3 Ways To Get Your Blog Off To A Flying Start
Blogging is such a powerful marketing tool, yet the sad truth is, it’s such an underutilized tool in the online world, often being reduced to as a tool just for affiliate marketers or, get rich quick AdSense schemes.
Whilst it’s true that there are thousands of blogs created daily, the majority of those blogs never see the light of day … in other words, they remain in the development stage or, “under construction.”
I’m sure most people ask the same question I did when my first blog was built … “I have my blog … now what?”
If this has been your experience or, you’ve taken off but you’re about to crash land, I want to offer you 3 things you can do to start building credibility through your blog, starting today.
1. Write your first 5 blog posts.
In fact, do this even if you’ve already started adding posts to your site.
Why five?
It will help build your confidence and begin the all important process of populating your blog. And whether you’ve already starting populating your blog or not, I want you to write these next five articles with these 3 key elements about your prospect in mind:
- What are my prospects goals?
- What are my prospects fears?
- What are the problems that my prospect is facing and, how can you solve their problem
Another alternative is to consider the theme of your site, say weight loss and then pick 5 sub themes that you could speak about on the topic of weight loss. Once you have your 5 themes, get 5 sheets of paper and write 1 sub theme on each sheet of paper.
Under each sub theme write 3 questions that you know people who are struggling with weight loss will want to know or have asked you in the past and then, answer the questions. Write a sentence or two, add a beginning and the end (just like at School) and there, you have your first 5 blog posts.
2. Optimize your blog.
Now you’ve written your first 5 blog posts, you want to ensure that they are found by your potential prospects and, picked up by the search engine spiders. So, before you post them you’ll need to optimize both your blog and your blog posts.
The first thing to do, is change the default permalink to either a custom one if you know what you’re doing but if not, change it to the name and date based setting.
Next, ensure your blog title includes your sites keyword. If your site is about weight loss, ensure the keyword weight loss is included in your blog’s title. I also suggest you include the keyword in the tagline but, it’s not essential.
If your theme doesn’t have it’s own SEO settings, I highly recommend that you use the All-In-One SEO WordPress plugin.
Now Optimize Your Posts.
Whilst you’ve probably heard a lot about SEO and how important it is to use keywords all over the place on your post, I should warn you that keyword stuffing will get you into more trouble than it’s worth and you will build far more credibilty if you write for your human readers and not the search engine spiders. Do put the keyword in your title and, in the body of your post if possible and, if it flows well, since people will find you using search terms (keywords) in the search engines.
It’s now time to post your articles but, rather than post all five articles at once, either manually post them say every two days or, use the auto post facility found in the WordPress dashboard. Apologies for those using any other platform, but I’m definately an evangelist for WordPress.
3. Promote your blog
I’ve been asked to do indepth SEO and analysis for people’s static websites and I’m still amazed that although I tell them to save their money and start a blog or use other methods of traffic generation, that they still insist on “needing” SEO services.
It seems their determination comes from a fear of losing out if SEO isn’t a part of their marketing strategy. Well my theory of SEO is very simple …
“Get Found Online!”
And, you can do this via a multitude of ways including web 2.0 promotion strategies such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Squidoo and Digg. You should also add your blog to technorati – the biggest blog directory online – submit articles to article directories, create 3 minute video clips with nuggets of information, podcasting, forums and, the list goes on.
If you focus on just doing these three steps, keep adding posts to your blog and, distributing good quality content to the various online services, I guarantee you’ll start building momentum, your confidence will soar and pretty soon people will start referring to you as someone with authority in your market.
Until next time,
Your Blog is Not A Business
I just wrote a blog post over at TrishJonesDotcom but, I feel it’s so important that I thought I’d post it here too.
Today, I came across a post at Problogger about poor bloggers focusing too much on blog posts and the author of the blog post, David Risley outlined this in a way I suppose I’ve been finding difficult to articulate to my clients.
First of all, content is STILL important!
The deeper question David asks though is for people to consider what they are selling since, blogs are not businesses.
Most of my work is with small business owners and entrepreneurs who have an existing business and they want to add a blog to their marketing mix.
