5 Ways to Build Your Blog’s Voice

Voice can give a blogger a serious edge. Your unique voice can set you apart from the competition, form a foundation for your brand, engender audience loyalty, and more. If you find it difficult to retain readers, and you’re confident of the quality and accuracy of the content you provide, you may need to work on your voice.

What is Voice?

Voice is the tone in which you present content. Your blog’s overall tone is also affected by visual elements like colours and fonts, but voice is a critical element in the tone of your content.

If a message is what we say, then voice is the way we express what we say. Pace, rhythm, turns of phrase, idioms — even the way you use punctuation — all contribute to the voice of your blog. Unless you’re a die-hard writing buff, it probably won’t pay you to get too hung up on grammar or the finer points of semicolon usage. Instead, focus first on assessing your posts in terms of how they sound overall.

First, choose a word that best reflects how you want to sound — “friendly” or “authoritative” or “experienced”, for example. Then assess a cross-section of your posts, scoring each on how well you feel it meets that requirement. Voice is strongest when it’s consistent, so also look at elements like tags and category labels, email autoresponders, error pages, and so on, to see how well they reflect your desired tone of voice.

This process will probably let you identify some inconsistencies that dilute the voice of your blog — and make it more difficult for your audience to know what they can expect, or to identify with your blog’s personality.

Ensuring Consistency

For many of us, it can be difficult to work out exactly what makes one post  sound better — friendlier, more authoritative, or whatever — than another. All we know is that this post sounds friendly and relaxed, while that one is flat, and this other one comes across as a bit of a rant.

The good news is that you can take a number of steps to make the voice of your posts more consistent.

1. Picture your audience.

If you want your blog to sound friendly, you might imagine a good friend who’s in your target audience each time you write a blog post. It might sound odd, but holding a clear picture of the person you’re writing for in your mind while you write can have a significant impact on the tone of your content.

2. Watch your mood.

With experience, you’ll learn to churn out content on demand, in a consistent voice. But while you’re still getting a handle on your blog’s voice, it can be a good idea to try to write when you’re in a good frame of mind. Not just a positive frame of mind, but one that reflects your respect for your readership and your enthusiasm for your blog topic.

We all have moments when we’d rather be doing something other than writing a post for our blogs; try not to write at those times, at least while you’re finding your voice. If you’re not interested in what you’re writing, that’ll come across in your post’s tone.

3. Separate writing from publishing.

Try to avoid publishing posts as you write them. Instead, save the post and review it later, when you’re in a different frame of mind. This way, even if you can’t avoid writing posts in varying moods, you’ll be able to cast an objective eye over your posts, and to edit and tweak them in ways that reinforce the tone you’re aiming for.

Don’t be afraid to edit your posts if you don’t feel they’re couched in the right tone of voice. You might find that a quick review, with fresh eyes — and the implementation of a few well-chosen tweaks — prior to publishing makes all the difference to the tone of your posts.

4. Create a style guide.

A style guide — a set of rules for grammar, spelling and expression — can help you to automate elements of your blog’s voice.

If you can identify, by looking critically at your blog, and blogs you like the tone of, elements that detract from your tone, you can list them in your style guide. Over time, you’ll compile a list of rules that can act as a sort of template that you can apply to every post your write.

“Have I used friendly text for links, rather than simply pasting the URL straight into the body copy of my post?” you’ll ask yourself. “Have I mentioned the position of every individual I’ve quoted in this article, to show the quality of my research and my respect for my industry peers?”

Using your style guide as a checklist on which to assess your posts can help to ensure that the tone of your blog remains consistent.

5. Consider tactics that may dilute your voice.

Some blogging tactics may actually serve to dilute your blog’s voice. Guest bloggers, for example, probably won’t write the way you do, and may jar with readers’ expectations of your blog’s voice. Similarly, being paid to write a post in which you promote a product can alter your tone of voice in subtle ways. You may even write about certain topics within your chosen field in a way that doesn’t reflect the tone of your blog.

Before you adopt a new tactic on your blog, consider what it might mean for  your blog’s voice. Consistency of voice is crucial when it comes to establishing trust and loyalty among your readership, so it pays — in the short- and long-term — to weigh up the pros and cons of each new tactic before you adopt it.

Glen Stansbery outlined some handy tactics that can actively help to enhance your blog’s voice, but again, use these with discretion and caution. Giving various approaches an open-minded try before you set your heart on adopting them is a good modus operandi.

Have you established a strong voice for your blog? What advice can you share?

Continue reading this series of articles on questions surrounding blog content.

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

5 Ways to Build Your Blog’s Voice

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Essential Reading on Content for your Blog

Over the last week or so we’ve featured a series of posts here on ProBlogger that explore questions surrounding the theme of ‘content’.

As the posts were spread out over 10 days I wanted to sum it all up with links all in the one place – so if you missed one – here they are!

• Source Quality Content… Continuously
• Blog Content Strategy 101
• Content Producer’s Copyright Checklist
• Big Content Monetisation Ideas for the Little Guy
• 5 Ways to Build Your Blog’s Voice
• Use Content Channels to Boost your Readership

Thanks to Georgina Laidlaw for putting together the series.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Essential Reading on Content for your Blog

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Marketing Faux Pas

It’s in situations like this that you hope that the response rate is very low   We had to scramble to “make things right” and it was a costly but valuable lesson.  The good news is that people are human and the majority of prospects and customers who received the post cards actually thought is was funny.

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

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Guess what? Bloggers – You and Me – Are Publishers, and We Should Act Like It. (So Let’s Not Be Jerks when Someone Sends Us A Guest Post!)

by Kelly Diels and Dave Doolin

In the ancient world of print publications – for example, in any academic or professional journal – when you send an article to the editor, you receive an acknowledgment of receipt.

Scratch that. In any time – past, present, future – professional publications (print and electronic ones) confirm receipt of your piece.

That is, you are going to get an email telling you somebody knows you submitted an article.

In the olden days (you know, like ten whole years ago), you would get a real, physical letter in the mail.

Quaint, sure.

But not hard.

The process isn’t difficult; there are professional standards. You submit your piece.  You get an acknowledgment.  Later, you get notified that you’re accepted for publication, or that revisions may be required, or that the article is denied.  It’s not hard to do or understand.

But in the blogging world, these standards haven’t really developed.  We all know people who’ve submitted pieces to another blogger and heard nothing.

Hell, we are those people.

And that disturbed Dave enough to email Kelly, informing her “I have a huge rant building on guest posts.”

Kelly’s response: “Bad for brand.  Do this, instead: write a piece *encouraging* bloggers to create guest-post submission channels with less friction. That’s useful. Ranting about this isn’t.”

Kelly is right (this time -d).  There are more productive things to rant about.

And while it might not be productive to rant about the guest post process, it’s certainly productive to talk about it. And improve it.

As bloggers, we graze on both sides of the fence – we accept guest posts for our blogs, and we guest post on other blogs.

So all of us know that guest posting can be hard. Hard on your nerves and hell on your courage. But worth it – because it can be a real honour to have your work published on another site, especially a popular, authoritative one.

That’s something both of us hear from our people, again and again: how do you land guest posts on other, bigger blogs? And how do you get the courage to even submit them in the first place?

Well, you just do. You do things to bolster your courage. You do your research.

Like this:

• you check to see how the other blogger prefers to receive pitches. Does she want to develop a concept, together? Or does he want a finished piece?
• you read all the recent pieces and poke around in the archives. Where is the gap? What piece do you need to read? Then go write that piece (or pitch).
• you check to see if the blog you want to submit to has guest post guidelines. That helps you understand what the other blogger wants – so you can deliver it.
• you check to see if there is a copyright statement – because you want to know who owns the piece after it is published. (Or at least we do. Because we get paid from our hot ‘n sweaty ‘n hopefully profitable content – and you do, too. So this is important.)

Doing all of these things will increase your confidence. You might even get brave enough to, you know, submit it.

To the other blogger. The blogger who will receive, read, and accept or reject your piece. The blogger who will hopefully publish your piece.

(And, being a blogger, sometimes you are that blogger – the one receiving and publishing guest post submissions.)

Since you know how stupid-hard it can be to get the gumption to send a piece in, don’t you want to make it a little easier for others to summon the courage to submit a guest post to you? Don’t you want to honor the submission effort?

Yes. You do. Really, you do.

And so, to that end, this is what you, the publisher, could - and should – do:

1. have a dedicated e-mail address to which to submit guest posts (and an autoresponse confirming receipt)
2. have someone checking it and responding regularly
3. have a submissions guidelines page
4. have some language about copyright (who gets it?) and guest author expectations (respond to comments, tweet, etc)
5. have a worksheet to evaluate the guest post and return that worksheet to the guest author so that they’ll know what was working/not working
6. have incentives such as a dedicated biographical box with a photo and keyword-anchored backlinks, or even better,
7. allow the guest author to use their own affiliate links or Adense codes.
8. consistently comment on your guest author’s blogs, consistently promote their articles by retweeting, etc.
9. if you use a plugin such as CommentLuv, promote your guest post authors before promoting yourself
10. if your guest author provides a service or has a product of interest to your readers, allow your guest author to pitch congruently to your readers.

And you should do that because receiving guest posts, graciously, is just good business (and relationship-building) practice – not to mention honorable.

In fact, we should all do that because we all know that submitting your best stuff – and it does need to be good – to other blogs is hard.

The whole damn trying-to-get-published process is hard. It can be

hard to create a guest post

hard to part with it

hard to wait for an answer

But most of all, submitting a guest post is hard because you’re risking rejection.

So we – bloggers who publish guests posts – aka “publishers” – need to amp up our game, act like professionals, and honour the submission effort.

And that’s not hard at all.

