6 Actionable Tips to Really Improve Your Blog in 2012

Enough of the quasi-motivating “New Year posts” which promise you the world but show you no actions to take.

This post is just gonna give you the facts; no B.S. about “taking charge” of your blog’s success, just stuff you need to get done to rock it in 2012.

So, how about you stop reading the intro and start taking notes, and after that, don’t go check Twitter, start implementing them right now!

1.) Take Your Email List Seriously

It’s time to start taking your email list seriously, because building it is the “do or die” component of your blog that simply cannot be ignored  ;-) .

By the way, if you haven’t started an email list for your blog, I can personally call you up and yell at you for motivation if needed .

First things first, nailing the right spots for opt-in forms.

There are 3 main spots where opt-in forms are essential and can really be considered not optional, and they are:

1. Sidebar opt-in
2. End of post opt-in
3. Opt-ins on important pages (about me, etc.)

Two “bonus” places I would greatly consider are the above the fold feature box (like I have on my site) and the dedicated subscription page (which also lists other ways to subscribe, such as via RSS).

The other two things you need to do are:

1. Try new email collection techniques
2. Make your newsletter worth subscribing too

As for the second, you need to start creating newsletter exclusive content just for subscribers, in the form of free guides hosted on your site or elsewhere (such as Scribd) or just with plain text emails that provide a lot of value.

Your email list is everything, time to make it count.

2.) Branch Out to New Content Mediums

Time to stop with the boring text posts all the time.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the classic blog article (you’re reading one now!), but in 2012 you need to embrace the change in how people interact with content, and that means getting involved with audio and video.

This is the year where you need to start “Being Everywhere”, and this starts with learning the benefits of using video and also how to start a podcast.

I wrote a post hear on DBT specifically about how to increase your blog traffic with SlideShare, and I have a quick update: I was able to make the SlideShare homepage, get over 18,000+ views on my presentation, and attract over 2000 unique visitors to my blog!

But I’m not hear to talk about my successes, I’m here to prove a point: new content mediums work, and you are missing out on tons of traffic if you stick to your regular old text posts.
It’s time to start engaging in:

1. Video
2. Podcasts
3. Slideshows
4. Infographics
5. Unique images
6. PDF & documents (guides)
7. Webinars

All of these forms of content not only help you stand out, they will also help you attract more visitors and become known as the blogger who dominants all content forms in your niche.

3.) Start Guest Blogging With Purpose

No more of the “spray and pray” strategy of guest blogging.

In my post on creating a funnel with your guest posts, I talk about how a blind guest post (with no real purpose), while it might bring over some traffic/subscribers, is far from being as effective as a guest post that relies on “priming” readers for something on your blog.

Your goal as a guest blogger should be as follows:

1. Create amazing content (that’s a given, “price of admission” as it were)
2. Prime readers for something on your site (we’ll get into that in a minute)
3. Stand out from other guest bloggers

We’re not going to go over how to create awesome content, there’s plenty of info on that.

As for priming readers, as I stated in my post above, you need to write a guest post that does one of the following things:

• Relates to your unique selling proposition
• Relates to your opt-in freebie (e-Book or otherwise)
• Relates to whatever you are selling

The reason you need to do this is because people who have read your post all the way through will be interested in learning more (since they obviously enjoyed the topic of your post).

This is why ‘priming’ work so well, after reading an article of yours about “taxes” on a personal development site, they head over to your blog where you write about taxes and, guess what, have a free e-Book on how to get your taxes done fast.

They’ve been primed by the guest post to your specific topic/niche, and now your blog caters to that topic.

I guarantee you’ll see more sign-ups to your list, try it out and if it doesn’t work, I encourage you to visit my blog and leave me an angry comment

4.) Stop Wasting Time on Social Media.

Okay, before you draw out the fire and pitchforks, hear me out…

As tremendous of a resource as social media can be for creating connections, it pales in comparison when it comes to networking influential people in your niche.

That’s right, email is the greatest “social network” of all.

Staying in touch with people who blog about the same or similar topics as you as the obvious benefit that they will likely support your new posts a projects, sharing them to a whole new audience for you.

Reciprocation generally leads to people willing to help you out back, this is where social media can come in handy (sharing the work of others on Twitter will usually lead to them doing the same).

