Archive for the ‘Hints and Tips’ category

5 Great Articles on How To Build Your Brand

May 25th, 2010

I often read what other bloggers have to say about blogging and what they say is really good.

This week I present 5 great posts on how to build your brand for your blog.

Creating a brand is crucial for your blog as it allows other people to recognise and identify you. Think of popular brand names such as McDonalds and Nike, and think about what you know about them and their brand names. If you see the Golden Arches or fast food you think of McDonalds. If you think about shoes or a tick, you think about Nike. What do your readers think of you when they read your blog or your your name?

So how do you build up your online brand. I have gathered some 5 posts that can help you.

How to Build a Remarkable Personal Brand – Famous Bloggers

4 Tips To Build Your OWN Online Brand – Hot Blog Tips

The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Blogging Brand – Blog Like A Pro! – Blogging Pro

10 Tips for Building Your Brand – JimiJones

How Not to Build a Personal Brand – Famous Bloggers

 

To sum up the above posts you:

  • Need to have an established logo
  • Have a unique design or theme
  • Promote your brand
  • Stay up-to-date with latest trends
  • Utilise Social Media
  • Contribute to the Blogosphere
  • Know your audience
  • Be unique
  • Be personal
  • Be consistent
  • Get out there
  • Be active
  • Build a community around you
  • Talk to others
  • Have something to offer
  • Establish an object with your name (E.g, Cooler – Esky; Adhesive Bandages – Band-aid)

 

How have you built up your brand name?

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53 Reasons Why Readers Aren’t Coming To Your Blog?

May 15th, 2010

Have you been blogging for a while, and you haven’t increased your readers? Here’s a list of reasons why this may be the case.

  • You don’t provide readers with useful content
  • What you say, readers already know
  • You are just copying other people’s idea’s
  • There is to much information already out there
  • You are not writing your best content
  • You have no authority in your niche
  • Your writing has to many spelling and grammar mistakes
  • You aren’t doing enough marketing
  • You are doing too much marketing (spamming)
  • You write for Google and not for people
  • Your blog is always down
  • You make it hard for people to navigate around your blog
  • You have to many broken links
  • Your website is hard to find
  • You don’t have any content on your blog
  • You are not capturing your readers details such as email addresses to tell them to come back
  • You don’t know what you are talking about
  • People can’t understand your instructions
  • You don’t have any fresh idea’s to write about
  • You don’t read into the full story
  • You don’t spend enough time Blogging
  • You read more than you write
  • You failed English or you don’t speak English
  • Everything you do is put off until another day
  • You are not part of a community
  • You are too predictable
  • You don’t understand what blogging is
  • You don’t put yourself in your readers shoes
  • You don’t invest time, money, and effort into your blog
  • You hurt or mock your readers beliefs, values, and feelings
  • You don’t have any initiative or goals
  • You aren’t inspired by other people
  • You hate blogging
  • Your expect to much from yourself
  • You are too negative
  • You don’t see the whole picture
  • You don’t explore or take risks
  • You don’t make use of your opportunities
  • You have not analysed your strengths and weaknesses
  • Readers don’t know who you are
  • You always say “I can’t” or “I’ll do it later”
  • You don’t have a schedule or you do, but don’t stick to it
  • You don’t set a clear picture with your writing
  • You don’t analyse the information you have
  • You are against your competitors, not working with them
  • You are too secretive
  • Your content is lame
  • You don’t want to blog, or don’t have a passion for blogging
  • You are not consistent
  • You lie, or twist the truth
  • You break your promises
  • You think about yourself, and not about your readers
  • You spam your readers with ad’s to make money

So if you try and not do the following, you will  be well on your way to creating a successful blog. Do you have anything else that should go on this list?

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Find Blogging Friends and Form a Relationship – Day 4 of 7 Day Challenge

April 8th, 2010

How did you cope yesterday? Did you get some good results? We are now up to day 4 of the 7 day Creating A Successful Blog Challenge. Challenges are going to get a bit harder now, and today’s challenge will take a bit more time then previous ones. Today you are going to form a relationship/partnership with another blogger in your niche. Don’t be too stressed out if you have no idea how to go about this, we have some tips!

Find A Friend First

The first step to forming a relationship with another blogger is to find another blogger. Sounds simple doesn’t it. Well it is. You may already read other blogs in your niche, so you may have already found a successful candidate. If not, you better get out there and start looking.