About the authors: Kelly Diels writes Cleavage, a blog about the three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning. Dave Doolin blogs at Website In A Weekend, where you can learn how to blog. Together they founded the top secret (sssssssh!!!) League of Extraordinary Bloggers where you’ll learn to have writing, blogging and business superpowers.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Guess what? Bloggers – You and Me – Are Publishers, and We Should Act Like It. (So Let’s Not Be Jerks when Someone Sends Us A Guest Post!)

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Blogosphere Trends + Digging Deeper

This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts). – Darren

Each week, we look at the ten most blogged-about stories of the last seven days, as provided by Regator (which is turning two years old on Saturday!). Today, we’ll see how several great blog posts looked beyond the basics of these popular stories to give their readers more value and provide unique content. Digging deeper to approach posts in an unconventional or creative way can mean the difference between getting noticed and fading into the background. Let’s see some examples:

1. Proposition/Prop 8
   The basics: Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, was ruled unconstitutional.
   Looking deeper: Daily Intel’s “The Prop 8 Ruling: The Scrutiny Question, and What Will Happen Next?” examines the judge’s methods of scrutinizing the case, how that approach will impact future rulings, and the history of other cases that led to this point. When everyone else is telling readers what happened, do a bit of extra legwork to tell them how it happened.
2. Chelsea Clinton
   The basics: Chelsea Clinton got married last weekend.
   Looking deeper: Conservative blogger Kathleen McKinley’s “Weddings and More. How Two Former President’s Daughters Are Quite Different” looked beyond the bride’s choice of hairstyle and gown by comparing Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to the wedding of Jenna Bush, another first daughter. She then broadened the comparison past the weddings themselves and into the lifestyles of the young women. Use comparisons to create a post that’s more appealing to readers in your niche.
3. Android
   The basics: It was reported that Android phones were outselling iPhones.
   Looking deeper: Rather than taking the figures at face value, Cult of Mac spoke to an analyst in an attempt to put the figures in perspective in “Android Competing Against ‘Dumb Phones.’” Take time to question information you receive through press releases, other blogs, magazines, newspapers, television…well, pretty much any source. Don’t be afraid to do some extra reporting.
4. American Idol
   The basics: Ellen DeGeneres left the show after one season as a judge.
   Looking deeper: While most blogs were awaiting official news about new judges, Pop & Hiss offered ten recommendations and the reasons for each in “Why not hire a music critic as an ‘American Idol’ judge? Ten contestants for the job.” Add your own opinions and recommendations to a story to make it your own.
5. Oil Spill
   The basics: BP finally managed to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
   Looking deeper: Investment blog Seeking Alpha chose the angle that worked best for its readers in “Static Kill a Success; What’s BP Worth Now?” The post hypothesizes on the company’s current value and, just as importantly, explains how the blogger arrived at those figures. Use your expertise to provide value to your readers and information that other types of bloggers cannot.
6. Ground Zero
   The basics: An Islamic cultural center (incorrectly referred to as a “mosque” by some) is set to be built on the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, causing controversy and debate.
   Looking deeper: As the tagline “Answers to your questions about the news” indicates, Slate’s Explainer does a fantastic job of looking beyond the headlines and dissecting issues. “Can anyone stop construction of the mosque near Ground Zero?” which examines the legal and zoning issues around the facility, is no exception. Look for aspects of a story that aren’t being explored and try to tackle unanswered questions.
7. BlackBerry Torch
   The basics: Research In Motion (RIM) launched the BlackBerry Torch.
   Looking deeper: Instead of simply reporting the release, PCWorld’s “BlackBerry Torch First Impressions: Fresh But Familiar Indeed” blogged their first impressions based on the blogger’s brief interaction with the device at the launch event. Going out and employing a hands-on approach will always get you better results than sitting at your desk waiting for press releases or review products.
8. Kanye West
   The basics: Kanye West joined Twitter, spawning memes galore.
   Looking deeper: Vulture’s “What Did It Cost to Be Kanye This Week?” is an extremely creative, entertaining approach to the story. Look for trends within a story (e.g., not only is Kanye on Twitter, he often tweets about his lavish lifestyle) to find unusual and creative angles.
9. Google Wave
   The basics: Google’s much-hyped Google Wave was shuttered this week.
   Looking deeper: In “Why Developers Did Not Adopt Google Wave,” ReadWriteWeb took a broad approach to coverage, discussing reasons Wave may have failed, the future benefits of its brief existence, and previous coverage of the product. Explaining why something happened (as well as how, see example #1) can be just as important as explaining what happened. Take the extra time and effort to give readers more.
10. Lady Gaga
    The basics: Lady Gaga’s cover story in the latest issue of Vanity Fair and record number of Video Music Awards put her on the list this week.
    Looking deeper: Gawker.tv used a combination of techniques we’ve discussed above—namely using comparisons and identifying why something (in this case, Gaga’s popularity) has occurred—in “Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and the Coup d’Pop: A Diva Revolution.” Developing and supporting your own hypothesis is a sure way to ensure original content.

How do you get beyond the surface story to a unique angle that will appeal to your readership? Share your ideas and methods in the comments!

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Blogosphere Trends + Digging Deeper

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Raise Your Marketing To The Next Level

I’ve been doing some marketing for a company that has a great product, great people, and a really good business model. When you can work for a company that has a lot to celebrate, marketing is an easy thing to do. That is, unless you have to move an entire brand from good, to great!

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

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Use Content Channels to Boost Your Readership

The first five articles in this series have made the case for some important concepts: treating content as an asset, seeing your posts as tools for meeting your (and of course your readers’ goals), and so on (see the full content series here).

The natural corollary to all this is the notion that while your blog is a content product, it’s just one of a number of channels through which you can put your content tools into action to promote the product itself. The best recommendation for your blog is your blog content, and your voice. How can you use it to reach more people?

Reaching Further

You have content — and lots of it. Use it wisely and not only will you enjoy an improved return on your content investment, which we talked about when we discussed content strategy, but you can expand your promotional efforts without a whole lot of extra work.

The idea is to take content you’ve already written, or small segments of it repurposed as required, and distribute them across other channels. This approach provides various opportunities to leverage your previous hard work, but also your headspace: if you’ve just written a post for your own blog, you might be in a good position to turn out related items — snippets, tips, or updates — for other channels, while the creative fires are still aflame. These channels include the following.

Social networks

While I’m no fan of the incomplete-teaser-as-tweet style of social network update that many major newspapers seem to champion, I do like to use a crafted version of my opening sentence, the post’s headline, or its key point as a brief, catchy announcement on social media.

Other blogs

We’ve discussed guest blogging as a way to expand your readership (and, on your blog, to offer variety, meet your goals, and reduce the pressure on you). You may not be able, or willing, to republish a post from your blog directly on another, but you may be able to reframe it, expand on a specific point it makes, or tackle the same topic from an alternative angle, very easily and quickly.

This variations-on-a-theme approach leverages your existing content and knowledge while providing in-post cross-link opportunities if they’re allowed by the blog on which you’re a guest. In any case, a reader who comes from your guest post on another blog to find a similar post that builds on that information on your own blog is likely to get the impression that you’re passionate and informed on your topic of interest.

Related websites

Presenting a key quote or idea from your blog as a comment on another author’s work on a website whose readership you’d like to attract is another possibility for content redistribution. You can use the same tactic in forums on the topics your blog addresses. Choose your topics, blogs, and posts wisely and you may find that a short paragraph from your latest post makes the perfect contribution to a larger conversation on the topic elsewhere online.

Other media

Earlier in this series, we talked about republishing your content in other formats, like print periodicals. While these kinds of opportunities may not be thick on the ground, they are out there, and they can make a good way to extend your content’s lifecycle and make the most of what you’ve written. Perhaps you could pull the key elements from a number of your posts and synthesize them into an authoritative piece on a given sub-topic?

These are just some of the ways you can reuse your existing body of work to promote your blog through different channels. Tell us about your experiences with content-as-promotional-tool.

Continue reading this series of articles on questions surrounding blog content.

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Use Content Channels to Boost Your Readership

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How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

One of the biggest challenges for a new bloggers starting out in an established niche is to find a way to stand out from the crowd and find their first readers. Without existing profile and/or credibility – getting those first readers can be very tough.

To combat this a few years back a number of bloggers started to use ‘Guest Blogging’ as a technique to launch their blogs and grow their brands to new audiences. This technique launched many bloggers to prominence – including Leo Babauta, Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, Skellie, Jon Morrow (all of whom have guest posted on ProBlogger) and many many more.

Much has been written on the topic of how to use guest posting but one of the best resources that I’ve seen lately has been produced by Jon Morrow. He’s just released the first in a series of videos (#aff) on the topic and they are well worth watching.

I’ve seen the complete set of videos for myself and they are easy to watch, actionable and inspiring.

Jon himself has used guest blogging with great success – including this fantastic post on speech recognition for bloggers here on ProBlogger which helped many.

Jon’s first video is completely free (no opt in required) and is well worth watching. His future videos require an opt in but you’ll get a feel for whether they’re right for you from the first one. I watched them all and they’re excellent.

Do yourself a favour and set aside some time today to watch these videos.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

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Blog Content Strategy 101

Content strategy might seem like the domain of giant content sites and big-brand online publishers. But if you run a blog, you’re a content publisher. And a solid content strategy can help you to more clearly define your goals, and identify how you’ll achieve them.

For those for whom content is a business, a content strategy can help support, and achieve, the goals set out in your business strategy.

What is Content Strategy?

A content strategy is a plan that helps your users achieve their goals, and helps you to achieve your own goals, through your web site’s content.

Content strategy treats content as an asset that can be used, or combined with other informational or interactive tools, to help users achieve their aims on your site. Content strategy prevents you from seeing your content as mere tactical executions that — hopefully — support some distant business goal. Content strategy frames content as a tool.

