Blogosphere Trends + Encouraging Comments

This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts). – Darren

You may have heard the stat that for every 100 people who read your post, only one, on average, will leave a comment. The fact is, most of us are lurkers by nature. I know I am; I read dozens of blogs every day but very rarely comment. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the content, just that I didn’t feel the need—or have the time—to join the conversation. So the next time you’re looking at the vast sea of white pixels below your latest post, don’t beat yourself up over it. Having eyes on your post and having comments aren’t necessarily the same thing, but the silence can be frustrating. After all, interacting with readers and creating a conversation are the aspects of blogging that many people enjoy most. That’s why, as we look at this week’s ten most-blogged-about stories (trends provided, as always, by Regator), we’ll also pick up some tips on how to encourage readers to interact with content:

1.  Google Instant
Example: Business Insider’s “Microsoft Bing Exec Pees On “Google Instant,” Says Bing Results Still Way Better”
Lesson: As Darren pointed out in his excellent 2006 post on comments, one way to encourage comments is to write open-ended posts that leave room for readers to provide extra information and expertise. This example provides one side of the story, allowing readers to add detail or jump in with opinions and facts that support the other side of the argument. Being thorough but not too thorough tempts readers to fill in the gaps.

2.  Labor Day
Example: ComicMix’s “Labor Day and the Cost Of Doing Business in Comics”
Lesson: Ask for comments. It sounds elementary but is probably the single best way to get more interaction. The question that ends this example post, “So how would you do it?” manages to create an in-depth discussion that is longer and more detailed than the original post.

3.  Terry Jones
Example: Mediaite’s “How To Marginalize A Media Whore: Morning Joe Refuses To Interview Pastor”
Lesson: Be controversial. Taking a stance on a hot-button issue such as this one is almost certain to create discussion and debate. This example got 113 passionate comments in just eleven hours.

4.  US Open
Example: Bleacher Report’s “2010 US Open: Can Robin Soderling Break The Cycle?”
Lesson: Cultivate a relationship with your readers. Author Rob York takes an active role in the conversation in the comments of this example, and it’s clear he has developed relationships with some of his regulars. Your blog almost certainly has commenters who are more active than others. Getting to know them keeps them coming back and their contributions may, in turn, create discussions that prompt others to join in.

5.  Tony Blair
Example: Spectator’s “Why Tony Blair remains a class act”
Lesson: Be opinionated. This is a great example of a blogger spurring conversation and debate by sharing a strong opinion. Those who disagree will feel the need to explain why you’re wrong. Those who agree will jump in to support your arguments.

6.  Ground Zero
Example: Gothamist’s “

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5 Ways to Blog Like Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee is the most influential martial artist to ever live.

In the book “Tao of Jeet Kune Do” he shares many of his philosophies on life and fighting. The great thing about his teachings is that they can be applied to just about anything, including successful blogging.

Let’s examine what Bruce Lee can teach us about the art of blogging.

1. Drive to succeed

“You can win if you want to badly enough,” means that the will to win is constant. No amount of punishment, no amount of effort, no condition is too “tough” to take in order to win.”

Becoming a successful blogger is damn tough. The fact that such a tiny fraction of bloggers actually make a living from it underscores just how challenging it is.

While the above is true, to have any chance of reaching your goal of making a living as a blogger, you really have to want it. It can’t merely be a passing thought, or a fantasy you have when feeling inspired. It has to be a fire that rages within you from the moment you awaken to when you hit the sheets at night. If you don’t have that kind of passion, your chances of becoming a professional blogger are slim.

2. Seize Opportunities

“If you think you have the opening, you should let it fly and not be half-hearted about it.”

When opportunities arise, don’t hesitate. Instead, make the move and put your full effort behind it:

If you notice a popular blogger hasn’t posted in a while, this could be your golden opportunity to submit a guest post. Don’t hesitate, churn out your best material and let it fly.

If you come up with a killer idea for a post and decide to save it for when your blog has a larger audience, that’s a mistake. It’s far better to write that post now and submit it as a guest post to a large blog which will grow your audience, now. The time to increase the popularity of your blog is now, not tomorrow. Seize the opportunity.

3. Use Your Energy Wisely

“A relaxed technician expends mental and physical energy constructively, converting it when it does not contribute to the solution of the problem and spending it freely when it does.”

