You work hard on your blog, so promoting it makes sense if you want to help others and generate revenue. Connecting your target market with your blog requires persistent effort, but it will eventually reward you well in popularity and profitability. The following nine smartest ways to promote your blog will help you achieve your goals. [Read more…]
If you are a current or aspiring blogger, one of the biggest ways to make your blog a success is to grow your reach and following by using social media. No matter the subject of your blog or the audience, there are many benefits a blogger can gain from using social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are four of the most important platforms you can use to promote your blog. Below are explanations of the importance of each platform and tips for naming your pages, integrating them with your blog, interacting with the public and learning about the ROI of social media. [Read more…]
Once you make the decision to have a blog on your website, the challenge becomes adding stellar content to it on a frequent basis. If you wait too long in between posts or your content is dull and uninteresting, you will end up creating work for yourself that does not benefit your bottom line and costs you time and money to keep going. Thus, the question becomes: “How do you generate good blog ideas that keep people coming to your blog on a consistent basis?” It’s not that hard if you keep the needs of your audience in mind.
A good blog schedule is to update your content once or twice a week always on the same schedule, like Tuesdays and Fridays. The larger your audience, typically the more often you will want to post to keep them coming back. However, if you are just starting out, a once a week schedule is fine. You will need at least four to five good topics a month, depending on which day you decide to publish. The more frequent the posting, the more habit-forming. If you post twice a week, that’s eight to ten good blog ideas you will need to come up with each month. Here’s how:
What are the biggest topics in your business arena? If you are selling apparel, it might be the latest spring or summer fashions. If tech toys are your specialty, maybe you want to review the latest tech offerings. If you are a consultant, discuss the latest methods that have helped clients in new and innovative ways. You can even check out worldwide trends on Google Trends or Twitter.com/search to discover topics that might impact your business.
What topics are the most popular on other business competitors’ blogs? These are also likely to be popular on your blog as well. Of course, you cannot plagiarize their content, but you can write about the same topic from your own viewpoint. Read the comments on the other popular blog topics to see what things those readers wanted to know more about. You can even post a reply to some question on a popular blog and link it back to your blog post. If the popular blog doesn’t see it as shameless self-promotion and feels it adds something to their own site, they will allow the comment. Also look for blogs that offer complementary services to do the same thing. These are more likely to allow links back to your blog.
Polling an audience can be a great idea for a blog topic itself! You can give out some ideas of what you think are the most relevant topics for your audience to start the ball rolling. Then, solicit their opinions on the topics of most interest to them. If you have an active audience, they will be more than happy to give you ideas for future blog topics that can help them in their lives even as they help your blog to become more authoritative and popular.
Topics that are showing up on the news more are usually controversial and thus, capture enormous attention. However, much of the news is negative and creates a situation where if you post something negative on your blog, it will generate the wrong kind of attention. So, you need to angle the controversy on your blog in a more positive fashion. You can even add humor to articles that reference a controversial topic to make light of it. That’s why you see so many articles talking about stupid things celebrities do or why Donald Trump’s hair resembles this or that. These topics are not meant to offer much more than entertainment, but they can generate a lot of views and everyone likes to join in the party, especially if it’s hysterically funny. The topic doesn’t take sides, it merely offers a light view on a controversial topic. It also conveys the blogger’s personality in a way that “how to,” trends, and educational topics fail to do. This can make your blog far more human and readable.
At some point, you will hit upon a topic that generates massive views and comments. When you have such content on your site, it’s a big hint that there is much more to be mined underneath the surface of that one topic. Create a series and link the series on each article. So, for instance, if you create an article for a marketing site on “Why Men Are Going to Love Pink in 2016” and you generate enough controversy and positive interest that it becomes a very popular blog, then, you know that maybe it will lead to other similar topics, like “How to Leverage Color Choices for Your Next Customer” or “Why Is Everything Vintage in Teal?” It really depends what’s of interest to your audience as to what topics will be popular on your site. Once there is an indication you have a winner, make a serial blog post out of it. This can take care of five or six blog post topics in one sitting.
At some point, you may hit a writer’s block. That’s when you need to hire someone else to help you brainstorm good blog post ideas. Writers who have written for numerous other people often have their fingers on the pulse of the industries that they serve. Offer them payment and a guest blog post position to keep your blog full of juicy content without much forethought on your part. That way you can concentrate on other areas of your business while the blog audience continues to grow and develop with only minor supervision.
As you consider all the cool blog design ideas you want to implement—because they look cool, because they’ll make it easier to post adds and push sales, because they’ll make upkeep easier, because whatever—you need to always, always keep in mind a single trait which matters more than any else: user-friendliness. The most magnificent blog in the world, with the greatest content and the greatest monetization schemes ever concocted won’t make a dime for you if your site is miserable to navigate. So before you enact any of your big ideas, take a long moment and consider these three tips for making a user-first experience. [Read more…]
Blog authors and website owners are having an increasing amount of trouble trying to find people to visit their sites because of the online competition. Millions of websites exist, and many of them offer the same goods, services and information. Furthermore, search engine optimization tactics have changed over the years leading to additional difficulty staying in the game. The following are a few tips that a person can use to keep visitors stopping by the website. You can get traffic to your blog using any of these methods. [Read more…]