Kristina Halvorsen, content strategy guru and founder of content strategy consultancy Brain Traffic, defines content strategy as including editorial strategy, web writing, metadata strategy, search engine optimization, content management strategy, and content channel distribution strategy.

Stepping Toward Strategy

I see the creation of a content strategy as involving these steps.

1. Set content goals.
2. Conduct content inventory and identify content gaps.
3. Review and amend, where appropriate, site taxonomy or labeling, content tagging, and categorisation so that your current treatment of content reflects the goals you’ve set.
4. Identify content-related tasks and responsibilities.
5. Set a plan for:
   - filling content gaps
   - the direction of future content
   - recycling or reusing evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible ROI

Let’s look at each step in turn.

1. Setting Content Goals

Every good blog meets a particular need for a given audience. Your content goals are the place where, on paper, your audience members’ needs can be aligned with your business needs.

For example, imagine I run a blog on chicken keeping, and my audience is backyard poultry keepers — families and others who aren’t exactly poultry enthusiasts or breeders, but want to have a few hens scratching in the backyard. And let’s say I want to generate an income of $1000 per month from my blog six months from now.

The only way I’m going to achieve my goal is through content: by providing my audience with the information they need. Whether I join affiliate programs, conduct paid product reviews, sell ad space or sell ebooks about chicken keeping, if I don’t publish the content, I won’t have an audience, and I won’t generate an income.

Content translates to pageviews, audience growth, engagement and loyalty — all the things that bloggers need to monetise their blogs. So my content goals might cover:

• publishing frequency
• per-post, per-month, or per-category traffic objectives
• topic emphasis, post type, or media used
• the quantity and quality of comments, discussions and feedback

Even if your blog isn’t a financial concern, content goals will help you stay focused on your blog’s unique advantage — its point of difference — and make the most of that with every post you publish.

2. Conducting a Content Inventory

A thorough content inventory involves listing each piece of content on your blog, and noting its publish date categorisation, tags, and any other metadata associated with it.

Through this process, you’ll find outdated posts, incorrectly categorised or tagged posts, broken links, spam comments, typos — all kinds of issues! Once you’re finished, you’ll also have a clear idea of the strengths of your existing content assets, as well as the weaknesses. And by considering your content inventory in light of your content goals, you’ll quickly be able to find content gaps: areas in which you lack the content that will be required to achieve your goals.

If one of my goals is for my chicken keeping site to be the recognised authority for backyard hobby poultry keepers, I’ll need the content to back that up. My content inventory will undoubtedly reveal some areas in which my content is lacking, incomplete, amateurish, or fails to represent best-practice approaches. They’re my content gaps for this goal.

3. Reviewing and Amending Content Treatment

The information you collected on your content’s metadata during the content inventory also needs to be analysed in light of your goals. This might reveal other gaps — perhaps you’ve overlooked some important tags, or the tags you’ve used don’t reflect the terms audience members usually search for. You’ll want to identify those issues and address them, creating additional tags, making sure your content is categorised as logically and intuitively as possible, and ensuring that the mechanics of your content are closely aligned with your content goals.

One of my chicken keeping blog goals was income, and I’ve decided I’ll use good organic search placement as one technique to build my readership. My content inventory shows that I’ve tagged all my content about poultry housing with the tag “hen houses”, but my research shows that searchers most commonly search for the term “coops”. I might add that tag to my site — and all related posts — to boost my position in those search results. I might also change the navigation label on my blog that leads to specliaised content about hen houses from “Housing” to “Coops” so that when the users I’ve attracted reach my blog, they see exactly the thing they’re looking for.

This step is really about looking at the ancillary information that allows users to find and contextualise the information you present, and making sure it’s optimised for your user and blog goals.

4. Identifying Content Tasks and Responsibilities

If you’re a solo blogger, the second part of this step will be easy: you’ll be responsible for everything! But just what is “everything”?

How often will you publish new content? What tools will you use to publish it? Where will you source it and what requirements will you place on every item published on your blog? Who will follow up on any copyright issues and check the factual accuracy of each post? Who will run the spell check? Who will schedule the posts and who will hit the “publish” button? How will you work out, or know, when you need to add a category or tag to the site? And how will you populate that new category with content?

If your blog is time-relevant, you might need a plan for retiring old content, but every blog contains some content that will become outdated in time. How will you manage that? Where will you redirect users who try to access retired content?

These are just some of the questions about tasks and responsibilities that you’ll want to answer through your content strategy. The guidelines you’ll want to set at this point will depend on the nature of your blog, and where you want to take it in future. For example, in developing my authoritative chicken keeping blog, I might decide to request guest posts from well-known breeders. This decision has implications for copyright, publishing schedules, consistency of style and voice, and so on. I’ll need to try to anticipate and answer those questions in my strategy.

5. Setting Your Plan

The work you’ve done so far forms the basis for your content strategy. You’ve defined a focus, audience and goals, and reshaped your blog (and its underlying process and management) so that it’s in the best possible position to achieve your goals as you move forward.

The final step involves setting out action plans to implement strategies and tactics that will help you achieve those goals over time.

That might involve tasks like:

• filling large-scale content gaps
• trying new content-sourcing tactics, post types, and media
• recycling, reusing or repackaging evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible return on your investment in it

When you work with content all the time, it can be difficult to step back and see your blog as a whole. That’s why comparatively few bloggers have developed content strategies for their blogs. But a good content strategy can help you to focus, and build your offering strategically using content assets that appreciate, rather than devalue, over time.

Do you have a content strategy for your blog, or are you winging it?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Blog Content Strategy 101

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Blog Content Strategy 101

Content strategy might seem like the domain of giant content sites and big-brand online publishers. But if you run a blog, you’re a content publisher. And a solid content strategy can help you to more clearly define your goals, and identify how you’ll achieve them.

For those for whom content is a business, a content strategy can help support, and achieve, the goals set out in your business strategy.

What is Content Strategy?

A content strategy is a plan that helps your users achieve their goals, and helps you to achieve your own goals, through your web site’s content.

Content strategy treats content as an asset that can be used, or combined with other informational or interactive tools, to help users achieve their aims on your site. Content strategy prevents you from seeing your content as mere tactical executions that — hopefully — support some distant business goal. Content strategy frames content as a tool.

Kristina Halvorsen, content strategy guru and founder of content strategy consultancy Brain Traffic, defines content strategy as including editorial strategy, web writing, metadata strategy, search engine optimization, content management strategy, and content channel distribution strategy.

Stepping Toward Strategy

I see the creation of a content strategy as involving these steps.

1. Set content goals.
2. Conduct content inventory and identify content gaps.
3. Review and amend, where appropriate, site taxonomy or labeling, content tagging, and categorisation so that your current treatment of content reflects the goals you’ve set.
4. Identify content-related tasks and responsibilities.
5. Set a plan for:
   - filling content gaps
   - the direction of future content
   - recycling or reusing evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible ROI

Let’s look at each step in turn.

1. Setting Content Goals

Every good blog meets a particular need for a given audience. Your content goals are the place where, on paper, your audience members’ needs can be aligned with your business needs.

For example, imagine I run a blog on chicken keeping, and my audience is backyard poultry keepers — families and others who aren’t exactly poultry enthusiasts or breeders, but want to have a few hens scratching in the backyard. And let’s say I want to generate an income of $1000 per month from my blog six months from now.

The only way I’m going to achieve my goal is through content: by providing my audience with the information they need. Whether I join affiliate programs, conduct paid product reviews, sell ad space or sell ebooks about chicken keeping, if I don’t publish the content, I won’t have an audience, and I won’t generate an income.

Content translates to pageviews, audience growth, engagement and loyalty — all the things that bloggers need to monetise their blogs. So my content goals might cover:

• publishing frequency
• per-post, per-month, or per-category traffic objectives
• topic emphasis, post type, or media used
• the quantity and quality of comments, discussions and feedback

Even if your blog isn’t a financial concern, content goals will help you stay focused on your blog’s unique advantage — its point of difference — and make the most of that with every post you publish.

2. Conducting a Content Inventory

A thorough content inventory involves listing each piece of content on your blog, and noting its publish date categorisation, tags, and any other metadata associated with it.

Through this process, you’ll find outdated posts, incorrectly categorised or tagged posts, broken links, spam comments, typos — all kinds of issues! Once you’re finished, you’ll also have a clear idea of the strengths of your existing content assets, as well as the weaknesses. And by considering your content inventory in light of your content goals, you’ll quickly be able to find content gaps: areas in which you lack the content that will be required to achieve your goals.

If one of my goals is for my chicken keeping site to be the recognised authority for backyard hobby poultry keepers, I’ll need the content to back that up. My content inventory will undoubtedly reveal some areas in which my content is lacking, incomplete, amateurish, or fails to represent best-practice approaches. They’re my content gaps for this goal.

3. Reviewing and Amending Content Treatment

The information you collected on your content’s metadata during the content inventory also needs to be analysed in light of your goals. This might reveal other gaps — perhaps you’ve overlooked some important tags, or the tags you’ve used don’t reflect the terms audience members usually search for. You’ll want to identify those issues and address them, creating additional tags, making sure your content is categorised as logically and intuitively as possible, and ensuring that the mechanics of your content are closely aligned with your content goals.

One of my chicken keeping blog goals was income, and I’ve decided I’ll use good organic search placement as one technique to build my readership. My content inventory shows that I’ve tagged all my content about poultry housing with the tag “hen houses”, but my research shows that searchers most commonly search for the term “coops”. I might add that tag to my site — and all related posts — to boost my position in those search results. I might also change the navigation label on my blog that leads to specliaised content about hen houses from “Housing” to “Coops” so that when the users I’ve attracted reach my blog, they see exactly the thing they’re looking for.

