Posts Tagged ‘Promotion’

6 Types of Content To Write On Your Blog

May 20th, 2010

You may think that content is just content. Well in fact, this is not the case. There are many different forms of content that a blog can have. For example, your blog can be made up of video, music, images, or text. However, there are different types of content that give a different final result and do different things with your readers.

Content that will get readers to your blog

First of all, you need readers to come to your blog. So you need to create content that readers are able to find and useful to them. This content is usually a once-off thing, and would most probably do really well on social media websites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.

It’s mere impossible to create this content everyday, but once you have it, it will increase your readers dramatically, and you’ll see your majority of search hits going that that page.

An example of content that will get readers to your blog may be an InfoGraph, or something that a lot of people find very useful and want to share it around.

Content that will get readers coming back

The second type of content is content that will get your readers to come back to your blog. This should be you main focus point. Therefore, you must write content that your blogs audience is looking for, and most importantly, have a consistent publication schedule.

You should create this sort of content everyday on your blog as this content entices readers to return. It won’t be anything special, but your regular readers will always come back and read it.

Content to make you money

Thirdly, you need to make money somehow. So this sort of content may be a paid review, a sponsored post, or a product that you highly endorse and get affiliate sales for. It is important that you use this sort of content sparingly as you don’t want to lose readers as you are spamming them with products to often.

Content used for promotion

Content that is used for promotion is content that you write that promoter’s your blog. For example, it could be a blog post that outlines the rules of a competition you are having.

The main aim of writing this sort of content is to get your readers to spread your name and brand around and to increase your blog subscriber count.

Content to spread around on social media

This sort of content should be created to become viral on social media websites. The aim of the content is to be popular on websites such as Digg. By creating viral content, you will be receiving a lot of new visitors to your blog which hopefully, your content can entice them to stay and return.

Content to promote your content

The final type of content is content that promotes your existing content. For example, if you have written a lot of posts about a similar topic, you may wish to create a post that links to each of those items. It’s also a great way to bring your older content back to life.

So there are 6 types of content that you can write for your blog. Have you been using any of these on your blog? Please share it in the comments below.

How To Build A Brand For Your Blog

May 17th, 2010

To create a successful blog, you need to develop a brand for your blog. A brand is essentially a recognisable name that people know information about. By creating yourself a brand, visitors can easily recognise you and talk about you which helps promote your blog.

So How Do You Create A Brand?

The first step is to offer your readers something. If you don’t have any products (or have content on your blog), it will be incredible hard to create a brand for yourself. So the very first step is having something that people want.

Have an Easy To Remember Site Name, Slogan, and Logo

For people to recognise your brand, you need to think of and create a name for your blog, a catchy slogan and logo. So when someone sees or hears about your site, they know what and who you are.

Keep A Consistent Blog Design

Find a theme, and stick with it – don’t change from on theme design to another. If your site looks completely different one day to the next, readers may get confused.

Build A Community

If you have a community around your blog, you are engaging with your readers. Ask them questions, respond to them and develop your brand to be helpful.

Be Consistent

If you are consistent with what you do, readers are less likely to visit your blog, thus promoting a negative image on your brand.

Be Out There

One final thing to mention is to be out there. If you are tucked away in your little corner of the internet, no one will find you and your brand will not exist. Interact with the online community in your niche, and help other’s out.

So how is your brand coming along?

How To Create, Run, And Maintain A Blog In 11 Steps

January 24th, 2010

Creating a Blog is pretty easy now. Just install WordPress on your own server or signup for a free account on Blogger. But you may be unsure how to setup a blog that is right for you and run it. So here are a few tips for you to follow.

Choose a passion

A blog only works if the author is passionate about the subject they are writing about. So if you hate cooking, don’t write a blog about cooking the best meals. It just won’t work. Write about something that you like and will like in the next few years.

Write down your goals and plan, plan, plan!

Once you know what your Blog is going to be about, write down your goals and plan your blog; from who are your competitors, to what sort of content you are going to publish. Planning is the key for success. “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail”

View your competitors blogs

Once you defiantly know what you are going to Blog about, do some research on what your competitors are blogging about. Learn what they are doing and try to do it better. If you find something that interests who, write it down and deploy it on your own Blog.

