The 3 Basic Funnels to Blogging Success

Onibalusi Bamidele is a 16 year old entrepreneur living the internet lifestyle, subscribe to his blog for more great blog posts.

I am sure you would have heard the word funnel once or twice before in relation to making money online. I’d like to define a funnel (in relation to making money online) as a system with which you can cash in income from your online business or as the basic steps you need to go through in order to get the best from your online business.

This post will be explaining the system used by many successful bloggers and internet marketers to make money online.

1. Build a Great Blog

The first and most important step in this funnel is to build a great blog for your online business. It is very important to note that setting up a blog is not only what it takes but having a blog that fulfills all the characteristics of a successful blog.

How Do You Build a Great Blog?

i. Quality Content: There are several things to consider when building a great blog for your online business and one of the most important things that should not be neglected is your content. Your content has a great way to affect the results you get and I’ve seen blogs that went from nowhere to overnight success just because of the valuable content they provide.

There are many benefits in writing great content when trying to build your blog, and one of those benefits is that it helps people develop trust in you. If you blog about a product, the factor determining the number of sales you will make is not only your audience but the type of trust you’ve developed with them.

Another great benefit of writing great content on your blog is that it makes people spread the word about you.

ii. Great Design: Another important aspect of your blog is your design. Aside from a great design being a very important aspect of a successful blog, it is also a very important aspect of our funnel (you’ll know why later).

One great characteristic of a great design is that it is easily navigable. You shouldn’t let your design make it difficult for your readers to read your content and you should also make it easy for them to locate everything they want.

If you take a look at the design of most successful blogs, aside it being unique and elegant, you will also discover it makes it easy for a reader to subscribe to their blog.

2. Attract Traffic to Your Blog

This is where many bloggers miss it, they will give the best of their content and expect people to come and read it without them doing anything to create awareness. Your content has no life of its own, except it is being read.

Even if your content will go viral, it still needs people to make it go viral.

There are several ways to get traffic to your blog and I will be listing 3 of the most effective ways to get traffic to your blog below:

i. Social Media: Making effective use of social media is one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog and this can explain why many social media sites are the top in the world.
ii. Guest Posting: Another great way to get the word out for your blog is by guest posting for other blogs in your niche and if done effectively, guest posting can be a great way to get traffic to your blog. When trying to guest post for other blogs, you don’t need to submit junk content because the blog is not your own. If you do that, several things may happen: either your post will get rejected by the blogger or you get little results from your guest posting efforts. Always try to give your best when guest posting for other blogs.
iii. SEO: Another great way to get free high quality traffic to your blog is by optimizing your blog for the search engines. Search engine traffic is a great type of traffic for several reasons. First, because it is highly targeted, and second, because it only requires little efforts from your part after which you can be getting results on autopilot.

3. Have a Backend

This is one thing I have noticed among every successful blogger, they all have a backend.

My definition for a backend is “a system that makes it easy for you to repeatedly get in touch with your readers after they stop visiting your blog”. There are two major types of backend namely “Your Mailing List” and “Your RSS Feed”, with the most effective one being a mailing list. There are several reasons why it is very important for you to have a backend. First, it makes it easier for you to get in touch with your readers anytime you want, and second it helps reduce your reliance on other forms of traffic. If you have a solid backend, you won’t worry about any fluctuation in search engine traffic and you won’t be afraid about losing traffic if you don’t post on your blog for a period of time. Another great importance of having a backend is that should anything happen to your blog thereby requiring you to start all over; you can still build upon your previous work since you can easily get in touch with your subscribers.

I will be writing about the 2 major types of backend below and which is the most important.

i. Your Mailing List: You would have heard it once or twice that the money is in the list. Having a mailing list is really very important and it is the best type of backend you can have. You can still do well with a lot of RSS subscribers but you will do better if you have a mailing list.

One great advantage of having a mailing list is that you can easily personalize the message your subscribers receive and you can easily send any message you want to them.

There have been many misconceptions to having a mailing list lately and this is why many people think having a mailing list is no longer effective. Having a mailing list is not the most important thing but how you deal with your mailing list; I will be giving some tips on how to get the best from your mailing list below.

- Trust Matters: One major thing you should focus on once you have successfully gotten someone on your list is building trust with them. Having a mailing list is not about you promoting offers every now and then, but you have to manage it effectively to get the best from it.

One of the best ways to build trust with your list is by making sure you provide value in every email you send. If you keep on helping people solve their problems and giving them high quality information in every one of your mails, it will be easier for them to take action anytime you recommend something to them.

- Frequency: While building trust with your list is very important, it is also very important to make sure you have the right frequency with your mailings. Don’t just be bombarding your readers with emails everyday but make effective use of every opportunity you have. You might truly be offering valuable information, but when you are bombarding your readers with too many mails (to add to the high number of daily emails they receive) they will begin to find it difficult to open your emails.