This step is really about looking at the ancillary information that allows users to find and contextualise the information you present, and making sure it’s optimised for your user and blog goals.

4. Identifying Content Tasks and Responsibilities

If you’re a solo blogger, the second part of this step will be easy: you’ll be responsible for everything! But just what is “everything”?

How often will you publish new content? What tools will you use to publish it? Where will you source it and what requirements will you place on every item published on your blog? Who will follow up on any copyright issues and check the factual accuracy of each post? Who will run the spell check? Who will schedule the posts and who will hit the “publish” button? How will you work out, or know, when you need to add a category or tag to the site? And how will you populate that new category with content?

If your blog is time-relevant, you might need a plan for retiring old content, but every blog contains some content that will become outdated in time. How will you manage that? Where will you redirect users who try to access retired content?

These are just some of the questions about tasks and responsibilities that you’ll want to answer through your content strategy. The guidelines you’ll want to set at this point will depend on the nature of your blog, and where you want to take it in future. For example, in developing my authoritative chicken keeping blog, I might decide to request guest posts from well-known breeders. This decision has implications for copyright, publishing schedules, consistency of style and voice, and so on. I’ll need to try to anticipate and answer those questions in my strategy.

5. Setting Your Plan

The work you’ve done so far forms the basis for your content strategy. You’ve defined a focus, audience and goals, and reshaped your blog (and its underlying process and management) so that it’s in the best possible position to achieve your goals as you move forward.

The final step involves setting out action plans to implement strategies and tactics that will help you achieve those goals over time.

That might involve tasks like:

• filling large-scale content gaps
• trying new content-sourcing tactics, post types, and media
• recycling, reusing or repackaging evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible return on your investment in it

When you work with content all the time, it can be difficult to step back and see your blog as a whole. That’s why comparatively few bloggers have developed content strategies for their blogs. But a good content strategy can help you to focus, and build your offering strategically using content assets that appreciate, rather than devalue, over time.

Do you have a content strategy for your blog, or are you winging it?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Blog Content Strategy 101

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Source Quality Content … Continuously

What does every blogger need more of? Quality content!

This is the first of a series of six posts that tackle key content questions. Today, we’re looking specifically at content sources: places where you can get ideas and information that, with a little work, you can turn into quality blog posts.

Your posts may be text, images or video; they could deal with any topic. But every blogger needs post ideas, and all of us hit uninspired patches through which we still need to produce compelling content to a regular schedule.

Thinking strategically about the content sources you use can deliver several benefits:

• It provides its own inspiration: can’t think of a personal story to share today? No problem — use one of the many other content sources at your disposal.
• It can make your life easier: instead of scrounging around one or two sources of ideas, you can find and track great sources through which you’ll gain access to a constant flow of post ideas.
• It helps ensure you don’t omit important information: if your blog covers a growing market space, there are probably news items and events that you’ll want to make sure you cover. Monitoring key content sources will help you deliver the essential stories to your readers at the right time.
• It can help you to think intelligently about how you pitch each post: a greater choice of content sources offers you more opportunities to creatively reach specific reader segments in ways that resonate specifically with them.
• It can give you a wider range of tools with which to achieve your blogging objectives: try different content sources, and over time you may well find that different types of information produce posts that serve particular objectives. We all know, for example, that a review post can provide affiliate opportunities that can translate directly into revenue. Work out which post types help achieve specific audience, promotion or revenue goals, and identify content sources for those posts, and you’ll be able to focus on making the content resonate with your audience, rather than spending your time searching for basic post ideas.

I usually see content sources as falling into two categories: internal and external sources.

Internal Content Sources

Internal content sources are those that exist within my operation, myself, and my audience. They include:

1. feedback and audience discussion around past posts
2. the audience itself
3. my experiences, perspective, and opinion
4. my network of colleagues and contacts

It’s essential that you stay abreast of what’s happening on your site. Existing discussions can help you identify topics that unite your audience in sharing, learning, or debate — all of which helps build community.

It’ll also provide one means for engaging with your audience (along with social media and other sources of direct audience contact). Sure, your site stats are helpful as a frame of reference, but nothing beats actual user engagement for getting ideas about what your blog’s readers want to know, what makes them laugh, and what motivates them.

Thinking objectively about your own experiences in the field, as well as those of your contacts, can unearth some intriguing ideas and information that can immediately help you to develop posts. But beyond that, your passion for your field should see you investigating ideas with colleagues, and forming your own opinions about industry developments. Those unique perspectives can provide a wealth of post ideas — from interviews and news-style reports to the kinds of opinion and analysis posts that stick in  readers’ minds, and keep them coming back to check the comments long after they’ve read your post.

External Content Sources

External content sources lie beyond my immediate sphere of operation. They include:

• other media focused on the same topic, including offline media, such as interest magazines and industry publications, forums, user groups, social network trends and discussions, and more.
• other people focused on the same topic, including thought leaders, commentators, reviewers, passionate hobbyists, and organisational heads.

I like to subscribe to media that focus on the same topic as my blog, so I’m constantly fed content ideas through story alerts, media releases, and news updates. The same goes for tracking people who lead opinion or have expertise in my area — by subscribing to their blogs, regularly visiting their sites, and following them on social networks, I can keep a grip not just on the news, but on the discussions and thinking that occur in the broader arena in which I operate.

The posts that arise from these sources might be as pragmatic as a product or service review, daily reports from an industry conference, or ongoing commentary on a major development in your area of interest. Or they can be as theoretical as an essay taking in various industry-leading opinions, advice, and responses on a particular topic. The posts may be yours, or those of a guest blogger you’ve sourced through your offsite research. In any case, your blog won’t be short of content.

Continuous Content

Sourcing regular, quality content is every blogger’s challenge. But with that challenge comes the hurdles of variety, insight, exclusivity and personality. At the heart of it all, you’ll need a continuous content sourcing approach.

To source content continually, you’ll need to build content sourcing into your schedule, and into your brain. Yes, you’ll need to dedicate time to content-sourcing tasks, like flicking through RSS feeds, reading, researching, interviewing, networking, and so on. But all that becomes easy if you treat everything you do around your blog topic as a potential content sourcing opportunity.

Soon, you’ll no longer sit down to write a blog post and start by wracking your brains for ideas. Instead, you’ll find content ideas pop up everywhere. You’ll stop asking yourself, “What will I write about?” and find yourself picking and choosing from a plethora of ideas that “just come to you”.

What’s your favourite source of quality content ideas?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Source Quality Content … Continuously

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Source Quality Content … Continuously

What does every blogger need more of? Quality content!

This is the first of a series of six posts that tackle key content questions. Today, we’re looking specifically at content sources: places where you can get ideas and information that, with a little work, you can turn into quality blog posts.

Your posts may be text, images or video; they could deal with any topic. But every blogger needs post ideas, and all of us hit uninspired patches through which we still need to produce compelling content to a regular schedule.

Thinking strategically about the content sources you use can deliver several benefits:

• It provides its own inspiration: can’t think of a personal story to share today? No problem — use one of the many other content sources at your disposal.
• It can make your life easier: instead of scrounging around one or two sources of ideas, you can find and track great sources through which you’ll gain access to a constant flow of post ideas.
• It helps ensure you don’t omit important information: if your blog covers a growing market space, there are probably news items and events that you’ll want to make sure you cover. Monitoring key content sources will help you deliver the essential stories to your readers at the right time.
• It can help you to think intelligently about how you pitch each post: a greater choice of content sources offers you more opportunities to creatively reach specific reader segments in ways that resonate specifically with them.
• It can give you a wider range of tools with which to achieve your blogging objectives: try different content sources, and over time you may well find that different types of information produce posts that serve particular objectives. We all know, for example, that a review post can provide affiliate opportunities that can translate directly into revenue. Work out which post types help achieve specific audience, promotion or revenue goals, and identify content sources for those posts, and you’ll be able to focus on making the content resonate with your audience, rather than spending your time searching for basic post ideas.

I usually see content sources as falling into two categories: internal and external sources.

Internal Content Sources

Internal content sources are those that exist within my operation, myself, and my audience. They include:

1. feedback and audience discussion around past posts
2. the audience itself
3. my experiences, perspective, and opinion
4. my network of colleagues and contacts

It’s essential that you stay abreast of what’s happening on your site. Existing discussions can help you identify topics that unite your audience in sharing, learning, or debate — all of which helps build community.

It’ll also provide one means for engaging with your audience (along with social media and other sources of direct audience contact). Sure, your site stats are helpful as a frame of reference, but nothing beats actual user engagement for getting ideas about what your blog’s readers want to know, what makes them laugh, and what motivates them.

Thinking objectively about your own experiences in the field, as well as those of your contacts, can unearth some intriguing ideas and information that can immediately help you to develop posts. But beyond that, your passion for your field should see you investigating ideas with colleagues, and forming your own opinions about industry developments. Those unique perspectives can provide a wealth of post ideas — from interviews and news-style reports to the kinds of opinion and analysis posts that stick in  readers’ minds, and keep them coming back to check the comments long after they’ve read your post.

External Content Sources

External content sources lie beyond my immediate sphere of operation. They include:

• other media focused on the same topic, including offline media, such as interest magazines and industry publications, forums, user groups, social network trends and discussions, and more.
• other people focused on the same topic, including thought leaders, commentators, reviewers, passionate hobbyists, and organisational heads.

I like to subscribe to media that focus on the same topic as my blog, so I’m constantly fed content ideas through story alerts, media releases, and news updates. The same goes for tracking people who lead opinion or have expertise in my area — by subscribing to their blogs, regularly visiting their sites, and following them on social networks, I can keep a grip not just on the news, but on the discussions and thinking that occur in the broader arena in which I operate.