Blogging is hard work, so using your energy wisely is essential to your success.

Don’t allow nasty emails or comments from haters to diminish your energy. Instead, use all your existing energy to further your goal of making your blog even more successful.

Likewise, if you’ve reached a temporary plateau, don’t feed the flames of frustration. All that frustration drains you of energy. Instead, use your energy to write guest posts, and brain storm new ways to broaden your reach and gain new subscribers.

Your energy is the currency for which you can further your objective. Use it wisely.

4. Practice

“Each performance of an act strengthens the connections involved and makes the next performance easier, more certain, and more readily done.”

Are you writing daily? If you’re a blogger you’re a writer. The best bloggers make writing a consistent habit. You don’t have to post everything you write, but you should create a habit of writing as consistently as possible. Not only will this lead to you writing better blog posts, but the time it takes you to write posts will decrease as well.

Practice your craft as much as you can and it will only improve with each passing day.

5. Passion

“We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. Yet, it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents as well.”

Don’t get hung up on whether or not you have the requisite talent to become a successful blogger. Talent isn’t a fixed phenomenon. On the contrary: You can significantly improve your blogging skills by reading and writing daily.

If you want to become proficient at writing headlines, you can do it. If you want to write quality openings in your blog posts, you need only study and internalize the proven methods that work for other successful bloggers.

If you want to write great content, you’d be wise to follow blogs like Darren’s and to read often and widely.

Apply the wisdom of Bruce Lee today and you’ll be kicking-ass in no time.

About the Author: Ted Pendinun is a part time actor who aspires to one day have a blog that inspires many. In his spare time he enjoys surfing, martial arts and going on whale watching expeditions.

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5 Things Magicians Can Teach You About Blogging

At some level, blogging is really just a stage show. We, as bloggers, are up on a virtual stage giving a performance that goes on for as long as we run our sites. Whether it is a stand-up comedy routine or a serious academic lecture, we’re talking to the world and hope that our audience, no matter how large or small, will listen.

On that front magicians are masters of the stage show. Using nothing but a few tricks, which can range from very simple to unbelievably complex, their charisma and whatever effects they have at their disposal, they have to keep a difficult audience entertained and enthralled through their entire act.

So maybe magicians can teach us bloggers a few things about showmanship and how to keep our audience glued to the screen, no matter what type of site we are trying to run.

On that front, here are five tips virtually any magician can tell you that can help make your blog a little bit better.

1. Have a Catchy Name

Good marketing starts with a good name and magicians understand this. You can tell a great deal about a magic act based on just the name it goes by and magicians are constantly honing and improving their brand by seeking publicity and getting their well-chosen name out there by any means necessary.

Application: Spend some time coming up with a good name that is easy to spell and pronounce but is also unique and describes what you are trying to do. Then, promote that brand vigorously and stand by it unless you have some urgent need to change.

2. Dress 1 Step Above Your Audience

Magicians have a general rule that one should dress one step above their audience. If you are performing in front of a completely casual audience, they will wear business casual, if the audience is business casual, they will dress in a suit, if the audience is wearing suits, they’ll wear a tux. The reason is that this gives the performer a sense of authority while making them approachable and relatable.

Application: Your dress is your writing and your language. Try writing your content one small step above what your audience would write, making it more authoritative than casual writing but still easily understood and approachable.

3. If You Mess Up, Be Honest, Break the Tension and Move On

Mistakes happen and when a Magician goofs they do so in a very public way. However, magicians rarely try to hide their mistakes, especially if they know their audience has caught on. Instead, they’ll admit to the mistake, go for a joke to break the tension and then move on quickly and confidently.

Application: Going for the joke may not always be appropriate but when you goof on your site you need to acknowledge the error, end the tension quickly (either with an apology, a joke or whatever is appropriate) and then move on. Don’t linger on your mistakes once you’ve dealt with them.

4. Make People Look Where You Want

Half of magic is about diversion and drawing attention where the magician wants it. A majority of magic tricks wouldn’t work at all if the audience was not looking at the right spot while the trick part takes place out of view. Magicians achieve this by using motion, colors, lighting and anything else at their disposal to distract and direct the audience to their will.

