you end up producing something less than great for your blog. It will give a serious blow to your credibility while lessening the impact of your website and putting the rest of your content into question – especially with future clients or other blogs looking for guest posts.

Creating Your Own Editorial Calendar

I have seen a lot of advice on this front, and all of it is good. But the truth is, you don’t have to have any specific process to making your own post schedule. All it really takes is some thought and asking yourself a couple of questions:

• What categories do I want for my blog? Try not to have too many to start out with and clean up if you have a lot already. You can add more as you go along, but the more general they are, the better.
• What kind of posts do I want to write? The themes will be another big part of the schedule, such as top 10 lists, tutorials and guides, reviews, posts on specific elements within your niche, etc.
• What kind of tags should I use? Developing a specific tag system will help you in the long run.
• When and what should I publish? You should decide now on what days you want posts to appear and what they should be about. For example, have top 10 lists once a week, a guide once a week, a short post twice a week and a review once a week. Then choose what days for each.

Conclusion

Creating your own editorial calendar is fairly simple to do. All you have to really know is what you want and make something to fit to those needs. There isn’t a right or wrong way, only what works and doesn’t work for you and your blog.

Sonia Tracy is the content editor for PsPrint and editor of PsPrint Design Blog. PsPrint is an online commercial printing company specializing in brochure printing. You can follow PsPrint on Twitter @PsPrint.

Writers block is common even for the most creative people in the blogging community. It seems as though every article idea is already out there for people to read. However, this is not something that should discourage you from writing. The truth is this: You’re blog will be unique simply because you are writing it. That right there makes it different. In other words, you can take a generic article idea and make it your own using different language and even different information.

Consider a few ideas for a blog post when writers block hits:

How to Find Article Ideas When Writers Block Hits

1. Tell an anecdote or explain a past experience.

This is something that works well for a personal blog, but usually not if you’re planning to guest post on a different site. Even if your personal blog has always been about giving advice and sharing information, readers will enjoy a personal story. If you prefer, make it related to your niche and explain what you learned from the experience. This works well every once and a while, and if you have a loyal reader base they will likely enjoy hearing a little bit about the writer. It works especially great on a Friday when no one is really in the mood for serious advice.

2.    Hold an interview with someone in the industry.

There is nothing easier than writing while using someone else’s words. Consider reaching out to someone in your niche who has advice to give readers and then hold an interview. This could be the CEO of a company in the city, a blogger who was recognized on a “ten best bloggers” list or someone you know who has made great strides in their industry. Reaching out to bloggers is your best chance for a response, but you might be surprised who else would be willing to answer a few of your questions.

3.    Write a book, movie, or blog review.

Although two blogs may both have a “review” article, no two articles will be alike. That makes this one of the best ways to keep your blog fresh even when the ideas aren’t quite coming to you. Consider doing a review on a book, movie, or even blogs. If you have ten favorite business blogs you like to read, write a review! Your readers will appreciate the new type of material, and you will have created a good relationship with the blogs you put on your list. However, remember not to make your choices too similar to your blog—you don’t want to point out the competition!

4.    If you have a lot of readers, create a contest.

Creating a contest can often be a lot of work, but it requires little creative thinking on your part. Consider holding the contest for the most creative article or the funniest blog post. Choose two or three and post them on the site. This will be fun for all readers and give you a break from writing (but not a break from reading!). The prize could be exposure for the winner through a featured blog post, a free book, or even a small cash prize. Make sure to treat the contest like a business proposal if you plan to give out a cash prize. People will take this more seriously, so you will have to have all questions answered in your contest description.

5. Create a survey or a poll for all of your readers.

These types of articles are typically not articles. All you need to do is write a quick introductory paragraph, and then ask your readers to vote. This type of interaction is usually fun for readers, and it will help you get the answers to your questions. You may even get idea for future articles based on the results of the survey or poll.