The posts that arise from these sources might be as pragmatic as a product or service review, daily reports from an industry conference, or ongoing commentary on a major development in your area of interest. Or they can be as theoretical as an essay taking in various industry-leading opinions, advice, and responses on a particular topic. The posts may be yours, or those of a guest blogger you’ve sourced through your offsite research. In any case, your blog won’t be short of content.

Continuous Content

Sourcing regular, quality content is every blogger’s challenge. But with that challenge comes the hurdles of variety, insight, exclusivity and personality. At the heart of it all, you’ll need a continuous content sourcing approach.

To source content continually, you’ll need to build content sourcing into your schedule, and into your brain. Yes, you’ll need to dedicate time to content-sourcing tasks, like flicking through RSS feeds, reading, researching, interviewing, networking, and so on. But all that becomes easy if you treat everything you do around your blog topic as a potential content sourcing opportunity.

Soon, you’ll no longer sit down to write a blog post and start by wracking your brains for ideas. Instead, you’ll find content ideas pop up everywhere. You’ll stop asking yourself, “What will I write about?” and find yourself picking and choosing from a plethora of ideas that “just come to you”.

What’s your favourite source of quality content ideas?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Source Quality Content … Continuously

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How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

One of the biggest challenges for a new bloggers starting out in an established niche is to find a way to stand out from the crowd and find their first readers. Without existing profile and/or credibility – getting those first readers can be very tough.

To combat this a few years back a number of bloggers started to use ‘Guest Blogging’ as a technique to launch their blogs and grow their brands to new audiences. This technique launched many bloggers to prominence – including Leo Babauta, Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, Skellie, Jon Morrow (all of whom have guest posted on ProBlogger) and many many more.

Much has been written on the topic of how to use guest posting but one of the best resources that I’ve seen lately has been produced by Jon Morrow. He’s just released the first in a series of videos (#aff) on the topic and they are well worth watching.

I’ve seen the complete set of videos for myself and they are easy to watch, actionable and inspiring.

Jon himself has used guest blogging with great success – including this fantastic post on speech recognition for bloggers here on ProBlogger which helped many.

Jon’s first video is completely free (no opt in required) and is well worth watching. His future videos require an opt in but you’ll get a feel for whether they’re right for you from the first one. I watched them all and they’re excellent.

Do yourself a favour and set aside some time today to watch these videos.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

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5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

One of the great things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running within minutes of deciding to start a blog.

Free tools range from hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger through to a myriad of plugins and themes around the web that can make blogging a breeze.

Of course while there are many many free options out there, sometimes to take your blog to the next level there can come a time when you need to spend a few dollars. I bit the bullet early in my blogging and did this first by paying for my own hosting and moving from Blogger to Movable Type (and later to WordPress.org). I also paid fairly early on for a custom design.

These days I continue to have a variety of expenses including hosting, design, paying a small team of writers (on dPS), paying for some admin support and some development costs.

There are also a number of paid tools that have become indispensable for me which I’d like to feature today. While there are free alternatives to some of them, I’ve found them to be of a standard that I’m more than happy to pay for.

1. Aweber

Perhaps the single most important decision that I’ve made in the last few years of blogging was to add newsletters to my blogs (particularly my photography blog).

I’ve outlined how I use newsletters to drive significant traffic and make money and have written previously Why I use Aweber so won’t rehash it all again – but this is a tool I’m more than happy to have invested in as it easily pays for itself and has been a key part of growing my blogs over the last 4 years many times over.

2. Ustream Producer Pro

This is the latest tool that I’ve invested in. It wasn’t particularly cheap at $199 but enables me to take my video streaming sessions up a notch and do things like have more than one camera angle, do live screen capturing, add a logo to my ustream sessions, import movies and audio into them, have extra transitions, do picture in picture etc.

Some of this is in the free version and you might find you don’t need to upgrade unless you want a few more bells and whistles.

3. MindNode Pro

I’m a big fan of mind mapping. I used to do it without having a name for it on whiteboards and note pads but when I saw online tools that could help me with it I was in heaven. I’ve tried a lot of the Mac based tools (both free and paid) and the one that suits my workflow best is MindNode.

Their free version is brilliant and you might not even need to upgrade but I’m willing to pay for the Pro version simply because it adds the ability to fold down sections of your mind map and do things like add images to it.

4. Market Samurai

I’ve not ever really paid money for SEO before until I came across the Market Samurai tool but it’s excellent. I may not use it quite to its fullest potential (yet) but have touched on how I find it useful for choosing a niche to blog about as well as optimizing a single post on your blog for search engines.

The cool thing is that they have a free trial of the tool which will give you access to its great features to try before you buy – you might find that that’s all you need to do some research and get your blog optimised pretty well.

5. Screenflow

This is a mac only tool which allows users to do great screencasting. I’ve used it more for private resources that I’ve developed for a couple of companies in consulting but it is a very cool way to show what’s on your screen in video as well as insert a view from a camera. A few videos I’ve made with it include -  

• How Leaving Comments on Blogs Can Drive Traffic to Yours
• How I Use Social Media to Promote my blogs
• How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to find topics to Write about

Note: I am an affiliate for Market Samurai and Aweber but am both a user and a fan of both.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

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5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

One of the great things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running within minutes of deciding to start a blog.

Free tools range from hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger through to a myriad of plugins and themes around the web that can make blogging a breeze.

Of course while there are many many free options out there, sometimes to take your blog to the next level there can come a time when you need to spend a few dollars. I bit the bullet early in my blogging and did this first by paying for my own hosting and moving from Blogger to Movable Type (and later to WordPress.org). I also paid fairly early on for a custom design.

These days I continue to have a variety of expenses including hosting, design, paying a small team of writers (on dPS), paying for some admin support and some development costs.

There are also a number of paid tools that have become indispensable for me which I’d like to feature today. While there are free alternatives to some of them, I’ve found them to be of a standard that I’m more than happy to pay for.

1. Aweber

Perhaps the single most important decision that I’ve made in the last few years of blogging was to add newsletters to my blogs (particularly my photography blog).

I’ve outlined how I use newsletters to drive significant traffic and make money and have written previously Why I use Aweber so won’t rehash it all again – but this is a tool I’m more than happy to have invested in as it easily pays for itself and has been a key part of growing my blogs over the last 4 years many times over.

2. Ustream Producer Pro

This is the latest tool that I’ve invested in. It wasn’t particularly cheap at $199 but enables me to take my video streaming sessions up a notch and do things like have more than one camera angle, do live screen capturing, add a logo to my ustream sessions, import movies and audio into them, have extra transitions, do picture in picture etc.

Some of this is in the free version and you might find you don’t need to upgrade unless you want a few more bells and whistles.

3. MindNode Pro

I’m a big fan of mind mapping. I used to do it without having a name for it on whiteboards and note pads but when I saw online tools that could help me with it I was in heaven. I’ve tried a lot of the Mac based tools (both free and paid) and the one that suits my workflow best is MindNode.

Their free version is brilliant and you might not even need to upgrade but I’m willing to pay for the Pro version simply because it adds the ability to fold down sections of your mind map and do things like add images to it.

4. Market Samurai

I’ve not ever really paid money for SEO before until I came across the Market Samurai tool but it’s excellent. I may not use it quite to its fullest potential (yet) but have touched on how I find it useful for choosing a niche to blog about as well as optimizing a single post on your blog for search engines.

The cool thing is that they have a free trial of the tool which will give you access to its great features to try before you buy – you might find that that’s all you need to do some research and get your blog optimised pretty well.

5. Screenflow

This is a mac only tool which allows users to do great screencasting. I’ve used it more for private resources that I’ve developed for a couple of companies in consulting but it is a very cool way to show what’s on your screen in video as well as insert a view from a camera. A few videos I’ve made with it include -  

• How Leaving Comments on Blogs Can Drive Traffic to Yours
• How I Use Social Media to Promote my blogs
• How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to find topics to Write about

Note: I am an affiliate for Market Samurai and Aweber but am both a user and a fan of both.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

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How to Build a Successful Blog Business

One of the best new resources for those wanting to make money from blogging is a new eBook (and available as a ‘real’ book is How to Build a Successful Blog Business by Collis Ta’eed.

I had the opportunity to read this great new book last week and was really impressed by the mix of solid teaching, practical tips and fantastic case studies.

Collis Ta’eed is the creator of some highly successful blogging businesses – Envato, Tuts+, Freelance switch and AppStorm. He’s built something with his great team from scratch to be some of the most popular and profitable blogs going around. He’s someone that I respect so much that I’ve invited him to speak at the upcoming Melbourne bloggers day net week.

Topics in the book include a wide array of things including

• an introduction to
• teaching on how to plan and research your new blog
• tips on creating a brand, naming your blog, choosing domains and design
• a variety of teaching on staffing your blog
• content – how to write it, editing content, headline tips, evergreen content etc
• generating traffic for your blog – how to do it!
• monetization – teaching on an array of methods of making money from blogs
• building a long term business – expanding to multiple blogs and adding businesses to your blog

There are also 3 great case studies on the blogs that Collis has set up – these case studies are highly valuable in and of themselves and my favourite part of the book.

I found this 327 page book to be a refreshing read and one that I think will help a lot of people. For me the highlight was to get an insight into how another bloggers has approached his business – I picked up a lot of great ideas and know that anyone starting out will gain even more insight.

You can get a free sample of the book on the sales page for it (including full table of contents and the first chapter).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Build a Successful Blog Business

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Popularity: unranked [?]

How to Build a Successful Blog Business

One of the best new resources for those wanting to make money from blogging is a new eBook (and available as a ‘real’ book is How to Build a Successful Blog Business by Collis Ta’eed.