Application: Tell the readers what you want to look at, use subheads, lists, tables, images and other things that draw the eye to make them look at the information you deem most important. Use such tools sparingly, otherwise the eye doesn’t know where to go, but don’t force your readers to figure out what’s important on their own.

5. Know Which Secrets to Keep

Magic thrives on secrets. As the TV character Jonathan Creek was fond of saying, once explained what was once magic becomes mundane. Magicians keep their secrets closely guarded to keep the illusion of their tricks being actual magic. Though the illusion is fleeting, most people realize magic is just an illusion, the ability to deceive oneself for a moment is an important part of enjoying the show.

Application: Blogging isn’t nearly as secretive as magic but you do have to think long and hard about what information you want to give away and what you don’t. You need to ask yourself what information will help your readers better enjoy or learn from your site and what will confuse and complicate things needlessly. Keep the secrets that you need to in order to stay on target and be effective, don’t try to throw everything out.

Bottom Line

Though magic and blogging have many differences, blogging involves significantly fewer rabbits for one, there are definitely enough similarities so that we bloggers can pick up a few pointers, especially when it comes to keeping our audience entertained and informed.

It might be easy to not think of blogging as a public performance but, in reality, that’s exactly what it is, the most public kind of performance possible and the fact that it merely writing, audio or video doesn’t mean that many of the same rules don’t apply.

So let’s listen to the magicians, they might have a lesson or two for us.

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4 Ways to Use Social Proof (Before Anyone Knows Who You Are)

Have you read the classic post from the Copyblogger archives explaining why you need to leverage social proof on your blog? If so, then I don’t need to convince you how important social proof is for online success.

Social proof is pretty simple. It’s just the human instinct that if someone else is doing something (buying a product, reading a blog, jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge) then it’s probably a good thing to do.

It’s not right and it’s not wrong — it’s just how we human beings are wired.

Social proof can give a blog great momentum. Once you have lots of readers, you’ll find new people purely because you have lots of readers.

But how can you pull it off when you’re just starting out and don’t have much social proof to leverage?

For example, new readers to Copyblogger glance over at the left-hand side of the site and see that more than 129,000 people already subscribe. The most common line of thinking is “Hm, maybe I should do that, too. 129,328 subscribers can’t be wrong, right?”

But when you’re just getting your blog off the ground, this kind of social proof simply doesn’t help. It took me a year to get 1000 subscribers on my blog, and when I did I proudly displayed my subscriber count for all to see — only to take it down a few months later because Feedburner was unreliable about displaying the right number.

You may not be able to use the same specific social proof techniques that the big blogs do. But there are at least four reliable ways I know to use social proof when your blog is still in the beginner stages.

1. Encourage comments

In the early days, a blog post that has no comments is like a party without people: no one wants to be the first one to show up.

A lively comment discussion shows new readers that your blog has an engaged community to interact with — that other cool people are at this party. The problem is, nobody wants to be first to comment, even if plenty of people are comfortable being second, third, and fourth.

One way to get readers over the hurdle is to specifically ask for comments. You can also end every post with a great question that encourages response. Some blogs even offer prizes for the best commenters.

But if you’re still having a hard time getting comments going on your posts, there’s an easy way to break the ice.

Get yourself a blog buddy who will comment on every post you write (you can do the same for them). Reply to each of their comments promptly.

When you respond to comments, others are encouraged to join in. Now that your blog buddy has broken the ice, others will be more comfortable about joining the conversation.

You may want to extend this to a small blog pack, a group of bloggers in a related topic who support one another’s work. It’s a great way to boost your traffic and subscriptions.

2. Tell stories

Social proof doesn’t always have to be about big numbers. You can also share stories that show how you’ve benefited others.

When I set up my web design company in 1998, I ran across many business owners who were skeptical about the need for a website. I started telling the skeptics a true story about one of my clients who shared their fears. That client took the plunge and cancelled his yellow pages ad so he could test the waters with a website instead.

He never looked back. His website was able to generate new leads for a smaller investment. And while his costly yellow pages ads ended up in the recycling bin the next year, his website is a great investment for years to come.

That story helped a lot of people find their courage and set up their own sites. Engage your blog readers by telling compelling stories that show how someone else has benefited from taking your advice.

You don’t have to go overboard — bragging will often chase readers away. Instead, tell the story like you would to a friend over lunch and you’ll hit the right note.

