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5 Steps to a Popular Blog

05 2008 Thursday

By Toni Laveri in Blogs & Podcasts

Blogging is a hot way for an ordinary person to make some cash on the net. Anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can make it in this market. You’ve no doubt come across many blogs and maybe you’ve thought about starting one yourself.

Here are some common sense advice on how to get your thoughts out of your head and into your blog. Listen up.

1. You’re the boss.

Don’t worry about what people will think when you blog. Just write what you feel, what is in your heart, and your fans will find you!

2. What To Write About.

What if you can’t think of ideas, where can you get ideas to write about?

There is so many ways to research ideas, that I could spend a year writing about each one. Here is just a few things you can write about.

Hop to YouTube, find a few videos you like and blog about those 2 .Go to the major news sites and blog about current events in your home town, the nation, or the world 3. Scan a few community forums and blog about what people are talking about.

3. Ok Ok, I get the Idea, but I really don’t have time to maintain a blog.

If the thought of committing to your blog gives you weak knees, you can always schedule a bunch of posts in advance.

A lot of blogging software give you the option to schedule your posts, giving you the flexibility to post at regular intervals even if you have a short period of time to commit to your blog.

For example, when you have time to blog, generate a list of ideas for articles, tutorials and other things that you might be interested in. Brainstorm at least ten different topics and create a 3-4 sentence paragraph about each topic. Then create a post for each idea using the future post to schedule the posts.

If you want, you can post 1/2/3 blog posts per week. Now, your blog will auto post your articles even if you can’t be at the computer.

4. Show Me the Money!

Okay, let’s monetize your new blog. Once your site or blog has lots of stuff on it then sign yourself up for Google AdSense and some kind of affiliate program like the Amazon Associates Program. I suggest that if you are using amazon you go with products that you hand pick so they are exactly targeted to the subject of each web page.

A lot of experts recommend you wait a month before you start thinking about site monetization. I can see the logic in this. After all, you want to have a decent collection of interesting projects, ideas, articles and related stuff before you start looking for the money.

But, don’t expect overnight riches. In fact, don’t expect a dime for at least 3 to 5 months after you start your blog. If you use money as your primary motivation for blogging, you will burn out.

5. Time is Your Best Friend.

A lot of the popular blogs that are making nice change have been around forever. Maybe you’ve heard of a friend of a friend that’s making a ton of money on a crappy blog he started only a few weeks ago. Every time you hear these stories, remember that these great results are not typical. I guarantee you that a person like that is buying advertising to get traffic to their blog, that their content is uninteresting, and that their blog will be down in a years time.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that a good website is like fine wine or cheese. The longer you blog ages and is allowed to develop, the more valuable your blog will be.

Making money on the internet is fun ancd exciting. Learn more at WildCashFlow.com

6 Reasons Why You Need to Have a Blog with Your Website.

04 2008 Friday

By Bjorn Brands in Blogs & Podcasts

Blogs are powerful marketing tools that can help you reach more customers, establish credibility, increase sales, and share company news without having a huge advertising budget.

Blogs have a number of advantages that make them highly effective in promoting your business:

1. You don’t have to be a tech geek to start a blog.

Anyone can do it, and sites like Blogger can help you create and publish your blog in less than 5 minutes.

2. Blogs can boost your search engine ranking.

The content of your blog is ripe for the search engines and encourages other bloggers who write on similar topics to link to you. Regularly updated, keyword-rich content (not spam) and linking will help boost your site’s visibility and in turn attract more customers.

3. Blogs offer multiple ways to deliver your message. If you’re not the best writer, you can start an audio or video blog and can therefore still reach your customers in a personal way.

4. Blog posts encourage immediate responses from your customers.

Questions, comments and feedback from your customers can help you better address their needs, adjust your campaigns, and react to the market’s changing demands.

5. Blogs help you expand your reach online.

By pinging search engines and using RSS feeds you can syndicate your content online, boost your reach and influence, and allow customers to control their communications with your company.

6. Blogs increase transparency and help you establish credibility.

Blogs are much more personal than a corporate website and because they are regularly updated, customers can remain informed about your business and feel more connected to you. Your blog can be your selling point and can sway prospective customers to choose you and your services over the competition.

Blogs are about communicating and building relationships with your readers. Use your blog for branding your business, building your reputation and communicating with your audience ‘ not just for making a sale.