The frequency of your mail and your level of trust with your subscribers is really very important and if you could prove to them that they are in the right place, they won’t find it difficult to do what you say.

ii. Your RSS Feed: This is another form of a backend (especially for those who don’t believe in having a list – which is a very dangerous thing). It is very important to focus on building the number of your RSS subscribers because they are the ones who will be receiving each and every one of your posts.

One major way to increase the number of RSS subscribers you have is by making sure you have a visible subscription form on your sidebar (above the fold) and if possible, below your posts. It is also very important to educate your readers about it thereby letting them know the importance of receiving content using RSS feeds.

Conclusion

The above are 3 basic funnels to online business success and once you could put the above tips into practice, profiting from your blog wouldn’t be a problem.

[Image Credit: HardwareAndTools.com]

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Tyranny Keeps Fighting The Losing Battle

After the questionable elections and subsequent protests in Iran a while back, it seemed clear tyranny was fighting a losing battle against the tide of free speech riding the Internet.  It was inspiring to see protestors with cell phones high in the air snapping pictures the way another generation raised their fists in protest against their government in 1960s America and who could forget Neda and her horrible death in front of the new media that rivaled those horrible pictures from Kent State?

Sadly, the struggle continues for many people in other countries where freedom of expression is far from an unquestioned right.

Bahraini authorities have arrested blogger Ali Abdulemam again. The National Security Agency arrested the family man after he was called to their headquarters. He is a campaigner for peace and an activist for democratic speech in the Arabic and Muslim worlds. Tunisian blogger Sami Ben Gharbia described his colleague as someone who uses the Internet to work for peaceful reform.

Here’s another report that’s sad but not really a surprise and it comes from…..you guessed it, Cuba. Luis Felipe Rojas is a brave Cuban blogger who was arrested and detained by the authorities there. He’d done some human rights writing on his blog and was subsequently arrested and detained for the better part of a day recently.

“One day, I will not return home so quickly, I know it. Now, I write while I can,” he writes.

Oman is another country that makes this infamous list. They’ve taken steps there to ban virtual private networks that would allow people to use VOIP phone systems. In a related story, Egypt has just released a Christian blogger that spent two years in jail for posting a link that the authorities there didn’t like.

I’ve tried to save the best for last here and that means the worst offender when it comes to jack booting freedom of expression.  It should be really no surprise that China tops the list for all of their apparent duplicity when it comes to encouraging Western economic growth on one hand and squashing freedom of speech on the other.

Here’s a few new smudged medals they can pin on their tunics:

• You can buy a mobile phone in China but you need to supply your personal ID. Sounds innocent enough you might say. One could argue that these rules that are in effect in many European, North American and Asian countries already, and they combat the use of unregistered cell phones in the commission of crimes, but most of those countries allow their citizens to read 1984. In China, the government uses the famous George Orwell book as a manual to watch and control people.
• Sites that offer micro blogging services in that same country will now need to hire censors. The Chinese are calling these people ‘self-disciplined commissioners’ in a the same strange way that people doing the same work in the old Soviet Union were called Comrades.

Let’s all hold out hope that all these places are just holding their fingers in the information dyke and that very soon now the wave of technology and human spirit will wash up and over the dams they’re trying to keep in place. I grew up in an era where we help up signs, grew our hair long and tried to change the world. Now it looks like the placards to really accomplish that goal are the computer screens we have in our homes.

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1 Easy Solution to 3 Big Blogging Problems

Guest post by AnnabelCandyfrom Get In the Hot Spot

Over the last 13 months 63,548 people from 165 countries have visited my blog and left 1,637 comments thanks to my friend Teresa. In fact it’s really all thanks to Teresa that I’ve enjoyed so many amazing opportunities since I started blogging. These are a few of the highlights of my short blogging career:

• meeting like-minded people from around the globe;
• being flown to China for a social media conference;
• earning money online;
• getting new clients for my copy writing and web design services;
• meeting best selling authors;
• writing for print and some of the most popular blogs on the Internet like Problogger.

You’re probably wondering who Teresa is and where you can find this great blogging guru. You may be imagining the female version of Problogger ~ an experienced bloggers who’s been coaching me and feeding me her best tips but the funny thing is Teresa doesn’t even have her own blog. She doesn’t know anything about blogging apart from what I’ve told her, and she wouldn’t normally read any blogs, but when I started blogging she read mine because she wanted to support me.

That’s because we our friendship is based on supporting each other to achieve our goals. We do also have shared interests in poker, dancing and white wine, but that’s another story. Teresa and I met in Costa Rica and started a writing group there based on a shared goal of wanting to improve our writing skills. Teresa liked my writing and I loved hers but mostly we enjoyed each other’s company.

In fact, we liked each other so much that after considerable debate we didn’t invite anyone else to join the writing group. It was just the two of us at Teresa’s kitchen table every Thursday night with a bottle of wine and our writing.

