Blogs need traffic to be successful. Otherwise it’s just an online journal for you and a few stragglers to enjoy.
Not to worry! Optimizing blogs for the search engines is a straightforward and fairly systematic process. You just need a plan and a bit of patience.
#1 Keywords. Optimize your blog domain name and your content for your niche keywords. You can also use tagging on your blog to help reinforce keyword optimization of each post. Read More→
Developing a blogging personality is critical if you want to make money with your writing. Customers don’t buy from a business; they buy from you. Trying to separate the two is impossible.
If every blog post you write is just a review of an affiliate product or an attempt to sell something, your readers will get turned off in a hurry. Obviously you need to do that every now and then, but you need to have a personality as well. Here are three methods to develop your own personality. Read More→
So you’ve decided to get involved with the Twitter revolution. Congratulations! But now what?
Here are the things you should do on your first day.
1. Create your account. Just go to Twitter.com and sign up. Choose your user name wisely. If it’s available I recommend you use your own name. If not, consider variations, such as adding “The” infront of it. Or adding a middle initial. Or your first name with your city or state. Read More→
Editor’s Note: Several people asked about getting involved in the Blog Challenge – but admitted they didn’t have a blog and weren’t sure where to start. So I thought this would be helpful.
So you know you want to start a blog but you’re not sure how to go about it. Here are five easy steps, and a few good tips, to make the process quick and easy.
1. Choose your niche. What’s your blog going to be about? You may want to do a bit of keyword research here. If you already have a business, then your blog will be related to your online business and those keywords, however, you can still narrow your blog niche.
Obviously the blog posts are coming hot and heavy this week as the 30-Day Blog Challenge wraps up. And those of us in the Mini 7 Challenge are playing catch-up. For example, in my case I needed to write 10 blog posts in 5 days!
After the blog challenge, things go back to “normal.” But what IS normal? There are several schools of thought on posting to your blog, so let’s review the most common models.
As you think it. Many people look upon their blog as a journal – and post accordingly. If there is something they want to share, they do so. If they are busy and don’t have any ideas to share, they don’t. That’s essentially what I’ve been doing for the past few days – posting as the ideas emerge.
Timed release. Under this model, a blog owner releases a new blog post on a schedule. My friend Robert Plank does this very effectively. Every few weeks he releases a new blog post. For at least 3 days before he posts it, he sends email to his lists, telling them it’s coming. Great teasing emails.
I’ve been known to set a reminder on my computer to be sure I rush over to read his post as soon as it’s released. Why? Because he closes comments! He was the first person I know of to do this – and it has worked beautifully for him. Now he closes comments at 100 – and if you want to be part of the first 100, you need to rush over when he posts the new article.
Marketing tool. For many marketers a blog is just another marketing tool. They publish well-planned articles on their blog, promoting their products. There is little interaction on the blog because it’s primarily a one-way communication medium.
So where are you going from here? Which model will you use and how often will you post AFTER the blog challenge? What will be your new Normal?
For years, I thought that I and everything I did needed to be perfect. After all, my parents had told me I was a “perfect” child. Just because I was over 40 didn’t mean that anything needed to change!
So I’d write an article in less than 30 minutes – then spend 3 days editing it. Even then it would sit on my hard drive for another week or two, just “aging” like a fine wine – as if that would make it even better. Finally, several weeks after my quick 30-minute article was ready, I would submit it to an article distribution service – then sweat for weeks in fear someone might find fault with it.
Of course, I know “no one” else has ever had that experience!
So how much is perfectionsim costing you? After all, if you persist and insist on everything being perfect, it will take you 20 times longer to get the word out about your product; 20 times longer to create the product; and 400 times longer to make a profit! You see, the pain of perfectionism is exponential.
So how do you get over your perfectionism? Share your ideas here and we’ll all conquer this together!
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