Archive for the ‘Blogging Strategies’ Category:
5 Tactics To Fight Back Against Copycat Bloggers
Credit: twvogel
There are three types of bloggers out there. In one group, we have a bunch of people who know how to come up with original blog posts on a consistent basis. These bloggers have mastered the art of grabbing an idea and looking at it from a unique angle. In the second group, we have a group of bloggers that come up with original ideas once in a while but mostly rely on other bloggers to do the job for them. The third group, which I happen to dislike a lot, are copycat bloggers. These bloggers not only steal your ideas but sometimes don’t even bother changing your posts enough to differentiate themselves.
There is nothing more frustrating than working so hard to come up with an original blog post, only to see someone else still your idea and run with it. To be frank, you can’t really complain about someone grabbing the idea behind your blog post and coming up with a unique post on the very same topic. But it is frustrating when someone copies you and your points and only changes the words around (we are not even going to talk about blog thieves). Read more »
5 Places To Dig Up Questions For Your Blog
One of the best ways to get more popular in the blogging world is by giving people what they are asking for. In fact, that’s the recipe to success in any business. If you can identify what people need and give them exactly what they are looking for, there is no reason you can’t make it big in blogging. Now, I am not suggesting that you can become a super-blogger by answering questions on your blog all day. At the same time, there are plenty of blogging ideas that you can dig up by doing your homework online.
Regardless of what niche you are involved in, you can always find people who are asking questions online that are probably being asked by many others. By identifying those questions and the needs of those people, you can write blog posts that people eat up and want to share with others. Not complicated on the paper but it does take some work. If you are looking to take advantage of this tactic to develop more ideas for your blog, here are 5 places you should look at:
Yahoo! Answers: still the best place to dig up ideas for blogs. There are plenty of questions in the database, which means you are going to have plenty of opportunities to develop ideas for your blog. You can also become an authority by participating and answering questions here.
Askville: a community by Amazon that doesn’t get the recognition that it deserves. If you are running a technology blog or have an audience that is hooked on Amazon products, Askville is a great place for your research. Read more »
Greet Your Visitors with WP Greet Box
When you get started with your blog, you only have a handful of posts for a while. So you don’t really get too much traffic from search engines. But once you hit those magic numbers (500, 1000, …) in posts, you are going to get a lot of passive traffic from all kinds of places. Some people may digg your blog posts. Others may submit your posts to Facebook, Delicious, or even Twitter. So you are going to get traffic from different sources. Now the easy way to deal with your traffic is to do nothing. Just sit and watch as people come and go. But that’s not very smart. Perhaps the smarter way to approach your traffic is by figuring out where its coming from and treat each source differently.
WP Greet Box is a cool plugin for Wordpress bloggers that makes it easy to track your visitors and show them customized messages based on their referring URL. Essentially, the plugin lets you treat your Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon traffic differently. You can give your Facebook visitors an incentive to tweet your posts and vice versa. This process can be implemented for other blogging platforms as well, though you’ll most likely need a 3rd party script to get the job done. With WP Greet Box, you won’t have write a single line of code, which is a big plus.
How To Effectively Manage Multiple Blogs
As someone who writes for multiple blogs on a daily basis, I am always looking for ways to become more productive with my blogging and get more done in less time. Running a blog is a very similar to being in a marriage. You need to work hard to make it all work. If you think running one blog is difficult, wait till you see how much effort it takes to run multiple blogs. If you add in the amount of time that you will have to spend promoting your blogs, preparing content, brainstorming, catching conferences, and reading books, you are going to go over 24 hours of work each day. So it’s essential for anyone who’s planning to run multiple blogs to plan things ahead of time to keep the momentum going on all of them without slaving yourself 24/7.
Recently, I came across an article on Pro Blogger about how using color-coding on a calendar has helped a blogger become more productive and effective in managing multiple blogs. The approach was certainly interesting, but it’s not something I would recommend to “multi-bloggers.” It’s nice to be able to look at a calendar to figure out where you are with each blog, but there are better tools out there. Calendars may have been effective in the 90s but not these days.