There are a variety of ways you can use your blog to communicate with your readers and promote your business, while unobtrusively going after the sale. You can use your blog to:

Write product reviews and link to product pages (consider signing up to be an affiliate)
Write insightful articles or tips relevant to your audience
Recommend products and services (yours or someone else’s)
Post and archive company newsletters
Share company news and product updates
Offer special incentives and promotions
Ask customers to complete surveys and provide feedback

Generating new content for your blog does not have to be a daunting task. You don’t have to worry about writing it all yourself. Instead, you can directly post your company newsletters as well as relevant third-party articles, reviews, and links found using sites like StumbleUpon and Google News.

Remember to include links where appropriate to your own website and product pages. Having a blog also allows you to make regular updates quickly and without needing a webmaster.

A blog is a highly effective tool in promoting your business, so start now

Bjorn Brands is a successful entrepreneur who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how his FREE course can help you do the same. http://www.moneyacces.com

How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert in 5 Easy Steps

04 2008 Tuesday

By Jennifer Osborne in Blogs & Podcasts

Your client is thrilled with the new blog. It provides a SEO friendly CMS, it’s Social Media friendly, your client loves the opportunity to participate in the conversation, etc, etc.

but

despite how cool their new blog is…. despite the increase in readers, traffic, comments, etc.

at some point,

your client is ultimately going to turn to you and ask

“What about sales?”

Because unless your client is running a CPM model or is really big into branding, at the end of the day; the only thing that really matters to your client is conversions.

Is this blog making me money?

How do you get your Blog traffic to convert? First and foremost, sales tips are worthless if you don’t follow the 10 Golden Rules of Blogging.

But the 10 Golden Rules of Blogging alone won’t get you sales. They’re just table stakes to make it even possible to sell.

1) Follow Jeff Quipp’s tips for Building Authority:
People want to buy from the best. Strive to be an expert in your field. Even if you sell a commodity product where “the best” is really just better marketing, then do that. Build your online authority and you will be perceived as “the best”.

Use your blog to develop a specialty in a particular niche of your industry.

As Jeff says, this is a difficult balancing act. You don’t want the niche to be too narrow that you limit people’s perceptions of your abilities (not unlike type casting to some actors), though too broad and its near impossible to establish yourself as an expert, and less and less likely over time.

Reach out to others in your field. Or as Jeff says, be an uber networker. One great way to do this in your blog writing is to find other industry blogs to link to when writing your posts. Many blog platforms will ping them that you’ve linked to them.

2) Follow the Loop Strategy in your post writing.

The Loop Strategy suggests that we never want to leave the visitor without telling them what the next step is. There are no dead ends because each page leads to another page.

Think about the most logical path for the consumer to take. If I enjoy this content then I’ll probably like that too. Build the next step into your template. Don’t add new content without thinking about what it relates to. Link it to the next step. This will substantially increase your opportunity to convert.

3) Make sure you have an “About Us” section in your Blog

Depending on your product or service, some people will jump right the buy, but others may want to know a little more about you.

Picture this. I found your blog through a long tail keyword search. I read your post about Rugs, Plastic Products, Petroleum, whatever and it really spoke to me because that’s my industry too.

I find myself thinking wow. Why haven’t I heard of these guys before? Who are they? And sadly, I’m left wondering because there is no About Us page. And if you’re afraid to tell me who you are - then I don’t trust you.

4) Use a Landing Page to ask for the sale

If you’ve given your reader really useful content, there is nothing wrong with linking out to a product page if that product is related to your article.

The Weight Loss Industry is really good at this: for example, do a search for “green tea, weight loss” you will find a plethora of helpful informational articles about the benefits of Green Tea for weight loss. Pretty much every one of these articles was written by someone who is trying to sell you Green Tea.

Does this bother me? Not if the article was useful. Make sure you give thought to color, language and placement when designing the landing page.
5) Make sure you have a call to action on the page you link to not in the blog post.

There are many possible ways to do this:

Just ask for the sale. Include an order now button beside the product information (The Direct Close method)

Use a deadline. For example, “product will be going up in price by July 30th (The Time Driven Close).

Make an offer. i.e. order these two products and save 20%. This makes the buyer feel like they’re making a smart choice or saving money (The Concession Close Method).

Whatever method feels right for you, make sure you use persuasive writing techniques like Brian suggests.

