Blogmanic

Since I’ve started blogging I’ve had a few people ask me about my writing process so I’ve decided to share it with you today.

This development process is pretty much the same exact steps that I’ve taken on every single post on Site Sketch 101. I’m going to take you from the concept development phase all the way to hitting the publish button.

Honestly, I usually have about five or six different articles that I am putting through this process at the same time. For some people that might not work, but for me it allows me to save time.

Sometime I get in the mood to develop topics so I create five or six ideas. Other days I want to go through my topics and create their key points so I list the main points for those five or six articles. Working through several articles at a time allows me to rapidly develop quality content for each day of the coming week.

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No matter what other marketers say about content, it is still an integral part of a blog.

People who argue about the importance of content, in my opinion, is complicating the issue. My argument is simple. Blogging is writing and writing produces content. People always go online to peruse some kind of contents. What I agree on is that, content by itself worth nothing. It needs consumers as much as a blog needs readers.

Currently contents are not only limited to text and image, but also audio and video. Consumers have more options to choose from. Not only they may choose which content to consume, but also the channel they prefer it to be delivered. This is a huge opportunity for bloggers, which should now label themselves as content producers or information publishers.

Content Production and the Success of Your Blog

Content production is so important that you should spend quite a significant portion of your time for it. By content, it doesn’t mean random page of text that lure the search engines and visitors to come to your site. That may work in the past as people who want to click away choose to click on ads, resulting in revenue for the site owners.

As search engines become smarter, and if you want to build long term readership, you should focus on creating strong, interesting and engaging content so not only the consumers are eager to read, listen or watch it, but also looking forward for more.

RSS and email play a significant role in building your audience. In fact, this may be your major goal when it comes to content promotion. More about this later.

Again, with so many blogs nowadays, the last thing people want is just another blog. On the other hand, people are always looking for fresh and unique content. As a blogger, you should create content that people look forward to consume. That’s the first step to building a successful blog.

In my experience, content creation accounts for 40-50 percent of total time spent on the blogging business. That includes writing content for the blog and producing various articles as a guest blogger on other people’s blogs.

Bloggers who extend their content beyond text to include audio and video spend about the same amount of time doing so. Your experience may be different, but the point is that content production should not be overlooked. Spend as much time as you need to produce really solid content.

Remember that for a blog, content is conversation. The quality of your conversation depends on the content and people you attract to your blog.

The Role of Content

During hard times when people tend to cut down cost, content remains a solid strategy for bloggers because anyone with even no budget can afford to create content.

One of the latest buzzwords is content marketing. There really is nothing new about it but strategically put content into use is one of the evolution I was talking about in previous post.

Your content strategy should be tightly integrated to every move you take. That way, you already make a focused effort with your content. By targeting on one or a handful of goals, you are more likely to gain results.

Scattered effort on contents yield random result. While that still works to certain extent, in the long run, that will be more of a noise rather than signal.

Let me elaborate a bit about integrated content strategy. An Indonesian idiom goes as “Rowing once to surpass two or three islands at a time.”

Integrated content strategy is like rowing smart. It allows you to gain the following benefits at the same time:

• Drive traffic. From returning RSS subscribers to referral traffic from other blogs or sites, social media, search engines and others.
• Extend search engine visibility. Optimized content for specific keyword helps you get found in search engines.
• Engage with your audience. Each new content is potential communication with your audience, which in turn is good for you, whether you are selling products or providing ad space.
• Build community. By providing a platform to interact with each other and give feedback — a blog is perfect for this — new content drives the audience back. Regularity turns them into a community.
• Extend your brand. For a blog, the blogger’s identity is the brand. By getting in front of the readers regularly, you are extending your brand recognition.

One big thing about integrated content strategy is that it is an orchestration to achieve a purpose. At the end of the day, your content needs to cater to your target market and grow your business.

Diversify Content for Your Blog

As said before, nowadays, consumers have choices. If they prefer to listen rather than read, not having audio content (podcast) sometimes means you are losing audience.

Diversifying your content formats is necessary if you want to capture a wide spectrum of audience. Also remember most people don’t stick with one format or channel. For example, personally, I subscribe to RSS feeds and browse web sites and blogs, but also watch online videos regularly, visit discussion boards and am active in Twitter. For audio, I still listen to a few, carefully selected, audio podcast during weekend.