However, I am sometimes disappointed that these offline business owners, some of whom have brick and mortar businesses, start up online and expect to have a solid business in a matter of days with as little content as they can get away with and, no other online strategies to sell their products or services online.
So, the good news is that these people do already have something to sell.
But, there is sometimes a misunderstanding of the business elements that go on behind the scenes and unfortunately, some of my clients come to me after they’ve been privy to some of the hype about how blogging can make you big bucks. So even when you explain that the content is just the beginning, it’s hard for them to grasp. And yet, if for many of them, they are unique in their market because none of their competitors have a website or blog let alone a full blown online business.
Check out David Risley’s post over at Problogger, it’s well worth the read and I think for many, it will put blogs and blogging into perspective.
Until next time,
Why Am I Getting "Category Not Updated" Message?
Isn’t it just so frustrating when you go to create a new category or update one and you get a message saying “Category not updated.”
Initially it was put down to a bug within WordPress 2.5 but, I can assure you it isn’t. If you receive the “Category not updated” error message, you’ll want to check out these simple fixes:
- Ensure you don’t have a blog post or page with the same title slug as the category you’re trying to create
- Check that you don’t already have a post tag assigned to a post with the same named slug
For those of you who may not know what a slug is, in a post or page, it’s called a permalink but in simple terms, it’s the link to the post, page, category or tag and looks something like this …. www.yourdomain.com/this-is-the-slug … and yes, the slug has dashes in the link.
To check whether you have a post tag with the same name, go to Posts and then Post Tags. There you will see all of the post tags you’ve used within your blog posts. If you find you have a duplicate name, now is the time to choose. Is it more important to use the name for the tag, category or blog post title.
Interestingly, if you create the category before you create a tag with the same slug, WordPress will allow it. The issue is if you try to create the category later on or, modify an existing category.
Sure hope this helps someone. If I get enough “confused” readers, I may do a video explaining the reasons you might get a “category not updated” error message, since I feel your pain! 
Patience And Passion Builds A Business
Gary Vaynerchuk is seemingly as frustrated as I am with people who want to make money online but want to avoid hard work.
I insist, if anyone finds that five page Best Seller book, please send it to me. Then and only then will I accept that it’s “possible” to build a list and make money with a blog which has five blog posts on it.
Can You Make More Money Marketing To Fewer People?
Some months ago, John Reese posted an interesting article on his blog, where he asked the question, ”can you make more money by marketing to fewer people?” He goes on to explain why this is the best way to market your products and services online.
I won’t repeat his full post here because you can read it at his blog.
The logic behind what he says will still be ignored by the majority who market online
Why? Because in their view, the bigger the market, the more sales they are likely to make. But, when I see this kind of marketing, it signals “ameteur” all over the site and sadly, this same mistake is made by experienced marketers as well as newbies too.
You take the weight loss industry, a target market John Reese mentions in his blog post, in 2007, Marketdata, Inc., stated that the annual total spent on weight-loss products and services reached $58 billion, a clear indication that this is a big and growing market. If you read some of the articles about starting up a new business online, you’ll probably read things like “weight-loss is not a target market and neither is Internet Marketing.”
Well, I say these writers have a point, especially if you want to focus on organic traffic to get more sales. But, by targeting a smaller segment of that marketing, you could have yourself a winning online business.
Take Lisa over at Flat Stomach Exercises, whilst her site isn’t strictly about weight-loss, she has captured a segment of the weight-loss market … those who want to get rid of the tummy bulge. Most people understand that to lose tummy bulge, you need a combination of a sensible diet (eating habit rather than rabit food and low fat nonsense!) and exercise. Lisa combines the two and has a #1 spot in Google for the term “flat stomach exercies.” Now she can talk weight loss to these people!
I hope you’re getting a picture of what I’m trying to hightlight here.
Had Lisa attempted to go for the weight loss market, her site is unlikely to have made it to the #1 position in Google or anywhere near the first page.
When newbies and experienced marketers alike get less than satisfactory results in the search results, they give up. Fortunately for some of us, we listened to the likes of John Reese and instead of running from a particular market, we simply targeted a smaller segment within that market and by doing this, we can now shout “Bingo!” Wow, and I didn’t even gamble.