Not only will this create different types of articles help give you a break from writing traditional content, but it will give readers a break from reading traditional content. Although this may be a little bit different than what you usually post on your blog, it will be another way to show your creativity. Even though these ideas are generic, the actual content couldn’t be more unique.

Photo Credit: clker.com, optify.net, mfcreviews.com, futurefiction.com, elenajforbes.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to content creation. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including document software to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

Bloggers “sell themselves” to their readers every single day, they do so by being honest about their opinions and writing factual articles that serve the niche for which they write, however despite the ability of bloggers to sell themselves to readers they often do not sell themselves well to advertisers, company’s looking for product reviews and even other bloggers. The biggest pitfall in this area comes from a lack of a decent media kit.

What Is A Media Kit

In it’s most basic of terms a Media Kit is a page on a website or a file that can be sent to potential advertisers that explains why they should be willing to pay for ad space, product review and other types of advertising on your website.

What To Include In A Media Kit

What you will include in your media kit will vary slightly from one website to another but there are several aspects that almost never change regardless of the niche you serve.

1. Display where ad spaces will be featured. For example you can simply state those locations “Top of website next to logo” along with the size of the ad, for BloggingPro it might read, “468 x 90px Ad – Top of website next to logo.” While simple text is fine many website owners like to create a graphical outlay that highlights each area in which ads are available, this helps “visual” people get a better understanding of what they are buying. I personally like to ad “other advertising option not provided can be discussed with the website owner” since customized campaigns can often bring in more advertising cash than standard ad placement.

2. Provide website visitor analytics. Advertisers want to know who exactly you’re reaching out to. For example it’s important to include both the “unique” number of monthly visitors to your brand along with the number of pageviews they create. This helps advertisers determine if you reach enough people to make their efforts worthwhile and pageviews helps determine if you have an engaged audience. For example 10,000 unique visitors with 100,000 pageviews means your audience on average visits your website 10 times per month. When providing analytic information I prefer to use Google Analytics, GetClicky and Quantcast, this ensures my advertisers that my analytics reports has been verified by multiple sources.

3. Offer website ranking positions: I’m a strong believer that an Alexa score or Google Pagerank doesn’t hold the same weight htey use to but many advertisers disagree. In fact websites I’ve run had typically fared better when I’ve over shared website rankings. For general purposes I suggest sharing your Alexa score,  Google pagerank, Compete.com score and Technorati scores (this last one can be more important if you rank high in your particular vertical).

4. Share your Social Media follow numbers. The hot topic of today’s internet is social media and how company’s share their content. Make sure to tell your potential advertisers how many Facebook Fan Page Likes and Twitter followers you current have. If you use other social networks such as Pinterest (great for Mom Bloggers) include those as well to show advertisers that your social network competent. On a side note I’ve had advertisers pay for an ad spot or product review and then throw in $10 for a quick tweet, sometimes on sites with as little as 500 twitter followers because of the niche involved in the website. You should also include the number of RSS subscribers to your website and any email based subscriptions you have obtains. The more followers you can show the more interest you will develop for your website. On a side note if you regularly run successful giveaway campaigns it wouldn’t hurt to find the average number of Likes, Tweets and other social shares those contests receive to show product company’s the type of exposure they are likely to receive.

5. Sell Yourself. This might seem like the most obvious part of a media kit but it’s often overlooked. Advertisers want to know that you’re an authority in your vertical so you need to talk about yourself. For example if you’re a mom blogger with three kids you should mention that and reveal your children’s ages and if you’re a tech blogger who formerly worked for Cisco and other tech companies for 10 years you should include that information as well. The more foundation you provide for your background the better chance you’ll have of receiving paid review offers and attracting advertisers who want trustworthy sources.

In it’s most based of terms a media kit doesn’t just provide a bunch of random numbers, instead it gives advertisers a sense of what your website is about and who it attracts on a regular basis, by selling yourself and selling the interest level of your readers even a smaller site can gain exposure and advertising.