However, email is where all of the magic happens: guest post submissions, project discussions, debates & private chats, interviews, collaborations, all of the interesting things about your business are going down via email, with social media as the ever present “face” or icebreaker for new contacts & business relationships.

Email is also how you can “chase” traffic rather than sitting around and waiting for it: don’t spam, but for new posts that really push buttons, shoot an email to a few influential people who might be interested in your content, and ask them kindly if they would mind sharing it to their audience (stating plainly that you think their readers would enjoy it).

You’d be surprised at how much a polite email can get done when sent to the right people.

5.) Optimize Your Site Design & Speed

If you recall from this research study on web design, it’s scary how much your site design can effect people’s perception of the quality of your content (and how trustworthy you are)… before they even read any of it!

Did you also know that you only have an average of a few seconds (that’s single digits) to capture someone’s attention before they “bounce” off of your site?

Point is: site design and site speed matter, a lot, and in 2012 it’s time for you to start taking them seriously.
When it comes to site design, you need to think about the end goal of your site: are you trying to get email subscribers? Are you trying to get affiliate sales? Are you hoping people will buy your products?

If you are the typical blog, you are going to want to focus on building your list, and if that’s the case, you need to focus on having a clean, uncluttered site with plenty of reading room and an emphasis on opt-in forms.

Not those annoying opt-in forms that won’t go away when clicked, but natural forms at prime locations, as discussed in section #1.

You are also going to want an easy to navigate site: don’t have a ton of options on your navigation menu, don’t have a search field unless absolutely necessary, and don’t include useless links in your sidebar and other sections of your site (example: get rid of links to categories under your post’s description).

When it comes to speeding up a WordPress blog, there are a few things that will always apply to your site’s speed:

1. Choose a good host (cheap is fine at first, but good hosting matters if you want to grow)
2. Keep your homepage simple and clean (KISS – Keep it simple, stupid!)
3. Optimize images automatically with WP SmushIt
4. Optimize your database with WP-Optimize
5. Consider using a plugin that utilizes LazyLoad
6. Pick a good CDN service and host files there (I suggest MaxCDN)
7. Turn off non-essentials (like pingbacks/trackbacks, default Gravatar images, deleting useless plugins, etc.)
8. [Advanced] Replace PHP with static HTML where you are able (check out this great post on how to do just that)

Lastly, if you are running a WordPress site without running a caching plugin, you are doing things wrong, so make sure you have either WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache installed right this instant! (I like W3 better, and integrated with CloudFlare)

6.) Create Content With Deliberate Practice

In a recent post of mine of the psychology behind a successful blog, I noted a research study that aimed to address why certain violinists went on to become world reknowned musicans, and why others didn’t (even though they were still talented at the violin).

Their findings?

It was due to the amount of deliberate practice that the world class students engaged in, not the amount of practice.

The thing was, the world class students had a tendency to practice in long, deliberate sessions were they worked on addressing their weakpoints and refining their strong points, ie, practice with a purpose.
This is akin to doing drills in athletics, rather than just “shooting the ball around”.

If you hope to create a blog that gets noticed and makes a difference, you need to take on this mindset when you write.

Write for your blog (and for your guest posts) when you really have time to sit and focus, when you have time to concentrate on creating a post that accomplishes what you set out to do from the very beginning, no matter how many edits and rewrites it takes to do it.

A lackluster effort will produce lackluster results, so if you want to become known for having word-class content, practice like a world-class blogger.

Gregory Ciotti writes about WordPress and online marketing at Sparring Mind (make sure to check it out). He also writers a weekly column for Daily Blog Tips.

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How I Got Two Job Offers and a $200-an-Hour Consulting Gig from Blogging

This guest post was written by Joe Bunting of The Write Practice.

So you started blogging to make some money. Adsense, advertising, and affiliate sales looked like a pretty good way to make a living. You thought you could make money while you slept at night.

Sounded good at the time, right?

But where’s the money?

You set up your Adsense account but you’ve only got pennies trickling in. No one wants to buy your banner ads. And the only affiliate sales you’ve landed are a few Amazon books that earned you $1.13. You’ve slaved on your blog for months, years even, working for a pittance. You thought it was going to be easy making money online.