I use To Do List widget on my desktop to manage my daily posting and find out what I need to do on a daily basis to keep the momentum going on my blog. To Do List is a Yahoo! Widgets Engine plugin that makes it so easy to manage daily tasks and become more productive. It uses Yahoo! or Outlook to help you manage your daily tasks. Since it uses color-coding as well, it’s very similar to the approach suggested in the above mentioned article, but it’s easier to manage. Read more »
Guerrilla Blogging I: Weekend Blogging
We have all heard of the 80-20 rule before. The Pareto principle applies to the field of blogging as well. Not just content wise but also how one can go about becoming a star in this field. I truly believe that talent is only 20 percent, if not less, of the equation when it comes to reaching superstardom in the blogging world. If you look at all the top guys in this field, you will see a bunch of folks who are not only very talented but also passionate about what they do. But even people are not particularly blogging geniuses can become stars by outworking and out-hustling their peers. At the end of the day, you can’t pick up talent but you can always work harder and smarter.
The key to success in the blogging world is having the willingness to try new things and innovate. If you are just getting started in this field, it could be discouraging to think about how many advantages top bloggers have over you. But anybody can be beat in any game. That’s been my philosophy since the start, and that’s the only way you can go head to head against the big guns without getting discouraged and disheartened. My favorite blogging strategy is what I like to call Guerrilla Blogging. Guerrilla tactics have been used throughout history by folks who were willing to take on much stronger opponents. The same concepts apply to the field of blogging. If you intend to dominate a market, you need to find out how you can outplay and outsmart other bloggers in your field. It’s not just about having the best content, but by being great in areas that your competitors are weak in.
Weekend blogging is my favorite Guerrilla blogging tactic. A lot of bloggers don’t like blogging too much on the weekend, but depending on your niche, you may have a great opportunity to grab more market-share by dominating the weekends. The demand on the weekends may not be as high as regular week days, but if your competitors are taking time off, it’s a great opportunity for your to differentiate yourself from them and stand out.
Many super bloggers blog on weekends as well, but they don’t pod-cast or post video-casts on these days. If that’s where they are weak in, that’s what I would go after. You want to focus on providing quality content to your readers and viewers all the time, every single day. Now I am not suggesting that you should forget your social life and focus 24/7 on blogging. You can always hire a few interns to take some load off of you and help you build a 24/7 content factory.
Guerrilla Blogging may not be enough to beat the best of the best, but it does help you dominate most of your peers. Besides, nothing happens overnight. If you keep doing it and picking the right strategies, over time you are going to pick up more followers and join the elite. Once you are there, you are going to have a more realistic chance of going head to head or form partnerships with other top bloggers in your field. Guerrilla Blogging tactics are not easy to implement, but they do make a challenger out of a heavy underdog.
Get More Blog Traffic with BlogCatalog
Blogging is one of the funnest careers to have these days. After all, you are going to write great content, and they will be found by your audience. Your audience gets a lot of value out of your posts, and you make decent money from your sponsorships. Everybody wins, right? Wrong! In order to get any decent sponsorship deals these days, you need to find a way to drive lots of traffic to your website. And I am not talking about driving traffic from pay per click marketing. Pay per click marketing can easily make you go bankrupt if you don’t know what you are doing. That’s why you should focus more on free or almost free ways to promote your blog and drive traffic to your website.
BlogCatalog is a social blogger community that helps you get the word out about your blog and attract new visitors each and every day. I was at first a bit skeptical about it. I thought to myself, “yet another blog directory. Big deal!” But I was mistaken. You’d be surprised how much traffic you can drive to your blog by getting involved in the BlogCatalog community.
The first step is to claim your blog on BlogCatalog. You have to create an account and submit your blog to BlogCatalog to have it listed on the site.
You want to pay close attention to category and tags section. Use BlogCatalog’s front page to find out which tags are more popular and which one gives you the best chance to drive more traffic to your blog.
Another great way to get involved on BlogCatalog is by creating a widget for your blog. There are many to choose from. You can add a widget that shows you your recent viewers. You can add a group widget to bring the BlogCatalog community right to your blog.
Speaking of groups, there is no better way to drive traffic to your blog than getting involved and ask and return favors on BlogCatalog. That includes ranking other blogs and leaving comments on them.
Overall, BlogCatalog is a great community to be a part of. It’s made just for bloggers. If you’re hoping to get more traffic for your blog, why not ask others to help you out? That’s what being a part of this community is all about.
There is More To Your Blog Than You Think!
It’s surprising how many people come to believe that you can make money from your blogs with just ads. Just put up a blog and put Adsense on them, and you are good to go. But that’s a Hollywood story. You are not going to make too much money with ads. There are people who claim they do, but you don’t have to look too far to figure out their strategy. All these folks have other avenues to earn money online. They are writing books, creating premium products, and doing all kinds of things to make money online. I am not suggesting that you should stop putting ads on your blog. That’s ultimately between you and your readers. If they don’t prefer to see ads on your blog, that’s probably something you should consider. But ads may pay your hosting bills, but they shouldn’t be your only source.