Getting you blog traffic to convert is really just a matter of applying successful marketing techniques to your Blog. The trick is knowing what’s appropriate for a Blog and what belongs on a separate page.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Blog Posts that Get Attention

04 2008 Wednesday

By Sharon Housley in Blogs & Podcasts

Blogs are now a dime a dozen, and bloggers need to make their blog posts stand out. Developing a blog following is not as easy as it once was. Learn how to write blog posts that attract readers and retain their attention. Follow these guidelines to cultivate readers…

1. Draw Attention

Use titles to attract the reader’s attention to the blog post. The title should mimic newspaper headlines and generate interest in the blog post. The title can be controversial, but not to the extent of being misleading. Use action words in the title. Bloggers will often come up with a handful of potential titles for blog posts, and then settle on the title that is best suited to a particular blog post.

2. Deliver

Having a catchy title, but following it with content that fails to deliver, will not endear you to your readers. The blog content must deliver what is promised in the blog title, or readers will unsubscribe and stop reading. When deciding on a blog title, do not stray too far from the content, as the two are intricately related — the title will attract the reader’s attention, but the content must then live up to expectations… or the blogger’s reputation will suffer.

3. Accurate

Nothing stains a blogger’s reputation like inaccurate information, so be sure that your blog posts contain accurate information. Intentionally posting inaccurate or false information will significantly damage a blogger’s reputation. But if an error unintentionally or inadvertently occurs in a blog post, be sure to quickly post a retraction or correction, along with an explanation and an apology in order to salvage your good reputation.

4. Relevant & Timely

Blog posts should always be relevant and timely. Hearing about something long after it has occurred will not captivate readers. Blog about information that is occurring in the here and now. If you are going to write something that is no longer timely, be sure to add some sort of twist, or include new or updated information to make it relevant.

5. On Topic

All blogs should have a general theme that connects all the posts on the blog. Readers will expect posts that are related, so stay true to the blog’s theme and topic.

6. Use Keywords

Use keywords liberally in blog posts. Search engines will attempt to categorize the content of a blog post and discern its general topic. By including related keywords or keyword phrases, search engines will have an easier time classifying the blog’s contents. Additionally, a blog that uses keywords will have a better chance of ranking well for those keywords or keyword phrases in organic search listings.

7. Evaluate Web Logs

Review web logs to determine what blog posts have been popular with readers. Then figure out how to provide similar or related content that might also be of interest to those readers.

8. Original

Blog posts should always contain original and unique content. If you are simply re-posting information from others, include editorial content or a different spin to the information. Readers do not want to constantly rehash the same information — they are interested in reading new material.

9. Chunky Content

Break content into smaller, readable chunks. Most website visitors will just scan paragraphs for information, and very few will take the time to read all the words contained in a post. Use bulleted lists, or break web copy into paragraphs with bolded sub-topics that appear before the paragraphs.

Writing blog posts is not just about spewing forth content. The best blogs are well thought out, and contain provocative and interesting unique content. Follow the above steps to produce a relevant blog worth reading.

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

Blog Sites Beware: Liability Lurks In Bloggers’ Postings

04 2008 Monday

By Chip Cooper in Blogs & Podcasts

If your site allows visitors to post digital files or comments (e.g. in an online blog, as well as in a forum or chat room), you could be held liable for copyright infringement if any of their postings infringe the rights of another person, even if you are unaware of the infringement. Under general copyright principles, you would be strictly liable for their copyright infringement, even if you are “innocent”.

You could also be liable for defamatory statements posted by bloggers.

The Playboy Case And Copyright Infringement

A good example of an “innocent infringer’s” liability that occurred before the enactment of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the case of Playboy Enter., Inc. v. Frena, 839 F. Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fla. 1993). In this case, Playboy alleged that the defendants who operated a bulletin board service (BBS) were liable for copyright infringement. Subscribers to the defendants’ BBS had illegally taken copyrighted photos owned by Playboy and uploaded them onto the defendants’ BBS.

The court found the defendants liable for copyright infringement, despite the fact that the defendants did not upload the photos (the subscribers uploaded them), and the defendants were unaware of the presence of the infringing photos until the lawsuit was filed.

The court stated: “…intent or knowledge is not an element of infringement, and thus even an innocent infringer is liable for infringement …”.

The DMCA, enacted in 1998, provided a “safe harbor” so that this harsh result can be avoided, but service providers must take affirmative steps to qualify for it… or else you will suffer the same harsh fate as Frena.