Seriously now, if you identify yourself in this or John Reese’s post, dare to be different than 95% of the market and go for a smaller niche or segment. This might be all you need to recession-proof your business and save it from ruin.
How To Make Viral Videos
In 2009, the big thing online was about getting your videos on YouTube or Google Video but in my view, 2010 and beyond will demand much more than creating a video or even putting it up on video sharing sites.
In 2010 and beyond, if you want to be noticed, you’re going to have to make more noise! In other words, your videos are going to have to stand out and be heard as well as seen.
If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to make your videos viral.
To be viral, your video has to be different – short (less than 3 minutes is best and 15 to 30 seconds even better). If relevant, make your videos funny, unique, interesting and, I would add to this, inspiring. In other words, you have to engage your audience enough that they consider your video worthy of sharing with their friends via email, social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook or even on their own blog.
Avoid making outright ads though. I have a few of these and I can tell you from experience, they do not get as many clicks as the other videos I make. Also, if you want to share your videos on as many sites as possible, you really ought to take heed to this advice since some video sharing sites, free or paid, will not accept videos that are just outright ads. Remember, people are searching for information and not sales pitches.
If you want to solicit comments on your video, engage your audience by having a conversation with yourself and asking people what they think. You’ll be amazed at how people respond to being asked to participate. That said, though, I would moderate my comments because some people are just mean online and there is always one whose aim is to put down other people’s videos in order to promote their own.
And remember to add some interesting Tags to your video and, spice up the thumbnail. YouTube for example creates a default thumbnail, but you can go into your video profile page and change it. I admit that sometimes I’m lazy and just don’t bother, but a picture paints a thousand words and often people are more attracted to the images than they are the title. But whilst we’re on the subject of the title, optimize it! Use relevant keywords but make the title catchy.
You can literally be duped into spending thousands of dollars learning how to make the most of video marketing online, but here’s a resource that I highly recommend if you want to capture a bigger share of the YouTube Traffic … YouTube Secret Weapon by Julie Perry and Paul Colligan.
I literally spent hours one evening looking for a good reasource on how to optimize my video marketing campaigns online and was about to go to bed disappointed because the only courses I could find were about $2,000, when someone on Twitter (Zeb Olsen), put out a tweet about YouTube Secret Weapon. After reading the sales letter, I didn’t waste any time to purchase and I would say this course sits in the top 5 courses I purchased in 2009.
Video marketing is cheap, it’s quick and, the results are fast. With sites such as SlideShare and Animoto, you don’t even have to purchase video cameras or expensive screen capture software if you don’t want to. It’s true, I have it all but I’ve been collecting since about 2005 when I first purchased Camtasia screen capture software, but for right now, video marketing is my top method for getting traffic besides blogging. But it’s also true, I like to talk!
Check out Julie Perry and Paul Colligan’s YouTube Secret Weapon course and make it your aim in 2010 to do more than make videos and upload them to video sharing sites … make viral videos.
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Take Out One Giant At A Time in 2010…
Happy New Year to my friends in Honk Kong and anywhere else in the world that have already celebrated the start of 2010.
I’m sure you’ve had all of the emails suggesting you buy this, that and the other before 2010 if you want to have the best year ever but this isn’t one of those blog posts.
I just want to encourage you to “take out,” meaning “kill” one giant at a time in 2010.
It’s fine to buy the mega expensive courses and kid yourself that you’re going to nail this Internet Business thing in 2010, but let me take some of the financial burden away from you … “decide which giant you’re going to kill first and then go for it with focused energy.”
Yes, I’m talking about being a “Giant Slayer” in 2010 and if the tools and services you’re going to buy are not going to help towards killing that giant, leave it where it is!
At the end of 2006, I asked myself, “who do you want to be known as, Trish?” I looked at people like Alex Mandossian who was known for Teleseminars and direct response marketing, Craig Pirrine, list building etc and I realized that what I’d been doing was dabbling and getting nowhere. At the time, I was building blogs for friends and getting clients by recommendation but blogging just didn’t seem “sexy” enough … I wanted to be like one of the big guys with Internet Marketing Muscle.