Have a search for keywords in your niche in Google Blog Search, or other blog directories that you know of, and see if you can find any sites that you think you can form a relationship with the blogger. Make sure it is a site that is around the same age, and type as your blog with a similar subscriber count as you. As a tip, if they use Feedburner as their RSS feed, add /~fc/ in the URL between the.com and their feed URL, and if the count is enabled, you should be able to see how many subscribers they have.

If you aren’t having any luck, try doing search on related:yourblogdomain.com.

Still no luck? You can always visit commentators on other blogs that you have found to see if there site is related to you. Because you will be surprised how many people are in the same boat as you. If you want, comment on this post below your blog name and niche, and you may find your friend without leaving this page.

One final place I recommend that you look is over at Twitter. Go to the Twitter Search Page, type of few keywords and see if you find any people you think you want to be friends with.

You may also want to look into our Exclusive Group offer if you are eligible. This is an exclusive group of bloggers who work together to help build up each others blogs.

Don’t Rush Into It

Now that you have found a successful candidate to be friends with, don’t rush into it by asking them to be a friend with you straight away. Ease your way in. Comment on a few of his blogs posts. The author will regularly see your name appear, and he may comment back on your own blog. Also re-tweet some of their posts and submit them to social media websites that I mentioned in day 3. They may recognise you, and again, return the favour.

Now that your new friend is visiting your site as well, write an article that promotes one of his articles or his whole blog. You may read something over on their blog that you think is really interesting, so you may want to share it on your blog. Don’t directly copy his content, but take their main views, link to the post, and have a discussion about it. If you are unclear what I mean, do something like Tom from Build That List has done with me. (Please note that Tom has sold his site since that post was published)

Just Pop The Question

You should now be at a stage where you are commenting and re-tweeting on each others posts, and linking to each others posts in each others posts. It is now time to pop the question and contact the other blog to see if you can officially form some type of relationship/partnership/friendship. When you do so, make sure you introduce yourself (if you haven’t already in your comments), explain what you have done (promoted their work, re-tweeted), why it is a good opportunity to be friends, offer them something in return and then have a virtual bear or cocktail.

Extra Challenge: Form another two or three friends. Involve each other, promote each others work and help each other out.

If you have any questions about today’s challenge or would like some extra help, please ask in the comments below!

» Read more: Find Blogging Friends and Form a Relationship – Day 4 of 7 Day Challenge

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Make The “No One Is Reading My Blog” Feelings Vanish

March 5th, 2010

If your blog is a few months old, and you don’t have the audience that you want, or your blog is only receiving one hit per day (i.e. just you), you may feel that your hard work is going to waste. Here are some tips that can make the “No one is reading my blog” feeling turn into “I love that so many people are reading my blog”.

Target Your Audience

The first thing that you need to do is to ensure that you are targeting a particular audience. If your blog topics are all over the place from Technology to Sports, to Environment, you aren’t targeting a niche. Pick one topic and stick with it. By doing so will increase you subscription count because readers know they are getting the information that they want.

Don’t Check Your Stats

The simplest way to not have the “no one is reading my blog” feeling is to never check your blogs statistics. If you don’t know that no one is visiting your blog, you assume that people are. That way, the only feeling you may get is “No one is commenting on my blog”. Good bloggers spend time creating content, and developing an audience; not checking their Adsense or Analytical statistics every hour.

Make It Easy For People To Read and Comment

If people aren’t commenting on your blog, one reason could be that it is difficult for them to write a comment. So make it easy for people to comment by:

  • Allowing guests to write comments
  • Don’t have an impossible CAPTCHA that no one can read

You may also want to make commenting rewarding for readers. You can do this by:

  • Using DoFollow
  • Giving them something useful in return

If you need more ideas, have a read of 10 steps to get readers to comment on your blog.

Remember That Success Does Not Happen Within Minutes

If your blog is new, and you don’t have an existing reader-base or another blog to help promote your blog, you won’t get readers overnight. It takes time for your blog to get high rankings on Google, and for this to happen, you need to have solid content, and content that an audience is willing to read.

Work Smart, Not Hard

To create good content, you may want to work smart and not hard. Don’t work hard by breaking your back over writing content after content, work smart by producing content efficiently and making it effective. Be efficient by recycling your old and forgotten content. That way you will have a new post that your new readers probably would never have read.

Promote Your Work, Brand and Name

One final reason for people not reading your blog is the simple fact that they have not found it. Make sure you promote your blog, individual posts, your brand, and name. Build quality backlinks, optimise your blog for search engines, or use various other methods to drive traffic to your blog.