Blogging is a great way to gain exposure online. If you keep providing value to your readers, you are going to gain more of them, and that will allow you to build a larger, tighter community. But at some point, you’ve got to stop looking at your readers as potential clicks and more as folks who are interested in knowing more about what you have to say. If you spend your days researching online and sharing your thoughts with people, you might as well try to give them more in exchange for some cash. And in order to do that, you’ve got to work on your branding. You’ve got to brand yourself and work on complimentary products that provide more value to your readers and make you some revenue on the side. The more value you provide on your blog, and the more trust your build with your readers, the more powerful your brand becomes, and the better chance you have of making money from your premium works.
With that in mind, here are a few ways to make money from your blog, besides using Adsense:
- Premium Video: premium videos are a great way to make money online. Take SEOmoz. They have free videos available to their members, but they also sell premium SEO courses. And why not! They have one of the best brands in the SEO world.
- Membership: depending on your niche, you may be able to monetize your blog by creating a premium membership service for those who are interested in getting more information and are willing to pay for it. Make sure you provide real value before charging people for your content. Create tools, reports, and even software programs to create an effective membership site.
- Podcast: creating your own podcast may not generate instant revenue for your blog, but you can always sign up sponsors. And you can also create audio courses from your Podcasts. You can also provide your podcast archives available to your fans for a free.
- Book: you can also take a page out of Darren Rowse’s books and write a book. Not everyone can do that. And Darren has one of the best brands in the blogging world to back his book up.
- Product: any other type of product that provides your customers with some value can generate you revenue. Some folks have started teaching people how to start a video blog. Others are selling courses on the basics of promoting blogs on the Internet. The sky’s the limit here. Think outside the box!
There you have it. You don’t need Google Adsense to make a killing online. If you have had a blog for a few years, you probably have enough content to create a product of your own without having to start from scratch.
Your take: when are you planning to offer your first product online? Please share!
35 Ways To Write a Controversial Blog Post
Controversy sells. If you have writing your blog for a while, you have probably used controversial posts to engage your users and gain more traction in the blogging world. Just take a look at Fox News. Those guys have some of the worst reporting I have seen in the media. They are so biased and crude. At the same time, they are dominating the world of cable television. Guys such as Bill Oreilly and Sean Hannity call President Obama all the names in the book, and people keep watching them (and I am not talking about the conservatives). It’s really the oldest trick in the book. Create controversy and reap the rewards for a long time. If you don’t believe me, ask Rush Limbaugh.
There are many ways to create controversy, some of which even I am not comfortable with. Not everyone can pull off a Rush Limbaugh. It’s an art, and that’s why Rush is so good at what he does. But if you are looking to create a little bit of controversy to gain some exposure on the Web, here are a few ideas to consider:
- Take on other top bloggers.
- Make bold predictions.
- Make off the wall predictions.
- Talk about the difference between men and women.
- Pick one gender over the other (know your audience first).
- Talk about why Web 2.0 is overrated.
- Bash Twitter!
- Talk about the death of blogging.
- defend Scientology and Tom Cruise on your blog.
- Pull a Hannity on President Obama
- Talk about who shouldn’t have touched the Queen
- Pick Microsoft over Apple.
- Bash the iPhone!
- Talk about UFOs.
- Tackle Illegal Immigration.
- Defend or oppose abortion.
- Post a controversial video.
- Create response videos to top bloggers.
- Talk about how our economy is doing great.
- Defend Jim Cramer and the Wall Street.
- Defend Facebook’s latest redesign.
- Better yet pick Facebook over Twitter.
- Or Twitter over Facebook.
- Discuss how Zune was great.
- Repeat Glenn Beck’s claims on your blog.
- Talk about how Kindle will never make it.
- Discuss Cash 4 Gold on your blog.
- Leave Twitter and talk about the reasons.
- Bash Digg and its new toolbar.
- Attack Net Neutrality.
- Argue why Wikipedia is overrated.
- Talk about why Twitter and Facebook should be paid services.
- Talk about dubious ways to gain followers on Twitter.
- Discuss the pros of behavioral tracking.
- Talk about who you wouldn’t date.
There are many more ways to create controversy on your blog. I strongly recommend everyone to look at FoxNews. These guys have turned this concept into an art. I am personally no fan of controversies. But there is no question this tactic works. Just make sure you know where that line is and don’t cross it. Remember, you want to expand your blog not kill it!