[Corporate Logo Image via BigStock]

Running, in particular endurance running, is a mindset more than anything and thinking like a runner, even if you aren’t one, has a lot of great benefits in your life and in your blogging.

So even if you’re not the type to get off the couch or wear running gear, getting into the mind of a runner can help you get the most out of your blogging and out of any other task that requires endurance and perseverance.

My Story

One year ago, I was not what anyone would consider a runner. Though I had already lost a lot of weight and greatly improved my health, I’d been shying away from treadmills and tracks simply because it was a type of exercise I wasn’t good at.

In high school, I was an avid mountain cyclist and would ride for hours on end. While cycling is great exercise, it requires a very different skill set than running and, every time I attempted to use my feet instead of my pedals it ended badly.

Yet, when I started seeing a trainer early this year, I had little choice but to start running. Since he was just starting out, the only cardio equipment he had was a treadmill so I was forced to learn and quick.

At first, it was pathetic. A lot of rail holding, long warm ups and short bursts. But, with time, I learned, got better and soon graduated to running on the streets and then begin to get much more serious, running farther than I ever thought possible.

Last week, I completed my first 10K run (6.2 miles) and am working on improving both my 10K and 5K times.

Though I still have a lot of work to do (my times are nowhere near competitive) It’s been a long journey already and one that I’ve already learned a great deal from.

With that in mind, here are just five of the lessons that running has taught me and how they apply to blogging.

1. The First Mile is the Hardest

There’s an old saying that goes: “The last miles is the hardest.” Whoever wrote that was not a runner.

The last mile is easy. You’re on the home stretch, your mind and your body are in a rhythm and you’re staring at the finish line. If you’ve made it to the last mile, you probably aren’t going to stop and you may even start to push harder.

For most runners, the first mile is by far the hardest. Though the first few feet is always easy thanks to the initial excitement, there comes a point where the pain and effort required to run catches up to your body and, sadly, you’re only a few hundred feet in.

At this point, you’re hurting and you’re staring down a long, hard road. It can feel impossible even if you’ve done it hundreds of times before. This, more than anything, will make you want to quit and go back home.

Lessons for Blogging: Setting up a site is easy and fun, everyone loves picking out their theme, but writing entry after entry without anyone reading gets tiresome quickly. You need to make a strong first push to get a site going and, once that’s done and your audience grows, you fall into a rhythm and things begin to get easier.

2. Consistency is Key

Though interval training is great if you’re learning how to run or want to burn a lot of calories quickly, it’s not a great way to post good times or run long distances. If you want to make it to the end of your run, you need to find a good, consistent speed that you can maintain and hold it.

Doing this not only makes running a lot easier on you, enabling you to go much farther, but it improves your overall speed, helping you get better times. The hardest part, however, is finding the exact right pace. It needs to be one you can maintain, but one that gets you to the goal as fast as possible.

Lessons for Blogging: You need to make blogging part of your routine and do it as often as you can maintain reliably. It’s easier to pick up the pace later than to scale back a pace you can’t maintain.

3. You Need the Right Equipment

Runners don’t wear the clothes they do out of a complete lack of fashion sense, it’s a matter of practicality. Normal clothes aren’t made for running, they’re heavy, restrict movement and are generally uncomfortable for any kind of extended physical activity.

That being said, good gear doesn’t make you a good runner, but it does make it possible for you to become one. Running shoes and track pants might seem like a waste of money, but when you try running in anything else, the difference is clear.

Lessons for Blogging: Bloggers have tools too, in particular the platform that they use. Whether it’s WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad or any of the other numerous options out there, you need to make sure you have the right platform for the type of site you want to run. The perfect blogging software won’t make you a great blogger, but it can give you the chance to become one.

4. You Need Support

Running is a solitary sport, but it’s not one you should be doing completely alone. It’s difficult to keep motivated when it’s just you running against yourself. Though you can set important goals, it’s easier when you have others to help push you along.