Now you’re wondering if you wasted your time.

This is where I was a few months ago. And then something happened that changed my blogging strategy forever. Someone offered me a job.

Pretend you’re an employer, a marketing firm with 100 employees, and you’re looking to hire the 101st.
Who are you going to choose? All the candidates look the same: similar educationa; backgrounds, similar experience. But one of them has a blog with 500 subscribers, a Twitter account with 1,000 followers, and is already an expert with Google+. The other candidates don’t. Who are you going to hire?

Here is a strange but true thing I heard an actual employer say:

• “The blog is the new resume.”

Resumes are outdated and growing irrelevant to today’s employers. Your blog gives a much fuller picture of your identity and your expertise. Nowhere else can you so quickly get a sense of a person’s skill, experience, and ability to engage others around what they know.

In only six months, I got two job offers, three requests for consulting work (one for over $200 an hour), and was asked to work on three paid projects. On top of that, I generated hundreds of leads for high-priced, hourly work.

How?

Just by blogging to a group of people who needed services, in my case, to creative writers. The best part is that you can do this, too. Anyone can. It’s very simple.

Who is your audience? You need to know who your audience is because you need to figure out what services they need. Define their:

careerhobbies and interestsagedemographicsannual income.

If you’ve been blogging long with any success, you probably have a fairly good idea of this already. I didn’t need to do a survey to realize most of my readers were over 30, well educated, and wrote novels and creative non-fiction as a hobby.

If you don’t know this yet, make it your top priority. If you can figure out how they think, you can sell to them (and in this business model, what you are selling is yourself).

The best way to define your audience, in my opinion, is simply by meeting them. When someone begins to comment regularly, email him. Ask to chat over the phone; if you live nearby, meet for coffee. By interacting with your fans you solve two problems at once, you get to know your audience and you turn them into friends. Once they become your friends, you get the opportunity to make them into your customers.
If you don’t know your audience, you won’t understand what they need.

My audience is creative writers, so I developed a site that I thought would interest them. Slowly, as I began to understand who was reading my blog, I realized there was a huge need for editing. My readers liked to write, but they didn’t like to edit. I found my opportunity.

As you get to know your audience, identify what they like to do and what they hate. What are they good at? What are they terrible at? And how can you help them be better?

As you do this, you’ll begin to spot opportunities for your services. They might need:

Education: You could develop a course teaching them what they don’t know.Consulting: You could sell your time and expertise helping them solve their problems.Complimentary services: You could sell services that your audience needs.

Let’s break down the complimentary services section a bit more because I think this is where this blogging model becomes really interesting. For example, I realized my audience—creative writers—needed editing services. So I began to pitch this to some of my friends and they loved it. Some of them even approached me!

If marketers are your audience, on the other hand, offer design or copywriting services. If homebuyers are your audience, offer listing services. If your audience needs a lawyer, then offer your legal services. If your audience blogs, you could offer ghost-blogging, design, editing, or copywriting services.

Now, let’s say you’re writing to people who want to get better at internet marketing. You think your audience needs help writing copy, but you don’t have any experience in copywriting.

I had this problem. I knew my readers needed editing help. I had some expertise with editing, but I didn’t feel comfortable selling my services to the guy who comments on my blog every day. What if I do a bad job and he gets upset and leaves?

So I started reaching out to editors, asking their advice on how to be a better editor. I emailed, called, and met face to face with them. This is when the most surprising thing happened.

One of them, an editor who has worked with bestselling authors, offered me a job. So not only did I get some practical knowledge to help (and sell to) my readers, I had his name to back me up. And one of the reasons he hired me was because my blog was my resume. He saw I was already passionate and talented. It was an easy decision.

After that, selling my services became much easier. And a much better way to earn money with my blog than selling Adsense.

This is a very quick overview. Do you have any questions about how to sell your services and use your blog as a resume? Have you done this with your own business?

Joe Bunting is a professional writer, fiction editor, and platform consultant. You can follow Joe on Twitter and download a copy of his eBook, 14 Prompts, for free.