The idea was to encourage and motivate each other to write anything at all when we could have just as easily been surfing, practising our spanish with the friendly locals or hanging out in the jungle with the monkeys and sloths. We were accountable to each other and we agreed never to criticise and always keep the feedback positive.

Our exclusive writing group wasn’t just fun. It worked and we both wrote lots. Then I spoilt it by moving to Australia and soon after that Teresa moved to England but she still carried on encouraging me to write and she did it in a public forum by leaving comments on my new blog for all to see.

There are almost 100 comments from Teresa on my blog now, even though she hasn’t left many recently because she moved back to Costa Rica and getting online is tricky there.

3 Big Blogging Problems For New Bloggers

I didn’t realise at first but Teresa’s comments solved these three big problems for new bloggers:

1. Low motivation

60-80% of blogs are jettisoned by their authors less than 30 days after being started. Knowing that Teresa would be checking up on me motivated me to keep blogging even when I was tempted to give up;

2. Lack of social proof

It’s human nature to want to be where other people are. Having comments on your blog shows other readers that your blog is read, enjoyed and engaging. Teresa’s comments made me and my blog look cool, interesting and loved;

3. Complacency

When your blog is new and you don’t have many readers there is a tendency to think that it doesn’t really matter if some of your blog posts are a bit off topic, badly written or of limited value to your readers. Knowing someone read my blog made me keep trying to improve my blog. Teresa made me keep trying to put only my best writing up there.

The Power of Blog Comments

In short, Teresa took me from being a depressed new blogger with only a handful of readers to a blogger with scores of posts, an established blog and an engaged community of appreciative readers. She single handedly fixed those three big problems most new bloggers have.

Here’s an excerpt from Teresa’s first comment ever:

“You’re sooo funny!”

Four posts later, and she commented on every one of them, she left this comment:

“Go Girl! Your best ever piece…passion, enthusiasm, encouragement…I love it!”

Comments like this one poured in from her:

“Wow I didn’t realise just how much I loved receiving your blogs until I thought I had missed one.”

It’s easy to see why those glowing comments kept me motivated but they also made me strive to publish only my best writing and showed other blog readers that I had something good to offer.

Blog comments are essential to a new blog’s success to:

• motivate you;
• give you ideas for other posts;
• provide social proof.

I love getting comments on my blog posts because they;

• let my readers have their say
• turn a monologue into a conversation;
• make my posts more interesting and deep;
• let blog readers add their tips;
• let me and readers find out about other blog readers;
• build a community.
• Show the post is well read, useful and enjoyable.

A blog without comments is like a party with no people. You can’t get out of there fast enough.

But when your blog’s new you probably won’t have many readers, let alone comments. Just by reading my blog and leaving comments Teresa kept me motivated, made me try my best and made me look popular.

1 Easy Solution: Blogging Buddies

You can’t have Teresa but you can solve these problems for yourself by getting a blogging buddy who leaves regular comments on your blog.

Finding a Blogging Buddy

First try asking your friends or relatives. I was lucky that Teresa just took it upon herself to comment on my blog regularly, but if you tell a trusted friend or relative what you’d like them to do and why, they’ll probably help out.

If that’s not an option then find an interesting blog that’s similar in age, style or topic to yours and leave the lucky blogger a comment. If they then visit your blog and leave you a comment, keep reciprocating and see where it leads. It could be the start of a beautiful blogging buddy relationship.

If you want recommendations for people with interesting, growing blogs check out the people who comment on Problogger – they’re obviously dedicated to blogging success and might like the idea of getting a blogging buddy too. Or seek out like-minded bloggers on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn or Brazen Careerist.

If you another blogger leaves a comment on your blog go back and leave a comment on their blog. With luck the blogging buddy relationship will grow naturally from that. If you find a friend who doesn’t have a blog but wants to support you with yours I recommend you help another budding blogger by commenting on their blog. Giving something back to other people really does make you feel happier in yourself. I love leaving comments on other people’s blogs and it’s a great way to start networking with people.

The more blogging buddies you can get in the beginning the better. You can tide each other over until you really do build up a good community of readers who care about what you write and leave you comments.

Have fun finding a blogging buddy. I hope they’ll be as enthusiastic and supportive in their role as Teresa was and that you’ll be able return the favor. I’ve got a few blogging buddies now and I’m still trying to get Teresa to start her own blog and share her writing with the world. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to kick start her blogging journey as she did mine.

What do you think? Would you like a blogging buddy or have you already got one? If you haven’t, check out some of the other commenters’ blogs and leave them a comment. You never know, it could be the start of a beautiful blogging relationship and a long-lasting, successful blog.

Annabel Candy covers business, success, writing and blogging tips at Get In the Hot Spot. Subscribe free by email or

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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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