I had the opportunity to read this great new book last week and was really impressed by the mix of solid teaching, practical tips and fantastic case studies.

Collis Ta’eed is the creator of some highly successful blogging businesses – Envato, Tuts+, Freelance switch and AppStorm. He’s built something with his great team from scratch to be some of the most popular and profitable blogs going around. He’s someone that I respect so much that I’ve invited him to speak at the upcoming Melbourne bloggers day net week.

Topics in the book include a wide array of things including

• an introduction to
• teaching on how to plan and research your new blog
• tips on creating a brand, naming your blog, choosing domains and design
• a variety of teaching on staffing your blog
• content – how to write it, editing content, headline tips, evergreen content etc
• generating traffic for your blog – how to do it!
• monetization – teaching on an array of methods of making money from blogs
• building a long term business – expanding to multiple blogs and adding businesses to your blog

There are also 3 great case studies on the blogs that Collis has set up – these case studies are highly valuable in and of themselves and my favourite part of the book.

I found this 327 page book to be a refreshing read and one that I think will help a lot of people. For me the highlight was to get an insight into how another bloggers has approached his business – I picked up a lot of great ideas and know that anyone starting out will gain even more insight.

You can get a free sample of the book on the sales page for it (including full table of contents and the first chapter).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Build a Successful Blog Business

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Big Content Monetisation Ideas for the Little Guy

Earlier in this series, we talked about treating content as an asset. In reality, content may represent an asset for a number of reasons: because it’s evergreen and can be repurposed into other forms; because it’s time-critical and extremely viral, sparking conversation and attracting new users; because it’s unique and can only be found on your blog … the list goes on.

We all know the standard on-site means of monetising blog content: through advertising programs, affiliate programs, and so on — Darren’s written about them in detail. Here, I’d like to look at some of the other ways you can get more out of your existing — and evolving — content inventory.

Creative Monetisation

When we discussed content strategy earlier in this series, we talked about the importance of having a grip on your content inventory so that you can achieve the best possible return on your investment in content.

How can you achieve that ROI? There are many options. In fact, as we’ll see, being creative about your monetisation strategy really can pay off.

To get you in the mood, take a look at the blog of illustrator and artist James Jean. Check his store to see some innovative approaches to the concept of “content monetisation”.

Whitepapers and Ebooks

Whitepapers, reports, and ebooks are established means by which to repackage quality content you’ve published on your blog into new, cost-effective formats. But don’t forget physical products, either — it works for James Jean, and it could work for you, too.

Before you begin, consider existing competition in the space — if leaders in your field release quality research or insight free, you’ll have to do something different, and do it well, if your audience is going to pay for your offering. Simply republishing a selection of your current blog content as an ebook won’t cut it. Augmenting that content, as a basic platform from which you can provide a range of value-adds, tools, and philosophies, might.

If you’re constantly immersed in your area of interest, you’re likely to come across information that, while it makes for good blog posts, also fuels your creative fire. It might start you innovating and exploring, and the resulting insights and experiences may generate new content or new perspectives that can augment and extend your existing content in other formats.

Products like these are usually most successful if you can provide solid practical value, unique insights, and compelling evidence. Don’t neglect to give your customers a means to assess the information for themselves, independently, as well as under your guidance. Interpret the results of your research in a paid report, by all means — but provide the raw data to allow users to conduct their own analysis, too.

Paywalls and Subscriptions

We’ve all heard about the News Corp decision to charge for access to its news sites — a plan that’s now going ahead in the UK and USA. Although opinion is divided over charging for web news, many blogs offer premium subscriptions that provide access to suites of value-added content such as research and interpretation, or deep insight and opinion. The free GigaOm network does this with its GigaOm Pro subscription service. Subscription services may also take in alternative media formats, such as videos or podcasts, that aren’t available through the free area of the blog.

Subscriptions won’t work for all blog types — expert content on business and academic topics seems to be one area in which paywalls have proven successful, but the average hobby blogger may have trouble justifying this tactic to an audience that can obtain parallel content free of charge elsewhere. If you do go ahead with a paywall, you’ll have to think carefully about how you’ll communicate the value of a subscription to your readers: will you offer a free trial? A demo? Will you let users pay on a weekly or monthly basis, or have them purchase a longer period, perhaps at a discount?

Users are already skeptical of paywalls and subscriptions. They can work, but usually they’re best left to the larger players who can afford to take such risks.

Content Syndication that Pays

An interesting alternative to the online news paywall approach has been developed by the UK’s Guardian news organisation. The Guardian is launching a service that allows others to syndicate Guardian stories free of charge — with the caveat that the content must appear as provided, and that includes an advertisement.

Syndicating your blog’s content with automatically-included inline ads may not be an option just yet. But are there other forms of “syndication” you can use? Could you arrange to republish selected posts regularly in another industry publication — perhaps in print — for payment?

Reselling your posts can be tricky, since you don’t want to dilute your brand or readership. By the same token, a well-planned strategy can serve to build your audience and your income. For example, you might syndicate time-critical content to other publications for a payment, but publish timeless, evergreen content, posts that build and engage community, and articles that provide great educational value, exclusively on your own blog.

Finding outlets that will pay to republish your posts may be a challenge, particularly while you’re still establishing your foothold in your chosen space, but as the Problogger income split posts prove, the small steps — and approaches that aggregate a range of income sources — really do add up.

What techniques have you used to monetise your content?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Big Content Monetisation Ideas for the Little Guy

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Big Content Monetisation Ideas for the Little Guy

Earlier in this series, we talked about treating content as an asset. In reality, content may represent an asset for a number of reasons: because it’s evergreen and can be repurposed into other forms; because it’s time-critical and extremely viral, sparking conversation and attracting new users; because it’s unique and can only be found on your blog … the list goes on.

We all know the standard on-site means of monetising blog content: through advertising programs, affiliate programs, and so on — Darren’s written about them in detail. Here, I’d like to look at some of the other ways you can get more out of your existing — and evolving — content inventory.

Creative Monetisation

When we discussed content strategy earlier in this series, we talked about the importance of having a grip on your content inventory so that you can achieve the best possible return on your investment in content.

How can you achieve that ROI? There are many options. In fact, as we’ll see, being creative about your monetisation strategy really can pay off.

To get you in the mood, take a look at the blog of illustrator and artist James Jean. Check his store to see some innovative approaches to the concept of “content monetisation”.

Whitepapers and Ebooks

Whitepapers, reports, and ebooks are established means by which to repackage quality content you’ve published on your blog into new, cost-effective formats. But don’t forget physical products, either — it works for James Jean, and it could work for you, too.

Before you begin, consider existing competition in the space — if leaders in your field release quality research or insight free, you’ll have to do something different, and do it well, if your audience is going to pay for your offering. Simply republishing a selection of your current blog content as an ebook won’t cut it. Augmenting that content, as a basic platform from which you can provide a range of value-adds, tools, and philosophies, might.

If you’re constantly immersed in your area of interest, you’re likely to come across information that, while it makes for good blog posts, also fuels your creative fire. It might start you innovating and exploring, and the resulting insights and experiences may generate new content or new perspectives that can augment and extend your existing content in other formats.

Products like these are usually most successful if you can provide solid practical value, unique insights, and compelling evidence. Don’t neglect to give your customers a means to assess the information for themselves, independently, as well as under your guidance. Interpret the results of your research in a paid report, by all means — but provide the raw data to allow users to conduct their own analysis, too.

Paywalls and Subscriptions

We’ve all heard about the News Corp decision to charge for access to its news sites — a plan that’s now going ahead in the UK and USA. Although opinion is divided over charging for web news, many blogs offer premium subscriptions that provide access to suites of value-added content such as research and interpretation, or deep insight and opinion. The free GigaOm network does this with its GigaOm Pro subscription service. Subscription services may also take in alternative media formats, such as videos or podcasts, that aren’t available through the free area of the blog.

Subscriptions won’t work for all blog types — expert content on business and academic topics seems to be one area in which paywalls have proven successful, but the average hobby blogger may have trouble justifying this tactic to an audience that can obtain parallel content free of charge elsewhere. If you do go ahead with a paywall, you’ll have to think carefully about how you’ll communicate the value of a subscription to your readers: will you offer a free trial? A demo? Will you let users pay on a weekly or monthly basis, or have them purchase a longer period, perhaps at a discount?

Users are already skeptical of paywalls and subscriptions. They can work, but usually they’re best left to the larger players who can afford to take such risks.

Content Syndication that Pays

An interesting alternative to the online news paywall approach has been developed by the UK’s Guardian news organisation. The Guardian is launching a service that allows others to syndicate Guardian stories free of charge — with the caveat that the content must appear as provided, and that includes an advertisement.

Syndicating your blog’s content with automatically-included inline ads may not be an option just yet. But are there other forms of “syndication” you can use? Could you arrange to republish selected posts regularly in another industry publication — perhaps in print — for payment?

Reselling your posts can be tricky, since you don’t want to dilute your brand or readership. By the same token, a well-planned strategy can serve to build your audience and your income. For example, you might syndicate time-critical content to other publications for a payment, but publish timeless, evergreen content, posts that build and engage community, and articles that provide great educational value, exclusively on your own blog.

Finding outlets that will pay to republish your posts may be a challenge, particularly while you’re still establishing your foothold in your chosen space, but as the Problogger income split posts prove, the small steps — and approaches that aggregate a range of income sources — really do add up.

What techniques have you used to monetise your content?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Big Content Monetisation Ideas for the Little Guy

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The Content Producer’s Copyright Checklist

Copyright is the content producer’s constant companion. If you create content, you own it, and you want it to stay that way!

At the same time, many bloggers link to, quote, and reference other peoples’ work. Understanding where the line of copyright falls is essential if you and your blog are to stay on the right side of the law.