Connect With Other Bloggers

It is also a good idea to connect with other bloggers that are in your niche. Treat them as a friend and not as an enemy, and help each other to build up your blogs. That is the secrete key to success.

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10 Easy To Deploy Techniques To Get Readers To Comment On Your Blog

February 25th, 2010

Is your blog running dry of comments? Do you want to get more people to comment on your Blog? Here are a few handy tips which you can put in to practice to make it worth while for people to comment on your blog.

Ask The Reader To Comment

The most effective way to get people to comment on your blog posts is to ask them to comment on your posts. You can ask your readers to comment anywhere throughout the post, but in most cases try to ask them at the end of the post. However, don’t just say, “What do you think of my post” or “Please comment”. You need to hint to them that you want them to comment. For example, at the end of this post I might ask “Please comment about your techniques you use to get readers to comment on your blog” Don’t be afraid, you can comment on this blog.

Make It Easy To Comment

People often read an article and want to express their views on it. Either that they like the topic, the author has done something wrong, or should do something another way. But if you make it hard for people to comment, they just won’t, even though they really want to say something.

To make it easy for people to comment, allow guests to comment. (I.e Don’t make people have to login or register to comment.) If you are worried about spam on your blog, there are numerous plug-in that combat this issue.

Reward The Reader For Commenting

Everyone loves to be reward for what they do, so it is a good idea to reward your readers. This could be as simply allowing them to have a link back to there site, or a link to their twitter profile for example. It would be extra rewarding if you use “dofollow” attribute (more on that later). You can make it even more rewarding buy having a list of your most active commenter’s in your blogs sidebar. (Again, more about this later).

You may also want to give each commenter a free eBook to download for their efforts for commenting – but make sure that the eBook is only available to people who do comment. Another option could be giving a random commenter access to your premium content (that’s if you have premium content).

Reply Back To All Comments

Make sure you always respond to a users comment. Even if they are just making a statement, tell them you’re thankful for them taking the time to read your work and respond to it. If the reader asks a question, make sure you answer it, and make sure you do it as soon as you can!

Give A Link Back To The Readers Website

Most people who comment on blogs actually have a blog themselves, and they usually comment because it increases the chance of someone clicking on their name and visiting their website. It just gives the reader a little more incentive to comment. Read the next tip for an even more incentive.

Use DoFollow

Most blogs nowadays use the ‘nofollow’ attribute when a commenter includes a URL in the post. By using the ‘nofollow’ attribute, search engines won’t follow the link and therefore, it will not improve the pagerank of the website that is being linked too. So to give an added incentive for people to comment on your posts, make sure robots follow their link – especially the one to their website. If you are not sure if your blog is using ‘dofollow’ or ‘nofollow’ look in the source code and see if it is included in a commenter’s URL. If you have WordPress, it is ‘nofollow’ by default.

Promote Top Commenter’s on your sidebar

Have you ever wondered why Yahoo Answers is so popular? It is because users want to try to be at the top of the list of giving the best responses. The only way to do this is to answer questions. This principle works the same for comments on blogs. By showing all your readers who the most active commenter is, and giving that commenter a link to their website, this will give an added bonus to the commenter, which increases the change of someone commenting as each commenter wants to be at the top of the list.

Make It Worth While To Comment

With the tips provided above, it comes down to one thing – Commenting needs to be worth it. A comment can take less then 10 seconds, however good comments can take more than 5 minutes. Readers will only comment if it is worth their while. Have a think about that, and see if the tips provide above help. Why do you comment on other blogs?

Comment On Their Blog First

If your comments are running dry, you might find it beneficial if you comment on someone else’s blog first who is in the same niche as you. The aim here is that they will return the favour. However, this won’t always work – but it is worth a shot, plus you get extra publicity for your blog.

Finish The Post With A Question

As with the first point, finish the post with a question. So here are my questions:

  1. What are your tactics that you deploy to get readers to comment on your blog?
  2. How do you get readers to comment on your blog?
  3. What is the average number of comments do you get on your blog per post?
  4. Did you learn something from this post?

Happy Commenting!

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Things You Must Consider When People Guest Post On Your Blog

February 5th, 2010

Guest blogging is becoming more and more common as both parties benefit from someone guest posting. If you are not sure what guest blogging is, it is when someone contacts another blog and asks if they can write content for them in exchange for a link back to their site.

