Stop Blogging Wrong! 3 Proven Content Types Your Blog Absolutely Needs

 has shown that businesses that blog get 67% more leads, and are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI, than businesses that don’t blog.
It’s 2015, and it’s been established beyond disputation that blogging, effectively, will always yield positive ROI for businesses.
However, does that mean starting a blog will automatically fix your content strategy and yield a positive ROI? No.
Without the right strategy, your blogging efforts is just a time sink and another waste of time and/or money.
The type of content you publish on your blog is a core part of your blogging strategy, and a solid blogging strategy can’t do without the following three content types; each content type is accompanies with personal examples to demonstrate their effectiveness.

1. The “Resource” Article

The resource article is perhaps the best type of content for driving traffic and boosting your conversions.
In my experience, every instance of a resource article I’ve published on my blog has resulted in at least 10,000% more views, sometimes 30,000% more views, than the average article (that’s not an error).
On my new blog where the average article barely gets 100 views, a resource article I published went on to get over 20,000 views in its first year.
On another blog, a series of resource articles I published went on to average 100,000 views, with the first article getting as much as 200,000 views in a span of 3 years.
I wrote a full case study about this on the  blog, and you can read the case study through the link below:

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Why do “resource” articles work?
Resource articles work because blogs are oversaturated with the same recycled content; opinions, tips and lists.
There are at least 300 million blogs today according to Wikipedia, and when it comes to getting tips, lists and opinion, there’s an abundance of that. However, very few blogs give people practical resources that they can use right away.
Instead of just giving tips, resource articles offer actual resources; so instead of saying “here’s what you have to do to get X results”, you’ll say “use X to achieve certain result”; with X listed in your article so readers can make use of it.
As a result, people will bookmark your content, tell their friends, link to it on their blogs, share it on their favorite forums and come back to it regularly.

2. Ultimate Guides

Data has proven time and again that long, comprehensive content will always outperform shorter content.
This was proven by research by serpIQ, carefully analyzed by ; the data revealed that, on average, the top 10 results in Google have at least 2,000 words, with the longer content usually ranking higher.
A  revealed similar findings, showing from an analysis of 500 articles on their blog that longer content indeed gets more links, traffic and social shares.
This instantly shows why ultimate guides are very good for traffic and conversions.
On , the most profitable article I’ve ever written is an, an article that has been viewed over 20,000 times to date and that has been responsible for mid-five figures in freelance writing income for me.
Ultimate guides are authoritative by nature, and the fact that they usually include visuals, lots of examples, sometimes multimedia, and lots of details ensure people bookmark, share and link to them.
If your aim is to get leads, traffic or authoritative links to your blog, ultimate guides are one sure way to do that.

3. Case Studies

 (in a partnership with MarketingProfs) has shown that content marketers report a 70% effectiveness rate for case studies as a part of their content marketing strategy; case studies was reported to be the second most effective content marketing strategy, second only to in-person events (at 78%), and tying with webinars/webcasts (also at 70%) in effectiveness. In other words, case studies is the only form of written content that can achieve similar impact to what is obtainable only through live interaction; and that’s saying a lot!
Unlike resource articles and ultimate guides, case studies might not necessarily generate extraordinary traffic compared to the average article, but they serve an entirely different purpose; increasing positive perception in the mind of your readers about your ability to deliver.
At the end of the day, the purpose of your blog is to generate more leads for your business and ultimately increase your revenue; traffic alone won’t do this.
It’s easy to track traffic and conversions, but it can be difficult to track positive perception in the mind of your readers; besides directly leading to increased conversions, case studies are also powerful for increasing your perception in the mind of your users and letting them value your brand more.
I’ve noticed case studies to be most effective in closing client deals for me, and helping overcome objections potential clients may have; if they are having doubts about my services, I just point them to a case study.

Which of The Three Content Types is Your Blog Missing?

The above are three powerful content types every business that blog should be implementing; ensure they are included as a core part of your content marketing strategy, and you’d be surprised to see how powerful they can be.
Bamidele Onibalusi is an content marketer and successful blogger. He blogs at , and he’s been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post and Digital Journal amongst others. He’s also a freelance writer who helps brands take charge of their content strategy.
Need help getting more traffic to your website and growing your online revenues? Then my Online Profits training program is right for you. 

It’s Been 3 Years…What I Learned And What Works For Bloggers?

I’d be lying if I said that blogging hasn’t been tough because it’s been a nightmare. I’m the type of guy that wanted quick success and wanted to make an impact right away. I must have tried everything when starting and was disappointed when it didn’t work. However, I’m glad it happened because it’s been one of the best learning experiences ever. It made me a different person because you’d be surprised that success doesn’t only have to do with writing awesome content but making a few changes in character as well.

When I sat down to write a guest post, I thought about my topic and decided to put something together that will resonate well with all of you. I know no matter if you’re an experienced blogger or just starting out, with the amount of information available online, you can lose focus very easily.

Anyways, here’s what I’ve learned in the past 3 years writing content and starting my own blog…

Stay Active

Staying active is the most important thing because if you don’t keep writing it’ll become a habit. It’s true what they say, if you do something for “14” days straight it’ll become a habit and the same applies to NOT writing content. Writing actively is a great way to build momentum because not only does it tell your readers you have new and exciting things to say but tells search engines that fresh new content is being published. This is great to increase user engagement and get indexed more regularly by search engines.

Staying active is a great motivational boost since each time you publish new content you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Ask any serious blogger, that, determination and motivation are the “2” most important factor to their success. Set small goals to be met each week and with each completion checkmark comes a feeling of accomplishment.

Here’s something that works well…

I know one of the biggest issues I’ve had is being able to write 2000+ words per day to complete a blog post. However, I’ve found a way to get it done and stay motivated at the same time. Write anywhere from 500-600 words per day and then start again tomorrow. If you do this for 4 days then you’ll have content ranging from 2000+ words which can provide valuable insight to your readers. If you do the math, 500-600 words will take you no more then 15-20 minutes which is more motivating then taking out 3+ hours to complete an entire post in one day.

Always Network

Much of the growth I experienced was through guidance provided by top bloggers within the industry. For example, I remember doing an expert post and Zac Johnson + 13 others provided their opinion on the most effective link building strategy which continues to work well ranking websites within search engines. The point I’m trying to make is that networking will open several doors for you allowing you to gather information and even publish content on their blogs.

Many top bloggers have thousands of readers and establishing a relationship with them can sometimes allow you to engage with their readers. Remember, when gust posting, it’s important to provide the best content which not only resonates with their readers but keeps the quality and integrity of their blog.

How do you find relevant blogs to network with?

Simple…

Do a quick search in Google using (“keyword and/or niche”) and this will produce a list of blogs relevant to your keyword

At this point, you can go through each one contacting them asking about guest posting opportunities or even their opinion. You’d be surprised how many of them are willing to help.

You’ll learn why this simple strategy of communicating with other blogs will help enormously later on.

Focus On Quality

Writing high quality content is truly the key to success when blogging and becoming successful. Having an abundance of information available can be both a positive and/or negative. With so much information available online, it’s very easy to be misdirected into information which provides NO substance at all. This is why high quality content is given more weight and leverage within the SERP’s. When I started blogging, I spent a lot of time rushing through creating content just to get things published. However, after communicating with many of my mentors, I learned that quality will always outweigh quantity so focus on creating everlasting content. When I started producing 2000+ in-depth content, a few things started to happen…

First, the user engagement increased and people were able to locate my content more easily increasing the amount of targeted traffic generated to my blog. Next, more people who had blogs of their own started to link back to my content because of the substance I provided. Next,

Google indexed my content and I was able to rank for keywords WITHOUT doing any link building, etc. When you write lengthy content, you have more leverage to add keywords into your content increasing the chances to get ranked for some of them.