3. Get testimonials

In the early days of my blog I put up a raving readers page to let people know that yes, this blog did have some readers. And better yet, those readers were interesting, engaged, and global.

There are lots of ways to make testimonials work for you — but first you have to collect some.

When you start a new business or blog you may not have any clients who can vouch for you yet. Try giving a few people something for nothing and ask for a testimonial if they like it. Start with your friends and branch out from there. If you can’t outright give your product away, at least give out some free trials or samples.

Make it easy for people to give you testimonials. Try asking specific questions. You can also write up any compliments you get by email or over the phone, then ask for your fan’s approval to use it as a testimonial on your website.

(I hope it goes without saying, never write fake testimonials. You’re aiming to build credibility and trust here, not destroy it.)

If you offer a high-quality service or product, your customers will want to help you promote it. Include the name of the person and that person’s occupation or company if it’s relevant. Pictures can also improve your testimonials’ credibility and enhance the element of proof.

4. Incorporate media

Being mentioned in the media is another great way to leverage social proof. It’s surprisingly effective to add, “As mentioned/recommended in the Smalltown Weekly” to your blog’s About page, even if the media outlet is a minor one. Gather a few mentions and you might decide to create a dedicated media page. And while you’re at it, remember that a mention on a big blog can be at least as powerful as a print publication.

Two of my friends have a half-serious competition to get the most mentions in local papers this year. If the prize is a more successful business and bigger client list, I’d say they’re both going to win.

Spend some time brainstorming ways your business might be mentioned in the press, on social media, or on TV. Can you make a friendly call to journalists or bloggers who write about your topic, tell them what you do, and ask them if they’d like a free sample or a free consultation to offer to readers? Could you speak free of charge at an event to get your name out there and establish your expertise? What story can you tell that would interest your local paper or favorite blog?

Have fun and be creative. Even when your blog is brand-new, you can start leveraging social proof today while you wait for your RSS subscriber count to grow.

And of course, as your subscriber count grows, you’ll have even more options.

How about you? What’s your favorite tip for leveraging social proof on your blog?

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Escape Your Blog to Grow it

I don’t remember exactly when I first shared my “flagship content” concept at Performancing.com but it came from looking at how we were going to achieve growth. We were hovering around the top 20 blogs on the internet, as ranked by Technorati. Each successful website reaches the same stage, but each gets there in its own way and on a different timescale.

What happens is you work hard to acquire any attention at all, you determine what works, get serious growth and then hit a plateau.

This blog has been on a plateau for a couple of years.

Part of the problem is we learn the system for how to grow our traffic and then we abandon it.

We focus too much in one area, and that halts or even reverses our growth.

Flagships, Cornerstones and Evergreen Content

Why do I talk about “Flagship Content” at all when there are seemingly other terms that mean the same thing? Other people do use the phrases interchangebly, but the idea sprung from seeing what was working and why.

Just like in a shopping mall, there are “destination” stores. These are what attract the visitors, but in between you get curiosity traffic and stopping for a coffee. It might be these smaller stores turn out to be a real draw for you in future. When you have a good experience at a mall you are more likely to return.

But why do you know about those destinations in the first place?

Cornerstone content is the foundation of your blog. A useful resource, jargon defined, robust how-to information. Evergreen content can get bookmarks and long term residual traffic, even passive income. The real win though is when that content escapes your blog, when it gets passed around, when people quote it, when people credit you in presentations.

Beating the Plateau with Attraction, Retention and Conversion

Let’s take a look again at the ARC Process. ARC stands for “Attraction, Retention and Conversion“.  You might have heard me talk about this in my courses and workshops.

Most people focus on attraction, they try to get attention, they link bait, they buy traffic, and research new ways to increase their visitor count. All the while their existing visitors are not returning for a second viewing. Some bloggers get to the point where attraction is not as big a priority any longer, they are getting sufficient results so get distracted in other areas. We live in “Retention mode” and only maintain their blogs to cater to keeping their existing audience happy (guilty!). The last group focus so much on conversion that their audience goes in reverse, and ultimately lose relevance.

So you have to look at what works for your audience in terms of attracting new visitors and reaching new audiences, keeping your existing subscribers happy, and then working in appropriate conversion (relevant offers, suitable affiliates, light sprinkling of ads). You also have to look at the interaction between – does someone arrive via a long tail SEO phrase then click a related post before buying a premium theme? …

Escaping Your Blog in Order to Grow it

So we get to my point (and I do have one, honest!).

