The post Seasonal Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Ben Yoskovitz’s 6 Steps To Getting Back Into The Blog Saddle reminded me today of some of the tougher times in my own blogging journey when I found it difficult to keep things going.

• The month I had Bells Palsy (facial paralysis and loss of all balance)
• The two weeks that I virtually lost my sight and couldn’t look at a computer screen
• The numerous times I took vacations and found motivating myself to start again a real challenge
• The many ‘critiques’ from others that took the wind out of my sails to the point where giving up seemed attractive

The list could go on (sickness, holidays, disillusionment, boredom, inability to think of fresh ideas etc) – it’s no wonder I’ve written so many posts on the topic of keeping your blog running (see below for a few).

Seasonal Blogging

Since reading Ben’s post I’ve also been considering the idea that blogs will go through different seasons over time.

Winter

I think it’s natural for the tough times (Winter?) to hit periodically. Times like I’ve described above where it is easy to get down in the dumps and consider giving up.

The task during a Blog’s Winter is to keep things going. You might not launch any new projects or add too many new features to your blog in these times – but if you can keep things ticking over until Spring time you’ll see the benefits of sticking at it.

Winter is a time where character and discipline is tested – it’s a time when many bloggers give up – but where those who stick at it can build foundations for a strong blgo that lasts.

Spring

But it’s not all the doom and gloom of Winter when you blog. Spring can be just around the corner at any moment with a period of renewed energy and life for your blog.

Perhaps it is triggered by a fresh idea for a series, the search engines tweaking their algorithm to sending loads or traffic or even by another site linking up.

The key in Spring is to go with the new life and let your blog grow to the next level. This might be a time to harness energy and launch a new feature – or even a time to do a little cross pollination with others in your niche to see what new partnerships might emerge. You might even have a little time to do a little spring cleaning up of your blog while you have renewed energy.

Summer

Then there are other times in the life cycle of a blog where things seem to coast along.

The content is flowing, readers are interacting with what you’ve been writing and you feel like you hardly need to put any effort in at all – it’s like a Summer vacation.

You might even take a little holiday at this time and bring in someone to help you keep things running while you take a little rest and relaxation.

Fall/Autumn

Lastly – there are seasons in every blog where change is needed. Dead wood needs to be cut off and swept away – like the sweeping away of the leaves on a deciduous tree in Autumn (Fall). Other areas will need a little fertilizing (extra compost to get them growing to their potential).

This is a time for refining and consolidation of what you do, perhaps with a little pruning and thinking a little strategically about where your blog is headed. This might also be a time for storing up supplies (write some extra content for that rainy day).

The decisions you make and the work you do in these times can help you to get through the Winter that might be ahead.

The Seasons Each Have Their Place

None of the seasons are ‘bad’ – all have their purpose and all have their tasks that blogger might need to be working on.

The trick is not to give up in those Winter months that so many of us have – but to keep working through them so that the blog is able to still be there at the next change of season.

What Season is your blog in at present?

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The post How to Monetise Your Influence Type: Micro-Influencers appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Welcome to the next post in our series on monetising your influence type. Last time we looked at Platform-Specific Superstars – a small percentage of all influencers. This time we’re going to take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Most of us fit into the category of “micro-influencer”, and it can be an exciting place to be!

Who are Micro-influencers?

Call them what you will – micro-influencers, long-tail influencers, the “Power Middle” – who are they and why are they getting so much attention?

There is no one defining characteristic or measurement that defines you as a micro-influencer. Generally it’s those of us with an online audience of less than 100,000 followers, be that a social or blog following. Some define it more specifically as having 500-5,000 followers, the power middle crowd have been defined as having 100,000-250,000 followers. You won’t get a straight answer from anyone, so let’s look at something other than just audience size to help figure out if you’re a micro-influencer (my term of choice, so I’ll use that from here on in).

Generally, as audience size goes up, engagement comes down. As marketers get smarter and realise the power of engagement over reach, their gaze has drifted to micro-influencers. Here’s why, neatly summed up in a graph from research done by influencer marketing platform Takumi on half a million instagram accounts.

You could argue that the focus on the superstars and celebrities is warranted – 1.7% of 100,000 is still more people engaged than 9.7% of 1,000. However, here’s where it gets exciting for you if you’re a micro-influencer.

The Advantages of Being a Micro-influencer

As a micro-influencer, the people who engage with you are likely to be more connected to you and more aligned with your passions, niche and generally of a similar demographic. It’s more likely that they actually know you, or have followed you from the beginning of your online presence – they know, like and trust you. This is why reaching a smaller number of your specific and engaged audience can be better than reaching a larger number of potentially less relevant followers of a bigger influencer.

This leads to another reason why it’s good to be a micro-influencer: trust and authenticity. Micro-influencers are less likely to publish as many sponsored posts and ads as bigger influencers, and when they do talk about brands their recommendations are more trusted by their faithful followers.

One of the reasons why micro-influencers can be even more trusted than everyday customers when it comes to recommendations is the ‘expert’ factor. Expertcity, another influencer marketing platform, discovered that micro-influencers have 22.2 times more ‘buying conversations’ than regular consumers and more consumers find them to be more believable and credible, more knowledgeable and better at explaining products than regular consumers.

So maybe that’s why their study showed that 82% of consumers are “highly likely” to follow a recommendation made by a micro–influencer, compared to 73% who are highly likely to act on a recommendation from an average person? It could be that the word of a micro-influencer could hold more sway than that of a friend in situations where an ‘expert’ opinion is more valued.

The Disadvantages of Being a Micro-influencer

It’s all the the word ‘micro’ – you may have better engagement and influence over a more specific target audience, but too often reach wins out. In order to get the same reach of a macro-influencer, marketers need to work with a group of micro-influencers, and that’s hard work. Finding influencers, negotiating with them all and managing multiple content pieces vs working with just one big influencer – many marketers opt for the second.

However it’s not all gloom and doom, because it’s often the group of micro-influencers that will deliver superior results, especially when it comes to conversion rates. Again, as a micro-influencer your audience is more specific, more connected to you and more likely to engage and act on your recommendations.

Monetise by Working with Brands

Whilst it’s encouraging that marketers are realising the value of micro-influencers, they can still very much try and earn your influence rather than pay for it. For example, they’re more likely to offer discount codes or giveaways for your audience, rather than pay you to do a sponsored post.

Rather than be frustrated with this, look at it as a way to prove your influence. If you can show a prospective brand partner proof of how you positively influenced your audience for a brand, then you’re more likely able to convince them that working with you on a paid basis is less risky and will ultimately give them a return on their investment.

Your first hurdle will be getting on their radar, so here are some great tips on marketing yourself. Start small and build up as you build up your evidence of influence. Focus on your engagement rates and other evidence that proves your influence, like testimonials from your followers. Get to know your audience demographics, either through the insights provided by the social platforms, Google Analytics or by directly surveying your audience. For more ideas, check out How to Pitch Brands When You Have Low Traffic.

Monetise via Affiliate Marketing

Put that recommendation power to work with affiliate marketing. Whilst normally a high-traffic strategy, affiliate marketing can work for micro-influencers too. Your best approach is to carefully select the products or services you affiliate. Choosing a few highly relevant products that you have a close affinity to will serve you better than promoting anything you can think of and hope it sticks. What are the products and services you use and love and find yourself naturally recommending?

Also consider the value of the product and the level or type of commission being offered. Naturally higher priced items can net you higher payouts, but make sure you can stand behind why your audience should purchase them. Affiliate programs on recurring services often offer recurring commissions, so you are rewarded for the lifetime of the customer, not just a once off payment. Examples of this include email marketing and other software services.

If you’re going to give affiliate marketing a go, remember it’s more than just dropping in a few links and hoping for the best. Don’t forget the ‘marketing’ part – create great content around the product, tell your story and it will resonate more with your audience. Want to know more? Check out  this podcast episode by Darren on how he makes money with affiliate marketing (even though he’s not a micro-influencer, many strategies are the same).

Monetise by Selling Your Own Products

If you have influence with an audience or community you have built up, no matter the size, one of the best ways you can monetise is by creating something for them to buy. Whether it’s an ebook, a course, a membership community or an event, you are in a great position to listen to your audience and create what they need.

An excellent example of this is when Lisa Corduff from Small Steps to Whole Foods decided to run a free challenge after having run a small blog and Facebook group for a couple of years. 550 people signed up to her challenge which she then transformed into a paid eight-week course which she has now launched multiple times to create a six-figure business. You can hear her story here. With less than 15,000 Facebook followers and just over 1500 Instagram followers she’s definitely a micro-influencer who is punching above her weight due to the trust and connection she’s built with her specific community.

So, are you a micro-influencer? Are you having success with any of the above monetisation strategies? Which one appeals and feels most achievable for you?

The post How to Monetise Your Influence Type: Micro-Influencers appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Monetize Your Influence Type: Platform-Specific Superstar appeared first on ProBlogger.

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When we think of influencers, we generally think of people with huge followings on their blog or social media platforms. There is more to influence than just audience numbers though, which is good news for the majority of us! Different influence types means there are different ways to monetize your influence as well.

In this series we’ll take a look at which monetisation strategies better suit your influence type. Hopefully you’ll find something that works in your particular situation, or a mix of strategies you can use do you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

In each context (or type of Influencer) we’re going to look at influence based on two factors to help inform the best ways to monetize:

a) where is your traffic is coming from?
b) what does the engagement look like?

Influence Type: Platform-Specific Superstar

Do you have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok or YouTube followers? Maybe you’re a celebrity of some kind? More likely you’re not quite there yet, but on the way, so here’s an insight into monetising the influence you have on one specific platform.

Celebrity endorsement is of course used and sought out by brands trying to make it onto the radar of their audiences. The combination of the reach and perceived endorsement is hard to look over, but with wildly differing rates among influencers, increasingly difficult to value! Social Media Stars are the new celebrity and are certainly enjoying their time in the influencer marketing spotlight (and its associated marketing spends). The shine is starting wear off however as marketers are starting to realise what the difference between reach and engagement, and even the type of engagement, means to their bottom line.

Monetize Your Influence Type Working with Brands

If you’ve got a large following you can certainly monetize by working with brands for product placements and endorsements – how much you can expect to successfully charge however will depend on whether you’re just driving impressions or actions.

Where is your traffic coming from?

In this case, where are your followers coming from? Are they following you because you are you (ie a celebrity in their eyes), because of your content, or (not recommended) because you bought them or are using bots to gain followers?

Some brands (or more likely the agencies that work for them) will not care who or where your followers come from – they just want eyeballs. It’s a short-sighted approach and amounts to paying over the odds for awareness. Impressions can usually be bought more cost-effectively through Facebook ads.

This is why marketers are starting to place lesser value on follower stats and even engagements. I’ve recently learned of one platform valuing followers as low as $0.001 per follower (yes, that is one tenth of one cent or a CPM of $1), or you can check out this article to see how marketers are arriving at a slightly more generous CPM of $5 or a Cost Per Engagement (for each like, comment, share) of just $0.25.

These are media buying metrics and the trend looks like the price of reach through influencers is heading south. So your best tactic is to trade on your influence rather than your reach. More importance should be placed on why your followers are following you, because this generally tends to inform the type of engagement and results you can get for a brand.

What does the engagement look like?

Social media superstars can have what looks like impressive reach and engagement, but on closer inspection that engagement can be quite shallow and doesn’t translate to influencing on behalf of a brand. It comes down to this – are your followers engaging with you or with your content? If you feature a brand in your Instagram post, let’s say a handbag, are your followers comments “You look amazing”, “Love your style”, “Insert emoji bot comment here” or are they “Does that bag come in other colours?”, “Where can I buy it?”, “Is it free trade?”, “Do you have a discount code?”

If it’s the latter, you can prove that you can drive conversions and should charge brands for your influence accordingly.

True influence drives action, not just awareness. There are certain verticals where social media influencers will be more likely able to drive these actions, for example: fashion, beauty, affordable gadgets, restaurants and experiences. These are purchases that are just a step above being convenience goods, where your followers are using you as a simple filter to help them make relatively low risk decisions.

Conversely there are some verticals that can almost be too aspirational and even a high level of engagement has less chance of converting. For example, health and wellness, fitness (fitspo), luxury goods. We can like them all day, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to sign up to the gym, actually change our eating or cooking habits, or buy that gorgeous $30,000 watch. These verticals convert better for people who are more relatable, which brings us to an alternative monetisation strategy.

Monetize Your Influence Type by Selling Your Own Products

If you do have a large following on one specific platform, you can use all the aforementioned influence to sell your own products, rather than someone else’s! This is especially so when your audience is more connected to you than just your content. Anyone can curate pretty content that people will click on, but only you can create an authentic connection with an audience and earn their trust.