Whether it’s friendly competition, encouragement or just someone to talk to about running, having people you can work with not only makes it easier but better all around.

Lessons for Blogging: When you’re blogging, it’s just you and your keyboard but there is strength in numbers. Networking with other bloggers encourages linking, swapping useful information and much more. Being a social blogger makes you a better blogger.

5. It’s All About the Mindset

When starting a run, if you realize it’s going to be a long run and take it seriously, you’re much more likely to finish it. If you underestimate how far X number of miles is, you’ll likely not finish it, even if you’ve gone much farther in the past.

If you know what you’re getting into and treat it with the right amount of respect, you’ll reach your goals. If you don’t, you won’t. It’s that simple.

Lessons for Blogging: Blogging is an endurance run. It’s not something you do one day and quit. It becomes a part of your life and something you do day after day for months or even years. If you realize that before opening a site, you’ll likely go far with it and do great things, if you don’t, you’ll probably quit not too far out of the gate.

Bottom Line

Running isn’t easy but neither is blogging. But any time you take on a challenge and overcome it, there are things that you can learn from that and take it to the next.

This is why it’s important to always be working to improve yourself in everything you do. The harder you work, the more you overcome and the more experience you get, the better you are prepared for what lies next.

That, in turn, enables you to do more and become more, possibly exceeding the highest expectations you had for yourself.

According to the Internet World Stats, English is the most used language on the Internet at 536.6 million users (Chinese comes in second with 444.9 million users). In this sense, we are lucky that we speak English fluently (as my students consistently reminded me) because we are able to write for a larger audience. However, there is no denying that reading something in your own language is preferred (ask anyone who is bilingual). Consider a few of the reasons translating your blog into other languages is worth your time.

Why English Only is So Last Year

Many business professionals are hesitant to go the “foreign language” route because it sounds like a lot of document management work (and managing documents in a foreign language is no easy feat). English is very obviously one of the most popular languages spoken around the world; however what businesses do not realize is that many of these English speakers speak English as a second language. Therefore, there are many benefits you should be factoring in when deciding whether or not to translate your blog into different languages:

• You will have more eyes reading your content. If you have something important you have to say (and if you’re blogging you probably should…), you want to say it to as many people as possible.
• You will be able to rank higher on search engines and local search engines in other languages because there is less competition.
• Your blog will have new perspectives and opinions to discuss. If the comment is posted in another language, you can translate the comments quickly using websites such as Google Translate. However, you may find that those who find your blog in another language will comment in English.
• Duplicate content doesn’t count across languages.

Translating blogs into different languages is still somewhat of a hidden secret. The benefits are great, but they are still for the most part untapped. The best part: creating the translation is simple.

How to Go from Awesome to ehrfürchtige

The easiest way to get started is by installing a WordPress plugin. There are several plugins to choose from; all of which will automatically translate your blog into a different language. Most plugins offer several languages, so all a visitor has to do is click on one of the languages and BAM!—your blog is in Norwegian. Although the translations are never absolutely perfect, the benefits will still remain consistent. Consider the two most popular plugins to make it happen:

• Google Translate—This is by far the most popular route for bloggers, and is considered by most to be the quickest and cheapest. You can download Google Translate here, and then all you have to do is copy the code you are given onto your blog. Once you’re all set-up, Google will take care of the translating.

• Global Translator—This service creates sub-directories for all of your translated content, so you will have a lot of extra pages on your blog. This is recommended for bloggers who expect their primary audience to be speaking something other than English. You can download it here.

Both of these services are easy to setup and all are completely free. Although the idea of translation wasn’t too big in 2011, I expect it to be much more popular in the near future. And with those thoughts I say to you buenas noches, ciao, 晚安, and au revoir.

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com

It isn’t a question which can be answered with a quick and simple “yes” or “no”, so here are some of the points to consider.

Easy Money?