What got my blog to the point it is at was by heavily guest posting. I guest posted so much that people were telling me I was getting over-exposed, so I pulled back. Then I stopped almost completely, apart from when a friend needed a hand or when I had something to say that suited another audience better. Upshot being … stalled growth.

It’s like when a band stops touring, never promotes, appears on TV, and such. People start saying “remember them?”, “are they still going?”. Retention is good, essential even, but even the best loyalty generating content is not going to do the trick unless you keep your own insights, experiences and exposure fresh. You do have to keep doing the attraction, not just to bring in outside audiences but to invigorate your existing audience. Go out and let people know you still have something to share.

Even the best zoo is still a cage.

Build your outposts. Get networking. Go out into your niche communities.

If you want to start growing your quality traffic, build some SEO-boosting links, and reach a fresh audience, check out my Guest Posting guide.

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Bring an Intense Debate to Your Blog Comments

I’ve been trying to clean up the blog here and there, and decided to go with the Intense Debate plugin for my blog comments. The previous comments were a mess. The layout was great, but it wasn’t threading comments and what’s the point of commenting if you can’t reply directly to other comments in a mannerly order. The overall setup with Intense Debate looks great and it’s really easy for anyone to log into their favorite platform to leave a comment, whether that be wordpress, twitter, facebook or even as a guest. You can see the comment form below and all of the different login options.

Outside of the great looking form and login capabilities, there actually a lot more you can do once you setup a free account with IntenseDebate to manage your comments. In the past I would have to look around for plugins or widgets to post the top blog commenters, top blog posts, as well as social network sharing. IntenseDebate has added all of these features and plugins to their backend. You simply just click which plugins you want, then they are enabled.

I’m still playing around with the admin options and moderation settings. You can moderate all comments, or have them automatically approved once a user has posted a specific amount of times and earned your trust. In the end, I think the move to Intense Debate was a good choice and I look forward to getting a better handle on how to better customize the comments on this site.

Leave a comment using Intense Debate and let me know what you think.

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How to Re-Ignite Your Blogging Fire When You’re Feeling Burnt Out

A Guest Post by Glen Allsopp from ViperChill.

In 2006, at 17, I started a blog about marketing which was very successful from launch. In fact, the first blog post I published was linked to by 4 of the Technorati Top 100 at the time, and I felt like I was on my way to joining the ranks of A-list bloggers.

Yet, within a few weeks, I had already ran out of steam. I had plenty of things to write about, and loved the industry I was covering; yet I simply had no motivation to keep going. At the time, I just assumed that my lack of motivation was because the site wasn’t making money, so I left blogging and decided to start working on other online projects.

When I moved to South Africa at 18 in 2008, I had the urge to start up another blog. I didn’t want to write about marketing this time, but instead I decided to focus on the topic of personal development, which I was passionate about at the time. For some reason, things were different this time. Again, I loved the topic and I had a lot to say. And again I wasn’t making any money (by choice). Yet my passion was never-ending and I was left with over 150 blog posts to show for my first year of blogging.

I did end up selling that blog at the end of 2009, but that was when it was making $5,000 per month and had over 6,000 subscribers. Right now I’m doing the same with ViperChill – writing about a topic I love (marketing, again) – and doing so for a very small amount of money. Yet, I’m still highly inspired to write for the site and grow my audience.

If it wasn’t a lack of income that caused my to run out of stream on my first blog, then what was it?

The answer actually comes in four parts; all of which I believe can help all you regain the motivation to write for your own blog if you’ve found your interest to be waning. Some of these were made clear to me after reading the excellent book Drive by Daniel Pink, and I encourage you to watch this great video on Youtube which illustrates a talk he gave at a TED conference.

Challenge Yourself to Learn New Things

I think one of the greatest things about blogging is that there is so much to learn and test, especially when you’re starting out. Installing Wordpress, customising a blog theme and writing compelling content are all things that can seem tricky at first but become much easier over time.

It’s this challenge that actually keeps us interested in what we’re doing. It’s a challenge I believe I was lacking with my first blog, but found in my next (building an audience in an entirely new industry) and the one after that (writing new content in a highly saturated industry).