Where is your traffic coming from?

Selling your own products works best when people subscribe to you because they see you as an authority or thought leader and they keep coming back for more. They seek you out rather than waiting for you to come up in a news feed, for example they subscribe to your YouTube channel and/or sign up to your email list. They want what you have, whether that be an uncluttered house, a passive income lifestyle, a skill they want to master. They’re coming to you to solve their problems, so create a solution and sell it to them.

What does the engagement look like?

When the level of engagement is deeper, the connection to your audience is stronger. Conversations trump likes, real life behind the scenes (ie Snapchat and FB Live) means more than perfectly curated content (Instagram feeds), content people can relate to and feel like you understand what they’re experiencing rather than superficial endorsements. Yes, you could still work with brands and influence this audience, but what they really want is you. When the connection and the intent of the audience (ie their search to find a solution to their problems) is this strong, create a product! Whether that be an eBook, a course, or even consulting services – listen to them and give them what they want.

You don’t have to be a social media superstar to sell your own products – this monetisation strategy and working with brands are not exclusive to influencers with large audiences. Stay tuned for the next instalment in the series where we’ll take a look at how you can monetize your influence when your traffic is passive and less connected to you.

Are you a social media influencer who relies on working with brands? Are you noticing brands being less willing to pay or pay as much? Would you consider selling your own products?

The post How to Monetize Your Influence Type: Platform-Specific Superstar appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post The 4 Rs That Show a Brand Your Blog is Influential appeared first on ProBlogger.

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One way to monetise your blog is through working with brand partners.

This could be  anything from sponsored content and affiliate promotions through to ongoing ambassadorships or sponsorships. In any case, there are a number of factors I consider when it comes to determining if a blogger is “influential” and can be successful in securing an opportunity with a brand.

As you would expect, metrics tell part of that story, so let’s take a look at them using a framework I thought I came up with, but has also been neatly described by Nielsen as the 3 Rs – Reach, Resonance, Reaction. I actually use at least one more R for Relevance which we’ll cover later.

1. Reach

How many people in the target audience is the blogger reaching?

Potential Reach and Actual Reach are two types of metrics to consider and not all platforms will provide you with both.

Most traditional marketing channels report potential reach, for example, circulation numbers for a newspaper. Your ad or story could potentially be seen by 300,000 people because that’s the number of copies distributed, and may or may not include a multiplier for ‘pass-along readership’ ie the number of people who might read the same copy.

Thankfully digital media gives us a more granular view, with not only potential reach, but also the actual reach of our content. Using a few platform examples (not an exhaustive list) below we can see the difference.

Reach Metrics

Google Analytics: Unique Visitors (potential reach), Unique Pageviews (actual reach)
Facebook Insights: Page Likes (potential reach), Lifetime Post Reach (actual reach)
Email analytics: Total Subscribers (potential reach), Total Unique Opens (actual reach)

Above is an overview of Facebook Insights Data. You can get more granular data from the exported insights.

2. Resonance

Does the content and message resonate with the audience so that they engage, remember or, ideally, change their attitudes or behaviour because of it?

Resonance is one of the main reasons brands work with influencers – their connection to their audience, their ability to tell a story that resonates with their audience far more than a branded message could, and the effect of their authority or trusted voice on the beliefs and actions of their readers.

The more your content resonates with your audience the more likely they will be to engage with it, and those metrics are easily tracked as dwell time, likes, comments, shares and click throughs.

Resonance/Engagement Metrics

Google Analytics: Time on Page (dwell time), % of return visitors (the higher the better), comments, social shares (to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc), some blog platforms have ‘likes’ which you can also include.
Facebook: Likes, Comments, Shares, Link Clicks
Twitter: Likes, Replies (comments), Retweets (shares)
Pinterest: Likes, Comments, Pins/Saves (shares)
Instagram: Likes, Comments, Tag in comments (shares)

A bit about link clicks – if your content has resonated to the extent that your audience follows a link to the brand or branded content, this is a great result. Make sure you capture it either by using a tracking link provided by the brand, or one you can track yourself like Bitly. You can use these links in your blog post and social posts to show click throughs and also to work out the click through rate ie the number of people who clicked the link divided by the number of people who viewed the content.

3. Reaction

Is there a measurable outcome in the change of attitude or behaviour of the audience?

All influencer campaigns are done to achieve some kind of reaction, whether it is awareness, acquisition (ie leads) or sales. It is at this point that you as a blogger/influencer are less able to measure the outcomes. It is here where rubber meets the road and the brand can determine if they got a return on their investment. However, you should still have an understanding of what actions you can drive that they will ultimately measure at their end.

Reaction Metrics

Awareness – obviously the more people who see the message, the more likely they will be aware of it. However, reach or impression numbers alone do not prove this outcome. A brand could look at things like increases in branded search terms, mentions of their brand on social media, unprompted recall, how they heard about the brand.

One way you can help is to survey your own readers and ask if they were aware of the brand before you mentioned it, and or have bought since you mentioned it.

Acquisition – this could be driving your audience to register their email with the brand, either via a competition, to download a bonus, to sign up for their newsletter. The brand needs to track where these sign ups are coming from to attribute the activity to your campaign and work out the cost per lead.

Sales – did your audience buy something? This can be tracked with a promo code for online purchases, an affiliate link, a printed voucher for in-store purchases, or a simple ‘how did you hear about us’ at point of purchase.

4. Relevance – the Most Important R

I mentioned earlier that I use more than just the 3Rs above. Before you look at any of those Rs, the first lesson is to understand that the same blogger will not be influential in all situations. So your first job is always to show a brand how relevant you are to the opportunity on the table.

Relevance will depend on the opportunity itself. Two main indicators of relevance will be:

1. Audience Demographics, Psychographics and Sociographics

Who is the brand targeting? The more specific you can get the more chance you can show how relevant you are over the next blogger. We’re not just talking about women aged 24-45 – that’s pretty much most blog readers! What kind of women, what life stage are they at specifically, what problems is the brand trying to solve for them? Then look at your own data for your audience and see how many similarities you can draw between the target audience and your audience. Some places you can look without getting too technical are:

Google Analytics Country and or even City data:

Facebook Insights “People” will give you a demographic overview for gender, age and location:

So, if the brief is to attract women in Melbourne to a local event, you can give them specific data on your blog and Facebook reach specifically for Melbourne.
Another way to get a more specific profile of your most loyal readers is to survey them annually. This is a great way to get basic demographic data (like education, income and family size/makeup) as well as the psychographic and specific sociographic profiles of your blog readers (their attitudes, interests and lifestyle choices). For example, your survey may tell you your typical blog reader is 25, single, cashed up and loves coming to you for fashion advice because she’s too busy to try and figure out what to buy herself (Ka-ching! by the way!).

You can then use a combination of the above data to show how relevant your audience is to the brand’s target audience.

2. What Outcome is the Brand Trying to Achieve?

The second factor that determines how relevant you are is the overall objective for the brand. What kind of position are you in to drive the specific outcome they’re after? As mentioned earlier, brands work with influencers, bloggers and media sites for awareness, acquisition, sales. Some more specific examples are as follows.

a) Awareness Objective:
The brand is running a general awareness campaign and want major reach for an emotive piece written from your perspective. They need blog post views.

What bloggers usually rely on:
Monthly Unique Visitors

What you need to show:
How many Unique Visitors (relevant to the audience profile) you can deliver to a single blog post – not just your blog.  Work out your average unique views per post based on a range of other sponsored posts, and show them some examples and results of similar posts you’ve written.

They need you to know you can drive a direct response to the blog post, perhaps in conjunction with a social network like Facebook or your email list. Show them where your traffic is coming from and that your ‘big numbers’ are not just search traffic to one well ranking post.

For extra brownie points:
Show how engaged they are with your posts using your averages for the Resonance metrics such time spent on page, comments, shares.

b) Acquisition Objective:
The brand is trying to establish itself on Instagram and an increase in the brand’s followers will be a key performance indicator of the campaign.

What bloggers usually rely on:
Media kit vanity metrics ie number of Instagram followers

What you need to show:
Anyone can buy or ‘game’ Instagram followers. Your first task is to differentiate yourself from these types of accounts. Whilst the number of followers you have on Instagram will be important, the outcome here isn’t how many people might see your post – it’s how many people will click over to the brand’s account and follow them. Show the brand how engaged your audience is with your content with average likes and comments for your posts. Even better, show them the metrics for other sponsored posts you’ve done.

For extra brownie points:
Show them examples of when you’ve done shout outs for other accounts/brands on Instagram. Use screenshots and ask for testimonials. We’re straying outside of just quantitative metrics here and into qualitative data to support how relevant you are to their campaign.

Your Most Important Objective

All of the above should give you a solid basis to create a pitch to a brand that goes way beyond what a standard media kit can do. In fact I’m not actually much of an advocate for media kits for influencers. Remember, when you’re pitching for an opportunity for a brand, your biggest challenge is to differentiate yourself from other bloggers and all a standard media kit does is show one blogger’s audience is bigger or smaller than another’s.

Get smarter and use the metrics and evidence you have at hand to show how you are more relevant than all the others. At the very least, by giving them access to a deeper level of data, you may educate them to start asking the same of other bloggers and that could very well be in your favour!

The post The 4 Rs That Show a Brand Your Blog is Influential appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Applying the Pareto Principle to Increase Your Productivity appeared first on ProBlogger.

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From ProBlogger expert Nicole Avery of Planning With Kids.

The 80/20 principle, or the Pareto principle, is widely known and accepted in business. The principle asserts that a minority of causes or effort lead to a majority of the results,

In business it can be easily seen in many areas:

• 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products
• 80% of customer complaints come from 20% of customers

The 80/20 principle is not an exact formula but the principle’s key truth is that the distribution is not even. It as about understanding there is an imbalance for effort and result. The split will not always be exactly 80/20, it might be 90/10, 99/1 for example, however it will not be 50/50.

Understanding how the 80/20 principle applies to blogging can increase your productivity and therefore your success.

Where are you spending your time?

The first step in applying the 80/20 principle is to analyse where you are spending your time in relation to blogging activities. There are many tools out there you can use to help you do this but I use Rescue Time.

RescueTime is an app you install on your computer and it focuses on measuring active computer time. (It has both free and paid versions, but I find the free version perfect for what I need.) It only measures which application is in focus or “on top”. When RescueTime detects that your computer is idle, that is you haven’t made an action after a certain time period, it stops attributing time to that application.

You can then either login to your dashboard to analyse your time use or wait for the weekly email to come through and see how productive you have been. Rescue Time with your help, with classify sites and applications as productive or distracting and generate a weekly productivity score.

Regardless of the tool you use, the most important thing is that you have a reliable data on how you are using your time. Humans are terrible at estimating our time use and how long we do things for as a recent study highlighted:

The typical person who reported having worked 40 hours, for example, actually worked closer to 37. The report found that “The greater the estimate, the greater the overestimate”; people who said they worked 75 hours actually worked closer to 50 hours. (That’s an overestimate of 25 hours, or 50 percent!) At the other end of the spectrum, people who worked relatively few hours (under around 25) actually ended to underestimate their hours. {source}

A tool like Rescue Time takes the guesswork out of it and you are left with the stats to analyse.

As bloggers, we work in an environment full of distractions. We are building audiences on social media platforms like facebook, twitter and instagram who have large paid teams working on solely how to gain and hold our attention. It is easy for a five-minute check of our facebook page to slide out to 35 minutes before we tear ourselves away from the latest viral meme. As hard as the truth maybe, we need to be honest with ourselves in how much time we are spending on these platforms and the value they are returning.

Through your time analysis you will discover where your effort is giving you the greatest return and where perhaps you are wasting your time.

If you are spending your time on the wrong activities, no matter how well you manage your time; you will not achieve the productivity you are after. Tasks that add little value are often referred to as the trivial many and those that contribute real results as the vital few.

Make changes

Armed with your data, it is then time to make changes. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What tasks are returning the biggest results?
• What tasks should I be spending more time on?
• Am I spending time on tasks that are working towards my goal?
• What tasks can I eliminate?
• What tasks can I automate?
• What tasks can I batch?

The hard part now comes once you know the answers. To increase your productivity you cannot simply make changes to how you work but you need to make changes to what you are working on.

The trivial tasks you are spending your time on are often easier to do than the vital few tasks. The vital few activities like creating killer content, creating e-books, creating courses are cognitively demanding and they require your brain to work hard. Doing hard work requires concentration through single tasking and it takes practice.

It is a practice that will pay dividends, not only with increased productivity through the quality and quantity of your blogging output, but also through the sense of achievement you feel when you have tackled a hard task and nailed it!

Do you know where you are spending your time?  

 This post was originally published on 11 October 2016 and updated 2 March 2023.