Choose your Blogging software

Next is to choose what platform you will run your Blog with. The most common ones are WordPress and Blogger. But there are heaps more out there such as LiveJournal, Joomla, and Drupal.

Purchase a Domain Name

Next is to pick your title and your domain name (that’s if you want to purchase one). They cost about $10 per year and gives your Blog a sense of professionalism instead of using a subdomain of your hosting provider. This also allows you to move your Blog to a different server without losing all your hard work in promoting it.

Customise your Blog

Once your Blog is installed, find a theme that you like. Most free themes will do the trick and you can find them easily by doing a Google search on “Free WordPress Themes”. Research has showed that if you have good, readable content, your theme does not matter.

Install useful plug-ins

Next, go through the plug-in directory on WordPress and install plug-ins that you like and that can benefit your Blog. There are so many plug-in that your Blog should have such as All in One SEO pack and a few others.

Write your “About” Page

Another good idea is to write an “About” page. This is where you can describe your Blog in full to your readers. Make sure you tell them why you exist, what you aim to do, and how visiting your Blog will benefit them. Make sure you also tell your readers a bit about yourself as well. This helps them relate to you and increases their chance of returning.

Write your content

A Blog will not be a Blog without any content. So get your keyboard and fingers out and start writing posts. Make sure you write a good post title, and use headers to lure them in. Most people have a bunch of feeds they read everyday so they don’t spend reading posts word-for-word. Good titles and clear headings will get them reading a lot more on your blog. (Similar to this post)

Promote your Blog

Once you got content that people want to read, it is time to promote your blog. There are many ways you can promote your Blog. You can do it by:

  • Advertising
  • Guest posting
  • Commenting on other blogs
  • Submit your Blog into web directors
  • Promote in forums and emails
  • Word of mouth

Have a read of 9 tips to drive traffic to your blog for more ways.

Join the Create A Successful Blog Course

So by now you know the basics of how to setup your own blog. Although this post is only 550 words, it doesn’t go in to much detail. So if you want to know the tips and tricks into blogging and resources to make your Blog gain more traffic, then you should join the Create A Successful Blog Course. Register your Interests today.

So now you have the basics knowledge to run and maintain a blog in 11 basic steps. Take that once step further, join the course and become a better, more profitable blogger.

A Quick Guide To Build Backlinks To Your Blog

January 18th, 2010

If you are not already aware, a backlink is a link from someone’s site back to yours. Backlinks are important to have as the more you have, the better you do in search engines rankings, and more people can find you. So below are a few tips to get quality backlinks to your Blog.

Write Articles and Submit Them To Article Directories

This is a really good way to build quality backlinks. By writing an article and publishing it on sites such as EzineArticles.com and GoArticles, this lets other users copy those articles to use on their own sites. With doing so, they are required to link to any links you put in the article and must link to the article source and your web page address. If you write a really good article, you can get thousands of people using it on their own Blog which gives you thousands of  quality backlinks.

Comment On Other Blogs

Although by default, WordPress uses NoFollow which in eyes of a search engine does not improve your search engine ranking. However, publishing a comment on a blog post can give you a lot of hits back to your site, depending on what you have linked to on your site, and what you have written in your comment. Search engine algorithms are always changing, so in the future, who know, they may count.

Write Guest Posts

Just like writing an article to submit it to an article directory site, guest posting on other peoples Blogs is a great way to get backlinks to your site and a bit of traffic as well. By writing a guest post on your competitors blog (if they allow it) can give you subscribers.

Using Social Bookmarking Sites

Bookmarking your sites is an easy way to get backlinks and help search engines know you are out there. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious all help.

Buy Your Links

Another way is to buy backlinks to your site. Although it may take you out of pocket, it is another method. Before you hand over money, make sure the site you are paying is trustworthy and you actually receive quality backlinks.

If you want your Blog to perform well in search engines, it is important that you have quality backlinks. Every now and again, start giving your link around to other Blogs.

4 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

January 16th, 2010

If you do not have much traffic to your Blog, here are for ways so you can increase traffic to your Blog.

Research your Keywords

You don’t get traffic by just writing a post. You need to use keywords to help rank your page in the top results. Carefully look at the possible keywords that you can use for your post. Ensure that those keywords get a lot of search and have low competition. These will return the best results and drive a lot of traffic to your Blog. You can use the Google Keyword Tool to research your keywords.