To qualify for the DMCA “safe harbor” from strict copyright liability, you are required:

* to post a specific notice on your site (Terms of Use); and

* to file the DMCA Registration Form with the US Copyright Office.

Liability For Defamatory Statements

In addition to liability for the copyright infringement of bloggers, another pitfall to avoid if you permit visitors to post to your site is liability for their defamatory comments about another person, a competitor, or another product.

Defamation is an intentional false communication, made either orally or in writing, published to a third party, which injures another person or company’s good name or reputation.

While it is clear you will be liable for defamatory statements posted by you or your employees on your site, what about defamatory statements posted by bloggers? Will you be liable?

Statements which consist of pure opinion are not actionable… however, merely stating that a statement is pure opinion does not make it so. For example, a law school professor was awarded $3 million in damages arising out of defamatory statements published on a student’s site.

Online defamation may occur in the context of product reviews where strong statements are posted such as “do not buy this product because it will not perform as advertised”.

In addition, actionable defamation may occur where a site publishes untrue promotional statements about a person or company. For example, in one recent case, the Wall Street Journal was sued by the Harrods department store for publishing the statement that Harrods was the “Enron of Britain”.

Congress came to the rescue of “interactive computer services” in 1996 with subsection (c) of the Communications Decency Act which provides: “No provider or user of any interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 USCA Sec. 230(c)(referred to below as “Section 230″).

Section 230 was intended to overrule prior case law which routinely held that online providers were liable as publishers and speakers for third party content. Now, under Section 230, absent an affirmative showing by a plaintiff that an online service provider is the author of a defamatory message, email, or post, the provider should almost always avoid liability for defamation. In other words, if you or your employees are the authors of defamatory statements, you’ll still be liable, but if your website visitors are the authors of defamatory material, you won’t be liable.

A word of warning about another pitfall — be careful in assuming an obligation to monitor messages, email, or posts contributed by your site visitors or in exercising editorial control over them. If you assume an obligation to monitor, or if you maintain editorial control, and if you fail to screen out defamatory statements, you may be liable, despite the protections of Section 230.

For this reason, your Terms of Use should clearly state the extent to which you exercise editorial control, if at all, over messages, email, or posts of site visitors. And it’s always best to reserve the right to monitor postings, but not the obligation to monitor.

Conclusion In summary, if you have a blog, take the steps discussed above that are required to qualify for the DMCA “safe harbor” from copyright infringement. Ensure that that your employees do not post defamatory statements on your blog, and affirmatively disclaim any obligation to monitor posts by bloggers.

Chip Cooper is a leading intellectual property, software, and Internet attorney who advises software and ecommerce businesses nationwide. Chip’s easy and affordable online contract drafting service coordinates website contracts such as Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Subscription, Membership, and SaaS agreements. Visit Chip’s http://digicontracts.com site and download his FREE report, “12 Sure-Fire Ways Your Website Can Get You Sued”.

Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog?

04 2008 Thursday

By Chris Haycock in Blogs & Podcasts

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone. Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com, and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing, and Blogates. A quick search for free blog on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software), Apache, Roller, Blosxom, Geeklog, Textpattern, LifeType.

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community, Server, Movable, Type, Radio, UserLand.

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting. It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily. Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting. Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

You don’t have as many options to customize your blog. Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features. The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog. Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking. Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site. The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites. More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need. The Cons

There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard. Updates aren’t as easy to post. You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog. However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be too hard. You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Chris Haycock is an information publisher, specialising in helping others start and run their own successfull internet businesses. To find out more about the above, and to get an absolutely no cost two hour business blueprint video, go to http://www.easyebizz.com

What are realistic measures for your clients blog

04 2008 Wednesday

By Jennifer Osborne in Blogs & Podcasts

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

From what I’ve seen, average traffic benchmarks for a Small Business Blog = 1,ooo to 2,000 visitors per month; for Mid Sized Business = 10,000 - 20,000 visitors per month; Large, Enterprise-Sized Clients = 50,000 to 100,000 blog visitors per month. This is easily doable with a social media strategy.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

While there are many factors that impact that bounce rate, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider a bounce rate below 20% to be excellent and over 60% to be fairly high. Between 20% and 60% whether these numbers are high or low really depends on what industry you’re in and if you have a high number of RSS subscribers.