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The post 8 Tips for Crafting a Winning Subject Line for Your Email Pitch appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Creating effective subject lines for your email pitch can be the difference between success and failure. Crafting a compelling subject line will increase the likelihood that your message is opened and read, making it essential to ensure that your emails stand out in the recipient’s inbox. Subject lines should be concise, informative, and attention-grabbing – but ultimately, they must relate to your overall message while still being unique enough to draw the reader in. With the right combination of words, you can boost open rates and ensure that your pitch has a chance of success!

In this blog, we’ll explore what makes a good email subject line and give tips on creating winning ones for your pitches. 

1. Keep it short and sweet – the subject line should be no more than 50 characters

Pitching a winning email subject line should be a breeze with the right approach. Keeping your message nice and simple by limiting it to 50 characters or less may give you the edge over other pitching emails. The shorter subject line can be a more effective way to quickly grab attention, instead of running the risk of name fatigue when sentences start to become too long. It’s clear then that those snippets are essential for capturing the interest of potential clients. Get creative, while adhering to that 50-character limit – it could be the difference between being overlooked or landing your next great opportunity.

2. Get to the point – make sure the subject line accurately reflects the content of the email

Crafting an effective email subject line is key to getting your pitch across. It’s important that the wording of the subject line matches up with the content of the email, giving a concise and accurate description of what’s inside. Instead of leaving it open-ended or overly vague, try to make it as straightforward as possible, so you get right to the point in one hit. That way, your reader knows exactly what they are opening and why they should be interested. When in doubt, ask yourself: ‘if I saw this subject line, would I bother to click?’ If the answer is yes – great! You’re on your way to successful emails.

3. Get Creative – Use puns and emojis

Using puns and emojis in your email subject lines is a great way to get creative, stand out from the crowd, and capture the attention of the recipient. Puns can add humour to your message and create an instant connection with the reader. Emojis are effective at conveying emotion and eliciting a response from the reader, while also helping make your subject line more eye-catching than other emails in their inbox. So don’t be afraid to be a bit silly and experiment with unique combinations of words and emojis that grab the attention of your readers!

4. Use active voice – avoid passive constructions that can sound boring or confusing

When creating a winning email subject line, using active voice is key. Active pitch sentences get straight to the point, grabbing readers’ attention with clarity. Instead of using passive constructions that can sound boring or confusing, craft your pitch sentences in an active voice to give them punch and energy – after all, you are trying to win! Active pitch sentences make it easier for readers to understand what you are offering and why they should care. Take some time to focus on crafting your pitch sentence with an active voice; it will be worth it!

5. Be specific – generalities will likely get your email lost in the shuffle 

Writing generic subject lines is a surefire way of ensuring your emails get lost in the shuffle. A great way to stand out and capture the attention of your target audience is to get specific with the topics you discuss in your email subject lines. Whether you are running an advertising campaign or pitching an idea, using concrete facts and well chosen details can be the difference between success and failure. For example, if launching a new product, opt for something more than ‘Come check us out’ – try something that directly calls out what makes your brand stand apart from the competition. With carefully crafted email subjects, you can make sure your message gets through.

6. Use keywords wisely – choose words that are likely to catch someone’s attention

Getting bogged down in the technical aspects of crafting a killer email subject line is easy. Don’t forget, though – your chosen words greatly impact whether someone opens and reads your email. Use specific keywords that are sure to draw attention and interest. Keep them relevant to whatever you’re sharing: if you’re discussing a new product launch, use buzzwords like “launch,” “unveil,” and “spark curiosity.” The words you choose can take an ordinary subject line and make it stand out – so invest some time in picking the right ones!

7. Test, test, test – try out different subject lines and see which ones get the most responses

Crafting the perfect email subject line is a challenging yet vital task if you’re looking to get an optimal response rate on emails sent out. While knowing your target audience is a great start, the only way to confidently make decisions about what words and phrases work best for that customer or client is to test them out! It’s not just about guessing what kind of language they’ll respond well to; it’s about actually measuring results and seeing which subject lines foster higher click-through rates. After you’ve surveyed the data – this could be done via A/B testing with two similarly crafted emails – you’ll be able to establish what works best. That way you can spend less time trying out subject lines and more time engaging with the responding people.

8. What has worked for you before? – Reusing previously successful subject lines

 Reusing successful subject lines can be a great way to quickly create content and maximize your reach. If a particular subject line worked well for you previously, it’s likely that it will resonate with readers again. When reusing subject lines keep in mind the relevancy of the message to the target audience. Additionally, pay close attention to the wording and any changes made so that your message still stands out. A little tweak to the language or creative use of words can make all the difference in having a successful email campaign!

Summary 

Creating an effective email subject line can mean the difference between someone opening your email or sending it straight to trash. Following the tips above can increase your chances of getting your email opened and read. And don’t forget to test different subject lines to see what works best for you and your audience.

Not sure which email service provider to use for creating your winning subject lines? Check out our email service comparison article.

At ProBlogger, we do all of the above and then run our email subject line through CoSchedule’s Headline Studio to get a score and actionable suggestions that tell you EXACTLY how to improve your subject lines. The example below shows how useful this analysis tool is.

CoSchedule’s Headline Studio

This guest post is written by Hannah Walters a freelance writer covering multiple topic areas (“content ‘n’ coffee”!). Hannah previously worked in house as a content writer for an optical company before making the move to freelance.

For freelance writing work, please check out problogger.com/jobs/

The post 8 Tips for Crafting a Winning Subject Line for Your Email Pitch appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Make Money Blogging – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

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This post on how to make money blogging is part of the ‘What I wish I knew when I first started Blogging’ Series. In this post I’ll share readers comments on the topic of making money from blogs as well as some of my own experiences and advice.

When I asked readers for their regrets when it comes to making money there was a variety of responses – from bloggers wishing that they’d started experimenting with ads and affiliate programs earlier to others wishing that they’d never started monetizing blogs at all because it was a distraction from what they actually liked doing – writing about their topic of interest.

My Own Experience with Making Money from Blogging

I sometimes look back on my blogging with a twinge of regret that I didn’t get into blogging earlier and establish myself in my niches before ‘competitors’ did. I dabbled in making websites about 25 years ago (5 years before I started my first blog in 2002) and blogged for a full year on a personal blog before even considering that I could make money from blogging or starting blogs on any focused topic.

If only someone had told me what I now know – getting a foot in the door in my niches back then could have had some amazing payoffs.

Having said that – part of me is very glad that I didn’t ‘Go Pro’ or start commercializing my blogging too early. That first 12-18 months of blogging on a personal blog was very formative. I learned so much about communicating online, building community, writing and the way that blogs operate – to the point that when I began to blog on a commercial level I had a lot of skills that helped me grow those new blogs faster.

The other great thing about that first year or so was that it gave me a love for blogging. I blogged because I enjoyed it and not with dollar signs in my eyes. As a result I wrote about things that interested me and not what would make money.

In a sense, that first blogging experience was an apprenticeship or training ground for what came later.

I see a lot of bloggers rushing into commercial type blogs that I think could learn a thing or two from starting a personal blog for a few months (or longer). These blogs are often on topics that they think will make money (rather than things they know about and love). You’ve seen these blogs – they have ads slapped all over them (instead of presenting their content as the prime thing on the blog) and they have uninspiring and uninteresting content that is regurgitated from elsewhere.

These blogs rarely survive longer than a few months because the blogger gets frustrated by the lack of initial earnings (remember it takes a year or so for a blog to ‘hit its straps’) and has no real interest in the topic to keep them blogging.

Should a blog Be Monetized from Day 1?

There’s always been debate over whether to start monetizing a blog from the day you start it or not.

Now that I’m established as a blogger my own approach when starting a new blog is to introduce some income streams from day 1 in order to set good expectations with readers. However don’t slap too many ads up all over your blog (especially in the early days). Note: I’m not contradicting my last point about doing an apprenticeship before getting into blogging for money – this is more for bloggers who have blogged before and are starting other blogs. I’ve written a lot more on this question of how quickly to put ads on a blog here.

Experiment with Different Income Sources

The other main advice that I’d give on the topic is to experiment with the many different ways of making money from blogs. There are literally hundreds of options for doing it and each method will suit different blogs differently. I semi-regularly post a list of the top ways that I make money from blogging and while AdSense has always remained in my top two earners the rest of the list has constantly been in a state of change as I’ve experimented with the mix of income streams.

Also, keep in mind that your blog has to directly make money from it. Some blogs will never make much money, however they have the potential to increase the profile of the blogger to enable them to enhance their earning capacity in some other indirect way.

Relevancy and Position

Another lesson that it took me a while to learn about making money from blogs was the importance of having income streams that are relevant to the content that you are writing about. I still remember in the early days slapping Amazon affiliate products up on my personal blog that were for the highest priced electrical goods I could find. Of course they never converted. I learned over time that a lower priced affiliate product could earn me much more in a post about that actual product.

The other problem with my early attempts at an income from Amazon was my placement. I stuck the ads in my sidebar (mainly low on the page). Of course affiliate products tend not to convert so well well over there – people need to see them and if they are close to your content (or better still, in it, they’ll do so much better).

The Importance of Good Traffic

I chatted with a blogger earlier in the week who told me that he was so frustrated because his site was getting so much traffic but that he wasn’t making much money from it. I asked for more details and discovered that the guy was bringing in hundreds of thousands of impressions each week but was making barely enough to pay for his server load (which was considerable).

When I dug deeper as to the source of his traffic he told me that he was buying it from a traffic generation service. He’d heard that all he needed to do was generate a lot of traffic and he’d be rich. I explained to him that there are different qualities of traffic and that depending upon it’s source it will convert very differently with different income streams.

Bought traffic generally doesn’t convert well with advertising or affiliate programs (in fact many ad programs will ban you if you use it). Similarly, traffic from social bookmarking sites like Digg is generally much harder to monetize with contextual ads like AdSense than traffic coming from a search engine.

Do work to get your traffic levels up – but understand that not all traffic is equal. It took me a year or more to really learn this.

More Resources on Making Money from Blogging

• You can read more about how to make money blogging here.
• Make Money Course – the most in-depth and detailed of the Four Pillars of Blogging courses “Make Money” will guide you with:
  • the many and varied ways to make money blogging
  • how to create your own monetization strategy and
  • what to focus on first to develop your revenue streams

Reader Comments on Making Money from Blogging

OK – enough of my ramblings. Here are a few of the comments that readers left on the topic of making money from blogs when asked what they wished they knew when they first started blogging.

Adam writes – “I wish I knew I could make money from them. ”

Rose writes – “About the thing that I only really regret is that I didn’t start adding Adsense sooner.”

Jason writes – “Ad positioning. I went from placing my ads in yellow zones in the beginning, outside the content, then finally I found a code for positioning ads within the content. If only I had known the importance of ad placement in the beginning I would have made a lot more money!”

Brandon J writes – “I still wish that I didn’t concentrate on the money part of it. I have less than one hundred readers and I can tell my site isn’t very “sticky”. Most of my decisions are financially based and I wish I could just write content without worried about how much money I’m making.”

Ankur writes – “Well I wish i had considered ad placement an important task in Adsense… just by making a slight change in my ad location… i have seen my revenues growing 6 times.”

Chris @ Martial Development writes – “I wish I had known that your choice of niche will affect your contextual ad revenue by a factor of 100! And that certain niches can therefore never, ever be profitable with Adsense!”

What do you wish you knew about making money from blogs when you first started blogging?

Read the rest of the What We Wish We Knew Series

The post How to Make Money Blogging – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How To Write Excellent Blog Content – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

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This post is part of the ‘What we wish I knew when I first started Blogging’ Series. Below I’ll share readers comments on the topic of Writing Excellent Blog Content as well as some of my own thoughts.

One of the most key aspects of any successful blog is the ability to create content that keeps drawing people back to your blog. I’ve written so many posts on this topic and know that ‘excellent blog content’ means something different on every blog – as a result I won’t pretend that what I write in this post will be a definitive guide to writing great blog content.

However I can tell you five things that I wish I knew in my early days of blogging about writing content (with a few links for further reading).