In the end, always focus on providing quality and the traffic and popularly will automatically come on its own. Remember the purpose of search engines, which is to provide users with the best high quality solution to their problems. Focus on just that!

Guest Posting Opportunities

Previously, I talked about the power of networking with other top bloggers within the industry. When you network, it opens up “guest posting” opportunities with them which means loads of “targeted” traffic generated to your blog. It’s an easy way to showcase your experience and build an audience at the same time. Before continuing, remember that “guest posting” can increase your conversions 30X when done correctly. When I started writing content, I was scared to contact other bloggers because I didn’t know what reply to expect from them. I was afraid to submit content fearing that it’ll get rejected. However, you’ll be surprised how many of them have been in the same situation as you and are willing to work with you to get you’re content published on their blog. They need fresh new minds and content on their blog to keep their readers happy and information flowing.

Here are a few “guest posting” guidelines to follow…

• Always submit your best work because it’s a great way to showcase your work to “targeted” readers that can convert to your loyal readers.
• Keep it relevant to the blog you are guest posting on
• Choose a topic which is NOT yet published on the blog to bring something new
• Always include your “author” information with a link back to your personal blog
• Once you get published, work with the blog owner to keep your new content getting published so you stay active.

The Power of Case Studies

With so much information online, it’s hard to find what actually works so why NOT provide your readers with solid proof. Case studies are probably the best piece’s of content you’ll find because it’s provides you a complete step-by-step approach to achieving your objective. For example, imagine you are trying to rank “5” keywords on the 1^st page of Google and you try 20 different tactics out of which 5 worked. You can save people an enormous amount of time by providing EXACTLY what worked and having them avoid the methods that didn’t. It’s a great way to build a following and credibility within the industry.

From personal experience, I continue to follow those blogs that provided me with proven methods that’ll help my business. Every day, I visit these same blogs to find updated information and try to learn new strategies that’ll help my business. I’ve even taken it a step further…

A few months ago, I started forming my own case studies writing updates each week on my blog to my readers. It’s a way to show them EXACTLY what I’m doing to achieve my desired results. Obviously I research what questions people are asking then I start a case study answering those questions. For example,

After doing research, there were many questions about the effectiveness of PBN’s (private blog networks) so over the past month I’ve been doing a case study answering each question. It’s a routine for me to update my blog each week so my readers keep up to date and can follow through.

The point I’m trying to make is that after writing both engaging and non-engaging content, it’s important to stick to what your readers are looking for which, a majority of time, is methods proven to work.

Try Different Things

If you want to succeed, you need to do things differently. You need to create curiosity and have people ask questions so that you can be the one answering them. It’s important because much of the stuff online is so routine that people already know the answer to the question WITHOUT reading the content. This is why “case studies” always create a buzz because you are trying different things and showing people how to EXACTLY do them. Remember that social media is an outlet which can generate enormous amounts of traffic so doing things that resonate with an audience can create a storm online.

Unfortunately I learned this very late in my blogging career and should have listen to my mentors. If you look at the most successful bloggers online they were all pioneers and NOT followers meaning they did things differently and are known as leaders within the industry.

The company “Apple Inc” has a slogan “Think Different” and they went from the brink of bankruptcy to the one of the most successful technology companies ever. Next time you are writing content or trying to create a buzz online, simply…

“Think Different”

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Why Your Blog Shouldn’t Have a Homepage

If you got a group of marketers, designers, bloggers, and other web professionals together to talk about homepages, you could count on at least one of them comparing homepages to storefronts. While there is some merit to this analogy, I believe thinking about homepages as digital storefronts, has caused many bloggers to miss out on a whole lot of money.

Let’s think about the function of a storefront for a second.

In my late teens I took a management position at shoe store at the local mall. We didn’t have a whole lot of choice of what went in the giant windows that made up our storefront, as far as signage went. However, we did get to pick a couple dozen or so pairs of shoes to be displayed in the windows on any given day.
Our strategy? Display a little bit of everything. Half were men’s shoes; half were women’s. Five basketball shoes; five skate shoes; five casual shoes; five dress shoes.
The setup wasn’t always so evenly distributed, but you get the idea. The point is, we wanted to attract the eye of whomever happened to walk by. And because we had no control over who walked past our storefront, our goal was to appeal to as many people as possible.
This is the approach taken by most bloggers and online business owners – and it’s all wrong!

What’s Wrong with the Digital Storefront Strategy?

The purpose of a brick and mortar storefront is to catch people’s eyes and get them in the store. Once you’ve got them in the door, all you have to do is lead them to the right pair of shoes and make the sale.
But things are different in the digital world. Online, once people are on your homepage, they’re already through the door. If you think of your homepage as a digital storefront, then you’re still trying to get everyone’s attention, when you should be focusing on leading the people already in your store to the right pair of shoes.

“But I Don’t Sell Shoes. Or anything for that matter!”

OK, so you don’t sell anything on your blog and rely on ad revenues instead, but surely you can think of something the visitors to your blog need to be doing in order for your blogging business to grow.
As a blogger myself, here are a few thing I want people to do when they visit my blog: 

• Share blog posts with friends and on social media.
• Build content and community by making comments on posts.
• Subscribe to my newsletter so I can invite them back later.

If you can get your visitors to take action in the above three ways on a regular basis, you can grow your blog’s reach, increase ad views, and make more money.

Getting Visitor To Do What You Want

The key to getting your visitors to help you grow your blog is to think of your homepage as if it were a landing page.
By applying the methods used to create effective landing pages, you can focus on the people already in the door (on your homepage) and lead them to the right pair of shoes (shares, comments, opt-ins).
What’s the Difference Between a Landing Page and a Homepage?
While homepages are often thought of as digital storefronts, trying to grab the attention of anyone who might click through, landing pages are much more focused and goal-oriented.
The goal of a landing page is get visitors to take action, often in the form of providing their contact information or purchasing an item. However, in many cases (such as yours), landing pages can be used to promote a particular piece of content or to get that same piece of content shared via social media..
So in order to reach your goal of shares, comments and opt-ins, you need to bring focus to your homepage, and subtly lead your visitors into taking action – just like a good landing page would do.
What’s Next?
Keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up post, where I’ll cover specific tips and trick for turning your blog’s homepage into a landing page, for increased reach and revenue.

Why Your Blog Should Have a Homepage?

This post is a counter-argument to Paul Gannon’s Why Your Blog Shouldn’t Have a Homepage article on BloggingTips. You should read it first before reading my counter-argument. What Paul basically insists is that bloggers shouldn’t use the homepage as a typical blog roll of latest posts but should optimize it to achieve certain purposes such as offering opt-in forms or encouraging visitors to comment on posts.

In short, the homepage should be purpose-oriented and so far, I completely agree with what Paul suggests but I would like to deviate a bit and present another perspective.

The Relationship between Blogger and Blog

In the last 4 years spent as a blogger, I have come to classify bloggers as:

• authority influencers (example: Zac Johnson and Pat Flynn)
• side kick to business websites (example: KISSmetrics.com)
• generic bloggers (example: about 90% of the blogging world)

Now, the purpose of a homepage will find varied usage among these three categories, depending on the relationship between the blogger and the blog.
How?
Let’s see.

1) Authority Influencers

Bloggers like Zac Johnson and Pat Flynn are already established authority influencers. The blogging community knows them and as such, if you look at their homepage, it is optimized to achieve a purpose.
If you see the homepage of SmartPassiveIncome.com, it introduces the visitor to Pat, to the community, to his podcasts and lastly, there is the recent blog post.
All in all, it’s a killer example homepage optimization.
Drawing on Paul’s analogy of a brick-and-mortar storefront, I think the blog homepage should function as a ‘storefront’, as a peep into what can be found ‘inside’ the store.