Google Analytics measures a bounce as “the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page”. This means that if you have a number of people sign up for RSS feeds, or read your blog daily. These “one-page-per-day” awesome visitors, will be counted as bounces.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

Where time spent on site might average 4 or 5 minutes, time spent on your blog might only average 1.5 to 2 minutes. Time spent on your blog over 4-5 minutes (what would be considered average for the rest of your site) is quite good for a blog.

This is because it only takes about a minute to half read, half scan an average 800 word blog post. If your traffic is spending more than 3 minutes per visit and are visiting more than one post at a time then I’d consider your blog content to be engaging.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

Most people don’t publish their RSS Feed numbers until they get a decent number of subscribers. For some that means subscribers in the hundreds, for others it means subscribers in the thousands. Either way, this gives new bloggers unrealistic expectations for how to define success.

RSS Feeds rely heavily on building momentum. The first hundred RSS subscribers will probably take longer to build than it will the next two hundred. This is because it takes a whole lot of inertia to power something from nothing.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Most bloggers will agree that there is nothing so satisfying as knowing that you’ve engaged someone enough to stimulate a comment. I think that it’s because as bloggers we “put ourselves out there”.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

How many comments should you aim for? Highly successful blog with thousands of subscribers will routinely get 50 to 100 comments per post. These blogs tend to be the most visible but they’re not a realistic benchmark for the average business blog.

For a new blog, getting one comment is an achievement. A solid stretch goal for your new business blog, should be to routinely get between 5 and 10 comments per post.
3.) Smoke and Mirrors Metrics

Some bloggers like to measure the “value of their blog”. This metric doesn’t really make sense for the average business blog though because they are unlikely to ever sell their blog. So if you’re never going to sell it; who cares what it’s worth?

Another measure of blog success often quoted is Technorati ranking. Technorati ranking is based on links to your site from other sites. For the typical business, this measure has very limited value. If you want to measure links to your blog then there are better tools to do this.

When used as a relative measure i.e. to compare your blog’s ranking to your competitors; then technorati can be somewhat interesting. But it should be considered a relative measure not an absolute measure.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

Apart from every other measure that I’ve discussed, the success of your client’s blog really just boils down to return on energy. Is the blog making them more money than the next best way they could spend their time and money?

One really cool way to measure the value of your blog traffic is to use Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can set up your conversion tracking to measure Per Visit Goal Value [the average value (based on goal value) of a visit to your site].

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

How to turn your Blog into a Blog Strategy

03 2008 Wednesday

By Jennifer Osborne in Blogs & Podcasts

What differentiates a tactic from a strategy?

A strategy is the plan for achieving a defined goal. A tactic is the “doing” part of the strategy. Tactics can be put together in a plan to form a strategy.

Time line is also an important differentiator between a tactic and a strategy. A blog can be up and running in a very short time frame (hours or days). A Strategy usually takes much longer to achieve (months or years depending on how lofty your goals are).

This is the second in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at how to develop a Blog Strategy for your Client. What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just building your client a Blog?

Starting a new Blog is a tactical move. You select the platform, customize a template, add a few plug ins and you’re done. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t.

What transforms a Blog from a tactical move to a Strategy are:

Setting Goals and Objective(s)
Developing an outlined plan of all the steps necessary to get there from here
Having some idea of how you will know whether you’ve achieved your goals (metrics).

These principles apply to any Strategy, in this post I am going to take the above steps and apply it to a Blog.

1. Goals and Objectives

There are many good reasons for starting a Blog.

Having a good understanding of what you want to achieve will assist in setting the tone for your writing; determining what topics you’re going to write about; and making decisions about how often to Blog and whether you wish to have multiple authors.

It will also influence social networking decisions such as if you’re going to show and allow comments, if you’re going to employ social media tactics.

2. Outlined Plan

Getting the right level of detail in a plan is very important. I’m a visual person, so I like to start planning with a diagram

Here is where I currently am -> -> -> -> and this is where I want to get to.

Then I break this plan down into the high level steps that must happen to get me from A to B. Personally, I like to plan three levels deep. Steps A, B, C, then A1, A2, A3. then A1i, A1ii, etc.

By planning three levels deep, you can take big steps and break them down into bite sized, doable pieces. Unless you’re working on a 18 month IT project with 60 project members, I don’t recommend planning in much more detail than this.

Although detail is awesome, sometimes you can get caught spending too much time planning and not enough time doing (also known as Paralysis by Analysis).