5 Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier about Writing Content for a Blog

1. The Power of Titles – the title has the ability make or break a blog post. It impacts how (and if) it’s found in search engines and social bookmarking sites, it influences whether people visit your blog in News Readers, it affects whether people leave a comment and is vital in whether people actually read what you have to say. Read more about using Titles Effectively on Blogs.
2. The Viral Nature of Lists – a single well written list post can launch a blog to great heights in the blogosphere. While the prolific nature of lists in the blogosphere can also mean your lists get ignored, I find that when writing the same content as a list that you write as an essay like article the list will almost always get more attention. Read more about why lists are great for getting traffic to your blog.
3. The Importance of Being Original – perhaps the best lesson that I ever learned as a bloggers was that people are drawn to others who speak their mind, who have something unique to say and who say it in a creative and fresh way. Say what everyone else is saying in the same way that everyone else is saying it and you’re almost guaranteed of being largely ignored. Read more about how to avoid joining the echo chamber and saying something original.
4. The Value of Well Formated Content – people don’t read content on line in the same way that they read content in other mediums. Online readers tend to scan content. As a result if you place visual cues in your posts that draw the eye to important points you’ll find people stick with you longer into your posts. Read more on How to make your content Scannable
5. The Impact of a Good Image – another simple technique for providing an additional point of interest in your posts is to provide something visual. I don’t use images in every post on this blog but find that when I do that those clicking through on the post in my feed reader increases. Images have the power to communicate in ways that words cannot – use them. Read more on Using images to make your posts POP in RSS feeds.

More Resources for Writing Excellent Blog Content

• 6 Months of Blog Post Ideas (180 blog post ideas) – available in the ProBlogger FREE Member Library (register/login to access)
• 7-Day FREE Content Sprint – in this mini-course I will guide you via video tutorials to create a plan and 6 new pieces of content for your blog in just 7 days
• Content Sprint Series – 3 x mini-courses to guide you in creating a plan and 6 new and different pieces of content for your blog in just 7 days (18 pieces of content over 21 days)
• Create Content Course – my first of four Pillars of Blogging. By the end of this course you will understand: who you are creating content for; your unique ‘voice’; how to generate ideas, create and (importantly) finish content; as well as how to sustain this process so that you can have a successful blog over the long term.

Reader Comments on Writing Excellent Blog Content

There are plenty of other lessons I could talk about – but I think my readers have even better insights. Here’s some of their comments on the topic of writing content and what they wish they’d know in the early days of their blogging:

D writes – “Understood the true importance of titles before writing the first post.”

Crazykinux writes – “Great content attracts visitors. Post, post, post!…. Having enough great content takes awhile; we’re talking in months people here, not days.”

NetBusinessBlogger writes – “Posting original content! I started blogging to make money. I created around 30 blogs (i don’t hesitate calling them spam blogs)…. At some point, you start realizing that this method of earning money is not life long as the traffic never grows. Once the visitor comes to know that the content is plagiarized, he is never going to come back! Today I’m happy that I’ve deleted all those spam blogs and currently I’m working on just 2-3 blogs which have genuine original content written by me. Its a great feeling to see your blog grow!”

Deb writes – “There is room for ‘my style’ within the general acceptable practices of blogging.”

SEO Expert Blog writes – “I wish I knew that it is much better to write 1 or 2 high quality posts a week than 1 or 2 medium quality posts a day.”

Arjun writes – “I think the single most important thing I learned over time was that I needed to write content that had value. I know it sounds obvious and stupid, but initially I wrote a lot of long articles that were more for me than anyone else.”

alam writes – “Using draft and future posting effectively.”

Lisa writes – “Keep the posts short!”

Tara writes – “I wish I would have known that it’s really OK to get raw and blog from the heart.”

Principles of Marketing writes – “Being a lot better at keeping on target is the one thing I wish I could have learned when I first started”

Bret writes – “I wished I had just focused more on producing content on a regular predictable basis. I’ve gone through a week here and there where I just didn’t have time to post. If I had a reserve of posts to draw from I could have filled those low stops with something ready to do. I feel that the dry spells had a negative impact on my slowly growing readership. I would highly recommend to all new bloggers to create a stock pile of posts ready to fill the dry spells and to just focus on establishing a good routine for creating content. Once you have that, go ahead and start to focus on other aspects of your blog.”

Margie writes – “Just because someone else has written about it does not mean you should not write about it too, because your post may offer information or insights that the reader has not encountered before.” and “Also, I wish I would have known that creating a blog post can be like an appellate brief, sometimes you just have to wade in. Start with an idea or a link and research and let it grow as you find more info, edit out earlier stuff, etc. Just wading in is more productive than staring at your blank screen in fear! And when you get done, after a bunch of ‘drafts’ you usually have something decent.”

Danielle writes – “Read blogs. I wrote my first month’s worth of posts without reading another blog. Once I started reading blogs, I learned about the importance of layout and text formatting from my own reading experiences…..Less is more. Concise and clear writing captures a larger audience. Too much flashiness in blog design take any from the content. Catergory tags should be kept to the minimum keeping the ‘feel’ of a blog more focused especially true for personal blogs….. Memes increase your audience. The weekly memes such as Wordless Wednesday, Thursday Thirteen and Manic Monday can be consciously utilized for your own niche and bring a wider range of readers to your blog. I have gained a fair amount of ‘regular’ readers through utilizing memes.”

Tanya writes – “I wish I knew that it takes so much time. It’s different when youre in school – you have that time, but with a full time job and two blogs at which I ‘should’ post daily – I’m tired all the time.”

BenQ writes – “Not to ever worry what friends and family think! I wish I would’ve known straight from the beginning not to be scared to blog about certain subjects.”

What do you wish you knew about writing good content on a blog when you first started blogging?

The post How To Write Excellent Blog Content – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Blog Hosting, Domains and Blogging Platforms – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

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This post is part of the ‘What we wish I knew when I first started Blogging’ Series. In this post I’ll share readers comments on the topic of Blog Hosting, Domains and Platforms as well as some of my own experiences and advice.

There is always a diversity of opinion over which blogging platform and hosting method is best – but there were some recurring themes in the reader discussion on this particular topic. Let me attempt to summarize the main theme:

The most common regrets seem to have been starting out with some of the free blogging platforms (particularly Blogger.com) and using the free subdomain URL that they provide instead of starting out with one’s own domain and hosting.

While there is some real wisdom in getting a taste for blogging using some of the free platforms my advice to anyone who suspects that they might end up blogging on a serious level it is worth securing a good domain name and getting set up on a platform that you think you’ll stick with for the long term.

In terms of blog platforms – there is no right or wrong answer and while my personal preference is for your own self-hosted WordPress.org website (not to be confused with WordPress.com) the blog platform that one chooses needs to match with the blogger’s own preferences. Try a few out and see which you’re most comfortable with – but be aware that the choices you make early can impact your future blogging. There are import features to migrate from many platforms to others – but it’s easier to choose the right one up front.

For a thorough overview of this topic, I’d recommend signing up to my FREE Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog course which covers, among everything else involved with starting a blog:

• how to choose a domain name
• registering and hosting your blog, including a topic on “Why WordPress? (In Case You’re Wondering)” and my web hosting recommendations

My Own Experience with Domains, Platforms and Hosting

I started out on a blogspot.com (blogger.com) domain and platform. While this was a great way to test my passion for blogging (I was hooked within hours of starting) I did quickly move on from this set up to my own blog, with a professional design and a standalone blogging tool (I went to Movable Type initially). When I made this move I noticed a significant increase in traffic and got a lot more respect from other bloggers and readers. Whether this was due to the design, having a blogging platform with more features (Blogger.com was very primitive back in those days – it didn’t even have integrated comments) or being on my own domain I’m not sure – but I suspect it was a combination of all of them.

As I began to start blogging on a more serious level and started attempting to make money from blogs I began to start new blogs. My ‘mistake’ (yet ironically a reason I had some success) was that I started the new blogs on the same domain as my first blog (a domain that had nothing to do with the topics I was blogging about). This was a big mistake in some ways in that it makes branding those blogs difficult and makes selling them almost impossible. On the flipside of this ‘mistake’ is the fact that because they shared the domain of an established and popular blog they did very well in the search engines from their first weeks of existence and as a result they grew readership very quickly.

I learned from my ‘mistake’ in later blogs. For example ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. Of course there are some regrets here also. I couldn’t secure Problogger.com so went with .net (and eventually secured the .com at a significant cost). While I still built a significant blog on the .net version I wish I’d pushed harder to get the .com earlier. With digital-photography-school.com I don’t like having dashes in the URL – however again the owner of the other version of the domain is asking a crazy amount for it – so I make do.

My advice is to set yourself up with the best setup that you can afford to do IF you’re wanting to do blogging on a serious level. Doing it ‘right’ from the early days will cause you less pain later. However – keep in mind that despite my mistakes I’ve managed to build some reasonably successful blogs. The domain name and platform you choose are just two elements of many that go into making a blog successful. They are important – but if you get it wrong you are not dead in the water.

Read more on choosing a blogging platform and selecting a name and domain name for your blog.

If you’re looking for a blog hosting option you might like to read this reader discussion on the topic.

Most recently, you can read about “What I Learned Starting My Newest Blog” and how I’ve really enjoyed using the Ghost blogging platform.

Reader Comments on Blog Hosting, Domains and Blogging Platforms

Here’s what ProBlogger readers said they wish they’d known on the topic of hosting, domains and blog platforms when they started out.

tejvan writes – “Use the best blogging software and try to avoid wasting time messing around with design and getting the blog to function. I learn’t through experience WordPress is the best blogging software”

Leszek Pawlowicz writes – “Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. Blogger was free, some aspects of layout are easy, and it lowered the barrier to start blogging. But ultimately it just wasn’t powerful or flexible enough to do what I wanted. I wish I had bitten the bullet and gone with WordPress from the start.”

Heraldo writes – “I wish I’d started out on WordPress rather than blogspot.”

Mike writes – “I wish I had been smart enough to start the blog using a dedicated blog platform….”

Terra writes – “I wish that I’d skipped over the whole free blogger to wp.com sites and just gone straight to my own domain.”

Trula writes – “I’ve always had my own domain name, but I wish I had started using a blogging program from the start. From 02-05 I hand coded my blog, every single entry on it’s own old-school html page. Ultra duh!”

Antonio writes – “There are about 5-10 very successful blogs that use blogger and other free blogs like for example (seth godin, postsecret, etc). They are not on wordpress and still have tons of readers and subscribers. I think that content is what makes the blog not the platform.”

betshopboy writes – “The one thing I’ll do differently if I could start my blog all over again is to get my own domain name and host the blog on wordpress instead of my current blogspot platform, with subdomain name. Blogging with subdomain will always be a poor cousin to blogs with own domain name, no matter how ‘killer’ your blog posts are.”

What do you wish you knew about hosting, domains and blogging platforms when you first started blogging?

Read more of the What We Wish We Knew Series

The post Blog Hosting, Domains and Blogging Platforms – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Finding Readers for Your Blog – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

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This post is part of the ‘What we wish we Knew’ Series. In this post I’ll share readers comments on the topic of finding readers for a blog as well as some of my own experiences and advice.

We’ve talked about setting your blog up right (hosting, domains and platforms), making money from blogs and writing great content – but while all of these things are important to think through, they are somewhat useless unless you have readers stopping by to engage with your content.

It’s no wonder then that the most common question I’m asked is ‘how do I find readers for my blog’.

As with all of the topics in this series, how to find readers is something that will vary from blog to blog significantly. But if I had to identify a top 5 things that I’ve learned on the topic over the last 5 years I’d summarize it like this:

1. Know Who You Want to Attract

When I was a younger single guy a wise friend gave me a valuable piece of advice for finding a life partner. He said – ‘Darren, write a list of what you’re looking for in a partner’. He went on to explain that when you define what you want in life you’re more likely to spot it when it comes by your way. You’ll also be more likely to know where to go looking for it. Read more on defining what type of reader you want and going after them.

While I’m not sure my friend would have expected his advice to turn up in a post about how to attract readers to your blog – I think there’s some truth to it. I wish now that I’d spent more time in the early days of blogging thinking about my reader (or potential reader).

2. Build Community

While I will always argue that quality content is essential in drawing readers to your blog I am increasingly convinced that one way to build your readership is to create spaces that people will want to belong to.

Build an interactive space where people feel empowered to add their comments, give readers jobs, give them homework, make your readers famous and create spaces where you step back and let your readers take the lead in showing their expertise and you’ll build a blog that people will want to be a part of and a space that your readers will promote for you.

3. Think Outside Your Blog

I’m about to make a very, very, very obvious point – please forgive me. The readers that you are hoping will discover your blog don’t come to your blog. What?

Let me explain with a short story. I was talking with one of b5media’s bloggers yesterday and they were telling me how much time they’d spent on building a great blog and yet were upset that their readership hadn’t really grown. My first question was – ‘how much time do you spend on blogging each day?’ Their answer proved to me that they were serious about blogging – they were investing hours every day.

My second question was ‘how much of that time do you spend working on your actual blog and how much of it do you spend off your blog?’ The answer was quite illuminating for both the blogger and myself. They spent 90-95% of their time writing content, answering comments and tweaking their own blog and only 5-10% of their time off their blog interacting on other people’s blogs and sites.