Write Unique and Compelling Content

Content will make or break your Blog. Your content needs to be unique, originally, compelling and interest your readers. If readers like your post, they will submit it to websites such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon which will give you a lot of traffic to your Blog, especially if it has been made popular.

Give people a reason to return to your Blog

Your content also needs to give your readers a reason why they should return to your Blog. If your content is dull, boring, and doesn’t contain useful information, they will never return. So give them something that they will find useful and enjoy. Such examples include giving away prizes, special offers, and exclusive events.

Be the first to promote the news

If you are the first site to break the news about something, other blogs will write their own articles and possibly link to your Blog. This helps with your page rank, which helps index you higher in search engines and drive more traffic to your Blog.

If you want to know more ways how to increase your traffic to your blog, check out these 9 tips.

What You MUST Do To Optimise Your Blog For Search Engines

January 13th, 2010

The easiest way to get visitors to your Blog is to make it SEO friendly. This is very important if you want to have a successful Blog. With the millions of Blogs out there, you got to try your hardest to your Blog ranked on the first page of search engines.

Use the right permalink structure

The permalink structure is basically the URL of your posts, categories, and tags. It is important to have a good permalink structure such as making sure the URL includes the title of the post. You can do this in WordPress by inserting %postname% as part of your structure. Have a look at www.createasuccessfulblog.com permalink structure. A good permalink helps search engines recognise keywords in your post and helps your Blog being indexed higher in search engines.

Install “All in One SEO” Plugin & “Related Posts Plugin”

Every blog needs to have these plug-in installed. All in One SEO plugin allows you to specify titles, descriptions and keywords to help your blog do better in search engines. The related post plug-in links to posts that are related to each other. This allows your readers to look through your blog some more as a related article may interest them

Research your keywords

Make sure you research some keywords to insert into your posts. By using keywords it allows you to rank higher in search engines. Make sure you use keywords that related directly to the post, and make sure you don’t use them too much.

Include Keywords in your post titles

Your title should have a keyword in it that describes what the article is about. The keywords in this post title are: “optimise”, “blog” and “Search Engines”. By using all three, it is hoped that when someone types those phrases in, your Blog should appear on the first page. However, this is not a guarantee.

Make your blog easy to navigate

If it is easy for a user to navigate around your blog, they will look through more of your site which increases the chance of them returning again. Make sure readers can easily search your blog, view categories, recent posts, and tags. The more links you have, the more chance that they will click on something they like.

Make a site map which includes a link to all pages in your Blog

A site map is gold for search engine as it can index every single page on it. So make sure you create a site map for your blog that includes a list of all your posts, pages, tags, and categories. These plug-in may help you.

Expand the Ping List

When you publish a new post, a ping list is a list of services that get notified with your new article. This insures that your new page gets indexed right away, allowing readers to visit instantly.

9 Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

January 12th, 2010

Having a blog is one thing, getting people to visit is another. Here are 9 tips for you to implement on your own Blog to get more people visiting it.

Submit Your Blog To Google Reader

The first thing you should do is to subscribe to your own blog in Google Reader. This allows it to be visible for other people to search for it. It can also act as a backup in case your Blog looses it’s data for what ever reason.

Trade Website Links on Your Blog

Find other Blogs to trade links with. This does not only give you more publicity, it also improves your Blog in search engine rankings.

Use Ping Sites

Use a ping site like ping-o-matic to alert the internet that you have a new post on your Blog. This helps search engines to index your new posts more quickly.

Comment on other Blogs

By commenting on other Blogs can give you more publicity, and help allows people to discover your Blog. When commenting on an article on another Blog that is in the same niche as you, write an article on your own blog that express your views about the same issue, and make sure you link to it in the comment.

Leave Trackbacks

When you link to other blog posts, make sure you leave trackbacks. This gives you a little more publicity.

Add your Blogs URL to your email signature

Promote your Blog through every email you send. Every once in a while, someone who you send an email to will look at your Blog.

Post in Forums

Post in forums and join the community. Answer their questions and leave your website for them to find out more about you.

Submit your Blog to blog directories

Just like a phone book. If you’re not in it, no one can find you. Submit your Blog in DMOZ and other Blog directories.

Promote your Blog offline

Don’t just promote your Blog online, do it offline as well. You can do this through Business Cards, newspapers, newsletters, bulletin boards.