Your take: did I miss anything? What would you add here?
How To Bribe Your Readers For Comments
A few days ago, I talked about how you can go about getting more comments on your blog. If you are suffering from lazy-readers-syndrome, there are a certain things you can do to get them to comment on your blog. Commenting on other blogs may not look that difficult, but a lot of folks don’t lift a finger without having some sort of encouragement. If you are dealing with these folks, you need to break their habit by giving them encouragement to get involved and engage with others in your community for the betterment of your community.
Here are a few things you can do to get folks to comment on your blog:
- Giveaways: the best way to get comments on your blog. You can always ask companies to sponsor giveaways on your blog. But if you have no success there, you can always buy a couple of cool gadgets and give them away in return for folks linking to you and leaving comments on your blog. You can also ask them to follow you on Twitter. Make sure your prize is something useful. I have had a lot of success with $25 gift certificates from Amazon, but you can give more or less. It never hurts to test.
- Products: if you have a product that you afford to giveaway, you are golden. People will jump through the hoops to get their hands on a freebie. Make sure your product provides some value.
- E-book: if you have written an e-book that you afford to giveaway, you can use it to attract lots of comments and traffic. Make sure you promote your work enough in your e-book to make it all worthwhile.
- Coupons: if you have a coupon that can save your reader $$$, you can get a lot of comments by giving it away. It really comes down to how much your readers can save by using the coupon. The more you giveaway, the more tempted your audience becomes to comment.
- Premium content: you may have one of those hybrid blogs that include both free and premium articles. If that is the case, you can increase user participation on your blog by giving away some of your paid articles.
- Membership: everyone likes to be a part of exclusive club. If you have a membership club that can provide value for your readers, you can get lots of comment by dangling membership to your club in front of your users.
- Limited Time Offers: it’s one thing to give away an e-book or a product to folks who leave a comment on your blog. It’s another thing to give your audience the impression that they have only a limited time to take advantage of your offer. That creates the sense of urgency that can get your more comments in a short period of time.
The rules are pretty simple here. As long as you have something that is of some value to others, you can give it away in return for user participation. People may be lazy, but they love free products. You shouldn’t limit yourself to the above tactics. You an always come up with innovative ideas to get people involved. But if your audience is not ready to participate even after you have offered them freebies, then there is probably something wrong with your comment system. Make sure you promote your freebie, and you should be all set.
Article Marketing: More Blog Traffic with Articles
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I have talked about in the past about ways that you can drive traffic to your blog. It’s not really that hard. There are just too many ways and too little time. So your goal should be to find traffic-building methods that work the best. Article marketing is still one of the best ways to drive traffic to any website. There are thousands of articles that are out there, but by targeting the top article directories, you can make sure your work is distributed to other article directories as well.
The top two article directories that I personally use are Isnare.com and EzineArticles.com. Ezinearticles.com is the best article directory in the industry. There is none better. I have been testing all article directories for years and nothing comes close to EzineArticles when it comes to driving traffic. These guys are very good at what they do, and they have a reliable stream of traffic that keeps getting you visits. What I like about EzineArticles is that they treat it all as a business, and they let you know how important you are to their success. The more quality articles you write for them, the more successful they will be, and the more traffic you get in return. It’s really a win-win situation.
With Isnare.com, you have an article directory that is among top 3 article directories on the market. Not only you can submit your articles to Isnare.com for free, you can submit it to 1000+ other article directories through Isnare’s article submission service. These guys have been around for a while and know what it takes to get you links and traffic.
Driving traffic via article marketing is not as easy as it used to be, but it’s still very much possible. A few years ago, you could write junk articles and get traffic regardless. Now, top article sites have added article ratings and comments to make sure you don’t get away with that. EzineArticles members don’t like it when you submit the same old junk over and over again, and they let you know that by giving you bad ratings. But as long as you spend time to write quality articles, you are going to get your traffic and keep your readers happy at the same time.
The practice still stays the same. Here is how you write a magnetic article:
- Choose a magnetic title
- Tag your articles properly
- Write a tempting summary
- Use your keyword phrases 1-2 times per each hundred words
- Don’t share everything. Tempt your readers to come to your website for more.
- Write a proper author bio. Make it into two paragraphs. Include your whole URL inside.
There you have it. As long as you follow the above rules and write original, decent quality articles, the sky’s the limit. You can not only get traffic from these article directories but also juicy links. Talk about killing multiple birds with one stone.