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Mastering the Art of Slow Blogging

This guest post is by Kelly Kingman of Kelly Kingman Media.
Several years ago, I hired a personal trainer and we’d work out in the park near my apartment. One day she had me run the loop around the park and noticed that I had difficulty keeping a consistent pace, I would stop and start a lot. She suggested that I run slowly (which she claimed was smoother than jogging—running experts, feel free to debate). The result was that instead of being either in a short-lived sprint or an exhausted, limping jog, I could sustain a smooth, slow running pace by dialing down my intensity.

When you take off blogging at a sprint, posting daily or even three times per week, your idea generating and writing muscles can cramp up pretty quickly. Over the past three years, I found that not only do I prefer to post irregularly—I average about every two weeks—it keeps me from burning out. I’ve even taken a month off from time to time. For example, I took November off to complete a content-creation challenge. I haven’t posted in weeks because my new website isn’t ready yet. (Stop gasping in horror.)

Economic inflation causes our currency to be worth less. Content inflation is what happens when your content decreases in value—you have more of it, but it’s not that powerful or interesting. When we’re so obsessed with posting frequently, we risk churning out less than exciting stuff, and this can water down our brand.

My blog exists primarily to support my claim that I write well, know what I’m talking about and have interesting ideas to add to the conversation. I don’t want to fill my blog so full of content-for-content’s-sake that it’s hard to find the good stuff. Plus, most of us are better writers when we are expressing something we feel strongly about or just had a flash of insight, and that doesn’t happen every day.

Less-than-great posts aren’t the only possible side effect of forcing yourself to blog all the time, you could be sabotaging your other efforts. Are you spending all of your energy blogging to the point you have nothing left over for other creative content? Are you lagging on client work because you’re blog must be fed? If you spend some time thinking about your business goals, it may make sense for you to slow down or take some time off and write that ebook or give your newsletter a little more love. The world will still be here, so will your subscribers.

I spent most of December creating pre-launch content for a new course that I am launching this month (about, surprisingly, how to build your online business without killing yourself). I am taking my sweet time to create a great opt-in offer for my new site, and in the meantime I want to keep my email list engaged by sending a newsletter two times per month. This all takes work in addition to working with clients, and I’m only human. While I actually do love blogging, I try to keep it as a piece of the bigger picture.

Much is made of creating a steady stream of traffic to your blog, but in order to practice slow blogging you’ll want to create a web of presence. If your blog is the only place you’re consistently showing up online, then as soon as you take some time off you’re essentially invisible. I’m not just talking about social media, but about an email list, a network of affiliates, maybe a Facebook page and guest posting opportunities. Diversifying the places where you connect with your target audience online will reduce the pressure to constantly be updating your blog.

There’s an important distinction to make here, and that is one of business model. The reason I can blog at a casual pace is because I don’t base my business on volume of traffic. Income that is generated directly from my blogging, in the form of product sales or affiliate commissions, is far less than the income I receive from working for clients or from my own products (for which others are affiliates).

I couldn’t even tell you how many people visit my blog on a regular basis, I never check. I focus my energy on making connections with people on social media platforms and converting visitors to email subscribers. Content is key, of course, but I make sure it gets to people on my email list first, and then the blog. When you’re small (and even after you get big) having a healthy email list—one that’s fed a steady diet of good content—is critical. There are always exceptions to any rule, but for the majority of Internet-based businesses, this is true.

If the tortoise and the hare taught us anything, it’s that good things come from a sustained, if slower, effort. In the end, blogging once every two weeks but keeping it up for three years will give you about the same total number of posts as posting daily for two months, but the cumulative impact is likely to be much greater.

The good news is that there’s no such thing as a perfect frequency for blogging. The bad news is that sometimes without a schedule, you might not find the time to post at all. The key with blogging, as with just about everything, is finding the balance that works for you. If you find that having a set schedule can actually help you stretch your imagination and come up with good ideas, by all means go for it. But if you find you dread blogging because you “have to,” it might be time to try your hand at the art of slow blogging. Your blog, and your readers, will thank you.

Kelly Kingman is a content strategist and visionary who will blog sometime soon at her new site, but don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, she’s just explained and mapped, online business models that work despite a lack of traffic, for a new course she’s co-teaching called the Way of the Peaceful Entrepreneur.