3. Metrics

It’s important to make sure that your metrics are tied to your objectives. If your goal is to increase traffic then one of your metrics should be to measure increase in traffic.

Make sure that you set an actual number. Setting SMART objectives is very important. Jeff defined these principles really well in his post about setting goals for social media Profile Development.

It could be a percentage increase in overall site traffic or could be a 12 month goal. If you blow away your 12 month target by month 3, you can always adjust this goal later.

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Here is a Blog Strategy for a Typical Client which employs all of the above:

Objective

Client Objective: My ultimate goal is to increase sales and I’d like to attract new customers to my website.

Agency Objective: We can use your blog to help bring new visitors to your website. If the ultimate goal is sales, then we will go after targeted traffic. Quality first, quantity if possible. (this is different than if your client is on a CPM model who strictly is going after eyeballs).

Outlined Plan (3 levels deep)

In this case I would optimize the site to help rank for many more broader keyword phrases than we’ve targeted in the past. Further social strategies will encourage referral traffic from like minded sites. Finally, niche tier II social media will expose your site to potential customers.

Here is the plan one level deep:

SEO –> Content –> Social Strategies –> Blog Promotion using niche social media

Taking it two more level deep it might look something like this:

1) SEO

Select an SEO friendly blog platform (like wordpress) and customize it so that it has the look and feel of the clients site. Add plug ins that will make it easier to do your job.

2) Content - Develop editorial schedule for next 3 months.

This will involve coming up with at least 15 to 60 Blog Post ideas that will appeal to your clients target market. I’ll be discussing how to come up with post ideas for Challenging Industries in Part III of this series, next week.

Decide who is going to be responsible for the writing. I really like it when the client does the writing. Not only does this keep the budget down but it starts the conversation between your client and their clients. Plus, they are the expert in their field. They know what matters to their clients.

Ideally you will be able to assign topics to various experts on the client side. Not only does this split up the work effort but it gives your client’s blog more variation in voices and content.

If the client is going to be doing the writing then some Blog Writing coaching is probably required. Writing a blog post is different than writing an article which is different than writing a business email.

2) Determine what Social Strategies you are going to employ.

The most common Social Strategy is to allow commenting on your site. I personally really like comments because take a one sided conversation and turn it into a dialog. Plus it can give your blog more of a community feel.

RSS Feeds are another social strategy. Your client’s readers may not be very technically savvy so it’s very important to make it easy to subscribe and to give the reader the choice of subscribing by email.

Linking out to other bloggers through your blog roll and in individual blog posts is also a good social strategy. When you link to another blogger you will get their attention. Chances are they will check out who is linking to them and if they like your blog they may subscribe to it. Or even link back to you in the future.

Further, by linking to authoritative bloggers in your industry, your readers will perceive you to be at their level, defined by the company we keep. It’s very important that these links make sense and that they add something to your ideas. Name dropping industry experts into your posts does not add to the quality of your post and will probably take away from your readers experience.

3) Promote the Blog using Niche Social Media

Research your clients industry to find social media sites that their potential clients may use. I.e. if your client’s product is helpful to the environment then environmentally conscious posts may appeal to the HUGG crowd.

Decide which posts would appeal to which social media. There is no point in spamming social media with every blog post your client writes. Only the really good posts that are on topic for that social property should be submitted. If your post is interesting to the social media’s target market then social media can drive quality traffic to your client’s site.

Make sure all the steps i the plan are mapped out into a process and that the process is communicated to everyone involved.

Metrics

Forget about what all the experts say. Just ask your client “what would make you consider this a success?” You may have to coach your client to keep it reasonable but this is going to open up a very important dialog.

i.e. You want get more traffic to your site and you want some of it to convert. So we have two objectives here.

Quantity of traffic (this is going to build over time so I would set goals for this for 3months, 6 months, 12 months).

Quality traffic. Some of my favorite quality indicators include bounce rate, time spent on site, and number of pages visited.

Down the line you will want to start looking at how social measures like the comments your posts are generating and the number of RSS subscribers.

I’ll discuss what realistic measures are for your Clients Blog, in part four of this series.

A Blog without Objectives and a Plan is just a Tactic.