2) Side Kick to Business Websites

These are typically business blogs, created with the purpose of driving niche traffic and generating leads.
If you read through the KISSmetrics blog, the content is all about data and analysis, which is what their software is all about and as Paul wrote is his piece, the homepage is already optimized as a ‘landing page’ intended to build customer base.

3) Generic Bloggers

The number of generic bloggers is high in the blogging community. Not many of them cross the bridge between being a general blogger to an authority influencer. The generic bloggers are typically those whose sole purpose of a blog is to earn advertising revenue.
As such, they cannot get rid of the typical homepage because:

• it is what advertisers expect. The advertisers wish to see updated list of recent blog posts.
• it is needed to display sidebars for advertisements.

The kind of optimization Paul suggests will not work for this category of bloggers unless they are ready with effort and commitment to leave behind generic blogging and move into authority blogging. Unless they are ready, they cannot abandon the typical ‘homepage’.
What do you think

How to Breathe Life into Old Blog Posts and Improve Blog Traffic?

Bloggers spend a lot of time finding and implementing strategies to improve blog traffic. Regular content updates and social shares are the two frequently used methods.

Today, let’s talk about something different.
What about your old blog posts?
The posts that were published a year ago or even a month back should be re-utilized to improve blog traffic. Why?

• Your old content will not go waste since a lot of time was spent on creating them.
• Your old content, if useful, can attract new readers to the blog.
• Frequent utilization of old content reduces pressure on creating new content on a regular basis.
• Old content will improve SEO balance.

Given these benefits, shouldn’t you breathe life into old blog posts and improve blog traffic?

6 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic with Old Content

Let’s see how.

1) Find Old Content that ‘Clicked’

Dig into the old post database and select blog posts which clicked with the readers in the past. If it clicked them, it will get good response now as well. You can select such posts on the basis of its social shares, comment count and search traffic.

2) Update Old Content

Breathing life into old blog posts to improve blog traffic means you need to update them as well.  Whether they are posts fitting the first point or other not-so-popular posts, you should use them to attract new traffic.
You do this by updating the old content. If they were time-centric posts, update them with new research data and news happening within that niche. For instance, if you wrote about Pinterest when it launched and you want to promote it again, you have to make a lot of changes to make the content suitable for present day.

3) Improve their SEO

Before re-sharing old posts, update its SEO peripherals. You can make changes to its title, primary keywords, add more secondary keywords, and improve H2 and H3 tags and other on-page SEO factors.

4) Index on Google

Yes, your old post is already indexed but once you update the whole blog page, log into Google Webmasters Tool and go to Crawl > Fetch as Google. Prompt Googlebot to crawl and index the newly updated page. This will boost its search rankings and improve blog traffic.

5) Automate Social Shares

Manual social sharing is awesome but time constraints move us towards automated social sharing options. You can use tools like JustRetweet to schedule tweets or software like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule social shares on multiple platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Google and others. They will be published in a certain designated time and bring more blog traffic.

6) Share Newsletter

If you actively share newsletters with blog subscribers, you can share the updated blog posts in the next newsletter as well.

Endnote

Breathing life into old blog posts is sure shot way to improve blog traffic.

7 Advanced Ways to Promote Your Blog Content

Content promotion is moving away from big-box social media channels to more focused platforms that hone in on a specific target audience.

To draw the attention of the movers and shakers in your niche or industry, you have to travel somewhere besides the familiar paths to promote your content.
It all starts with using the right tools in your content promotion toolbox. Here are seven ways you can promote your content that goes beyond basic social media engagement:

1. Sniply 

You can give context to links you share through Sniply and make them work for your content. Sniply allows you to tack a relevant message or call to action onto a link you share on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or other major social media platforms.

If you are sharing content from another source, you can also include a link back to relevant content on your blog. It allows you to include sign up form for visitors to receive news and updates related to your blog.

Sniply has a cool feature where it lets you imbed viral content from Youtube or Vine and other popular visual content channels directly into your site. When people click on the embedded videos, it drives traffic back to you, so your blog benefits when it goes viral. This is big for beginning blogs that don’t have a lot of traction.

2. Outbrain 

When you read an article on high profile websites, you often come across a box at the bottom of the webpage containing a half-dozen images and links to other articles from around the web. Outbrain is responsible for bringing this targeted content to your attention.

Outbrain acts as a paid syndication service designed to connect content to interested audiences on high profile websites. It uses a per click distribution model. This means when your content receives a higher number of clicks, Outbrain will recommend your content on a higher number of websites. The cost per click is as low as $0.10 per article, so it offers an inexpensive option for getting many more eyeballs to see your content.

3. Subreddits 

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Reddit is essentially the world’s biggest online bulletin board. Since there literally as many topics for discussion on Reddit as grains of sand at your local beach, subbreddits are useful for narrowing your target audience to a specific niche.

A subreddit is basically a niche within a content category. Self-improvement articles, for example, might be further divided into subreddits like fitness, philosophy, DIY and food. Content within these subreddits receives votes from members of the subreddit community.

A few good examples of niche subreddits:
College football: http://www.reddit.com/r/cfb
Reaction GIFs: http://www.reddit.com/r/reactiongifs
Movie News and discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies

If you get positive votes, your content ranks higher in the subreddit and is seen by more people. The catch is you need to interact with others in the subreddit. If you are all about self-promotion, you can find yourself kicked out in a hurry. Troy Shanks at Blog Beast Network recommends spending 2-3 months of adding value to the conversation before dropping any self-promo.

4. Hootsuite 

Posting content links to social media platforms can be time consuming if you do it one at a time. That’s where a place like Hootsuite can be like a best friend for your content promotion efforts.

Hootsuite lets you manage accounts for more than 35 popular social networks in the same location. You can schedule when to publish links to content or specific messages to your social media followers. You have access to a wide range of analytics that track how your links are performing, so you can see what strategies work and which ones need to be changed.

The best feature is an app directory that gives you access to more than 100 popular social media apps from Instagram to Marketo, so you have a better idea on where to put the spotlight on your content.

5. Paper li

Large scale content promotion can be as simple as creating your own online newspaper. It only takes a few minutes and is totally free through Paper li. You can use Paper li to publish articles, photos and videos —created by you or others—relevant to your brand or industry.

Paper li processes more than 250 million social media posts per day and extracts more than 25 million articles from that slush pile of information. Our recent ipas2 post on Multiple Streams went viral because of the option paper.li gave us to put that piece in front of affiliate and network marketing audiences. It lets you select your sources, customize your newspaper with ads, videos and your own content and gives you access to promotional tools such as daily email digests and embedded news widgets for your blog..

6. Triberr 

Being part of a tribe isn’t just reserved for reality television. With Triberr, you can join a tribe of other bloggers to share content. Your reward is a promise of higher traffic and opportunities to earn income as a brand influencer.

Top Ten Reviews recently used Triberr to find niche specialists to cover some of their review pages…since they have over 1,000 of them. Triberr is free to use and works through 30 day influencer marketing campaigns. In this type of campaign, companies hire bloggers to promote and endorse their brand, products or services. It helps the company gain a foothold with certain target demographics. For the blogger, it is a great way to build their reputation and give their content added credibility as the ambassador of a popular brand..

7. Blog Aggregators 

Aggregators are landing pages that collect the best blog content from across the web. There are countless blog aggregators to choose from and each one offers different features and benefits for content promotion..