Anyway, by the end of 2006, I came to my senses and decided to build my consulting business around blogging and I was amazed how doors just started flying open. I even ended up doing some work with Alex Mandossian which, I would never have dreamed possible.
At the end of 2007, I decided that we had to get more of our finances in order and my husband and I focused on debt managment like credit was going out of fashion. Our focus on being out of debt has moved us forward in leaps compared to the situation we were in.
And this year … I was determined that my husband would be in good health. On Christmas day, my husband sat down and ate Christmas dinner with my loud family after months of running away from even myself and our daughter because of the loud ringing in his ears. I had made a declaration at the start of 2009 that he would not go into 2010 with this ailment. For those believers in Christ, you can watch the video on my Getting Maximum Results site once it’s up.
I don’t care how many emails you’ve received today telling you it’s the final deadline before that great discount is removed, if you don’t decide to slay a giant in 2010 with focused energy, you’ll get to the end of it and wonder where the year has gone and why you have such a big hole in your bank account with nothing to show for it.
I’m not discouraging you from buying, but if you do, ensure the kit includes the catapult and the stones that will take off that giant’s head! That’s all it took for David … He picked up five stones but he only needed one! Why? As far as David was concerned, that giant’s head was his even before he swung that first stone.
If you know the story of David and Golliath in the Bible, you’ll know that once David took out the giant, the Philistine army who had plenty of mouth when their leader was in charge dispersed in fear. So, when you take out one giant, you’ll find a whole load of other issues come tumbling down too.
Not much of a blogging blog post today folks, but I hope it’s encouraged you to become a Giant Slayer in 2010.
Blessings,
Write Better Blog Posts
One of the questions I’m frequently asked is “how do I write a blog post so it gets noticed?”
The first thing to consider is that when you are writing your blog posts, you have to please both the search engine spiders as well as your human visitors, but despite what you may have heard, Google for example is much more interested in you making your articles readable to your readers. There are however easy ways of creating great blog posts so you please both.
The second thing to consider is that no matter how beautifully your blog posts are written – they could sound like prose from Shakespeare – if they are devoid of keywords, you’ll find it harder to get free search engine traffic. The search engines aim to serve up the most relevant information to searchers on the internet and most people use keywords intentionally or unintentionally when searching but if there is no keywords either in your article or an anchor text link to your article with the relevant keyword, it’s going to be impossible to find you.
You do also want to add keywords to your posts without what is called keyword stuffing, making your article look and sound artificial.
For now though, let’s look at the 5 ways in which you can ensure you write better blog posts to please both the search engine spiders and your human readers:
- Try and include the keyword in your title. This truly is important because this is the first thing the search engine spiders see when they come to view your web page – and each blog post is a separate web page to the search engine spiders. If using the keywords in the title say using WordPress, you can use the All in One SEO plugin, which will give you the option of writing a more appealing title for your human readers and then using a manual override for the search engines.
- Use keywords in your headlines that are relevant to your topic. It will help the search engines find your article and encourage potential readers to click on the link to your post.
- Inject some human life and personality into your blog posts. I read some blog posts and feel as if I’m reading a dissertation or thesis. If you write as though you are addressing one specific person, may be a friend, then your writing is likely to flow better and sound as though you really are interested in writing about the chosen topic. And it’s okay to use “I” instead of “WE” MBA’ers!
Someone asked me this question a few days ago … “should I write in the first or third person?” And, my answer is always going to be first person when writing blog posts but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct answer, I just prefer both reading and writing in the first person because it brings authenticity which is hard to deliver when writing in the third person.
- Use relevant links in your blog posts and where possible, link your keywords – which could be an actual word or phrase.
- Break your blog article into sub headings and/or bulleted lists. This really does help the reader skim if they prefer but also removes what can feel like an arduous task out of reading longer posts.
Hope you found this list useful,
Enhance Your Text Editor: Make Writing Better Blog Posts Easier
If you’re using the standard text editor that comes with WordPress, it really might be time for you to consider an upgrade.
It’s cheap, in fact free and, it will help you style your blog posts in a way that is appealing to your readers. With this text editor, you can change the color, style, and size of the font and, it will enable you to add tables to your blog posts without having to code it.