While all of the activities that this blogger was doing on their own blog were important, the majority of that effort was spent on internal activities and keeping current readers. The blogger wasn’t engaging in spaces where their potential readers were. I suggested that this next week they see what happens if they decreased their posting rate a little and spent more time on other sites (other blogs in their niche, forums and social sites).

4. Leverage the Traffic Tsunamis

If I have a regret about this area of finding new readers it is that I wish I knew earlier about how to leverage the power of the waves of traffic that do come to a blog from time to time.

Even in my first few weeks of blogging I had some little waves of traffic come in as other blogs linked up and ask the search engines began to find my content. However it wasn’t until a couple of years into my blogging that I realized that I was so over the moon celebrating the peaks of traffic that I had that I was missing an opportunity each time they happened.

The problem was that each time a new ‘wave’ happened I’d find that the next day my traffic levels would return to ‘normal’. A handful of new readers might hang around but it wasn’t really anything I’d done that kept them.

It wasn’t for a long time that I began to experiment with harnessing the power of the waves of traffic that came in and attempting to create reader loyalty (or blog stickiness) at these times.

Now my first reaction when I see a wave of traffic arriving on one of my blogs isn’t to jump around the room thinking about how great I am – it’s in putting strategies into place to make sure that some of those new readers come back again tomorrow. Read more on how to surf traffic tsunamis.

5. Learn some Basic Search Engine Optimization

I learned about SEO in a bit of a backwards way. The search engines found me and started sending large amounts of traffic to my blogs – and then I decided I should work out why so that I could help them send me even more traffic.

I discovered pretty early on that the best way to build SE traffic was the same way that you built other types of traffic – writing great content that people found useful and linked to. This needs to be at the core of your SEO strategies – build a great blog.

However there are other techniques that definitely help in building search engine traffic. I won’t regurgitate them all here because I’ve previously written a guide to Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers that I think sums it up pretty well.

The one thing I will emphasize again here is that SEO is important, but it’s not something to obsess about. Learn the principles and keep them in mind as you set up and run your blog – but don’t let SEO be your only traffic generation strategy. Keep a holistic approach and you’ll build a much more sustainable type of traffic (and the other strategies will help your SEO too).

Remember – strategy #1 for SEO – build a great blog.

Reader Comments on Finding and Interacting with Readers

That’s enough of me talking about finding readers and blog promotion – what did readers write on the topic when I asked them what they wish they knew about blogging when they first started?

Andrei Rosca writes – “I wish i knew the importance of talking to every single one of the visitors that were leaving comments. By just talking to them you show that you care about their opinions and you encourage them to say more often what they think.”

Crazykinux writes – “Network with bloggers in your niche, they are your best source of new traffic at first.”

baiguai writes – “I wish I knew the importance of getting involved. Whether it is with other blogs, or forums, or other online communities. It is through these outlets that I have found my most loyal readers, but it was slow going because I didn’t network enough at the start.”

Expectant Father writes – “I kind of thought that: “If I blog, they will come!” This is so very far from the truth. It takes a lot of elbow grease to feel like you are getting anywhere.”

Patsy writes – “I wish I knew how important commenting on blogs is. I visited tons of blogs in my learning process and I just recently started commenting.”

What do you wish you knew about finding readers for your blog when you first started blogging?

The post Finding Readers for Your Blog – What We Wish We Knew appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Your First Week of Blogging – Plan Your Future Blog Posts appeared first on ProBlogger.

Update: this post has been updated and compiled with other similar posts into ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course – a 31-day guide into getting your blog going on the right foot.

Let’s look at another idea of what to do in your first week of blogging. Related to our previous post in this series which focused upon writing compelling content – is a task that I think can be a very useful habit to get into – developing an Editorial Calendar, or at the very least doing some planning on the future content that you’ll be producing for your blog.

Today I want to show you three techniques that I use in my process of future planning for posts.

1. Capturing Ideas

One of the most useful folders that I have on my computers desktop is one that I simply call ‘Ideas’.

Inside that folder are four other folders – one for each of my blogs and another for miscellaneous ideas.

Inside each of those folders are many many text files. Each text file is a different idea for a blog post.

• Some are completely empty and the name of the file is simply a short phrase which is an idea I could write about.
• Other text files are simply a list of 3-4 points that I could write about.
• Others are more developed ideas – they might contain an introduction or even a full draft of a post (although generally once they are at this stage I move them over to saving them as a draft in WordPress).

These text files generally begin their lives at random times during the day when I’m thinking about something else and an idea pops into my mind. The key is to capture them quickly, record them in a way that they can be found again and to develop them as much as I’m able to as the idea is fresh.

Sometimes, if I have the time and energy for it, I’ll work on the ideas for a while straight away but many times I simply get as much of the idea down into the file as I can and then save it for another time.

This means that at any point of time I have quite a few post ideas at different stages that I can tap into.

2. MindMapping

I won’t write an extended post on this as I’ve covered it previously but one of the most powerful techniques that I’ve ever used for coming up with blog ideas to write about is mind mapping.

You might choose a different method of brainstorming – but the key is to set aside specific times (I try to do it monthly) to simply come up with ideas to write about.

You can read more about how I do this in at Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping. Note: I used to use whiteboards for this process but now use a Mac tool called MindNode.

Generally once I’ve done the mind mapping exercise I’ll then convert the best of the ideas that I’ve generated into text files to save in the ideas folders mentioned above.

Note: Incidentally – I also use mind mapping when planning a new blog. It’s similar to the technique outlined above on coming up with post topics but I find it also helpful in planning out categories for a new blog.

3. Editorial Calendars

I’ve used a variety of approaches to creating editorial calendars over the years. I’ve adapted my approach over time to suit the different stages of my blogs. These days as I’m actively editing two decent sized blogs with up to 30 posts a week I find that I need to map out what posts I’ll be doing ahead of time.

In doing this you’re able to develop content that builds momentum (posts that build upon each other), take your readers on a more thoughtfully planned journey and give them a more balanced run of content.

I found previously that if I wasn’t planning ahead in this way that I’d end up with too much of one kind of content all in a row which didn’t really benefit readers as much.

The other good thing about this approach is that you know what writing you need to have done by certain times of the week – deadlines work well for me in motivating me to work.

My Editorial Calendar approach these days is pretty much based around spreadsheets. I’m on a mac and use its ‘Numbers’ program for this and simply have a spreadsheet which looks like a weekly calendar. Here’s last weeks:

You can see here that DPS has a 2 post per day schedule and that ProBlogger is on a 1 post per day schedule – but I like to throw in a few extras each week. This is obviously a completed week – I generally am playing around with it during the week and am finalising timings as the week progresses as I (and my writers) finish posts.

I also have editorial calendars on the go for future weeks at any given time – they’re less developed but I do add to them as I get closer to the beginning of each week.

At this point spreadsheets work best for me but previously I’ve taken different approaches including using a paper diary, using iCal and Google Calendar, using tools like Basecamp etc. It’s about finding a system that works for you and setting it up so that you do it naturally as part of your workflow.

Also check out Day 12 in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – it is all about Editorial Calendars.

Tasks for Your First Week

Perhaps an editorial calendar like the above one is a little advanced if you’re in the first week of your blog – however the concepts behind it can be good to explore. If I were starting a blog today I’d be taking the above three exercises and doing something like this:

1. Set up an Idea Collection Process – whether it be using folders and text files as I’ve mentioned above, getting a notebook and pen or using a tool like Evernote on your iPhone – set up a system where you can collect ideas as you have them for future use.
2. Set aside time to brainstorm topics – schedule time into your monthly (or weekly) workflow where you’re simply setting aside time to brainstorm possible topics to write about on your blog.
3. Develop some kind of system to help you look ahead at the future posts on your blog – You might use a calendar of some kind or simply have a section of your notebook where you plan your next week or month of content.

Share Your Approach to Planning Future Content on Your Blog

I’ve shared 3 of the techniques I use to help me keep fresh content coming on my blogs – I’d love to hear from you on how you do it in comments below!

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The post Your First Week of Blogging – Write Compelling Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Update: this post has been updated and compiled with other similar posts into ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course – a 31-day guide into getting your blog going on the right foot.

Lets kick off our new series on what to do on the first week of a new blog with the most obvious task. Once your blog is set up and functioning it’ll need some posts for it to be truly live.

In many ways this task should have begun in the pre-launch stage of your blog as it is very handy to have a number of posts written and saved as drafts before you launch. This means that during your launch week you can free yourself up a little to focus upon other activities.

Types of Content for Your First Week of Blogging

The content that you write will vary depending upon the type of blog you’re running and it’s topic – however some of your early posts might include:

• an introduction to the blog and what it’ll be about – his could double up as your about page.
• your story – one of the best types of posts for establishing a relationship with readers is a post where you share your own story as it pertains to your niche. Again – this could function as a type of about page (or at least be linked to from your about page.
• pillar content – most topics have topics in them that could function as a pillar type article for your blog. By this I mean topics that are central to your overall topic that will contain solid advice that you’ll be linking to again and again. Getting these types of posts written early is important as they’ll both show that you are tackling the important issues in your niche and they’ll give you something to point new readers to. For example – on my photography blog I set about writing posts early on on the central themes of good exposure – shutter speed, aperture and ISO.
• epic posts/viral content – this can be hard to do when you don’t have a lot of experience with blogging but one strategy to get things kick started is to start off a blog with an ‘epic’ post that is written with the hope of getting attention. It’s hard to define this type of post but they’re the type of things that get passed around on Twitter, that do well on social bookmarking sites and that get emailed from friend to friend. These posts are often comprehensive lists, humorous posts, controversial topics or epic guides to topics.
• a short series of posts – sometimes having a series of posts at the beginning of a blog can be worthwhile as it helps to create a sense of momentum on your blog. Someone new visiting is immediately given incentive to come back or subscribe because they want to see what you’ll be producing tomorrow that relates to what they’ve just written.

As mentioned above – this content writing task should really begin before you go live. I would normally suggest launching a blog with 2-3 posts already live and another 5-10 posts saved as drafts. Having a range of posts ready to go as drafts means that you’re free to do other stuff but that you’ve also got a range of types of posts ready to go as the need arrives.

I’ve got many other blog post ideas (180 of them) for you inside ProBlogger’s FREE Membership Library: 6 month’s of blog post ideas (you’ll need to login or sign-up to access the library).

And I also coach you through planning and producing content in my 7-day FREE Content Sprint Course.

Establish a Posting Rhythm

Related to this task is that of thinking about the frequency of publishing (something you’ll want to establish early also).

The frequency that you publish posts in the first week will vary from blog to blog but I’d normally start with at least 3-4. If something that you publish does get some decent traffic try to publish another post that follows it up in some way the next day as it’s important to keep the momentum flowing.

It’s also important not to push too much of your content out too quickly. The temptation after launching is to just publish everything you have at once. This unfortunately leaves you with nothing in reserve. Be patient and establish the kind of posting frequency that you’ll continue with when your blog has been going for a while.

Further Reading on Blog Content:

Writing compelling content on a blog doesn’t usually just happen – it takes time to find your voice and establish a style of writing that connects and engages. However a lot can be learned early on with a little reading and lots of practice. Here are a handful of posts that will help you to get your mind into gear on this crucial topic:

• How to Get in Tune with Your Readers Needs and Produce Compelling Content (first post in a series of posts)
• How to Craft a Blog Post (another series about taking ‘good’ content to ‘great content’ by taking a little extra time at each of 10 different points in the writing process
• 7 Types of Blog Posts which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic
• 7 Tips on How to Write Sticky, Memorable Blog Posts
• How to Write Great Blog Content – a collection of post from the ProBlogger archives

What You Said about Blog Content in the First Week of Blogging:

Last week I asked readers what they advise bloggers do in their first week of blogging. Many of the responses so far have centred around this topic of writing content for a blog. Here is some of that advice from our readers:

“Have 7 or 8 posts written and scheduled posting for the next 2 wks.” – Rachel

“Write at least 10 blog posts – advice, lists, personal, a video – and add each one every day for the first 10 days.” – Andrew

“What we did right out of the gate was write out a series of post that all went with one theme for our first week, the 2nd weeks theme coat-tailed the 1st weeks theme and the 3rd week coat-tailed the 2nd… Next week we are going to be tying everything together…” – BrianJUY

“If you’re really serious about building a blog for the long term, I think the most important thing to do is create a posting schedule. Be honest with yourself and don’t overestimate what you can do, but do commit to a schedule. This has helped me through little dips when I lacked motivation.” – Peter

“In the first few weeks of a blog, I would suggest you concentrate on creating 10 to 20 awesome posts.” – Tee Riddle

“Post to your blog! No matter how excited you’ve made people about the launch of your blog, they’ll stop visiting if new content is too infrequent.” – Laurajr

“Create valuable content at the very beginning. Include several pillar posts and content that engages the reader and creates a impact.” – Mathew Day

“Before even you setup blog, create rough drafts of atleast 5-10 original posts you are going to write.” – Harsh

“My advice is to launch into writing a series of posts. Something with a timeframe like ‘every day this week I’m going to explore a different …’ or ‘every Monday I will put the spotlight on …’ or ‘every month I will interview a well known …’ and so on. It puts the pressure on a bit but it’s great for motivation!” – Kerrin

“Write something EVERY DAY. Writers write. You don’t have to *publish* everything you write – the ’save draft’ button is your best friend. But scribble in a notebook or keep a draft word processing doc; write something. Set aside some time – 15 minutes, a half-hour – and write something. Your writing muscles (and that elusive voice everyone keeps talking about) only develop if you use them.” – Pat

“Take your time to craft a couple of really great posts. And enjoy being able to do so without feeling pressured to churn out content (you’ll have those chomping-at-the-bit readers soon enough!) Never think that it’s a waste of time to produce your very best work at the start of your blog’s life: you can link back to these early posts as your blog grows.” – Ali

“Don’t burn off a lot of time writing a first post that basically welcomes readers. You’d figure the initial post — the hello, world! part — would be among the most important assignments you give yourself. You’d be wrong. Instead, put your energies into a brilliant on-topic post that’ll have great shelf life — a so-called tentpost article.” – Glenn

Next week, as part of this series, we’ll talk a little more about content. In the mean time – feel free to add more of your own tips and experiences. What type of content did you publish in the first week of your blog?