So if you do allow people to guest blog on your blog, here are a few things that you must make clear.

Who will own the content?

You must make it clear to the guest blogger who will own the content. This depends on your copyright status of your blog and other various factors. Just make sure you let the guest blogger know who will own their work, and what other people can possibly do with it.

Does the content have to be unique?

To have good SEO, content on your blog needs to be unique. So if you want unique content on your blog, you must state to the guest blogger that what they upload to your blog cannot be from another source on the internet, or be published elsewhere.

What are the rules on editing?

You must also be clear on the rules of editing their post. It is recommended that as a condition for guest blogging, you are allowed to edit what they have written. This can be spelling, grammar, links, or paragraphs you don’t want to appear on your blog. Make sure you edit within reason. Don’t remove all their links, or they will take their content somewhere else. But remember, you deserve to have final say what get’s published on your website.

What are the rules on links?

You must be clear on the number of links and the types of links that are permitted to use. Do you permit the use of affiliate links? How many links are they allowed to have in their post? Do you use the “NoFollow” attribute? The guest blogger must be aware of your stance on these rules of yours.

The rules of what you can do with the post?

It is also a good idea to tell the guest blogger what you can possible do with their post. Things can include:

  • Editing their post
  • Removing/deleting their post
  • Moving their post

This is important as it is unfair to the person who writes the post if you remove because you can. If you want this power, then make sure you make them aware of it.

Post acceptance

You must also tell the guest blogger that you get final say whether or not their post will be published on your site. Unless it is an open community blog where anyone can post what they want.

We would like to know what your experience of guest blogging has been like. Do you accept guest posts on your blog? Have you guest posted on other blogs? Please share your experience.

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How To Remove The “Can’t Be Bothered Blogging” Syndrome from Bloggers?

February 3rd, 2010

If you are a blogger, you might find yourself in situations where you just can’t be bothered to write new posts, or even finished your half written posts. You really want to write, but you just can’t be bothered. So how do you get rid of this can’t be bothered syndrome? Here are a few hints and tips to help get you motivated again.

Ask Yourself: Do I really want to be doing this?

The most common reason of not being bothered writing posts is that you don’t really want to be doing it. It could be that you have better things to do in your life, you are sleep deprived, or you just don’t enjoy the topic you are writing about. So think long and hard if this is something that you want to be doing.

Ask Yourself: Is this something I am enjoying?

Blogging is fun, social, and it allows you to express your views on your favourite topics. If you can’t be bothered blogging, then think to yourself, ‘is blogging actually fun and do I enjoy it? If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, then refer back to the first step.

Ask Yourself: Is the reward beneficial?

Every blogger blogs for a purpose. Because it is rewarding in some way – but it is different for everyone. Some people find it rewarding because they are making money, other people as it lets them escape from reality, and others because they know they have a loyal reader base and people are reading what they write. So what reward are you getting for Blogging? Do you even get one? If you don’t, that’s a reason why you’re not enjoying it.

Tip: Set yourself 10 small goals to reach one large goal

If you are writing an eBook, you might start writing and say to yourself, “I have a long way to go”, then just give up. But don’t. The best way to tackle this is to breakdown the eBook into sections. Don’t have your eBook all in one document. Break each chapter down into a file. This allows you to focus on the chapter you are working on and forget about the rest. Sooner or later, you have finished one good quality chapter and feel a sense of achievement. Keep doing this, and you will soon find yourself having completed the eBook without even knowing it.

Tip: Set yourself a deadline. And enforce it!

Set yourself a deadline to get what you want written done. Not only this, but make sure you enforce it and set a punishment to yourself if you don’t. Remember the days in school and university? What happens when you don’t finish it on time? You get an afternoon detention or you fail the course? Blogging isn’t any different. If you miss your deadline, you lose your readers. Don’t make your hard work go to waste.

Tip: Write heaps when in the mood, have a break when you are not

If you are in the mood to write, then do a whole week worth of posts. If your not in the mood, then write a little bit, then come back to finish it off. By doing this, when you are not in the mood for Blogging, you don’t have to write because you have completed your weeks work already. Make sense?

Tip: Don’t force yourself

Your best writing will just come to you. If you don’t currently feel like writing, don’t do it because your readers will know that you don’t care and don’t have the passion for what you are doing.

What have you done to help get you back into the mood of blogging when you can’t be bothered? Please share in the comments.

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