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How to Host Guest Blogs while Building your Credibility

This guest post is by Ronique Gibson of Freshome.
Once you have been blogging for a while, the reality of keeping your content fresh, relevant, and interesting becomes more of a challenge. One way to satisfy these challenges is to host guest blogs on your site.  While there are plenty of tips out there on how to be a good guest blogger, what about being a gracious host? Similarly to inviting guests to your home, you want your guests to feel welcome, relaxed, and oh yeah, they should provide a gift to the party—worthwhile content!

                                                                                            Image copyright denlitya - Fotolia.com

On my home decor lifestyle blog Stagetecture, I have hosted close to 300 guest bloggers to my “home,” and along the way I have been able to carefully perfect a system of hosting quality guest bloggers that helps my guests deliver a quality product to my readers and develops my credibility in the process. Here are three tips to help your guests writers want to contribute more, and how your reputation as a quality blog will rise to the top of the competition.

1. Know your niche and don’t let your guests deviate

Have you ever had a guest come to your dinner party, and they come with a hidden agenda, like trying to recruit your guests for their business? Remember: your home, your rules. Have a clear and concise niche that you are accepting guest posts for, and make it crystal clear in writing for interested guests. 

While most guests are genuine, it is not rare to have content pitched to you that subtly veer off-track from the intent of your blog, and the message you want to deliver to your audience.


How to accomplish: Before accepting guest blogs, ensure that your blog has room for opinions, and ideas, and welcomes engagement of your readers.
Develop submission guidelines: Visit a few blogs that you enjoy who welcome guest blogs. Typically, they will have submission guidelines, or you may have to go through the contact form for these. My advice is to put everything in writing on a page that can be easily found on your blog. Include who your blog caters to, desired length of blog posts, if you welcome images, links, and so on. This will save time and energy for both parties.

Once your niche and audience is clear, your guests will be clear as to where their creativity and expertise can best be used on your site. You, in turn, will build credibility for your website as a blog that sticks to its niche and values your reader’s valuable time.

2. Stay professional and courteous

Have you ever sent out RSVPs for a dinner party where only two people responded, yet 30 people showed up on the night of your gathering? When hosting guest blogs, professionalism and courteousness can take you a long way. I, personally have been on the receiving end of trying to write on another blog, and never received a response.

When hosting guests, reply within a set period of time, and make it your policy.  After all, both of you are taking a chance on the other, the rapport that you develop now will make the experience enjoyable for you both, and will in turn show through in the blog post for your readers.


How to accomplish: Keep your contact form linked to an email that you or someone from your blog checks regularly.
Feed back: Provide concise and courteous feedback. Thank the guest for wanting to submit content and work with them to bring their post up to the standards of your blog. For excellent posts, show them your appreciation, and give them a date when it will be published. As a courtesy, I write each blogger and give them a link to their post when it is live. This also helps them promote their post on social media streams, which is a win-win for both of you!

3. Build diverse content through guests

The last time you created a guest list for your barbecue, did you choose all guests that were exactly the same, or did you try and mix and match personalities for diversity? Once again, the same scenario is true for hosting guests on your blog.

While you want your guest writers to stay within your blogging niche, you still want to seek out diversity to add interest for your reader, and therefore credibility to your blog as a whole. When I first started accepting guests on Stagetecture, I only sought out home interiors and decor guests, then I realized there was an entire world of do-it-yourself, home maintenance, green home living, and home trade experts out there that I had never tapped into!

In October of this year I was asked by eHow.com to be a resource for their home niche blog content to lend helpful advice to eHow readers. To this day 90% of these posts are from Stagetecture guest blogs.


How to accomplish: Seek out guests through your social media connections, visit similar niche blog sites, and seek out guest blog websites that are a meeting place for a myriad of bloggers. You will be surprised how many resources are out there.  When finding guests, you just need to ask, be friendly, and be genuine in your intentions, and your ‘guest list’ will fill up in no time.
Hosting guest blogs on your website can be rewarding for both parties. Similarly to a perfect party, your guests will love to talk about your blog for months into the future; if they were treated well, enjoyed themselves, and made new friends.

Your website is your home to the world. Create an inviting guest blogger experience and your guests will be asking when the next party will be—and your site will build credibility for being the best place to visit for quality guest-contributed content!

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