The Basics

We all know that information — including images, video, music, or words — published online is not there for the taking.

My bare-bones rulebook for using other people’s content looks like this:

• Only use content that’s identified explicitly as being available for reuse under the creative commons or open content licenses.
• Always include a linked citation alongside the content I reference or reuse, identifying the creator and the URL of the original work.
• Contact the creator to let them know I’m reusing their content and appreciate their making it available.

You may also choose to identify the license under which the content was made available for reuse in your citation.

When I include a quote in a post, I make sure I identify the individual I’m quoting, and I always include a link to the source document from which I’ve obtained the quote itself.

These are the basic rules I follow when I’m using content created by others. But what about your own blog’s content?

The Blogger’s Copyright Checklist

This checklist should help you to ensure your blog is up to the basic copyright “safety standards”:

1. Does a current copyright notice appear on every page of your blog?
2. Do you watermark any unique images you own and have published to your blog with your blog’s URL?
3. Have you secured content assets like ebooks, whitepapers, and reports, and do each of these assets carry your copyright notice?
4. Have you set a copyright policy for guest posts that you publish on your blog?
5. Do you request and agree to the copyright policies of any blogs you contribute to, either in a paid or unpaid guest arrangement?

Other Copyright Considerations

Deciding on your approach to copyright early in the piece can help you keep a handle on infringements of your copyright — and avoid infringing the rights of others. It can also affect the value of your property. For example, you might decide you’ll only publish completely unique content over which you own all rights, in a bid to ensure that when you sell the site in future, you get the best possible price for the content itself.

Prevention is better than cure. Sometimes protection is an insufficient deterrent, but in cases where your rights are infringed, you can always lodge a DMA takedown notice with the offending site’s host.

On the other hand, you may decide that you want to release some of your assets under the Creative Commons license, which “provide[s] free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof”.

Alternatively, you might use the Open Content license, which licenses content “in a manner that provides users with the right to make more kinds of uses than those normally permitted under the law – at no cost to the user.”

Are you concerned about others infringing your copyrights? What steps have you taken to protect yourself?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Content Producer’s Copyright Checklist

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The Content Producer’s Copyright Checklist

Copyright is the content producer’s constant companion. If you create content, you own it, and you want it to stay that way!

At the same time, many bloggers link to, quote, and reference other peoples’ work. Understanding where the line of copyright falls is essential if you and your blog are to stay on the right side of the law.

The Basics

We all know that information — including images, video, music, or words — published online is not there for the taking.

My bare-bones rulebook for using other people’s content looks like this:

• Only use content that’s identified explicitly as being available for reuse under the creative commons or open content licenses.
• Always include a linked citation alongside the content I reference or reuse, identifying the creator and the URL of the original work.
• Contact the creator to let them know I’m reusing their content and appreciate their making it available.

You may also choose to identify the license under which the content was made available for reuse in your citation.

When I include a quote in a post, I make sure I identify the individual I’m quoting, and I always include a link to the source document from which I’ve obtained the quote itself.

These are the basic rules I follow when I’m using content created by others. But what about your own blog’s content?

The Blogger’s Copyright Checklist

This checklist should help you to ensure your blog is up to the basic copyright “safety standards”:

1. Does a current copyright notice appear on every page of your blog?
2. Do you watermark any unique images you own and have published to your blog with your blog’s URL?
3. Have you secured content assets like ebooks, whitepapers, and reports, and do each of these assets carry your copyright notice?
4. Have you set a copyright policy for guest posts that you publish on your blog?
5. Do you request and agree to the copyright policies of any blogs you contribute to, either in a paid or unpaid guest arrangement?

Other Copyright Considerations

Deciding on your approach to copyright early in the piece can help you keep a handle on infringements of your copyright — and avoid infringing the rights of others. It can also affect the value of your property. For example, you might decide you’ll only publish completely unique content over which you own all rights, in a bid to ensure that when you sell the site in future, you get the best possible price for the content itself.

Prevention is better than cure. Sometimes protection is an insufficient deterrent, but in cases where your rights are infringed, you can always lodge a DMA takedown notice with the offending site’s host.

On the other hand, you may decide that you want to release some of your assets under the Creative Commons license, which “provide[s] free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof”.

Alternatively, you might use the Open Content license, which licenses content “in a manner that provides users with the right to make more kinds of uses than those normally permitted under the law – at no cost to the user.”

Are you concerned about others infringing your copyrights? What steps have you taken to protect yourself?

About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Content Producer’s Copyright Checklist

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Crazy Stuff I’ve Done as a Blogger, and What I’ve Learned From It All

Blogging is like life itself. 

You get from it what you put into it.  You can’t go it alone, success requires contact with, and some degree of acceptance and approval from, the outside world.  Perserevence and maintainance are mandatory.

Every day we are presented with lessons.  Noticing and allowing them to chart the course going forward are part of the Success Equation. 

Do the math.  Nobody gets to reinvent the rules.   

That said, most of us mess it up – both our life and our blog – on a regular basis. 

Thankfully, unless your transgression takes you out of the game altogether, the medium and the masses are forgiving, or at least they are possessed of a short memory.

We try, we stumble (the fall on your face kind), we move on. 

Here then, after fourteen months online with my blog, are a few tries and stumbles of my own, and what became of them.

I allowed my URL to expire.

Not on purpose, of course.  Out of ignorance.  

I first registered with Yahoo, then transferred the whole enchilada to Hostgator.  Neither bother to notify me (insert finger-pointing here) when the 1-year contract expired. 

Ignorance is no excuse.  It was me, not them, who suffered a mild cardiac event when I woke up one morning in Hawaii and my blog was completely off the grid.

I now have a 5-year URL contract.  I just hope somebody gives me a heads up when it nears expiration, since I’ll be older than dirt by then and will undoubtedly forget what “URL” even means.

Come to think of it, I don’t know now.  Only what it feels like to lose one.

I got into an online street fight.

I took a stance on an issue that rubbed somebody the wrong way.  She called me a prick in the ensuing exchange on the Comment thread.

Hey, she started it. 

I hit back – the never-hit-a-girl mantra of our youth is pure horseshit when a whacked-out woman attacks you online – though I never called her anything metaphorically referencing human genitalia.

Pricks are everywhere.  Even online.  I’m just glad I’m not one of them.  Not then, not now.

Came close, though.  Never again.

I wrote a post about typos.

It was right here on Problogger, as a matter of fact.  Thing is, it had two typos in it.

And then, when several dozen readers gleefully pointed this out, I actually offered up another typo in a blushing apology.

I’ve learned never to promise a typo-free post again.  Only to try for one every time.

I dissed another blogger.

There are a couple bloggers out there who, because of outrageous, totally misplaced egos, really piss me off. 

I shant name names.

I tried to once, but my wife saved me from myself.

That’s the lesson.  Keep the wife close at all times.

I wanted to quit.

Don’t we all from time to time?

Resist the urge.  That’s the lesson.  Don’t.

One word in front of the other.  Just like walking through the valley of the shadow of rejection, one foot at a time.

Just try to keep that foot out of your mouth.

I stopped interacting.

Don’t we all from time to time?

Resist the urge.  That’s the lesson.  Don’t.

Redundancy intended, by the way.

I posted jokes.

Seriously.  My site isn’t remotely funny, I write about effective storytelling standards and processes, and how to get it published.

If you haven’t tried that, it’s the antithesis of humor.  It’s a nightmare.

Maybe that’s why the jokes worked.  Every tortured writer needs a laugh now and then.

I got personal.

Just like now.  Depending on the venue, your humanity is as important as your narrative dexterity.

Just pick your times.   Nobody comes to your site for you.

And always chose self-deprecation over self-promotion.  Just sayin’.

I posted a prayer.

Call me crazy.  In fact, that prayer is up on my site as I write this.  It’ll be in second or third position by the time you read this.

The prayer was answered, too.  At least in terms of reader comments.

I find it fascinating how posts imbued with vulnerability, risk-taking, humor and commiseration are the most effective in terms of reader response.

People come for the meat and potatoes.  But they comment for love.

The Sum of These Lessons

Perhaps the biggest lesson of it all is how each of these parts meld together into one big pile of throbbing learning curve.

It’s called blogging.  No matter how or why you do it, it has something to teach us.

Larry Brooks writes at Storyfix.com, an instructional site for novelists, screenwriters, novices and burned out hacks, and those who live with them.  His book, “Story Engineering: Understanding the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing,” comes out in February 2011 from Writers Digest Books.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Crazy Stuff I’ve Done as a Blogger, and What I’ve Learned From It All

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Crazy Stuff I’ve Done as a Blogger, and What I’ve Learned From It All

Blogging is like life itself. 

You get from it what you put into it.  You can’t go it alone, success requires contact with, and some degree of acceptance and approval from, the outside world.  Perserevence and maintainance are mandatory.

Every day we are presented with lessons.  Noticing and allowing them to chart the course going forward are part of the Success Equation. 

Do the math.  Nobody gets to reinvent the rules.   

That said, most of us mess it up – both our life and our blog – on a regular basis. 

Thankfully, unless your transgression takes you out of the game altogether, the medium and the masses are forgiving, or at least they are possessed of a short memory.

We try, we stumble (the fall on your face kind), we move on. 

Here then, after fourteen months online with my blog, are a few tries and stumbles of my own, and what became of them.

I allowed my URL to expire.

Not on purpose, of course.  Out of ignorance.  

I first registered with Yahoo, then transferred the whole enchilada to Hostgator.  Neither bother to notify me (insert finger-pointing here) when the 1-year contract expired. 

Ignorance is no excuse.  It was me, not them, who suffered a mild cardiac event when I woke up one morning in Hawaii and my blog was completely off the grid.