Blogorama functions as a free directory where your blog content can be grouped with other blogs covering the same niche or topics. Bloglines puts an emphasis on local news and groups blogs by city. You can vote on favorite blogs and the site lets you customize content feeds. AllTop is like a virtual magazine rack. It collects headlines from the latest stories on the top sites and blogs on the web. These headlines are grouped by topic into individual web pages.

Using a blog aggregator is most effective for timely content because it gets your content into the news feeds of people who are already interested in that..

32 Great Benefits of Blogging

I love blogging and I could give you 300+ reasons why blogging is so beneficial and how it can massively change your business and branding forever. Instead I will just give you a list of 32. Why 32 you ask? Because it’s my favorite number and it grabs attention.

32 Great Benefits of Blogging

1. Build a platform for your audience to leave comments and engage with your comments.
2. Enable social networking sharing links right within your site and content.
3. Finally put that yourname.com (personal name) domain to good use and build a brand
4. It’s one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a brand online
5. Google loves blogs because they usually create unique content more often than static sites
6. WordPress makes the process of setting up a blog super easy
7. There are over 100 million blogs in the world… shouldn’t you also have your own
8. If you can create compelling content that provides value, it shouldn’t be hard for you to make money with a blog
9. Using a blog as your online resume and source for individuals to find all of your information and social profiles is super easy
10. Billion dollars companies are paying a ton of money to rank at the top of the search results, a quality blog post with a few links could do the same
11. Blogs provide you with an outlet to talk about something you are passionate about
12. Become an expert at something you love, while inspiring others
13. If you don’t want to get your own domain name or hosting, you can start a blog completely free through Blogger or WordPress sites
14. Expand your reach and meet new people everyday throughout the world from people who are finding your content
15. Blogging makes you a better writer and more knowledgable in any given topic
16. People share and link back to content on your site that they find value in
17. Build a mailing list and create a loyal following through the use of newsletters and rss feeds
18. Give away free ebooks and course through your blog to provide extra value outside of just blog posts
19. With your own blog you can start a trend, following, business and concept… you just need to reach the right audience and get something going
20. Build a platform and following through your blog that could lead into products, coaching and speaking gigs
21. Learn how to use WordPress, make money online or anything else you might like by documenting the process on your blog
22. Get a better job by building out industry related content on your site and connecting with fellow workers/companies online
23. Become a published author by starting with a blog, then growing your following and eventually self publishing your own book through Amazon or possibly be approached by a huge brand
24. Protect your online identity and reputation by having your own sites come up for your personal and/or business name in the search results
25. With a blog you can established yourself as an expert in any field or topic. You only need to know 1% more than your audience to be perceived as an expert.
26. Master the art of SEO. Web sites and blogs are the future and ranking in the search results is always going to be important — all of which can be learned while launching a blog of your own.
27. Create a product, reach out to other blogs and make money off of what you are an expert in.
28. Every day millions of people go to Google to look for answers to there questions. You can help people by creating a blog on detailed topics that you might already be an expert in or have experience with.
29. Spread awareness for events, causes and charities that you are passionate about.
30. Put yourself out there and see what happens. Blogging has changed the lives of many and how can it change yours?
31. Connect with mentors, idols and celebrities through engaging content and in-post interviews
32. Web sites and blogs are selling for lots of money. Create something of value and you could quickly cash in

How many blog benefits can you think of?

Now that I’ve ran through a ton of benefits to blogging that I’ve just randomly come up with off the top of my head, why don’t you add some of your benefits of blogging.

How to Maximize Email Marketing for Blog Promotion

Using email marketing as your strategy to promote your blog content is one of the best moves that you can do to get more exposure for your page and reach a wider targeted community for your brand.

There are many posts out there that discuss the basics of email marketing, but I know that there’s still room for innovations to make this marketing strategy really work for any brand.
In this post, I’d like to share a few actionable tips that you can apply to promote your content through email marketing (in a non-aggressive way).
Let’s get started.

Get as many email subscribers as you can

Capturing emails through opt-in forms or landing pages is the first move in email marketing. Remember that if there’s no subscriber, there’s no email marketing strategy to execute.
How to collect emails both from new and existing visitors?

• Do a content upgrade in your most visited pages by adding bonuses to them, wherein your visitor will only get access to those freebies after they subscribed to your blog.
• Provide brief and honest benefit to your call to action. Let your potential subscribers know the value in your newsletters.
• Choose email-capturing tools or plugins like ManyContacts that are responsive on mobile devices. The more responsive your page/content in mobile devices, the easier for your followers to subscribe to your blog.
• Incentives are the best way to entice people to join your email list but be careful with how you create and present your incentive.
• Fix an opt-in box in your sidebar to increase daily email signups.
• Link to your landing page (with optin-boxes) from your content contribution (e.g. guest posts).
• Invest in building a community around your brand by participating in online forums, Q&A sites and blog communities.
• Use micro-survey tools (e.g. Qeryz) to ask a few questions then direct your respondents to your landing page.

Consistently providing to your audience can easily help your brand to collect emails from engaged visitors.

Decide which type of newsletter you will provide to your subscribers

Different industries and different brands have their own way of creating content format for their newsletters. Some are happy with sending product reviews/updates to their subscribers while others would start off with sending informative articles that are relevant to the industry.
The best way to find what newsletter format (content) could best benefit your audience is simply by learning from your competitors.
Subscribe first to their newsletters and identify the following things that will best help you create your own newsletter format:

• Email frequency (do they send weekly or daily emails?)
• Content (are they giving out industry updates or plain self-promotional emails?)
• Length of emails (500 words or more?)
• Format (text plus images?)

Once you determine the types of emails your competitors are sending to their users, you can now think of how you outperform their work.
Here are a few things you need to consider to create your own brand identity for your email marketing campaign:

• If two are three of your competitors have the same email frequency, you would want to do the same for your campaign.
• Use the Pareto Principle (80/20) when sending newsletters to your followers (i.e. 80% informative content, 20% for branded content – product updates, news, etc..)
• Make your emails conversational and personal to encourage discussions/feedbacks even in the email platform itself.
• Use responsive emails in you newsletters to improve readability and increase click through rates. GetResponse does a great job in this responsive email feature.

Test your emails

Improvements happen when you start to test your emails and get results from your experiment.
Don’t just allow knowledge from email marketing posts to come into your mind and get acquainted with it. But rather start learning from your own experience.
A few things you need to experiment to yield better results for your blog’s email marketing campaign:

• Headlines
• Full text or with variations of text and images
• Placement of links (intro, body or end of the email).
• Call to actions near the link.

There are a lot more experiments you can do aside from the things mentioned above. The only thing that matters is the result (data) you can get from every experiment and decisions you will make out of it.
You may want to check out this post on Digital Philippines about 25 content promotion strategies.

Final thoughts

Start executing a solid marketing campaign for your blog to help your content/page gets its traction in your industry. Apply every tip I mentioned above to improve your email marketing process.