I remember when WordPress upgraded to 2.5 and those of us using Semiologic at the time were so disgruntled because the we had been spoilt with a text editor that functioned in similar ways to Microsoft Word. Other WordPress users weren’t so fortunate but the upgrade to WordPress 2.5 was supposed to be an enhancement to the text editor but for us Semiologic users, we felt as though we had been relegated to the third division especially when I spent about an hour one day, hand coding a table my client wanted adding to their blog. Such a frustrating waste of time.
Fortunately, I soon discoverd the TinyMCE Advance Text Editor plugin which is now widely used by WordPress bloggers and I love it because it’s functional.
Watch this video to find out how to use the plugin and, how to install it if, you’re not familiar with adding FTP.
Working From Home in 2010?
… And, I called into a radio show for the first time ever to speak about my experience of working from home!
I never listen to radio these days, but the stereo in my car isn’t working at the moment and this morning as I tuned into Radio Bristol, I heard Graham Torrington talk about the new Home Business Report that was released today and he got my attention.
I live in Bristol, UK and we are apparently second only to London in the number of people running their business from home, as people are moving away from the workplace for better work-life balance and to cut costs during the recession.
Whilst it wasn’t news to me to hear that there was a rise in the number of work from home businesses, I was shocked at the figures:
- In the UK, of the 4.5 million small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK, more than 2.1 million of them are home-based businesses
- Home-based businesses have a combined turnover of over £364 billion?
- Over 60% of new businesses are started at home whilst people are working a 9-5 job
- 5M people work from home in the UK
One of the freelancers at Radio Bristol said how much he noticed the increased number of people in the supermarkets during the day and often wondered “don’t these people work?” Well now he knows … many of them work from home.
But the question that was really being asked was “is 9 to 5 outdated and should companies be more flexible?”
I think the issue for many people lies not so much in their job being 9 to 5 but what happens before and after and more importantly, during the 9 to 5 period.
People have to take into account commuting time, taking their children to School, daycare or wherever, collecting them at the end of the day, petrol costs and, many other things I’ve not listed. But my biggest concern for why I HAD to get out of the corporate world (and I was a manager) was what I will call the “potential integrity gap” that was missing for me.
Employers tell you what skills they expect you to have for a job and, they are not interested in any other skills or potential that could effectively be useful. The attitude is very much, “don’t show me it until we ask to see it” kind of thing. And in my view, this is the difference between being passionate about your job and going through the motions of your job.
I worked for Direct Line Insurance in the claims department many years ago and when I started, it was a young dynamic company and there was room for creativity and personality input. By the time I left some 8 years later, it felt as though even the way you said “Good Morning” was scripted. I once heard one of the managers challenge a member of staff for giving out the wrong information and the staff member said “I thought …” to which the manager shouted across the floor, “you’re not paid to think!”
And I could go on about a friend of mine now, a qualified solicitor (lawyer) working for a company in Bristol who treat their staff – qualified, trained or otherwise – like battery hens … “we put in the system and you must produce.” And by system, I’m talking about call centre systems where everything you say and do is managed by stats and you need no personality or skill to be a manager any longer because all you do is look at the stats and give a scripted response to productivity … “your call stats are low.”
But I digress.
Working from home can be hard work, especially initially when you’re not quite sure exactly what you want to do. And often both family and friends see you working from home as an opportunity to call and chat or invite you out to lunch for hours on end and they will forget that you are “‘Working” from home and so, it’s up to you to remind them!
It is however very rewarding and, if you’re passionate about what you do, it really is the motivator that get’s you out of bed in the morning and keeps you going with a task even when you hit roadblocks.
So, if working from home is something you’re serious about doing, don’t let the hard work element put you off. Do your research, speak to people who already own a business and doing it successfully and then start small, but start, even if it means being one of the 5 to 9 workers as they are now called … those who work on their home based business after working hours.
We’re almost into 2010, and the last thing you want, is to let another year go by without you taking some major steps towards your dream of running your own home business.
I want to challenge you to go for it and, if you’re still unsure where to start, grab a copy of Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek
All the best in your new ventures,