What does the above scenario show? Two things:

• If your message is all over those places and I am your ideal client, you have more opportunities to reach me and deliver your message.
• Quality is no longer a unique value proposition. It is compulsory. With so much content and so little time, I become very choosy about what I consume. For me, this is especially true for audio podcast. I only choose to listen to two or three shows per week. Unless your podcast is really good, it will be deleted from my iTunes subscription faster than you can say, “Opps!”

With that said, here is a list of content formats and channels you should consider. Note that you don’t have to adopt all formats / channels for your content distribution to be effective. In fact, you should not try to put too much on your plate when you are just getting started unless you have the resources to do so.

1. Web site content. This includes articles, blog posts, tools and resources you create and publish to your web site or blog.
2. Image galleries. The sky is the limit when it comes to using images to convey your message. Flickr and other image hosting make it very easy to host images.
3. Audio podcasts. Podcasting isn’t dead. People want the candy, they don’t care about the vending machine.
4. Online video. Most people find it hard to believe that 60% of online video viewers are over the age of 35, according to Nielsen Online. One in two Americans, or 154 million people, watch a video at least once a month in 2008. The number is still expected to grow. A personal note to myself: you’re crazy if you don’t tap into this opportunity.
5. Micro-blogging. Nowadays, Twitter is the de facto standard for micro blogging. Like blogging, it is not the proper place to solely distribute promotional messages. Become resourceful and your followers will just grow faster than the number who decides to leave.

Some bloggers find that they prefer to record their voice because writing simply is not their cup of tea. That’s fine. There are ways to work around the diversification. Whichever formats you choose, ensure that you weigh in your resources and time commitment to content production.

It is better to do one thing very well than scattering your effort into multiple formats with little result. I know I’ve said it before but it is worth repeating because of its importance.

How can you shoot different content formats down different distribution channels? The next post in the series tells you how, including tips and strategies to leverage your content for online marketing.

Many friends have asked me whether we can make money from blogs or not. I told them you can make money even by selling lemonade at the corner of your school but the main problem is that you must have passion and time for what you will be blogging. Many people fail because they are starting blogs just to make money , they are writing 2 or 3 articles and they are using different affiliate links and other advertisement programs to catch any cents.

You must know that in order to make some money , at least you should know what you are talking about and not post just crap in order to increase number of posts in your blog.
Many newbies on the internet doesn’t even know how to get a free blog online so in this article I wont tell you the secret to make millons of dollars on adsense, or whatever. I will explain step by step what you have to do in order to make some cash from your blog

There are 2 big blog providers online which are

* WordPress.com
* Blogger.com

- WordPress has a lot of templates and widgets so you can use for your blog , you can create categories and you can even purchase more space and other cool features if you upgrade
- Blogger was purchased by Google so the best part is that you can get accepted to Adsense through Blogger. The bad part is that you cannot create categories but you can give Labels to your posts as they were categories (Im doing it)

You must know that creating a blog is really simple but updating it everyday with new and unique content is really a hard work (its not so hard if you speak about your favorite niche like I’m doing) So content will be the judger whether you will be a successful blogger or not, if you will update it once a week chances will be very low but if you will post good and unique content every day then you will be in the right road

So ok so far , you have created the blog , you chose your template and you are posting some articles. You will ask how will you get the traffic ?

There are tons of ways to drive traffic to a blog , I will explain some of the techniques I’m also using

* Register at FeedBurner.com
* Register at TechnoRati.com
* If you are a member of DigitalPoint Forum add your RSS Feed to your profile (it will be shown under your username everytime you post a new reply or thread)
* Write some unique articles and upload them at Article Directories (See this post for more explanations)
* Register at MyBlogLog.com
* Add your blog url to your signatures in every forum you are (if possible add also an avatar with your blog’s address)
* Add your blog url to high pr directories

So with 7 easy and free ways you can start seeing some increases in your traffic (Note that if you dont post regularly your traffic may decrease again)

Now I know that all of you are thinking , how will we be making money from our blogs ? Its really simple but I would strongly recommend use just 2 or maximum 3 advertisments and do not put the advertisements from the beginning (wait until you have some traffic then you may add them) Make sure your advertisements and other widgets are like your template so you wont have a lot of contrast.