10 Digital Marketing Blogs You Need to Follow

arketing, with constant reposts of the same content.
That’s why we set out to find a selection of blogs written by people who really know what they’re talking about, and who can provide you with unique insights on how to tackle the murky waters of establishing a solid online presence.
So, without further ado: these are 10 digital and internet marketing blogs that you should follow if you want to stay up to date with trends and get solid advice on how to succeed.
1.  Moz – http://moz.com/blog
Moz Blog is part of SeoMOZ, a group that specializes in providing SEO-optimization and digital marketing tools. Their blog is a popular and authoritative source for unique insights and concepts when it comes to getting your site ranked.
Rather than just giving you advice on how to successfully market your business, contributors will often share wisdom on how to build a solid business with strong client relationships. While the blog is free to access, their proprietary tools will cost you a (reasonable) investment.
2.  HubSpot – http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing
The HubSpot blog for Inbound Marketing attracts over 1.2 million readers a month. Have a quick glance at the content and you’ll see why. This beautifully designed blog is full of interesting tidbits of information, and will familiarize even technology novices with internet marketing concepts. Inbound Hub will deliver a wealth of knowledge to you at a steady pace, discussing everything from closing sales leads to ensuring your eBook is well received.
3.  Occam’s Razor – http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Occam’s Razor is the analytics-focused blog of Avinash Kaushik. He uses this portal to demonstrate the benefits of understanding your website’s traffic metrics, and the best practices for managing and presenting your business online. Avinash is also the author of two popular books on analytics: Web Analytics 2.0, and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. Use the information on this blog to empower yourself with knowledge that few others will make use of!
4.  Copyblogger – http://www.copyblogger.com/blog
Copyblogger is a fantastic resource for those of you seeking advice on content creation and content marketing. Not only do they provide industry-killing seminars, webinars, and e-books, they also provide incredibly useful tips for free via their popular blog. The posts there are full of interesting, unique, and daring perspectives. To trust Copyblogger is to be part of the forefront of internet marketing.
5.  Unbounce – http://unbounce.com/blog
Unbounce is another one of those blogs that provides fascinating insights on metrics and analytics. Beyond that, their main focus is on helping you understand how to make as many conversions as possible. Everything from creating a captivating landing page to producing relevant and convincing copy is explained here, making it a fantastic source of information for those of you frustrated by low sales numbers.
6.  Mail Chimp – http://blog.mailchimp.com
Ah, MailChimp. An industry-leader in the newsletter game, the company knows much more about reaching readers than just delivering your content on time. You may not know it, but they also run a blog from their official website which shares some effective guidance on how to make successful work of what can often be a murky medium to utilise. Even better, readers can subscribe to the blog by entering their e-mail address at the bottom of the page.
7.  Blind Five Year Old – http://www.blindfiveyearold.com
Despite a rather tragic year for author AJ Kohn, and a somewhat questionable business name, his blog remains an aesthetically gratifying and much-valued stockpile of internet marketing tips. His advice is often delivered in a playful manner, but it is immensely useful and frighteningly accurate nonetheless. You should bookmark this blog immediately if you’d like to hear from a genuine internet marketing pioneer.
8.  ViperChill – http://www.viperchill.com
Glen Allsopp is a renowned name in the SEO business. He’s an internet marketing guru who’s been in the game since a young age, and is now trusted to provide regular and reliable (and oftentimes ground-breaking) guidance on taking your internet business to the tippy top. Glen’s work is as much about making new discoveries as it is sharing tips on how to use the tools available to you to exist efficiently and productively. Listen to this man and you will reap the benefits.
9.  Danny Brown – http://dannybrown.me
Danny Brown’s blog is as much a homage to wonderful web design as it is a place for helping you to understand an ever-changing internet. This is where an award-winning internet marketer discusses everything from eBooks to analytics, managing comments, and making conversions. There’s an almost serene quality to time spent on Danny’s website, and we highly encourage you to take a breather there now and again, too.
10.  Jon Loomer – http://www.jonloomer.com
Jon Loomer is a social marketing guru who’s unafraid to get his point out there. His official blog details not only how to market yourself using the social web, but also how it’s changing and what you should expect from each change respectively. A highly intelligent person, Loomer is a man who has earned his stripes having contributed to (and spearheaded) several successful internet marketing campaigns.
There are always going to be the new kid on the block when it comes to web marketing blogs, so keep your eyes peeled for excellent newcomers. But these 10 blogs are standby successes that every marketing pro should have bookmarked.
And when you find one that you really love, make sure to either subscribe via RSS, or sign up to the appropriate mailing list so that you never miss a new nugget of gold one of these experts is giving away.

5 Effective Ways to Increase Email Open Rates

When someone mentions the term “email marketing campaign” many people would often think about having email opt-in forms on their blog or even customized landing pages hoping to increase the amount of subscribers on their list. When people start analyzing a strategy that is NOT producing any results, they often look at the wrong metrics. For example, 9/10 people would often think it’s the landing page, content or actual message which wasn’t clear enough, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Many top players in the industry will tell you that once you have a handful of subscribers and are ready to start an email marketing campaign, the most important thing is having your email messages opened. You’d be surprised how many email marketing campaigns fail as soon as you press the “send” button. Think about it this way…

If your average open rate is 20%, that means 70% of your email subscribers are not viewing your email messages. This also means that you’re losing 70% potential profits you could have been generated through your subscriber. The good news we have enormous resources in the form of data that shed light on the “optimal” email message actually get opened and produce conversions. Let’s look at the “5” most important factors which will increase your open rate.

Optimal Sending Time

If you schedule your email to be sent at the right time, you’ll be surprised how it can dramatically increase your open rates. For example, several email service providers (ESP) have done studies in the past calculating the optimal time to send out emails. It’s been proven that 8PM-12AM is the best time to fire out any campaigns you have planned for your subscribers. If you think about it, this is the time that people have arrived home from work, had dinner, spent time with their family and have some spare time to hop on the computer. 8PM-12AM is when people don’t need to rush through emails and engage with the content within each message. During work hours 8AM-5PM, people are more likely going to open work related emails and skim through the rest opening only the ones which they feel are important enough.

Image by mailermailer.com

A few important things to keep in mind before sending your next email campaign: First, obviously implement the time shift discussed above so that your email lands in the inbox between 8PM-12AM. Next, keep the time difference in mind when sending emails to people in located in other countries.

Right Days of the Week

When choosing the right days to send emails there are a few things to consider. First, sending emails is not about what’s convenient for you but when the customer is most likely going to check their inbox. Statistically, it’s been proven that sending on weekdays is the optimal time to reach the recipients with most of it having to do with how accessible email accounts are to people. For example, on weekdays people are at work and/or in work mode so continuously checking their emails. Weekends, on the other hand, people tend to be more recreational enjoying family time, shopping and trying to make the most out of days off.

Let’s get to the statistics…

Image by GetResponse

The time to send emails is from Monday – Thursday since it’s the beginning of the week. It’s also the days that people are back at work logged into their email accounts skimming through the weeks work. However, for optimal performance, it’s recommended that you send between Tuesday-Thursday for the following two reasons:

First, people are done going through most of their emails and have organized their inbox that typically happens on a Monday as it’s the beginning of the week. Monday people tend to skim through quickly and only read those which standout (work related, personal and other business interests). Tuesday to Thursday people most likely pay more attention to every email that comes through increasing the open percentage of your emails.

Secondly, you fall into the days that have shown the highest CTR. GetResponse analyzed 21 million messages sent, and CTR was the highest from Tuesday to Thursday. Much of the increase in CTR has to do with the recipients having cleared their inbox of junk, spam or anything that looks unresourceful earlier in the week.

Email Regularly

It’s a great way to increase brand awareness and not scare people away. The last thing you want to create is email inconsistently because that will scare people away. For example, once someone opts into your newsletter they expect to get updates and not implementing a regular emailing frequency will make people forget about your newsletter. When someone forgets their on your list, it increases the chance that they’ll mark your email as spam when you send a follow-up. Keep brand awareness and open rate high by sending frequent updates to your list. Make sure to send them high-quality content in each email, so they gain substance out of your newsletter.

Implementing this strategy has never been easier since many email service providers streamline the entire process. You can easily setup an auto-responder sequence that sends periodic emails once or twice a week. Once this sequence has been setup, it’s automated, and you don’t need to worry about it unless you’re adding more emails to the sequence.

Personalize Your Emails

Emails that have been personalized with the first & last name of the recipient in the subject lines have performed 6X better than others. There was an Experian study which analyze the data of 24 billion emails, and the results were amazing:

1. Even though the most common approach in sending mails is using the first name, mails with the last name had a slightly better open rate.
2. Mail subject lines with the first and last names had the highest open rates.