If you are a good, fast writer then you can make a reasonable living from writing for other people. You might never become a millionaire from it but if you want a steady, fairly predictable wage then you get it this way. With your own site things aren’t quite so clear cut, as your earnings could vary greatly from nothing at all to a lot of money. If you like the idea of striking it rich with a huge income then you might like to give your site a go, but it you are happy with safe and steady then copywriting as a job is probably good enough.

No Boss

Working from home as a freelance writer is one of the most relaxed types of job you could do. It is certainly nothing like being stuck in a stuffy office with a grumpy boss and a coffee machine that never blooming works (do I still sound bitter?) but can it be bettered? Certainly, online employers tend to be of the laid back variety but if you really want to go it alone then this is your chance. Of course, working without a boss means that you get more responsibility and can’t concentrate just on writing. Now you’ll need to find clients, handle the admin and maybe even hire your own staff.

Lots of Work

Freelance copywriters often complain that their job is all about feast or famine. No problem on that score if you run your own site; there will be a feast of work to do all the time. This is actually the main reason why people don’t seem to be so keen on what looks like the perfect compromise of doing both things at the same time. Running your own site is a full time job which simply won’t leave you the time to work for someone else as well.  Workaholics might like to give it a try but anyone who enjoys sleeping occasionally would be well advised to avoid this compromise.

Any Subject At All?

Maybe you think that working on a solo basis means that you can write about anything under the sun. It’s a nice thought but not really true in most cases. Your site will be like any other ones out there and will be situated in a niche which you have to stick to. If you want to attract visitors and make money from it then you are going to have to concentrate an awful lot on your keywords. In fact, strange as it may seem, you would probably get more variety working as an employee. Most writers juggle a few jobs at once, and switching between these gives them a nice bit of variety in the subjects they write about. If you find something you are truly passionate about then maybe you could make it work on your own site but in my experience any subject becomes a little less exciting after the 50th article.

Freedom

One of the best things about working as an internet copywriter is the concept of being free. You can work in your slippers, have your breakfast at 5pm and go to bed at 6pm if you want. Your monthly rail pass can turn yellow and curl up and your tie can disappear down the back of the wardrobe. Is this freedom the same whether you work for yourself or not? I reckon that it is extremely similar. You might be very unlucky and get a boss who wants you to stick to strict deadlines or who expects you to be on Skype on the hour every hour but this is unlikely. In fact, in my experience writing for someone isn’t that far removed from writing for myself. Once I hunker down and start typing I forget about who ordered the article and just start writing it.

Writing is a funny old business and writers will often find themselves asking this question. There is an seo copywriting team that lets you write for yourself as well as clients- Life can be perfect.

When I first started using Facebook fan pages on my various websites I immediately began to think of those pages as an extension of Twitter. On Twitter I simply dump every story I write directly into my Twitter profile and allow my users to pick and choose what they read. However I soon realized that not only do Facebook users begin to ignore a fan page when their are too many posts popping up in their news feed, it can also cause Facebook to turn away from your pages, displaying them to less fans.

To better understand Facebook fan page engagement and why it’s important let’s take a look at what engagement does for a fan page.

1. Post Engagement Leads To Exposure

Many Facebook users don’t realize that the less engagement they receive on their fan page posts, the less future posts are shown to fan page subscribers. For example, if I setup a Facebook post on my page and of my100 page followers 5 people leave a comment I have a 5% engagement rank for that post. Because anything over 1.5% is typically seen as a high engagement score Facebook is more likely to show my next fan page post to all or most of my subscribers. If my engagement score falls below 1.5% however there’s a chance that only a fraction of my fan base will be shown my next posts in their news feed. Hence, post engagement leads to more website exposure.