Here I’m listing the ways how you can make money from your blog once you have some decent traffic and some readers

* Adsense (CPM & PPC which pays differently for each niche)
* Text-Link-Ads (Get Money if someone buys a link to your site from TLA)
* ReviewMe (Get paid for different reviews you make , more traffic you have more you will earn)
* PayPerPost (same as ReviewMe but it has more advertisers in their network)
* Money4Banners (Doesn’t matter if you have a small or big blog , you get 10$ when you sign up and 5$ every month just to display their advertisment
* WidgetBucks (this seems to be most promising program which pays very high rates but nobody has received any payment so far as its a new company)

So I’m listing just these 6 ways but if you would be interested on others feel free to contact me and I will share my experience with you.

Make sure you use proper keywords for each article and make sure your blog structure is like :

http://yourblog.com/this-is-how-yourl-must-be.html

and not like :

http://yourblog.com/Post.php?id=2007-2425 (SEO Purposes)

Share your comments for this article if you found anything special !

Really what you’re saying here is that you want to use your blog to ’sell yourself’ instead of to sell a product or ad space.

Here are a few things to work hard at:

• build trust - increasingly marketers are finding that people want to know and be in some sort of trusting relationship with those that they buy products or services from. This is particularly true for a personal service like consulting. Be open about your agenda and about what you do and don’t know. Talk both about your successes and failures. If all you do is use a blog for ’spin’ you’ll present as too good to be true.
• be personal – building on the last point – one way to make a deeper connection with potential clients is to show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human injecting humor, a photo or two of yourself and showing your personality.
• use story – I find readers respond very well to story on blogs. Stories of my own experience, stories of other clients (shared with permission as case studies) etc. Using relevant stories can help build credibility in your niche.
• establish expertise – people won’t give you the ‘expert’ label without you earning it. Show what you know (without being arrogant), show how you apply it (it’s one thing to know a lot – but can you translate your knowledge into something constructive and useful) and be a thought leader in your niche (ie break some new ground and show people that you’re capable of original thought).
• be generous – some consultants use their blogs to talk very abstractly about their field of expertise but don’t actually give their readers much in the way of practical and applicable content. My approach is to give away quite a bit of information and to be quite generous with what you share. If you help someone for free I find that the next time they need something they’ll quite often be willing to pay for it. You might not want to give everything away for free but free reports, ideas and tips should feature pretty heavily on these types of blogs.
• establish relationships in your niche – while building relationships on your own blog with potential clients can be very effective – when another blogger recommends you it can be even more powerful. Get to know other bloggers in your niche and you’ll find they will add to your credibility with their links and mentions on their blogs.
• be consistent – while there’s no problem with changing, growing and developing in your ideas over time you do need to present some consistent messages over time. If you’re constantly chopping and changing what you’re on about and focusing on you’ll find that readers find it hard to connect with you and build a ‘relationship’ over time. Remember that every time you post you have the opportunity to add to or take from your reputation and brand

Writing with keyword-rich content helps your blog be found and readers to fully understand what you are writing about. Write consistent and purposeful content.

The more inline your content is with your blog’s purpose, the more concentrated your use of keywords will be throughout the entire blog, not just on a per-post basis. The more diverse your blog’s content, the more diffused your keyword usage will be across all of your blog.

Make a plan for your content. Make lists of the topics you will write about in keeping with your blog’s purpose. Stick to those subjects as much as possible to build your blog’s reputation as the place to come for answers on those subjects.

What Are The Benefits Of A Focused Blog?

• Content is synonymous with the subject.
• Links are synonymous with the subject.
• It builds a reputation.
• It builds authority.
• It becomes a destination.
• It becomes a source.

Your Blog’s Content Labels Your Blog

If your blog tells more stories about your life than reports on the news and world around you, then it’s a personal journal or memoir. If your blog reports and comments on politics, it’s a political blog. If it has more reviews of products and services than other content, it’s a review blog. If it has more photographs than text, it’s a photoblog. If it has more music than text and pictures, then it’s a music blog. If it has more video than music, text, and pictures, then it’s a video blog, vid-blog or v-blog. If your blog has more ads than content, it’s in the business of blogging.