How do personalized emails make a difference?

There are many reasons however being able to cater directly to the person helps. Next, there is a psychological aspect which involves “special” or “personalized” treatment that has triumphed the way we interact in society. It’s the same factors which would determine the amount of the tip you’re going to leave for the waiter or waitress at a restaurant.  When emails are personalized, it’s a way of showing respect and builds comfort that translates into an email being opened by the recipient.

Image by CrazyEgg

Personalizing your email messages is very easy since it’s an option provided by ESP’s however make sure you add the right code into the message. Next, you need to ensure you collect the first & last name during opt-in. Without having this information, the “code” will not be able to pull out the right data.

Another good trick is to personalize the sender name changing it from the company name to your personal (sender) name. It’s creating a one-on-one platform for communicating which again builds a level of comfort between you and the recipient.

Another strategy is to use first & last name followed by a personal question. Since time, we have been programmed to respond to questions so would automatically want to respond to an email that throws out a question. Make them short and right to the point, for example,*full name*, How are you doing?

• *full name*, Your ready to get started?
• *full name*, Want to increase blog traffic?
• *full name*, Ready to make some money?
• *full name*, Looking for a new credit card?
• *full name*, Paying too much for insurance?

Provide ONLY The Best

One of the best ways to increase email open rates is by establishing a reputation of providing “high” quality content. Many times people will open emails and find low-quality content that will deter them from opening emails in the future. It’s not important to send your subscribers a follow-up each time content is published so take your time finding content which is useful and provides substance to your readers. This builds your reputation as someone whose emails are worth reading and can provide problem-solving information.

I’ve been part of several email lists which bombard me with useless information and after 2-3 follow-ups I’ll unsubscribe from the list. I’ve also been on email lists which send 2-3 follow-ups per month, and their content blew me away and I’m still on their list today. It’s important you understand why people joined your newsletter in the first place which is because they read useful information on your blog and are hoping you keep providing top-notch content. It’s important not to disappoint them so provide only the best to your subscribers, so they stay loyal subscribers and returning visitors.

Wrapping Things Up

Start implementing these strategies right away and analyze how they improve your open rates. Without a strategy to increase your low open rates, your going to lose out on the opportunity to convert your subscribers into loyal readers or sales. Over the next month, start analyzing data until you achieve an optimal open rate. The good news is, once you find something that works you simple need to scale to achieve the highest possible results.

How to Promote Your Blog Using Influencer Outreach

The world of blogging is filled with grey areas. Obviously, we all want to succeed and rise above the competition, but as bloggers, we’re also part of a larger community that works together. We’re neither mortal enemies nor best friends, more like mutual partners striving towards a similar goal. It’s the most respectable kind of competition there is, one that isn’t fueled by blood lust or greed, but a common goal and a desire to create mutually beneficial arrangements that allow us all to rise up.

What does stand as a strong aspect of the blogging community, is the fact that many people are influenced or inspired by other similar posts in their niche. By reaching out to these muses of the industry, connections can be made, more ideas can begin to develop, and what was once a no-name blog can now become something with help from influencers. This is only one of several ways to promote your blog’s content, but it’s a valuable and sometimes overlooked resource.

How Can I Make This Happen?

There was a time when we were all young, and our parents told us never to speak with strangers. That was of course, a time sensitive piece of advice. In today’s modern world of blogging, networking is paramount and influencer outreach is fueled by this concept. In addition to networking with other bloggers, you can also attract a nice following by putting together an email marketing plan, which could potentially reach influencers or contacts as well.
When writing your blog posts, consider the kinds of content that is easy to market and utilize for an outreach arrangement. Here are a few types that work well:

• Interviews
• Top 5, 10, or 20 Lists.
• Co-Authored Posts
• Case Studies
• Editorials or Opinion Pieces

The basic idea here is to utilize a form of communication like email, social media, or even an in-person meeting over coffee to discuss the possibility of another blogger promoting or sharing your post. We’re all in this together after all.

Here Are Some Key Strategies to Creating a Successful Outreach

The amount of information packed into the internet it astounding, and as bloggers, we’re all contributing to it on a daily basis. Everywhere you go, you can find information about all aspects of blogging, but I’m here to give you an easy to read rundown of some best practices and highly regarded strategies that I’ve found after a long expedition to the ends of the internet and back. This way, I can save you the trip and give you the information you need.
First of all, reaching out to influencers is only a piece of the overall puzzle. In order to truly maximize the effectiveness of your blog, you need to utilize multiple avenues of promotion. Reaching out to other bloggers that inspired you is a great way to get the shares flowing and the traffic moving, but if you really want to crank up the heat, I recommend you check out this post on On Blast Blog about effective ways to promote blog content. Variety is not only the spice of life, but it’s also the way to really add some fire to your blog.
One great example is Brian Dean’s “The Skyscraper Technique.” While I didn’t invent this technique, it does provide a very structured and efficient way of outlining possible influences with which to network. This technique also helps you build links within your blog posts, which brings traffic to your blog and makes you easier to find in search results. When you have this links established, having these influencers share your blog will maximize the benefits.

Finding Influencers and Creating Your Masterpiece

The first portion of this tactic involves doing a lot of research, but you can look at it like your shadowing the competition. Check out a highly successful blog in your niche and see what posts are performing the best on their social media profiles. Look at several of them like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and record the results you find. Notice which topics and posts are the most popular and focus on those specifically.
The next step is to create your own version of that content, and make it better. This can be done in a number of ways. A great example is taking a top 10 list and making your own that’s a top 100 countdown. People don’t see a massive list like that every day so they’re more likely to share it. Maybe you know a better, more modern angle on the topic? Use that, or structure it better with an improved design. Think outside of the box and seek to create something that turns something old into something new.
It’s not personal, it’s just business. From here, you can reach out to the author that inspired you to write your own post (your influencer as it were) and let them know that you linked your new post to theirs. Thank them for the inspiration and invite them to check it out. With luck, they’ll share it themselves and you’ll have gained a powerful resource in promoting your blog.

Other Strategies for Networking

Other great strategies include seeking out opportunities to contribute guest posts, which offer valuable opportunities to be heard through a larger website while also promoting your own blog. Consider also commenting on posts that you found interesting on other blogs. Spreading the word of your blog only requires you to be outgoing and willing to put your content out there for other bloggers to see and share.
Here’s a bonus tip for all you Blogging Tips readers out there: if you really want to thank your influencer and possibly create a lasting relationship with them, be sure to reciprocate when they share your content. Too often influencers push content out there on their own channels, but don’t receive the same level of courtesy. If you have someone promote or share your post, why not share theirs as well? It’s the nice thing to do, and it shows that both of you can benefit from the whole exchange, which makes them more likely to work with you again in the future.

Some Final Thoughts Before You Go

Blogging is more than just writing posts. It’s more than recording your thoughts, advice, or skills on paper. This profession, this hobby, whatever it is to you, it’s a way of life and each post has a little piece of us in it. If we respect the work that goes into each and every word, then we can truly understand the power of connecting with others who have chosen this path. Remember, if your influencer helps you, do the same for them. It’s simple advice, but crucial nonetheless.
Remember these tips, treat your influencers with respect and don’t waste their time, and they won’t waste yours. Working with them to promote your content and in turn you promoting theirs is the best way to take major steps forward in your blogging career and make valuable connections for the future. Don’t ever forget that we’re a community, and we’re all in this for the same reason: to inform, entertain, and inspire the world around us.

How to Protect Your Reputation with a Blog.

If you’ve ever worried about your online reputation and what people might find online surrounding your personal name or business, starting a blog is one of the best ways to combat these issues.