Is there something you can challenge yourself to do with your blog?

• Can you try to rank in Google for a certain keyphrase?
• Can you get better at networking and build stronger online connections?
• Can you write an eBook that helps solve a problem your readers have?
• Can you post a better article about X than any other blog?

If you take the time to think about this, you’ll come up with a long list of things you can try. This alone may be enough to help you re-ignite your blogging fire.

Really Interact with Your Audience

You may be wondering how this can help bring back your blogging passion, but the reason behind the heading is actually quite simple. As Daniel Pink points out in the video I linked to earlier, the desire to belong to something is a strong desire within us all as human beings.

It’s why people spend hours upon hours writing articles for Wikipedia or coding fixes for open-source software for absolutely no monetary gain.

It’s partly why people support different sports teams and wear their colours with pride and it’s also why some feel passionate about their gaming ‘clans’ which exist solely online.

If your blog isn’t getting many comments and the big bloggers in your niche are ignoring you then it’s unlikely you feel like you belong to anything. Yet one of the greatest things about blogging is the connections you can create and sustain with others who have similar interests.

Instead of waiting for people to come to you, go out there and email fellow bloggers, comment on their articles and interact with like-minded people on Twitter or Facebook. You’ll quickly find a new urge to start writing articles to get the feedback of your new community.

Set Smaller Goals

If I offered you a date with your favourite celebrity if you’re able to grow your feed count by 5,000 legitimate subscribers in the next 30 days, how motivated would you be to even try? If you’re like most people, probably not motivated in the slightest.

If I set the target to 500 subscribers, however, I’m sure you would be far more interested at giving it a shot.

When you read the success stories of people with over 100,000 feed subscribers or hear about successful six-figure product launches, it’s easy to feel discouraged if you attempt to achieve similar results and don’t even get close.

It’s important to remember that exceptional stories like this are the exception. It doesn’t mean you can’t achieve them to, but you shouldn’t base targets like that as your blogging goals. At least not initially.

Another great thing about blogging is that it tends to come with a snowball effect once you grow. It took me 7 months to grow my personal development blog to 500 readers, yet just 5 more until it reached 4,000.

Don’t be afraid to think big, but set smaller goals for yourself so you’re constantly achieving things along your journey.

Identify Your Hurdle

If none of these seem to be helping, then this last piece of advice – as simple as it may seem – could be just what you need. Though it’s possible to misdiagnose the reasons you’re not feeling inspired to continue with your blog, it’s still worth attempting to identify the cause of your demotivation.

I had assumed the reason I lost interest for my first blog was because it wasn’t making money, yet looking back I think it was because I didn’t have any challenge to overcome and certainly didn’t feel part of the online community.

Common hurdles bloggers face include:

• Struggling to see a return on your time investment
• Running out of content ideas
• Not having enough time to work on your site
• Feeling like you’re not helping people

The best thing about identifying your hurdle or “block” – whatever it may be – is that you can then look at ways to get past it.

If you’re running out of content ideas, then read some books on your topic or sit down for a few hours and brainstorm new ways to help your audience. If you don’t have enough time to work on your site then log your actions on your next normal day and identify time-wasters which aren’t essential to your daily life.

I could go on with this, but I’m sure you get the point. It may be that the blog you’ve started just isn’t something you want to continue with which is fairly common, but don’t give up until you’re sure there isn’t just a hurdle getting in the way, or another one of these tips that you can try.

Glen helps people build remarkable websites and writes about viral marketing. If you liked this post, you may also enjoy his guide to Wordpress SEO.

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Blog World Expo – Fo’ Real

If you're a blogger, you need to come to blog world expo!

This is going to my first year attending Blog world expo. I am excited to attend and learn how I can continue to grow this blog to an even more awesome level of awesome. Haha.

This is also going to be my first time speaking at Blog world expo along side DK, Shoemoney, John Chow, Zac Johnson and Bryn. I think it's a panel where there will be Q&A and some other stuff. Should be a lot of fun!

Seriously though, blog world expo is the largest social media conference in the world (according to them) and just like every other conference, is all about the huge connections you can get there. So much of the things I have learned has come from being able to network with a ton of people.

I'm really looking forward to going and hanging out with: Shoemoney, John Chow, Problogger, DailyBlogTips, (lots more) and all of you who come!