I now have a 5-year URL contract.  I just hope somebody gives me a heads up when it nears expiration, since I’ll be older than dirt by then and will undoubtedly forget what “URL” even means.

Come to think of it, I don’t know now.  Only what it feels like to lose one.

I got into an online street fight.

I took a stance on an issue that rubbed somebody the wrong way.  She called me a prick in the ensuing exchange on the Comment thread.

Hey, she started it. 

I hit back – the never-hit-a-girl mantra of our youth is pure horseshit when a whacked-out woman attacks you online – though I never called her anything metaphorically referencing human genitalia.

Pricks are everywhere.  Even online.  I’m just glad I’m not one of them.  Not then, not now.

Came close, though.  Never again.

I wrote a post about typos.

It was right here on Problogger, as a matter of fact.  Thing is, it had two typos in it.

And then, when several dozen readers gleefully pointed this out, I actually offered up another typo in a blushing apology.

I’ve learned never to promise a typo-free post again.  Only to try for one every time.

I dissed another blogger.

There are a couple bloggers out there who, because of outrageous, totally misplaced egos, really piss me off. 

I shant name names.

I tried to once, but my wife saved me from myself.

That’s the lesson.  Keep the wife close at all times.

I wanted to quit.

Don’t we all from time to time?

Resist the urge.  That’s the lesson.  Don’t.

One word in front of the other.  Just like walking through the valley of the shadow of rejection, one foot at a time.

Just try to keep that foot out of your mouth.

I stopped interacting.

Don’t we all from time to time?

Resist the urge.  That’s the lesson.  Don’t.

Redundancy intended, by the way.

I posted jokes.

Seriously.  My site isn’t remotely funny, I write about effective storytelling standards and processes, and how to get it published.

If you haven’t tried that, it’s the antithesis of humor.  It’s a nightmare.

Maybe that’s why the jokes worked.  Every tortured writer needs a laugh now and then.

I got personal.

Just like now.  Depending on the venue, your humanity is as important as your narrative dexterity.

Just pick your times.   Nobody comes to your site for you.

And always chose self-deprecation over self-promotion.  Just sayin’.

I posted a prayer.

Call me crazy.  In fact, that prayer is up on my site as I write this.  It’ll be in second or third position by the time you read this.

The prayer was answered, too.  At least in terms of reader comments.

I find it fascinating how posts imbued with vulnerability, risk-taking, humor and commiseration are the most effective in terms of reader response.

People come for the meat and potatoes.  But they comment for love.

The Sum of These Lessons

Perhaps the biggest lesson of it all is how each of these parts meld together into one big pile of throbbing learning curve.

It’s called blogging.  No matter how or why you do it, it has something to teach us.

Larry Brooks writes at Storyfix.com, an instructional site for novelists, screenwriters, novices and burned out hacks, and those who live with them.  His book, “Story Engineering: Understanding the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing,” comes out in February 2011 from Writers Digest Books.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Crazy Stuff I’ve Done as a Blogger, and What I’ve Learned From It All

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What Is An “Auto-Responder“? Will It MAKE ME MONEY ?

What is an “Auto-Responder“? Will it MAKE ME SALES ?

Why do I need an “Auto-responder” How will it make me INCOME ?

Question: “What is an Auto-responder” ?

Answer: “Auto-responder” is an automated email program that sends out your emails for you! By placing a simple form on your “Lead Capture Page“, “Splash Page“, website or email, you can have people enter their name and email address ( phone etc…) and this puts them on your “eMailing List“. The people entering their information are “Opting In” (or Option In) to receive your emails. They also have the option to “Opt Out” ( no longer receive) your mailings, whenever they choose.

An “Auto-resonder” IS a MUST HAVE if you are “marketing” anything “online“. For example, you place an ad and draw someone to your website or sales page. If they do not purchase your item or service the fist time they are there, you have lost them forever. But with an “Auto-responder” when they enter their name and email address, now you can email them information or product advertisements forever!

Set up your “Auto-responder” to send out Pre-Written emails, assign the delivery day (1 day after they Opt In, 3 days after they Opt In etc…) and NOW Your “Email Marketing” and “Business” are on “AUTOPILOT”!

Auto responders also allow you to send out “Broadcast” messages. A “Broadcast” message is a message that you send out to your entire list any time you choose. For example, you just found out about a great new tool or website that you know will help the people on your list grow their businesses. You can just make up a quick email style message with a link to your new find and shoot the message out to everyone on your list. It’s fast easy and current.

Another thing that a good Auto-responder will allow you to do is send out very slick, well designed, colorful massages. Most of the bigger Auto-responder companies have pre-made templates. You just choose from their template list. Pick your style, colors and design, then just type in your message. You now have a very professional looking message, newsletter or broadcast!

PLUS! With the rise in “Social Networking” you can set up your Auto-responder to send out your current blog posts to your entire list! You can even put an “Opt In” form right into your blog posts or Auto-responder messages!

All of the tracking of your messages is done inside the Auto-responder program. You can see how many messages went out and to how many people. How many people opened the message. How many people clicked your link inside your message etc… This is a Great Tool!

This tool is a MUST HAVE for anyone who is marketing anything on or offline,

YOU can set up an “Auto-responder” your “business” or “business opportunity” for approx $19/month!

More info and a Special Introductory Offer!

PS: YES it will make you money! Plus most Auto-responders have affiliate programs too!

Until next time, All The Best!
Dale Werner
FREE Marketing System: DOMINATE Your Niche…for FREE!

For practical things to know in the sphere of free traffic – please make sure to go through the web site. The times have come when concise info is truly only one click away, use this opportunity.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Blogosphere Trends + Unicorns

This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts). – Darren

Okay, okay, so we’re not actually talking about unicorns…but even though it’s a vital part of your blog’s tone and voice, I didn’t think you’d click on anything that sounded as deceptively unsexy and unexciting as what we’re actually discussing this week, which is grammatical person. Wait! Before you zone out, stick with me for a sec: It’s not as bad as it sounds. Grammatical person is simply means that you’re either referring to yourself (first person), your reader (second person), or a third party (third person). And, um, like a unicorn, it often goes unnoticed and can be exceptionally helpful. (I’m trying, you guys.)

Every time you sit down to write a post, you make choices. Some, such as your topic and headline, are likely to be very deliberate. Others, such as grammatical person, probably happen without much scrutiny—but even if you aren’t pausing to consider person (we’ll drop the “grammatical” now ’cause I know it freaks some people out), it impacts the strength of every post you write. That’s why I’ve chosen some posts about the ten most blogged-about stories of the last week (provided, as always, by Regator) to illustrate the importance of choosing the right person. Let’s take a look:

1. Oil Spill – Writing in the third person (using pronouns such as ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘they’) isn’t just for newspapers, academic papers, and formal writing. Although we have talked about the importance of using your personality and opinions to strengthen your blog, there may be times when you simply want to convey the facts. Unsurprisingly, the blog of news organization Reuters is written in third person in “Dalian oil spill is all cleaned up” and most of its other posts. Be aware though that a “just the facts” approach can, when not used with care, leave you with a post that seems dull or stiff.
2. Shirley Sherrod – The writer of “After Breitbart and Shirley Sherrod, We Need a Slow-News Movement” from Politics Daily chose to add first person (using pronouns such as ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘we’) in combination with third to clearly convey his opinion along with a bit of his personality.
3. Comic-Con – FirstShowing.net’s “Comic-Con 2010: Quick Review of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim” is an example of a very first-person focused post, with pronouns such as ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘my’ accounting for more than five percent of the word count. A post with this much focus on the blogger is risky because unless he or she has established a relationship with readers so that they care a great deal about personal viewpoints, the post runs the risk of being less useful to readers.
4. Mad Men – Jezebel’s “Contest: Win A Complete Set Of Mad Men Barbie Dolls!” primarily uses second person (pronouns such as ‘you’ and ‘your’) to give instructions directly to readers. There are plenty of times when you might want to speak directly to your readers, giving them directions for a contest is just one.
5. Angelina Jolie – Vulture’s “Six Lessons From Salt About the Differences Between Male and Female Action Heroes” is an example of a third-person piece that—unlike the newsy style of the Reuters blog above—infuses some personality, humor, and informality into the post.
6. Kindle – “Don’t Really Care About Touch Screens or Color” from Conversational Reading uses a combination of first and second person. That choice, along with phrases such as “I wonder how many readers out there are like me…” establishes a conversational tone.
7. Magic Trackpad – Telegraph.co.uk’s technology blog asks, “Would you switch your mouse for a trackpad?” Second person is the best choice when you’re trying to encourage interaction and, although the rest of this post is written in first and third person, most of the comments directly answer the second-person question from the headline.
8. Tony Hayward – “3 Big Reasons Why Tony Hayward Failed As CEO” from The Business Insider is a third-person piece that uses first and second person in the subheaders to provide the voice of the public. Choosing a different grammatical person in subheads can make them stand out even more.
9. Chelsea Clinton – Ecorazzi’s “Chelsea Clinton’s Very Vegan Rehearsal Dinner” uses first person (along with the ubiquitous third person and a dash of second) to help build the voice of the blog and connect with readers with statements such as “I’m just as confused … as some of you may be.”
10. Oliver Stone – When a story has a direct impact on you for some reason, as “Put Down Your Pitchforks; Oliver Stone Apologizes” from Cinematical did for its author, the first person is likely to be your best choice. Many people find that first person is also the most natural option for storytelling, since that is how we are accustomed to telling stories on a day-to-day basis.

Even though the grammatical person was almost certainly not the first thing on these bloggers’ minds, each of the above posts would have been vastly different had the bloggers chosen a different option. What person do you use on your blog? Is it a conscious choice? Please share your thoughts and unicorn stories in the comments.

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

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