Here’s a clear cut plan to get started and have something live within the next hour.

1. Register a domain name related to your name or business
2. Setup hosting and install wordpress
3. Create five to seven quality posts for your site right away
4. Link to all of your social networking profiles
5. Share, promote and like these articles across all social platforms

Seem easy enough? It should, because the beginning phases of protecting your identity and reputation online are just that simple.
However, the method above simply isn’t enough to protect your name for the long run or even outrank anyone who might already rank for your business or personal name,.
Instead you will need to start monitoring your mentions online, seeing who is ranking for your name and what you can do about it.
I’ve mentioned other tools in the past like Google Alerts for setting up email notifications to see what is currently (and new) ranking in the search results for your desired terms, but there are others that you should consider as well.
InternetReputation.com for example has a free service where they send you updates with anything new that gets triggered based off your desired search terms. You can see an example of one of their emails below.

That darn golfer “Zach Johnson” is always causing a mess around my name in the search results

No matter whether you are looking for a new job or just wondering what appears in the results for your name, it’s always a good idea to have some form of tracking in place.

What to Look for in Terms of Negative Rankings

When looking at the search results, the most important thing for you to consider is what links are good and which are bad.
In the screenshot above you will see that the “Meet Zac Johnson of ZacJohnson.com | Ranktactics.com” link is considered “Possible Positive” — which it is.
In the “Search Engine View of Your Results” you will see a few other articles. As mentioned, “Zach Johnson”, the golfer, got triggered for my name a few times so none of these are of use to me… but they aren’t negative at the same time. If they were, they would be marked with that red x.

To improve your search results, you would want to increase backlinks to the good articles… in hopes of pushing down the negative ones.

How a Blog Helps Your Online Reputation

As mentioned in the beginning of the post, one of the best ways to combat the chances of a bad search listing is by creating a blog focused around your business or personal name. If you have a business name that is already well known and want to protect your personal name, throwing up a resume site under yourname.com, would be a great option. Once the resume site was created, you could then link to it from all of the major social networks and job sites out there. The link juice from these sites would then push your site higher in the rankings while pushing your competition down.
Blogs are great for protecting your online reputation because they rank well with Google, they are easy to setup and you can continually build up your content and brand power in the process. If you haven’t secured your personal or business name as a domain name, I highly recommend you do that immediately!

If you’d like to run a free reputation report on your name or business and get free email reports like the one above, you can fill out the form here.

Get That Perfect Picture For Your Blog, And Here’s How:

You’ve come across an article on how to make that awesome web design. It’s just the kind of article that you’ve been looking for, and its heading – “Web Design That Will Get You To The Top”- is what draws you into reading it! So without wasting much time, you click on the link and start reading.
And that’s when you realise that it’s going to be a long long read. The article just seems to go on and on (almost 3000 words!) with no respite for your weary eyes. Halfway through, you can’t take it anymore and you end up just closing the tab and moving on in search of something else, something better.
So what went wrong here? The heading was catchy, the content was fabulous. What happened?
Well, the answer is simple. The blog post didn’t have images! Yes, that’s right. Even if your content is great and your heading is awesome, if you don’t have great (and relevant) images to go with the copy, you’re losing out on a lot.
Arrest Your Audience With Your Images:

The world wide web has the power to showcase beautiful imagery (all thanks to the HD screens that these websites are viewed on), so why lose out on it? Viewers love to read, but they love to see as well. A well-written blog with arresting images will go a long way to attract as well as retain your viewers for a longer period of time.
So what exactly do we mean by arresting images? Even in a world where different people have different likes, there are some things that’s common to all – a beautiful sunset, the snow-clad mountains, and so on. To talk about something more practical, even if one prefers to drive a Porsche and the other a Ferrari, both will agree that both cars have good looks.
What we’re trying to say here is that there’s always some common ground, try and find out what that is and choose images for your posts accordingly.
Which Images Fit Best?So how do you go about choosing images? One thing to remember here is that every image generates some kind of emotion. A smiling face will make you feel happy while a starving child will evoke sadness. So think about what emotion you want to generate through your image in particular and your blog post in general.
The second thing to keep in mind is that the images you choose should reflect your personality. Let’s say there are two bloggers writing about the same topic, one chooses casual images (like cartoons/doodles) while the other uses more formal ones (like screenshots and flow charts). Neither of them are wrong. The kind of images you choose will entirely depend on what you want to be known online as.
Last, make your images relevant. Stick to the topic and choose images accordingly. Nothing distracts and irritates the readers more than a sprinkle of irrelevant images.
Please note that I said “sprinkle” and not “downpour”. In other words, DO NOT OVER-STUFF YOUR ARTICLE WITH IMAGES. Too many images on one article breaks its flow, something that’s not recommended. Be wise and insert images on strategic points (where you feel the readers will need a breather from the information download) without breaking the overall flow.
Negative Vs. Positive Images:
The other thing that you need to keep in mind is whether the image you’ve chosen evokes a positive or a negative emotion in the readers. In most of the cases, positive works. People are more likely to share blogs posts that have a positive feeling than those that evoke the guilty conscience or the “eeeew!” factor.
Having said that, it also depends on the kind of blog post you’re writing. It may be that some are written with the deliberate aim to evoke negativity. In that case, negative images are best suited.
Sourcing Your Images:
Knowing what kind of images to use is important, but being aware of where you can source them from is equally important. Most of you may have heard of (and been using) the popular sources like Google Images, Flickr, Instagram for your images, and they’re good. However, there are many not-so popular ones that are equally resourceful:

• Tumblr: You can search images via tags, or follow the trending ones.
• Google+: This does not have as many images as the others, but nonetheless it’s a good place to start your search.
• Reddit: Surf through Reddit, and you might just find the image that you’ve been looking for.
• Society6: It’s a place where artists, designers and illustrators hang out and share/sell images. You’ll find loads of options here.
• Quipsologies: It’s the one place to find out what’s trending in the graphical design industry, and gives you a whole lot of images to choose from.

Unless you want to sit with your Photoshop and spend hours creating images, sourcing is the next best option for you. One thing that you need to be careful here is the ownership rights of the images you plan to use. While some of them are free, some of them need attribution while still others you’ll need to buy. So depending on what your budget is, pick images accordingly.
Giving Final Touch-Ups:

Not all images that you source are fit for use immediately. Some of them need to be given final touches (maybe change the size of the image, or just lighten the shade a bit). Here are some softwares that will help you do exactly that:

• Picasa
• Jing

Each has its own set of unique features, but you’ll need to fiddle around to know what each one’s capable of. And yes, they’re free. So get your hands dirty!
Making Your Blog Image-Ready:
Having images on your blog is a great way to increase traffic to your website, but you also need to keep in mind that images are heavy files. So make sure you have signed up for a web hosting service that can handle the ‘weight’. You’ll need a plan which has enough bandwidth to ensure that your website loads faster across all browsers. So do your research and choose one that meets all your website requirements.
In Conclusion…
Just as you optimize your content for search engines, you can also optimize your images. There are many ways of doing it (like using alt text, reducing file size, including captions, etc.), but that’s a story for another day. For now, make sure that you have the right images from the right sources, and you’re bound to experience increased traffic to your site.
All the best!

How to Use Pre-selling to Get More Subscribers? The Technique that is Rarely Used

Building an email list.