This post was first published 16 Feb 2010 and updated 12 January 2023.

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The post How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important] appeared first on ProBlogger.

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While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘how to blog‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘WHAT will I blog about?’

There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision).

Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog

Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include:

1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers

My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone.

Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ‘stop writing about XXXX’.

When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog.

In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in.

2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better

I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things.

What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend?

Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page.

The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser.

When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy.

3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines

It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc.

There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go.

4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile

One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic.

The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’.

For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries.

Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful.

Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related

Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic.

So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in.

Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy.

How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog

Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog.

Here’s my followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche – How to Blog: How to Choose a Blog Niche.

Updated 5 January 2023

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The post From Hobby Blog to Business Blog: a Plan of Attack appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Many—perhaps most—blogs start life as hobby blogs. We have a special interest, and we want to share our passion with others, so we start a blog. But then somewhere along the line, a large proportion of bloggers decide they’d really like to make some money from their blogs.

This is my story—I started blogging for fun, and liked it so much I set myself the goal of doing it for profit. Examples like this convince many to try their hand at turning hobby blogs into businesses, but the process really isn’t as simple as it seems on the surface.

There are a few tasks I believe we really must spend time on before we consider turning a hobby blog into a business.

1. Assess the niche

If you have a hobby blog, you’ve probably already chosen a niche. But to make the decision to turn it into a business, you need to know if the niche is large enough, and profitable enough, to generate an income for you. I’ve written about choosing a blog niche before, but basically there are a few things you’ll need to assess:

1. the size and popularity of the niche
2. the size and strength of competition
3. the scope within the niche for ongoing, growing monetization (some niches and markets are, obviously, easier to monetize than others).

2. See if your monetization plan suits

It’s one thing to blog in a niche with a strong profit potential; it’s another to actually make money from your blogging within that space. Different niches are suited to different kinds of monetization. While you might love blogging in your hobby niche, and it might have strong potential to generate advertising revenue, for example, you may not want to put ads on your site or in your newsletters. If you want to make money in this niche, you’ll have to find another way to do it—and that way might be different from what everyone else is doing.

On the other hand, you might have big plans for monetization, but find that your niche can’t sustain them. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your ideas are “bad”—it may just be that the niche isn’t sufficiently mature for there to be enough people to take up your offer, or that, for instance, the niche is a low-value one and audience members aren’t used to paying higher prices for more value-rich offerings.

If your hobby blog’s going to become a business, you need to pitch your profit-making tactics at a level that’s matched to a sufficiently large audience segment.

3. Make a plan

I have to admit that I’m a bit better at preaching this point than practising it, but if I were looking to turn a hobby blog into a business today, I’d make a plan. That plan would have the current status of my hobby blog as a starting point, and a revenue (and profit) figure as an end point. In between, I’d plot out the key steps I’d need to take to move from hobby to business.

Those steps might include things like:

• • building on my existing content inventory
  • market testing product ideas
  • a clear plan for ongoing reader attraction, engagement, and loyalty-building, perhaps with numerical targets attached
  • working out a stepped approach to turn my blog’s loyal readers into paying customers
  • plans for developing my own ability to generate income (which might include things like using ad management systems, establishing contact with potential advertisers or sponsors, taking a writing course or SEO training, etc.)
  • …and so on.

I’d definitely encourage you to put a time limit on your plans. I did this when I decided to try blogging professionally—I had six months to make it work. If it wasn’t generating an income in that time, I’d have to look for some other want to make a living. Having this time limit on things gave me motivation to really get stuck into what I was doing. It also gave me a light at the end of the tunnel, because if I hadn’t enjoyed it, or it hadn’t worked, I’d have had an “out”—permission to cut my losses, rather than keep trying to make a go of a failing effort.

That thing called passion

The one thing that anyone who’s ever pursued a passion for profit has wondered is whether making a hobby into “work” will kill their enthusiasm. There’s really no answer to this question—I think it’s something you probably need to test for yourself.

One thing’s certain, though: if you want to make money from a hobby blog, and you succeed in doing that, your passion is much less likely to flag than if you struggle with the challenge from the start. I think the best way to avoid risking losing your passion for your hobby is to research and plan well, perhaps along the lines I’ve outlined here—though of course your preparatory work will depend on your niche, your area of focus, your experience, and your audience.

Have you ever turned a hobby blog into a business? Share your story with us in the comments.

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The post Avoid Blogger Burnout: 5 Tips to Save Your Sanity appeared first on ProBlogger.

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For the beginner, the blog learning curve can be steep. As well as all the technical and blog visibility issues, there are questions about focus, content types and research, and of course reaching readers.

You’re plugging away, day after day, and getting little in the way of recognisable success. How can you stay motivated during what can be a very trying time? Here are the techniques I use.

1. Do what you love.

Staying motivated is a whole lot easier when you’re constantly thinking about, and dealing with, the topic you blog about. If you love your topic, you’ll find it easier to think up content ideas, engage with readers, and establish a warm and welcoming voice that encourages rapport and develops readership.

2. Take it one step at a time.

When you start a blog, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the things you feel you should be doing to help it grow. Realise up front that your blog isn’t likely to be an overnight super-success and pace yourself. Instead of focusing on what you haven’t done yet, spend time each week assessing the things you have done, and considering ways to build on those results.

If you’re going to avoid burnout, you need to be kind to yourself. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to tell yourself it’s too hard, you don’t have time, and to give up.

3. Plan, plan, plan.

If you haven’t already, develop a flexible, but clear plan of attack for building up your blog’s content and reach. A focused plan will help you to keep your expectations of yourself in check, and to test and assess the results of what you do.

This kind of periodic review will give you information that you can feed back into your efforts to make each new promotional approach more successful, and helps you avoid the must-do-everything-now, scattergun approach that quickly exhausts even the most motivated blogger.

As you plan, you’ll likely identify some easy wins — things that you expect will be fulfilling or gratifying on some level. Perhaps these are tasks that will pull in a lot of readers, or maybe you just know you’ll really enjoy doing them. Try to space these jobs so that when the going gets tough, you know you have a favourite task just around the corner. This can make a big difference to your motivation over time.

4. Allow for downtime.

Once you’ve got a plan, fit some downtime into it. Make sure you’re not always operating at breakneck speed, or that if you are, it’s only for a short, manageable period. Be sure to build in time out for family and friends, and to be flexible about your schedule.

Above all, let yourself really enjoy that time off — don’t spend it guiltily obsessing about all the things you should be doing to build your blog.

5. Realise that everyone has bad days.

It’s true. Some of us even have bad weeks! And months. It doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel or that you don’t have what it takes. Of course you have it — the thing is, you need to manage it to get the most out of it. If you have a bad day, don’t beat yourself up. Accept that this is part of life.

If you feel like giving up, let yourself feel it. Stare your discomfort in the face and see if there isn’t some way you can overcome it, or work around it, and make your blog better in the process. After all, necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes, it’s the thin end of the wedge that gives us the impetus to innovate solutions that make our blogs — and our work on them — infinitely more enjoyable.

These are the main ways I keep motivated about blogging. What kinds of techniques do you use?

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The post Looking to 2023: A Commitment to Blogging Smarter … With a Little Help appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Feeling a little run down? At this time of year, many of us are. It’s been a big 12 months, and I think most bloggers are looking forward to some down time over the coming weeks.

If you’re like me, you might be thinking of using this time not just to recharge the batteries, but to give a little thought to the year ahead, and how you want to handle it. Perhaps you’ll make some blogging resolutions for the new year, in addition to those resolutions you might be making in other areas of your life.

Blogging resolution: work smarter … with a little help

If there’s one resolution I could encourage any blogger to make for 2023, it’s to work smarter.

There’s always more to do on a blog—the work never ends!—and as many readers mentioned on our recent post about social media mistakes, time is a critical issue. Working longer hours can’t be the solution.

For me, one of the keys to working smarter has been delegation. I’ve got help with blogging, which has given me more time to focus on the things that really need my attention.

Looking back, I’m sorry I didn’t delegate more earlier in my blogging career.

You don’t have to be on a five- or six-figure income to make the most of someone else’s expertise, and give your blog a boost. Nor does it have to be a long-term arrangement.

We’ve published a few guides to outsourcing different functions on your site. If you haven’t seen them already, have a look. They might just give you some food for thought over the holiday period.

Working with WordPress contractors

How to choose the right WordPress contractor for your blog, by John Bonello.

If you’re on WordPress, and your blog’s not performing at the level you’d like, it might be time to call in the pros. A good WordPress expert will be able to implement new designs, apply plugins and patches, take care of your backups, and more.

For those who aren’t technical, getting a WordPress contractor to do piecemeal work—or look after your blog on a continuing basis—could be a good way to go.

This post is also worth reading if you have a blog on another platform, as it’ll help you assess any blog platform developer you’re considering working with.

Working with other techies

How to work with technical contractors, by Neil Matthews.

Whatever your blog needs, it seems there’s a developer for every occasion! In this post, you’ll learn what’s needed to find a good developer to implement all kinds of changes on your blog, including things like:

• adding forums, communities, gamification, social integration, and so on
• customised backend features that give your blog a competitive advantage or point of difference
• online store and shopping cart integration
• specialized tracking or research
• migration of blogs, mailing lists, etc.
• security and privacy-related work to protect your blog’s and your customers’ details.

Most of us need help with these kinds of tasks—especially if we’re going to apply them to to our blogs with some degree of depth and reliability. A pro developer may well be the answer.

Working with designers

How to work with designers to design your blog, by Rob Cubbon.

Plenty of blogs use off-the-shelf themes, but those that stand out usually entail some kind of customization, or perhaps have their own unique design.

Of course, you don’t need to be undertaking a complete redesign of your blog to be able to use the expertise of a quality designer. They can also help you with:

• campaign- or launch-related communications
• designing the visuals for products, like the cover of an ebook, or an eye-catching branded intro for your video series
• designing newsletters, ads and other communications like infographics that you’re hoping will go viral
• illustrating your posts, and more.

…and the rest

Over the years, we’ve published a few other posts in this area, which I’ve listed here:

• How to outsource your blog, or part of it: a general guide to outsourcing by Georgina
• Fiverr outsourcing tips for bloggers: a realistic guide to shoestring outsourcing by Rhys Wynne
• How to hire writers for your blog: my recent post on my own experience outsourcing writing tasks.

Hire a Blogger or Writer

For 15 years the ProBlogger Job Board has been the leading marketplace for blog related jobs. Bloggers have an impressive and often unique range of skills to offer. As the demand for content grows, more and more businesses and publications need these skills. If you’re looking for a blogger to help you in any way, post a job from $80 for 15 days. The most obvious use for our job boards is to look for bloggers to blog on your blog on an ongoing basis – however advertisers have also used it to great effect in other ways including: blog post writers; editors; social media managers; web developers; virtual assistants and more.

Making it pay

Outsourcing aspects of your blogging—even as one-off projects—can be expensive. While the resources above should help you avoid being ripped off, many bloggers will be asking how they can justify the expense in the first place?

I think the answer to that question is to adopt the mindset that the work you outsource will need to pay for itself somehow.