The majority of the content on your blog indicates the purpose of your blog. When labeling your blog, take a serious look at its content. As your blog evolves, the value of your blog comes from the content you build over time.

Readers Thrive On Consistency And Continuity

If you create an expectation of content on your blog, readers return expecting to find similar content. If you switch one week from blogging about grooming pets to blogging about grooming horses, you have set an expectation that your blog is about grooming animals. If you switch from grooming dogs to racing cars, readers are thrown off and their expectations aren’t met. The odds are they will not return for more.

It used to be said that predictability was boring. In blogging, predictability builds return customers. They know you are the expert on this subject and that you are the source for information. Meet their expectations when they return

There are several “first impressions” your blog makes as it struggles to attract and hold on to readers. Few of those first impressions come directly from your blog’s design and layout.

Search Engine Results: The first impression most people get of your blog is found within search engine results. They see a post title, blog title, and content excerpts around the keywords of their search terms.

Blog Feed Aggregator: An aggregator is a blog or website which displays titles or post excerpts from various blogs. Aggregators usually list your blog title, post title, and first 100-300 words of your post.

Feed Reader: A feed delivered to a feed reader displays the content as text, with few images, and none of your blog’s design. Depending upon how the feed reader is set, it showcases the blog title, post title, first 100-400 words of your post or the full post content, if the blog owner has set the feeds to full. Typically, the post title and first 100-400 words are the first impression.

From Other Bloggers: Another first impression a potential visitor gets comes from the words other bloggers have to say about you. It could be a simple link to your post title, or a paragraph or two recommending your blog and/or your blog post. The information in and around the link can make or break a reader’s decision to click through to your blog.

Front Page: Many web designers design the front page of the blog before the rest of the pages, creating a gateway to your blog. This is old “print-think”. Nowadays, visitors may arrive on any page on your blog. If they get lost navigating, or need more information, they will click to your blog’s front page. Every page, including the front page, must visually represent the purpose and intent of the blog. The front page must also still be the gateway to all the categories, sections, and pages of your blog.

Single Post Pageview: Most visitors arrive on a blog post page. The first impression is to the visual presentation, blog title, post title, and content, followed by other visual images. It must also offer easy-to-find navigational aids to help them find related and more content.

About Page: More than anything on your blog, your blog’s About page cements the first impression with information on the blog’s purpose and intent, as well as the blogger’s expertise. If they get past the visual presentation, they will look for more information about the author.

Category Page Views: The page views of your category, tags, and archives showcase the content within your blog in related groups. The first impression of category pages are the post titles, followed by the first 100-200 words of the post content. Most visitors scan the post titles looking for information related to their needs.

Go through each of these “first impressions” to see what kind of an impression your blog makes on the web.

If you have been blogging on the default blog template, or one of the first free templates you found, chances are good that your current template isn’t doing the job it should to enhance your blog. And unfortunately many blogs are using templates that actually detract from the user experience on your blog, whether due to a mismatch of template to blog theme or simply a theme that isn’t really presenting itself in the best possible way to your readers.

A good blog template will truly enhance what you present rather than detract from it, which a poorly chosen blog template can do. If you are one of those bloggers that put little time and effort into finding that perfect blog template for your blog, it is definitely time to find that killer blog template that is more suited to your style and content.

Where to find

Wordpress theme templates seem to be much more prevalent that themes for other blogging platforms, but no matter what type of platform you are using, do a search for “free Wordpress templates” changing it to match the platform you are using. There are so many people releasing templates today that you are sure to find something. If you have a particular theme in mind, add a couple keywords about that and see what turns up. The same goes for color. If you have your heart set on a purple template, throw the word purple into your keyword search.

Finding one that fits

If your blog is about white water rafting but the blog template you ended up choosing originally has a picture of a subway station in the header, it is a complete mismatch between design and content. So you want to make sure that what you present visually matches what the content of what people are reading.

Swap images

You might find that perfect template, but it is a mismatch like the subway station one. So instead, look to find an image that you could swap out for the subway picture. Maybe you have a picture from one of your white water rafting trips that would match perfectly or you can find one on Flickr under creative commons. So don’t completely eliminate templates simply because the header image isn’t quite what you have in mind.