By breaking out the steps and assigning accountabilities & time lines to those steps you can take a tactic and turn it into a successful strategy for your client.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Boosting Your Blog With Better Content

03 2008 Monday

By Andy MacDonald in Blogs & Podcasts

As you think about ways to generate buzz around your blog, you can also improve the quality of your blog by focusing on your posting techniques. These tips may give you some good promotion ideas:

Post about current or controversial issues. This idea seems like a nobrainer, but it’s an easy one to forget. Pay attention to the news, and watch for events and issues that are of interest to your readers. When you find one, create a post or series of posts around the subject. You might want to aggregate blog postings on the subject, sum up opinion articles, or even state your own opinion.

Don’t be afraid to be critical or controversial in what you say, as long as you can defend your opinion. Good blogs don’t shy away from confrontation, although they don’t create it purely for the sake of argument. Going out on a limb definitely causes people to comment more and probably also result in more links from other blogs to your postings.

post in user groups and forums. The Web is peppered with user groups, bulletin boards, and forums about all kinds of subjects. If you have set yourself up as an expert and have valuable information to contribute to a forum, you can drive traffic to your blog.

Be very careful that you don’t come off as a spammer or someone who is trying to sell a product or service. Your postings should be on topic and provide information, opinion, or clarification that contributes to the discussion. Let your knowledge sell the blog or your company for you. Don’t try to be someone you’re not — identify yourself as being associated with a company, because if anyone figures it out and you haven’t been up-front, the backlash can overshadow your message, even if you didn’t intend a deception.

Guest blogging. Invite prominent bloggers, industry experts, and other influential people to guest edit your blog for a day or a week. You may have to provide some incentive to get them to help you out. Other bloggers, however, undoubtedly talk about their guest-blog gigs and bring traffic to the site. The real payoff is in the promotion you can do to bring readers in during that time.

If your blogger is well known, you may be able to offer an exchange: Your blogger for mine. This solution is also handy for those days when your blogger wants to take a vacation or is in some way unavailable to blog. Even an unknown guest blogger is preferable to having your blog go dark.

Tip: Be sure to talk with the guest about appropriate topics, writing style, and your expectations on the number of posts to be provided. If you plan to edit the guest blogger, state this up front as well.

Add photos to your posts. Say it with images! A blog can be a text-heavy, boring-looking page, even if the writing is scintillating. The addition of photos, charts, and other graphics can add spice and interest to any blog entry — and readers respond well to blogs that use images. Keep your images to a reasonable size, especially if you have pages that display several blog entries at once.

Author: Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS. line

Proper Use of RSS Feeds and Promotion of Your Blog

02 2008 Monday

By Andy MacDonald in Blogs & Podcasts

Unquestionably, the popularity of blogging has fueled the expansion of RSS feeds. According to Technorati, about one-third of blogs have RSS feeds. Some people who maintain blogs are publishing an RSS feed without even knowing about it, because some of the blog Web sites automatically create feeds.

In this article, I give a quick overview of blogging and how to use RSS with your blog to gain more readers. If you want to start a blog, i explain where to go next. If you already have a blog, I explain how you can create an RSS feed and use it to publicize your blog.

Bloggers Unite

Blogging has become a movement. Blogs have become influential, and even the mainstream media are taking notice. Web sites have been around for a long time. How did a few daily entries balloon into millions (yes, millions) of blogs and an entire industry?

The early days of the World Wide Web contained lots of personal sites and free information, as people discovered they could post anything they wanted. Still, the great expansion of the Internet was driven by commercial uses.

However, people never forgot those earlier days of personal interests, and they still had more to say. People discovered that they could publish, meaning that they could create a site whose main purpose was to provide updates on anything — current events, social mores, technical advances, and so on — including their opinions on these topics. It was the opinions — well-researched, smartly written, and often funny — that hooked people on reading blogs.

Tip: For lots more on blogging see Ten Simple Tips for Successful Blogging.

Creating a Blog

If you want to create a blog, you need to decide which type of service or technology you want to use. Your choice of blogging tools is an important decision — after all; you’ll probably use that tool almost every day.

The easiest way to start a blog is to use a Web-based service. You don’t need your own Web site, because the Web service hosts your blog for you. You just enter your content into a Web form in your browser and click a button to post your blog.

If you want to run your own Web server, you can. Several blogging programs work on a server. The disadvantage is that you need more technical skills. The advantage is that you have more control over your blog. Also, you don’t have to worry about your blogging service going under or its servers crashing.