That might mean you set a conversion goal for the new online store you’re having developed. Or it might mean that you spend the time you’re not having to dedicate to redesigning your site on creating and launching a new product, or boosting conversions through your email subscriber list. Whatever you outsource, plan to recoup the costs through the time that’s freed up. Make either the work itself, or the extra time you have, pay for the outsourcing fees.

Put a monetary goal on your work, and a timeframe by which you want to have recouped the cost. This is a great way to make sure you’re not just throwing money at your blog—instead, you’ll be investing it, and you’ll be able to track your return on that investment over time.

How does that sound for a new year’s blogging resolution? And what others do you have in mind? Let us know in the comments.

The post Looking to 2023: A Commitment to Blogging Smarter … With a Little Help appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Get Off the Plateau: Growth Tips for Mature Blogs appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Do you feel like your blog has reached a plateau?

Maybe your readership has stalled, subscriptions seem to be maintaining momentum but not growing, and you’re having trouble squeezing more value out of your already-loyal customer base…

What should you do?

There are a number of ways to kick yourself off that plateau and move into a new phase of blog growth. The ones that will work for you will depend on your blog’s niche and audience, where your skills lie, and what you’ve already tried.

That said, I thought I’d set out some of the starting points that I’ve used to change gear on my blogs over the years. You might already have tried some of these ideas, but I hope there’ll be something here that you haven’t experimented with yet.

First, secure your position

You’ve already built a blog with a loyal following, so why not use that as the starting point for your future growth? By looking at what’s working, you can hone your approach in those areas to make it more successful, and potentially identify areas where you could improve.

The other thing that this kind of review will achieve is, potentially, to free up some of your time to focus on new tasks. By looking at what’s working, you can identify what’s not working—and cut your losses. This will help you secure your position, give you the maximum return on your time investment, and give you a clear run at new ideas and markets (which we’ll get to in a moment).

Review posts

Spend some time analyzing which posts are working to help you achieve your goals.

Those goals might be readership figures, long-tail search traffic, social media shares—or something else entirely. But whatever your goals are, work out which posts are working best to achieve each of them.

Once you have this information, you can spend your writing time focused on creating the content that’s working best to maintain your blog’s current position in the market. It’ll give you a solid basis from which to spring forward using the other techniques we’ll discuss.

Review promotions

Some promotional channels are bound to be working better than others. Identify those, and cut your losses with the channels that aren’t performing as you’d expect or hope.

Again, we’re shoring up your current position here, so it’s important to face the facts about what’s working to attract readers to your site, and what’s not.

Review conversion funnels

Whether yours are sales funnels, or free conversion channels, review them to ensure that their working optimally. We have some great content here on ProBlogger to help you do that (have a look at How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel for Success).

Look at systematising your approach so that it’s as scalable as possible, with a view to growing your readership and conversions in the future. Then set aside regular time in your schedule to do whatever you need to do to keep those cogs well-oiled.

Review design, categorization, and usability

If your blog’s outdated, your content categorization is hazy, or the site makes it difficult to navigate through content and offers, you’ll have trouble growing your audience.

The fact that you’ve grown your blog to its current point isn’t reason to skip this step—it could well be that elements of design, categorization, and usability are whats’ keeping your blog from shifting up a gear. Tweaking categorization can have significant implications for organic search traffic, for example, and design considerations can make or break your users’ ability to find what they need.

Secure your blog’s current position using these techniques. Then, it’s time to look at growing your blog.

How will you grow?

Growing a blog, like building it from scratch, usually requires a multi-pronged approach. You might get lucky with one technique that’s wildly successful, but it’s probably best to try a few of these ideas—though you don’t want to spread yourself too thin—and see what works.

Find ways to reengage

Again, start with your current, loyal fan base. Find new ways to reengage with your existing readers, and to deepen loyalty, and you may well see sharing and traffic rise.

Consider these options.

• Create a free subscription offering (such as a course or series of regularly emailed bonus material) or reward (a giveaway, competition, etc.).
• Try new engagement initiatives. Perhaps it’s time you tried running a weekly video interview, a contest that spans your Facebook page and blog, or a podcast that features a Q&A with your own readers?
• Survey your readers to find out what they’re thinking about, and what they need. This can do a lot to create a sense of engagement beyond the everyday blog comments and social media interactions. It can also provide valuable information that you can use to approach new audiences.
• Perhaps a new product could help you to reengage with your readers, and give them something to talk and tweet about at the same time. Building out your existing product offering to fill any gaps in readers’ experience can deepen loyalty and boost buzz that can attract new readers from segments you haven’t already met through your product offering.

Find new markets

For most mature blogs and brands, tapping new markets is a necessary part of a growth strategy. This can be intimidating for some bloggers who are comfortable in their niche, with their current readers, but branching out can open up a world of possibilities for your blog.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

• Try reaching a new market using a particular promotional channel. For example, you might write some guest posts to be published on blogs in a complementary, but different niche from your own. So, for example, I could promote Click! (and Digital Photography School) via guest posts about kid photography on mommy blogs, or smartphone photography sites. They’re not key market spaces for DPS, but could be good ways to reach new segments of the general photography market.
• Alternatively, you could take a look at niches or topics that are related to your blog, and look for opportunities within them. I might, for example, read about the growing market for iPhone lenses, and decide to create content for DPS on photography using iPhone lenses specifically to capture that market segment.
• Another approach is what traditional marketers call “product line extension.” This involves developing new products that reflect your existing core offering, but open it up to new markets. So far, we’ve developed ebooks for Digital Photography School. What if we turned some of those products into online courses, complete with videos, post-processing cheat sheets, and so on? What if we developed our own post-processing tools? These new products could open up new markets, and as a handy side-effect, help us to deepen engagement with our current customers, too.
• If that sounds like a leap you’re not ready to make, why not try different approaches to monetizing your blog as it is, and your existing products? Perhaps it’s time to dip your toes into the affiliate marketing waters—either by offering affiliate products to your readers, or by establishing affiliate programs for your own products. Or maybe you should try advertising or media relations or sponsorships—whatever suits your niche and target markets.

Find ways to make more from what works

Last, but not least, look back at the reviews you did at the outset, and seek to optimize what’s working for your blog. Try applying the tactics or techniques that have been successful to other markets or areas within your topic area.

• To start, you might look at a product that’s sold well, or a promotional approach that worked well to boost readership within a subsegment of your audience. From there, you could develop a strategy to reapply that model in other areas of your readership or would-be readership. If promotion through targeted on-site advertising worked with one of your products, perhaps it would work for other products, or to promote that first product in other markets.
• Consider becoming an “expert” at some form of promotion that seems especially successful for your brand, but which you haven’t really committed to yet for whatever reason. Try SEO, content marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing—whatever works for your niche or brand, or appears to work for a new market segment or offering you’ve developed.

Experiment and refine

The process of trial and error—or experimentation and refinement—isn’t just inevitable in getting off the traffic plateau. It’s a valuable process that will help you make the most of your efforts and work smarter to get a foothold in new markets in the future.

This is a grab-bag of ideas, but I hope that some will strike a chord with you. Try one or two of these tactics, track your results, and keep tweaking and improving on your efforts. You might be surprised by what you can achieve.

What tactics have you used to get your blog off a growth plateau? We’d love to hear your advice—share it with us in the comments.

The post Get Off the Plateau: Growth Tips for Mature Blogs appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

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One of the most common questions I’ve had over the last six months is ‘Have you tested any Artificial Intelligence Tools for creating content?’

Until this week my answer was “not lately”.

I have been using AI for image generation and posting my results on an Instagram account (and I am VERY impressed with the results) but after testing one AI tool 12 months ago and not being overly impressed – I’d not given Artificial Intelligence another go for writing content.

That was until this week when I was encouraged by several people to try OpenAI – which has a free trial usage.

To say that I’m impressed by how tools like this have improved over the last 12 months would be an understatement!

They are getting quite good!

I’m not someone who is likely to give up writing content myself any time soon – but I can see tools like OpenAI getting used more and more.

One of the tests I did of this tool was to ask it to write an article about how to use AI in blogging (how meta is that).

Before I did it I also asked it to write an outline for an article on the topic. Here’s what it gave me for the outline:

I then asked it to write an article on the topic and thought I’d share it below.

Everything that follows (until I make a note below that it’s me again) was generated by AI except for the formatting of subheadings. I’ve left all spelling and grammar as it generated it.

The only things I did in generating this article were:

• I wrote the prompt at the start telling it what to do
• I formatted the subheadings (it generated the words)
• In each section it didn’t generate the list of tools as examples in the first draft, so after it wrote the first draft I asked it to give examples. It generated them as lists of tools which I’ve included as the final version.

The first draft was written in 30 seconds and the adding of examples took about a minute.

Prompt: Write an in-depth article on how to use artificial intelligence for blogging.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used by bloggers to automate mundane and time-consuming tasks, such as optimizing blog posts for search engines, finding content ideas, and curating content from other sources. AI can also be used to analyze data about blog readers, discover new trends, and measure the success of content. In this article, we’ll explore how to use AI for blogging and discuss some of the benefits and challenges associated with this technology.

Blog Optimization with AI

One of the most common uses of AI for blogging is to optimize content for search engine optimization (SEO). AI can quickly analyze a blog post and suggest changes to improve the post’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). AI-powered tools can also help with link building and keyword research, two key aspects of successful SEO.

There are a number of AI-based tools that can be used to optimize SEO.

1. Moz’s Keyword Explorer: An AI-based keyword research tool.

2. Google’s RankBrain: An AI-based algorithm to determine search engine rankings.

3. SEMrush’s AI-based SEO analysis tool.

4. DeepCrawl: An AI-powered website crawler.

5. Google’s Natural Language Processing tool: Used to identify the topics and sentiment of content.

Content Curation with AI

AI can also be used to curate content from other sources. AI-powered tools can quickly scan hundreds of sources and identify content relevant to the blog. This content can then be shared with readers, helping to keep the blog fresh and up-to-date.

The following AI-based tools can be used to curate content from other sources:

1. Scoop.it: An AI-powered content curation platform that helps you discover, share, and organize content from around the web.

2. Curata: An AI-powered content curation platform that helps you find, organize, and share relevant content.

3. Swayy: An AI-powered content curation platform that helps you discover, organize, and share content from the web.

4. Curator: An AI-powered content curation platform that helps you find, organize, and share content from the web.

5. Feedly: An AI-powered content curation tool that helps you discover and organize content from the web.

6. DrumUp: An AI-powered content curation tool that helps you find, organize, and share content from the web.

7. ContentGems: An AI-powered content curation tool that helps you discover, organize, and share relevant content.

Content Analysis with AI

AI can also be used to analyze the data generated by blog readers. AI-based analytics tools can track user behaviour on the blog, helping to identify what content works best and what topics should be explored further. This can help bloggers create more engaging and useful content for readers.

Some of these AI tools include:

1. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is an AI-powered tool that can be used to analyze blog content. It can track user behavior, such as page views, time on site, and bounce rate, and can also be used to measure the success of content.

2. BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is an AI-powered tool that can be used to analyze blog content. It can identify the topics and sentiment of content, as well as measure content engagement on social media.

3. DeepCrawl: DeepCrawl is an AI-powered tool that can be used to analyze blog content. It can identify the keywords used in blog posts and measure the success of content on search engine results pages.

4. Moz: Moz is an AI-powered tool that can be used to analyze blog content. It can identify the topics and sentiment of content, measure the success of content on search engine results pages, and suggest changes to improve the post’s rankings.

5. MarketMuse: MarketMuse is an AI-powered tool that can be used to analyze blog content. It can identify the topics and sentiment of content, measure the success of content on search engine results pages, and suggest changes to improve the post’s rankings.

Creating Content with AI

AI can also be used to generate content. AI-based tools can analyze existing content and generate new, unique content that is optimized for SEO and tailored to the blog’s audience. This can help bloggers to create content more quickly and efficiently.

There are several AI-based tools that can be used Create Content, including:

1. Quillbot: An AI-powered content writing tool that can generate original content based on a topic.

2. Articoolo: An AI-powered content writing tool that can create content from scratch.

3. GPT-3: An AI-powered content writing tool that can generate text, images, and other content.

4. Narrative Science: An AI-powered content writing tool that can generate content from structured data.

5. Wordsmith: An AI-powered content writing tool that can generate content from data and natural language processing.

6. Content Generator: An AI-powered content writing tool that can generate content from templates.

Challenges with AI

While AI can be an invaluable tool for bloggers, there are some challenges associated with using AI-powered tools. For example, AI-based tools can be expensive and may require significant resources to maintain and update. Additionally, AI-based tools can be difficult to use and may require significant technical expertise. Finally, AI-based tools may not always produce accurate results and may need to be monitored closely.