It’s a hard topic, nearly the hardest in online marketing after closing the sale.
I’ve been posting about this topic for some time now, hope you’re enjoying these posts.
What I’m trying to do in this series is to cover some techniques that is rarely used by other marketers and it’s not mentioned a lot.
However, they’re really powerful and don’t take a lot of time to implement those in your posts.
If you’d like to keep up with these posts, make sure to check previous posts before you continue reading. You’ll find a couple of tips that you don’t use and you’ll get huge results, so make sure to check them:

• Why Email is Important to Build Sustainable Lucrative Business
• How to Get More Email Subscribers Overnight? Tip #1
• How to Boost Your Email Subscribers? Tip #2
• How to Boost Your Email Subscribers? Tip #3
• The most important tip to make your incentive drive more subscribers
• How to Use the Power of Scarcity to Increase Your Email Subscribers

What is pre-selling?

When you go to a website and read great content and then you’re asked to do an action (like subscribing to an email list), that’s pre-selling.
When you go to a page use a tool, like it and then you’re asked to buy it, that’s pre-selling.
Got the idea? Pre-selling is actually what you do to try to convince the prospect to take an action, so when you ask him to take it, he’ll be pumped to take that action.
The question now is…

How to Pre-sell your readers to subscribe?

There are many ways to pre-sell your readers to subscribe. One of these techniques are mentioned above is to share insanely awesome content that makes it no-brainer not to subscribe to your blog.
Another way, which is really effective, is to create a page specifically to ask visitors to subscribe to your blog.
Your job now is to send visitors to this page.
How?

1. Link to it in the navigation bar
2. Use the scroll-box which appears at the bottom of the page as a pre-sell to this page, awesome right?
3. Use the WWSGD plugin. More on this below.

The last one is the best of those.
The plugin, What would Seth Godin do, could make you wonders. You could use it to display a message box for new visitors to check your pre-sell page. Yes, pre-selling to pre-selling page.

It’s your time to take action:

Pre-selling is one of those techniques that could be very powerful when done right, but it could make you more harm, if you don’t do it right.
I’ve shown you some of the ways to use pre-selling. Make sure to test them and keep testing with words and all this stuff.
But the most important thing is to take action.
What do you think about this technique? Do you’ve any other ideas on how to apply it?

Link Building: A Necessary Ingredient for Your Blog

The value of links for every blog post should never be underestimated. Despite the quality of content in your blog that could easily prompt you to wonder why the search engines would not just find your blog without necessarily undertaking any optimization efforts, the engines will still require your help to make them help you in return.

You need a highway or some form of boulevard for your ride through the city from one end to the other. Search engines need the links to trace their way from one web page to another.
Admittedly links are not the only thing about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However they are recognized by search experts as being core in determining what pages are more popular and important and this eventually determines the popping of these pages on search engine results.
A great deal of the search engines’ algorithms are attributed to link-based factors. They help the engines in establishing metrics such as trustworthiness of a page, its authority and cases of spam in addition to their analysis of page popularity.

Understanding The ‘Link’

There are a variety of link types and it is important to get the distinction in your link building efforts. The moment you create a website or a blog, that site automatically generates a link that could be used by any other pages or sites that would wish to interact with your content.
As such, all you need to utilize the power of this form of link is a powerful content that others will want. This kind is known as natural editorial link and appears naturally to other interacting sites or pages. They do not necessarily require any specific action in the SEO efforts.
Manual or outreach linkbuilding on the other hand entails creating of links by sending out emails to bloggers for link submission and submitting websites to targeted directories. You could as well pay for entries of any kind.
In this process you must appeal to the link target as to why and how creating the link is in their best interest or why such a process is worth undertaking. You may have to fill out forms for submissions to given website award programs or other similar procedures to earn qualification for your site’s inclusion in the public set up.
Aside from that, there are Self-Created links that are non-editorial in nature. Various websites all over the Internet have a provision for visitors to create links with them via forum signatures, guest book signings, and user profiles or through blog comments.
Such links create substantial impact for SEOs though the value they offer is considerably the lowest among the other types of links. Search engines generally cheapen such links and tend to penalize websites that depend on pursuit of these kinds of links.

Essential Considerations In Link Building

A link is only worthy if it plays to its purpose in your SEO efforts. A link that will work for your blog must take into consideration a number of the attributes of a link that a search engine will look for.

• The Anchor Text

Building a successful link requires a concise text that has all the relevance needed for the target page. This anchor text is one of the most crucial signals used by the various engines in their search rankings. The anchor text which refers to the visible words or characters displayed by hyperlinks when linking to another web content or location will indicate to the search engine that the particular site targeted is being considered relevant by the present site for the benefit of their users.
In the event that several links point to a page with the right selection of keywords then that particular page stands a high chance of ranking fine for the targeted group of texts or phrase in that anchor text.
This means that it would be most advisable when building links to approach as many bloggers as possible for manual outreach links that will redirect traffic to your blog. This will in turn optimize the ranking of your blog when search engines crawl through the web in search of needed content.

• Local Popularity Consideration

Links that are generated from sites that have content surrounding or within a particular topic-specific community suffice more as compared to those from general or out-of-the-topic sites when it comes to search engine activity.
Search Engine Optimization for your blog by utilizing links thus should utilize an optimum number of inbound linking from sites that share the same category of content or topic.

• Neighborhood of the link

Chances are that if you link to a site or page that has content deemed to be spam by the search engines then your site too is likely to be spammed. The common trend is that links go both directions and search engines know about this.
Spam sites are linked often to each other and one site is likely to have several other similar sites linked to it. As such, selecting the sites you link your blog with should be done with a level of caution. The same degree of caution should apply when you seeking the sites to receive links from.

• FreshRank

Search engines tend to favour fresh new links as compared to those that have been in use for long. This way sites and pages that appear at the top of the list of results by search engines may not remain the same over time as the links that redirect traffic to them lose strength with time. It is thus important to keep seeking and earning additional links to keep your blog marketable.

How to add an image logo on the title of your blog

Title is an important part of blogger. By twisting some simple codes on your template you can add an image such as your company logo, graphic art, pen, globe or any type of images to the post titles of your blog. You can also display animated gif images (like this-) on the post title. This image will appear on all of your future Blog post titles after applying this.

Step by step guide
1.Create your image, ensure that your image is sized suitably so that it will fit snugly beside the post title text.
2. Upload your image on Blogger Post or any Image Hosting Website (Photobucket, Flickr, Tinypic and Picassa ). Copy the URL of the image, and paste somewhere in notepad.
3.Go to Blogger dashboard. Template | Edit HTML.
4.Find the following lines of code:

<b:includable id='post' var='post'> <div class='post hentry'> <a expr:name='data:post.id'/> <b:if cond='data:post.title'> <h3 class='post-title entry-title'> <b:if cond='data:post.link'> <a expr:href='data:post.link'><data:post.title/></a> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:post.url'> <b:if cond='data:blog.url != data:post.url'> <a expr:href='data:post.url'><data:post.title/></a> <b:else/> <data:post.title/> </b:if> <b:else/> <data:post.title/> </b:if> </b:if> </h3> </b:if>

If you don find entire code together try Ctrl+F and <data:post.title/>

5. Delete the above code and paste the following instead of it.

<b:includable id='post' var='post'> <div class='post hentry'> <a expr:name='data:post.id'/> <b:if cond='data:post.title'> <table><tr> <td class='ssybyposttitle'> <img src='YOUR_IMAGE_URL'/></td> <td><h3 class='post-title entry-title'> <b:if cond='data:post.link'> <a expr:href='data:post.link'><data:post.title/></a> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:post.url'> <b:if cond='data:blog.url != data:post.url'> <a expr:href='data:post.url'><data:post.title/></a> <b:else/> <data:post.title/> </b:if> <b:else/> <data:post.title/> </b:if> </b:if> </h3> </td> </tr></table> <style> h3.post-title { margin: 0px !important; } </style> </b:if>

6. Just replace "YOUR_IMAGE_URL" with the URL of the your desired Image you prepared .
7.Save template, You are done.