I've been to Pubcon (just for DK's Poker Tourney), Affiliate Summit, and Ad:Tech. All are great and I will see how this one compares.

Lastly – if you book your tickets before 16 September there are some good discounts on tickets still available. Get all the details on the Blog World and New Media Expo Site and I hope to see you in Vegas!

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10 Things Bloggers Should NOT Do

Every now and then I will see a list of things bloggers should do, but I notice people are not that inclined to do what they are asked to do, while they pay more attention to things they should NOT do. That is why I decided to create the list below. Here we go:

1. You Must Not Expect Results Overnight: This is happening everywhere and that is the major reason why a large percentage of bloggers fail. Many bloggers come online unprepared and with the wrong set of expectations. They think blogging is a bed of roses and they only need to write one or two posts and begin to make money right away. Wrong!

2. You Must Not Ignore Your Readers: Some bloggers start gaining traction fast, and after a while they start to make their blogs gravitate around themselves. That is, they start talking exclusively about themselves, about the things they like, about how cool they are and so on. Big mistake. Your blog is about your readers, not about you.

3. You Must Not Scrape Another Bloggers Content: This is funny but nowadays you will see many new bloggers who don’t even know the basics, and yet they start to scrape another bloggers content. Often times these people won’t even credit the source. You can’t get far with this attitude.

4. You Must Not Expect Success Without Promoting: Many people think blogging is like setting up a shop at the road side and that all they need to do is wait for people to start finding them. Build and they will come, as the saying goes. This unfortunately is not true. Even if you have great content you’ll need to work your butt off getting people to visit your blog and read it.

5. You Must Not Be Another Blogger: This is so common among many bloggers nowadays. They no longer want to be themselves, they now want to be one popular blogger they know. It is like using the “fake it till you make it” strategy. Will it work over the long term? No. So keep it real.

6. You Must Not Fail To Update Your Blog Regularly: You will see some bloggers telling you they want to be a problogger, only to leave their blog without updates for weeks. If you can’t commit to updating your blog regularly, why would you expect people to commit to reading it regularly?

7. You Must Not Ignore SEO: Nowadays, you will see many bloggers not optimizing their blogs for search engines, if you ask them why, they will say they don’t know SEO. The real answer, however, is “Because I am lazy.” Don’t be lazy and learn what you must if you want to make your blog popular.

8. You Must Not Ignore Networking: You should never underestimate the power of networking. As people say, it is about who you know and now about what you know in the long run.

9. You Must Not Have An Unreadable/Unnavigable Site: Many people think blogging is all about your content. No! Blogging is far more than your content. You should work on making sure your site is easily navigable and that readers can easily get what they want without looking twice. Usability is a big factor on the web.

10. You Must Not Throw Mud Around: Some new bloggers that if they attack other people or bloggers, they might create a buzz and increase their traffic levels. This might be true in the short run, but over the long term such attitude will create many enemies and burn yourself.

About the author: Onibalusi Bamidele is a young entrepreneur living the Internet lifestyle, subscribe to his blog for more great posts. He sometimes write at technshare.com as well.

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Hustle like ‘Shanky’

I’m not a sports guy and I hardly ever go to sporting events. However, I did have the chance to go to a special event with my Dad and Grandfather to see the hometown team play an away game. That was a once in a lifetime trip for me because I had never gone on a trip with just my Dad and Grandfather before. We went a baseball game and what was most entertaining for me wasn’t the action on the field but the hustle in the stands.

Because of all this social media and blogging stuff that I am involved in I’m always looking for ways to relate real world marketing to the virtual world. I learned so many lessons just by watching one of the vendors in the stands. His name was “Shanky”.

When I first saw Shanky I thought to myself, who is this guy? He was loud, personable and quickly established rapport with the crowd. He came down the stairs carrying a container of Bud and Bud Light aluminum bottles. He announced that he had ice cold Bud and Bud Light. The people in front of us flagged him down, he put down his container and asked the “party people” what they would like and how many. He got them the beers quickly and when they were done he asked how much change they wanted back.