Conclusion

Using AI for blogging can help bloggers to save time and improve the quality of their content. AI-powered tools can be used to optimize blog posts for SEO, curate content from other sources, analyze data about blog readers, and even create content from scratch. However, AI-based tools can be expensive and challenging to use, and may require extensive technical knowledge. Ultimately, bloggers should consider the benefits and challenges associated with AI-powered tools before deciding whether or not to use them.

It’s me Again

While there are a few edits that I would make to that article – I think you’ll agree that it was written pretty well.

I’ve tested it with numerous topics and in most cases what it writes makes sense – but lacks a little depth. In the case above the first draft was ok but I could see it needed the examples of what the tools were – but that was fixed by asking for examples and adding them.

Maybe this could have been achieved by prompting it better at the start.

What I’ve learned about using AI for generating visual content is there is a real art to creating prompts and that to get the best results you need to test, tweak, test, tweak, test, tweak to get a high-quality result. Over time you get better at prompting and the images you can produce with your early prompts are good simply because you know what will and won’t work.

I’m VERY new to using this tool so suspect there is a lot more I could do with it to improve its output with a little more practice.

SHOULD we use AI to generate content?

One of the questions I’m asked is about the ethics of writing content with AI and if it is something I recommend.

There are some ethical considerations here. While I’m not across HOW tools like OpenAI generate this content, they’re using what has previously been written about the topic to come up with the content they create – drawing upon the knowledge and ideas of others.

I’ve searched for segments of the articles I’ve generated with it, and none have appeared elsewhere in the exact form – but no doubt there are similarities, and there is no way (that I’m aware of) to be able to credit the source of those ideas.

As bloggers, we have to assume that AI is scanning all of our previously written content to help others generate content.

There are some fuzzy grey areas in the legalities of this. There’s grey around these issues in the image-based AI space and who owns the copyright. I’m no lawyer, and I’m guessing this could differ from location to location, and I can only assume that there’s going to be a lot of talk about these issues in years ahead!

I won’t be using AI like this to create articles for my blogs (at least not in their current form) – BUT I could see use cases where AI will be useful for editing, coming up with ideas and optimising content etc. (as the article suggests).

I have already used some of the mentioned tools (Moz, SEMrush, BuzzSumo, and Google Analytics, to name a few.

These tools WILL impact our lives as bloggers whether we use them or not. We are entering an age when massive amounts of AI-generated content can be quickly produced, optimised and published. This means our content is going to have a lot of competition!

I know this scares a lot of writers. I spoke this week with several freelance writers who worry that their time as writers might end. While I agree that AI is going to take some of their work (and probably already is), I do think that, as human writers, we can create unique work.

We each have lived unique lives, have unique personalities, have had unique experiences and can create unique voices. We can also create unique connections with our readers in how we engage with them.

AI will become harder and harder to identify as it improves. Still, I suspect that as we live in a world where its use becomes increasingly common, people will thirst more and more for good old-fashioned human-to-human engagement.

For more help creating your own content – or for feeding into an AI content creation tool ;) – try one of my 7-day Content Sprints where I will guide and support you ​to create a plan and 6 new pieces of content for your blog in just 7 days.

The post An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Write a Series for Your Blog (and Why You’ll Want To) appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Have you ever written a series of posts for your blog – a set of posts that are deliberately linked together?

If you haven’t, I hope I can convince you to give it a try.

Some bloggers feel writing a series of posts is more daunting than writing individual posts. But it’s often easier to come up with ideas for a ten-post series than for ten stand-alone posts.

Here at ProBlogger we’ve run a number of series over the years, including 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which I’ll be coming back to later in this post.

So why should you write a series of posts instead of just individual posts?

How a Series of Posts Could Boost Your Blog

Writing a series of posts, even a short one, can be useful. In particular, it gives you the opportunity to:

• Dig deep into a particular topic, showcasing your expertise.
• Encourage readers to keep coming back for more.
• Create plenty of internal links between your posts (good for both SEO and encouraging readers to dig deeper into your site).
• Build a comprehensive piece of content readers can bookmark, share, and keep coming back to (especially if you have an introduction post or an index of posts).

Even if your blog is new, you can still run a series. In fact, it can be a great way to get some solid cornerstone content up there early on.

Two Different Approaches to Running Your Series: Which is Right for You?

When you look at a series of posts on the blogs you read, you’ll probably find they fall into one of two categories:

Type #1: Time-Limited Series of Posts

This type of series runs for a set period of time, and every post published on the blog during that time is (usually) part of the series.

For instance, a three-part series of linked posts may appear on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And on the following week, the blogger goes back to standalone posts.

We’ve done this on ProBlogger with ‘Theme Weeks’ such as Creating Products Week — a series of five blog posts on how to create products for your audience.

This approach works well if you want to create cornerstone content, or build up a piece of series content you might use later for an ebook or even the basis of a course. (More on that later.)

Type #2: Ongoing, Regular Series of Posts

This type of series can run indefinitely, with posts appearing on a specific day of the week or month, or even at a particular point in the year. And standalone posts appear as normal between installments of the series.

The series might look like:

• A roundup of news/posts in your niche each Friday. (We used to do this in our “Reading Roundups”.)
• An ongoing monthly series on the first Tuesday of each month. For example, if you blog about healthy eating, you might publish a new recipe at the start of each month.
• An annual review of your progress in your niche each December or January.

If you want to build a sense of consistency and community on your blog, this can be a good type of series to use. It can also help you beat blogger’s block, as it gives you specific things to blog about. (Well, at least some of the time.)

Coming Up With a Great Idea for a Blog Post Series

It can be tough enough coming up with an idea for one blog post. So how do you come up with a great idea for a series?

For a fixed series with a limited number of posts, you might look for:

• A topic that you’ve already covered, but not in much depth. A series could give you the chance to really dig into the topic and examine different aspects of it. We did this on ProBlogger with a series on guest posting.
• Beginner-friendly topics that would make a good introduction to your blog or niche. The posts themselves could all be on different topics, but you can link them together by having them aimed very much at beginners.

For a regular, ongoing series, you might look for:

• Something you could blog about pretty much indefinitely. It could be the week’s news in your niche, your monthly results from affiliate marketing, or common mistakes you see beginners making in your field.
• A particular style of posts. You could have a weekly “Q&A” like Trent Hamm’s “Reader Mailbag” on his blog The Simple Dollar, or a “monthly motivation” post where you collect together inspiring quotes.

If you’ve got several ideas and aren’t which would work best, why not ask some other bloggers for input? (If you don’t know many other bloggers yet, the ProBlogger Facebook group is a great place to meet some.)

Structuring a Series of Blog Posts

Hopefully, you already feel confident about structuring individual blog posts. If not (or you need a quick refresher), check out these posts from our subject matter expert Ali Luke:

• How to Plan Your Blog Post from Start to Finish
• 5 Critical Elements You Need to Check Off for Every Blog Post

But when you’re structuring a series, you also have to make structural decisions about:

• The series as a whole. It will need a beginning and, if it isn’t an ongoing series, an end. These might be short sections of a post, or posts in their own right (for a long series). For instance, you might write a post to introduce the series and explain what’s coming. You can then update this post with links to the different parts of the series.
• The individual posts within the series. How can you structure these so they ‘match’ as parts of a coherent whole? You could:
  • use a specific type of image, or brand your images in a particular way
  • title the posts consistently
  • have a particular format for each post, such as a quick recap at the start and a task or assignment at the end.

Interlinking the Posts in Your Series

It’s crucial to link the parts of your series together so readers can easily navigate between them. Remember, not everyone will read your series as you publish it.

Some readers will be busy, and will want to catch up with the whole series later. But many more (hopefully) will come to your series in future weeks and months through search engines or social media.

You can interlink posts in any number of ways. Here are some you can try. (You may even want to use two or three in each post.)

• Create a tag or category for the series, which is what we did with our guest posting series. Readers can then get all the parts of the series by clicking that tag/category name. If you’re running an ongoing series of weekly/monthly posts, this is probably the best way to organise it.
• Put a link at the top of each post leading to the previous part(s), so readers can easily go back to any posts they missed.
• Create a page or post with links to every post in the series. You can do this before you run the series and update it as you publish each part, or do it retrospectively.
• Put links at the bottom of each post leading to the next part, so readers can easily go through the series. (Obviously, you’ll need to go back and add these in once you’ve published the later parts.)
• Add links to the body of the post whenever you mention a topic you’ve already written about in the series. (You can also go back to earlier posts and link them to later posts in the series.) This saves you having to repeat yourself a lot, and makes it easy for readers to find the information they need at any given point.

An example of links to all the posts in the series at the bottom of the post

However you choose to link your posts together, make sure you’re consistent. And remember to check back after finishing the series to see if there are opportunities to work in some extra links.

Taking Your Blog Post Series Further

Once you’ve completed a series, or have been writing an ongoing series for a while, it’s worth considering whether you can repurpose your series into something else.

That might mean:

• Bringing your posts together as a free ebook, perhaps with some bonus content. For instance, if you’ve published ten monthly recipes on your blog, you could put those recipes into an ebook and add five extra recipes you haven’t published.
• Publishing your posts as a product, such as a paid-for ebook or even an ecourse. (31 Days to Build a Better Blog went from a series of posts to an ebook, and now we’ve turned it into a course.)

You might also use a short series as the inspiration for a longer one, or an ongoing series as an opportunity to get readers involved on your blog.

I’d love to hear how you’re using a post series, or what ideas you have for using them in the future. Leave a comment below to share your thoughts with us.

For more help creating content, why not try one of my 7-day Content Sprints where I will guide and support you ​to create a plan and 6 new pieces of content for your blog in just 7 days.

This article was updated 1 December 2022.

The post How to Write a Series for Your Blog (and Why You’ll Want To) appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Prepare Your Blog For the Festive Season: a Step-by-step Guide appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Over the past week or so, we ran a short series of interviews with bloggers of different types, to get a feel for how they’re preparing for the festive season.

We spoke to the owners of:

• a product-sales blog
• a blogger-consultant-speaker
• a digital publisher
• a not-for-profit blog.

If that series made you realize how underprepared you are for the coming weeks, don’t worry. Today’s post is a checklist for getting ready for the festive season.

1. Have you worked out when you’ll take a break?

The first thing to do is get out the calendar. Work out when you won’t want to be blogging, and block those days (or weeks!) out.

Now you know how much time you have to work with.

2. Do you know what you want to get out of this period?

The benefits of setting some goals up front are two-fold.

First, goals will help you set your priorities for the next few weeks. Second, they’ll help you assess your efforts when you come back to your blog in 2023. They might even help you improve on your work when the festive season rolls around again in a year’s time.

Set a few goals. They might be as simple as maintaining regular posting and social media schedules, or as detailed as setting expectations for sales and tracking the sources of traffic that converts.

3. Do you know what you need to do to get there?

List the tasks you’ll need to achieve your goals.

If you want to maintain a twice-a-week positing schedule, how much writing time will you need? How much editing time? Will you work any affiliate promotions into those posts? Which ones, and when will they run? When’s the best time to promote those posts?

Make a list of all the things you need to do. Then, schedule them. Think a long time in advance, and get right into the details. Don’t just make a note to curate ten tweets to auto-publish over the festive period. Schedule the time you’ll need to find quality content to include in those tweets.

Without taking your plans to this level of granularity, you’ll run the risk of underestimating the time and energy you’ll need to do everything on your list.

As you’re doing all of this, think about how you might make your blogging life easier.

Which leads me to…

4. Have you prioritized your priorities?

This is an extra step, but one you may well end up doing. You may already have found that your eyes were bigger than your stomach, so to speak, when you set your goals for the period. If you can’t fit everything in, check your top priorities and consider whether you’d be happy if you just achieved those.

This should help you focus as the inevitable distractions and schedule-changes come up in the coming weeks … and you run out of time!

Tip: Consider making your own checklist for every one of the tasks you need to do, so that you can avoid waking up in a panic because you forgot to find images for a post, or to encode your affiliate links in that email you’re autosending.

5. Have you got things ready for your return in 2023?

Getting ready for the festive season isn’t just about getting through to January 1, 2023. It’s also about hitting the ground running when you get back to your desk.

If the whole process of preparing for the festive season has been a wake up call for you, perhaps first consider (and listen to my podcast on) how to make the most of your time.

Then in the lead-up to the break, when you’ve just set all your priorities, write a to-do list for Day 1, 2023.

Include:

• checking emails, stats, and social listening to find out what you missed while you were offline (assuming you were offline!)
• goal-setting for the new year (if you haven’t done that during the break)
• reconnecting with others who you can help—and can be helped by—in the coming 12 months.

This is the basic checklist I use to make sure I’m on track through the festive season and beyond.

What about you? Share your tips and advice for keeping your blog going through the silly season below.

The post Prepare Your Blog For the Festive Season: a Step-by-step Guide appeared first on ProBlogger.