Getting started

Obviously, once you have chosen a blogging tool, you’ll be eager to start writing. Perhaps you already know what you want to say — in fact, maybe fully developed ideas are practically exploding out of your head. But for most people it’s a good idea to think a bit about how their blog will develop:

Decide on your blog’s purpose. You may want to write a mission statement that describes what you are trying to accomplish and why. Include your expected audience.
What kind of content will you include? Do you just want to create a diary-type blog and write off the top of your head? Will you need a source of inspiration?
What is the focus and format of that content? Will you focus on one topic or let yourself write about anything that interests you? Will people read your blog because you’re an interesting person, because you write well, or because they’re already interested in a topic that you’re covering?
Consider your schedule. How much time will it take you to write a regular blog entry? How much time do you have every day to blog?

Tip: If you’re considering a blog for your business, and you’re already spending lots of time communicating your thoughts via e-mail, blogging probably won’t take you any more time.

Creating a Blog with Your HTML Editor

If you already have a Web site and maintain it, and you don’t need fancy bells and whistles, you may not need a blogging tool at all. For example, perhaps you don’t want to allow comments or responses — this requires some sophisticated programming, which the blogging services offer but which you may not be able to do easily on your own. If you don’t need this kind of feature, you may choose to create a blog on your own.

After all, what is a blog? It’s just some text on a Web page, listed by date. If all you want to do is create a daily entry, you can create one in the same way you create any other Web content.

Maintaining Your Blog

After you’ve created and posted a few blog entries, you’ll establish a routine of maintaining your blog every day or so. The most popular bloggers put aside a few hours each day, usually at the same time, to blog.

Getting input for your blog

Although many people write entries based on blogs or news stories that they’ve read, don’t forget that you should add something meaningful to other peoples’ content. Work on developing your own voice and your own point of view.

Remember: When you mention an outside source, provide not only a link but also a mention of the author and title. In other words, be generous about giving credit to your sources.

Maintaining your blog is more than just posting. If you allow people to add comments, you should comment on some of those postings.

Adding ads

Here’s another consideration for maintaining your blog — do you want to make some money from it? If your blogging service is not free, you may want to at least make up some of the cost of using it.

The main way to make money is to place ads on your blog. If you create your blog on your own Web site, you can use Google Adsense. You get paid a small amount for each time someone goes to your site and clicks one of the ads. Because the ads are appropriate for your site’s content, people are likely to click the ads.

A similar option is Blogads. Advertisers sign up and choose the blogs they want to advertise on. You can sign up to be listed as one of those sites.

On the other hand, it’s perfectly all right to keep your blog ad-free. In spite of the commerciality of the Internet, a strong culture also exists for keeping information and opinion noncommercial. If you’re blogging because you love it, why bother with ads?

Finding other ways to make money

You can ask for donations. Some bloggers use Amazon’s Honor System program, which allows site visitors to donate to your site.

If it’s appropriate for your blog’s topic, you can become an Amazon associate and recommend books that relate to your blog. If readers buy the books, you get a small percentage. Many readers will appreciate your recommendations for further reading and won’t think of these links as advertising.

Publicizing Your Blog with RSS

If you feel that no one is reading your blog, it can be disheartening. But you can’t just sit back and wait for the masses to come to you; you need to let people know about your blog. Just having an RSS feed doesn’t guarantee that people will subscribe. And most people still read blogs by going to the blog’s Web site.

The first step is simply to let people know about your blog. Tell them the URL of the blog and of your RSS feed. Send an e-mail to all your friends and colleagues. Put the URL on your business card. Explain to them the advantages of subscribing to your feed.

If you used a hosted blog service, such as Blogger or LiveJournal, remember that they only list your blog on their sites. Therefore, you need to go out and make your blog and its RSS feed visible elsewhere on the Web.

If you can find other blogs on similar subjects that accept comments, feel free to make constructive comments and include a link to your own blog. Perhaps you can write some articles for online or offline publications and mention your blog in them.

Quite a few sites function as directories just for blogs, regardless of whether they have RSS feeds. People come to these sites to search for blogs on topics that interest them. You can list your blog on some of these sites to help people find you.

Use a combination of blog directories and RSS directories to publicize your blog. Keep your blog interesting, relevant, updated, and useful, and people will come knocking at your door.

Do you have a favorite method for promoting your blog or RSS feed? Leave a comment and share with the rest of us. Who knows it may help you gain another reader

And finally, be sure to check back soon, when we will be releasing a similar article named “how to promote your RSS Feed” Be sure not to miss it by Subscribing to my feed.

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