Shanky came in and out of our section over and over and always sold at least 20 beers. I watched him hit a bunch more sections in the time it took other vendors to get through one. Each time he came through he was excited, personable and loud. As the night went on he went back to his usual fans and sold them Red and Blue (colors of the aluminum bottles). He made sure to let us know that he’d be back for the 7th inning stretch and last call. Other vendors came with Bud and Bud Light but no one bought from them. People in the crowd took their photos with Shanky. It was a sight to see. And I learned a few things, too.

Say What You Do

There was no mistaking what Shanky did. He told every customer that it was his job to keep them in Ice Cold Bud & Bud Light and it was their jobs to have a good time.

Be Personable

We knew the guys name was Shanky because he told us. I can’t tell you any other vendors name because they did not hustle, and were not personable. They didn’t connect with the crowd int eh way that Shanky did. He made it a point to make an impression on each person in our section and all the other sections as well. He also remembered his customers and made sure that when they were done their beers he was there to get them a refill.

Make it Easy

Shanky broke it down to the easiest transaction possible. The beers were $7.25 each, he was selling Bud and Bud Light. He broke that down to asking whether people wanted “Red” or “Blue”. Everyone knew what he was talking about and it made the transaction quicker, made the decision making quicker too.

You Gotta Ask

As for the money my Dad pointed this out to me. For each person that bought a beer Shanky made either $0.75 to $1.75 on the sale. Why? He asked what the customer wanted back for change. Did they want $1.00 or $2.00 or rather 1 or 2? By doing it increased his tips so much. First of all he didn’t ever fumble with coins so he could get change back to people fast and get on to the next customer. By offering the choice of 1 or 2 he essentially made it a simple decision about the tip for each customer. Also by doing this the customer was going to give him a tip or be uncomfortable not giving one. No one opted for the uncomfortable route.

I didn’t get to see every vendor in the park but I am sure that Shanky was one of the top sellers because he hustled, was personable and asked for the sale. Did I mention that it was near 90 degrees that night and we were sweating in the stands just watching the game? That made it all the more impressive to me.

So, how can you apply these tips and tricks from Shanky to your blogs to start making more profit?

Split Testing Your Landing Pages

It doesn’t matter if you are promoting your own product, an affiliate offer or event a contest… the bottom line is, you need a killer landing page! You can send the best and most targeted traffic in the world to your site, but if it’s not designed properly, how much business are you losing? That is why you MUST split test your landing pages.

I’m currently using a service called Conversion Doubler for split testing tracking on my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging opt in pages. I’m going to start setting up a few ad campaigns on the major search engines and through social networking, so it’s important to have a good idea what’s working and what’s not. Here are the three landing pages I will be split testing with.

(Landing Page 1)                                     (Landing Page 2)                                    (Landing Page 3)

I haven’t done any split testing yet on these landing pages, so I’m anxious to see how they compare. I have a good idea which will convert best, but I will also let you decide. Leave a comment on which landing page you think will convert best and I will follow up with actual split test results.

How to Setup Your Own Split Testing

In this series of split testing, I’m going to be using Conversion Doubler, which is an amazing took for split testing A/B Multivariate solutions. Since my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging landing pages are more image based than text, I’m truly not putting the full power of Conversion Doubler to use, so I will show you want I mean.

Instead of dealing with the hassle of running an ad campaign, sending traffic to your landing page, then repeating the process after changing an area to see if it helps your conversions, Conversion Doubler let’s you start your campaigns while testing different text and changes in the beginning. In short, let’s pretend I want to split test ZacJohnson.com’s blog and how I can increase conversions to the newsletter subscribe on the right side of the page. When I log in to Conversion Double, I would setup a new experiment and after listing my site, it will show the actual landing page and you can hover and click on any area you would like to split test. You can see in the preview below how the ad copy in the newsletter section is highlighted with a blue dotted line, you can hover and select any area of your site to split test within the Conversion Doubler admin.

This probably sounds complicating to some of you, and that’s understandable… it’s much easier to learn from a visual standpoint. Fortunately Conversion Doubler took the time to create a short video on the step by step process for split testing your landing pages.

This is a really amazing split testing service Conversion Doubler has to offer, and definitely one of the best I’ve seen. They actually make it so easy to split test, that I will write up a few landing page split testing case studies over the next couple of weeks. I will also be following up next week with the results of the Six Figure Affiliate Blogging landing page split test. Be sure to leave your guess at which landing page will convert best.

Setup a free account at Conversion Doubler and see how you can double your conversions.

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