Find a few

Sometimes that seemingly perfect template just doesn’t seem to do your blog justice once you actually upload it and install it. So as you find various templates, save them and upload them. Then you have a few different ones to try out and once, so you can easily compare then, check for any odd bugs, and pick the one you think compliments your blog the most. Don’t forget, you can always remove the ones you don’t ultimately end up with if you want, so download all those “maybe” templates too, it wouldn’t be the first time that a “maybe” template actually ends up being the perfect fit after it is tried out on the actual blog, instead of viewing a screenshot of it in action.

Still can’t find the perfect template?

Do what I do, and that is find a template that is “almost” and then go code diving and make the tweaks yourself. Often, you can change the code to make some of the changes yourself. Perhaps you want an ad block in the sidebar or a slightly larger or smaller design width. Or perhaps you just need to add your own custom logo to make it yours. You may discover tweaking it is easier than you realize, or you can call in a favor from a coding friend if the changes will take someone inexperienced just a short amount of time to do.

Many people don’t realize how important having a suitable template for a blog is, especially when the current one you have just seems completely inappropriate for the type of blog entries you are writing. If you are using a blog template, take the time to look closely at it and see if it really is a template that suits your blog, and if not, take the time to search for that perfect blog template that is clean, presentable and most importantly, goes with the theme of your blog.

This week I learnt two things about blogging:

1. Getting your readers to DO something on your blog is a powerful thing.
2. Personal contact with readers makes a real impact

Last week i ran a quick and small competition on ProBlogger to promote the ProBlogger Book.

The competition was simple – leave a comment on the competition post that told me why you wanted the book in 250 words or less.

The competition ran for 24 hours and at the end of that time there were 193 entries (more than I expected). The entries were so good that I felt bad just giving one book away so selected three submissions to get a copy of it.

At this point in running competitions I usually send the prizes, make a quick post announcing the winners and then do nothing else – but this time I decided to do something different.

I felt bad that so many had missed out on the book after going to the trouble of entering so on the spur of the moment I emailed each of the 190 entrants who didn’t win. It took me a while to pull all their emails into an email but I wanted them to know that I appreciated the effort that they’d gone to.

The email thanked them for their comment and told them that I was said that there couldn’t be more winners. I also pointed out that the book was on special at Amazon and said that I hope they’d be able to get a copy at some point.

I was a little hesitant to mention the book on sale as I didn’t want it to come off as a sales technique (the primary purpose of the email was to thank them) but decided to do it on the spur of the moment.

I sent the email.

What happened next was surprising.

I started getting emails from the 190 that I’d sent my email out to. Over the next 24 hours I had 70 emails!

There were two main themes in the emails:

1. They appreciated and were surprised by the personal contact - quite a few readers emailed that they’d been taken aback by the follow up email.

2. They’d bought the book – most of those who emailed said that they’d just bought the book (or were about to). Whether they all did or not I’m not sure but the book’s ranking on Amazon leapt up that day by 600 spots – so something happened.

In the days since my competition I’ve noticed a third flow-on effect of my email.

3. More Reader Interaction – a number of the people that I’d emailed had never commented before on ProBlogger before the competition – they’d been lurking but never active on the blog. However in the last few days they’ve been commenting like crazy.

Take Home Lessons

I’ve been reflecting upon this experience over the last couple of days and two ‘lessons’ have struck me.

1. Getting your readers to DO something on your blog is a powerful thing – this hit home on two levels. Firstly the act of getting readers to write why they wanted the book to play a big part in them actually buying it. I guess when you invest a few minutes into thinking about why you want something and then go to the trouble of writing those reasons up you ’sell’ yourself on actually buying it. Secondly – the act of making a first comment on a blog can often be enough to make a lurking reader an active reader. I’ve noticed this before – people often feel shy about commenting but once they take the step to do so they open the flood gates.2. Personal contact with readers makes a real impact – this is something I’ve known for a long time but have had to re-learn many times. It can be difficult to interact with all of your blog’s readers but when you do it can really impact them and help them to become more loyal to your blog.

Read more tips like this from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger Blog Tips