2. The Importance Of A Question

When posting stories to your Facebook page I highly recommend asking questions that will resonate well with your readership. For example, if you’re most popular posts lately have been about Facebook privacy policy updates it would make sense to ask “Did you know Facebook just changed their privacy policy again?” This type of question serves two purposes, first it targets your core readers by focusing on an issue that your website analytics shows they care about and second it leaves a lot of information to be determined which in turn often leads to better user engagement as your base asks questions. Regardless of what type of comment, like on a fan page post or share occurs you are receiving engagement points which in turn helps the fan pages exposure.

3. The Problem Of Auto Sharing Posts

As I stated in my opening argument, simply throwing up every post from your website is a mistake. For the longest time I was implementing RSS Graffiti for my posts, allowing every single piece of content I published to reach my Fan Page. The program with that type of thinking was the fact that RSS Graffiti and various other feed sharing programs don’t attempt to ask questions and engage with users, they simply throw up your post with a title, link and description. When I started asking questions about posts and then posting their links I immediately found that users were more apt to answer question and engage.  I also found that by asking questions during certain times of the day I was able to receive higher engagement, for example a question in the morning received page impressions and answers all day long while an 11pm post I wrote was less likely to become engaged by my page followers.

Whether you increase engagement by offering engagement prizes (giveaways, free e-books), through page posts that force users to ask questions or by simply choosing your best posts that tend to resonate with readers, the important thing to remember is that engagement will bring with it more exposure and likely even more Facebook fans who appreciate the fact that you aren’t spamming their news feed with tons of posts on a daily basis.

1: Yoast WordPress SEO

Yoast WordPress SEO is an all in one SEO kit which gives you site wide control over some of the most important SEO factors. Most usefully it allows you to easily write SEO friendly meta titles and descriptions, or it can even choose them for you! You can use Yoast SEO to create dynamic titles and descriptions across pages or to update individual pages. Other handy features include the ability to customise the content of your RSS feed, additional permalink controls, breadcrumb creator and a handy XML sitemap creator.

2: W3 TotalCache

W3 cache is a great plug in for improving site speed. Some WordPress sites can be notoriously slow because they have a lot of information to fetch from the server and then deliver to the user. Blog posts, comments and plug in data all have to be retrieved from the server which takes a lot of time. W3 TotalCache significantly reduces that time by caching its own fully complete copy of that page in its memory and presenting that to the user.

W3 TotalCache also allows you to minify CSS and Javascript files, which is particularly useful in some WordPress themes where there are an unnecessary amount of files. W3TotalCache essentially eliminates the unnecessary files and squeezes everything into one efficient file which is delivered directly to the user. W3TC can also be used for local cache, providing information to the browser as to what to cache and how long to keep it caches.

3: Share This

As social shares are likely to carry even more weight as a ranking factor, it’s as important as ever to ensure you’ve got social share buttons on all areas of your site. There are several social sharing plug ins, but for sheer ease of use and number of services this is the best for those who just want to install and let it do it’s magic. Share This enables you to customise the social sharing sites you display and where you display them on the page. You can also register with ShareThis to get additional social analytics about your shared posts.

4: upPrev Previous Post Animated Notification

One of the best bounce rate search engine optimisation tips I can give is to get this plug in! This is a great little way to subtly capture your users attention, help decrease bounce rate and generally get people engaging with more and more posts on your site. A lot of people found it initially on sites such as Nytimes.com and oddee.com have also been using something similar for a while.

This plug in creates a slider which fades or slides into your page when a user reaches a certain point in your post. If you set this at the very end of your page, it grabs the attention of the reader and allows them to click straight through to a different post. It works because it’s not too intrusive and when used properly feels quite natural and helpful.

5: Google Analytics For WordPress

For those serious about learning about the insight of their website, there isn’t a more complete Google Analytics package than Yoast’s. This plug in allows you as much insight into your websites analytics data as you want. You can either install the tracking code and leave it to collect the raw data you need every day, or use it to set custom variable reporting, e-commerce integration and event tracking.

Scott is a writer who would urge every SEO who hasn’t got a WordPress site to go out and start experimenting TODAY!