How to Write a Must-read Product Review

This guest post is by Karol K.

Reviews are one of the more common types of content on the internet. I’m sure you’ve looked for a review of a given product yourself once or twice. However, being on the receiving end of a review, so to speak, is a completely different ball game than actually writing one.

First of all, some people mistake reviews for sales messages. Some indications that you’re dealing with a disguised sales message, rather than a review, are: too big a focus on glorifying the product, the presence of numerous affiliate links, and a lack of actual information about the usage of the product or service being reviewed (only promotional speech).

So how can you be the good guy or girl and actually craft a proper review? This post presents the essential techniques you should use, but first…

A good review is not intended just to make some affiliate sales … at least, it shouldn’t be.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against affiliate sales, it’s just that if making money is your only goal, this makes it impossible to present an unbiased opinion of the product or service. You still can include an affiliate link at the end of your review, but treat it as an extra opportunity, not the goal in itself.

So what’s a better purpose than affiliate sales for a review? To answer that question, take a look at why people read reviews. If you decide to cater to that need exactly, you will create a truly valuable review.

In my opinion, the most common reasons why people look for product reviews are:

to learn the pros and cons of a given productto find out if the product is meant for themto find out if the product is of high quality and easy to useto find out about alternative solutionsto find out about other users’ experiences with the productto ultimately learn if the product is worth buying.

With those needs in mind, let’s look at what you can do to craft a truly valuable review.

This is the first rule to writing a review! Sometimes I’m really amazed at how many people continue writing reviews without even owning the product they’re reviewing.

I mean, it’s doable if you just want to make a few affiliate sales, but if your goal is to provide value, then it’s absolutely crucial for you to have the product in your hands (or on your computer).

Now, there are a range of ways you can get the product. The best way is to simply ask the product owner to give you a copy for free (just mention that you’re writing a review).

If this doesn’t work, you can sign up as an affiliate and buy the product through your affiliate link. This will allow you to get up to 90% off the retail price, depending on the affiliate commission you’ll earn. Be aware, though, that some affiliate programs don’t allow you to buy through your own link—check the terms and conditions of the arrangement before you do this.

As I said briefly a couple of paragraphs above, I’m not against affiliates. As a matter of fact, I’m an affiliate for plenty of products.

To put it simply, if there is an affiliate program available for the product you’re reviewing, by all means do sign up. Just don’t make affiliate sales your main goal when writing the review.

Why am I calling it a problem? The problem is that not every product is a quality one.

Every once in a while, you’ll stumble upon a product that is simply garbage. And the problem here is that people (including you, I hope) are naturally nice. So we don’t want to hurt anyone by publishing negative reviews of their products.

And this is where the problem of honesty arises. A natural approach here is to simply omit some negative experiences from your review—to not say anything about them. I really don’t advise you to do this.

Always try to fight the natural resistance and mention every negative aspect you’ve stumbled upon. This will strengthen your brand and also ensure your readers know that you’re an honest source of information.

Setting all the issues with purpose and honesty aside, now let’s focus on the core contents of your review.

Make sure you provide information on:

Features: Cover information on what the product does.Target group: Include information on who the average user of the product is, and why they would want to use it.The main benefit: There are always some benefits a given product has to offer, and listing them is usually the biggest value a review brings. Just to define the idea of a benefit briefly: it’s what the features of the product mean to the users, and how those features improve their lives.Practical details: Cover things like the price, where to get the product (you can include your affiliate link here), what the guarantee is, how long customers have to wait for the delivery, and so on.

This is optional. You can do this, but it’s not a mandatory element of a good review. Besides, sometimes there simply aren’t many alternatives to a really specific product.

Even if there are, there’s often no point in listing them. For example, when you’re reviewing a novel, even if there are other novels in the same area, it’s not likely to provide much value if you list them as alternatives.

The pros and cons section is a feature of every good review. Listing the pros is usually easy, as the product creators always try to make them clearly visible, but cons are a completely different story.

The first thing you need to realize is that there are always some cons, no matter how good the product seems at first. Your job as the reviewer is to bring them to the surface.

One more tip. Please don’t list cons that aren’t really cons. This is one of the tricks used by affiliate reviewers. For instance, when dealing with digital products, affiliates tend to mention the fact that the package takes a long time to download as a downside. It isn’t.

Cons are only significant if they somehow make the product less usable in some way. Focus on those.

If you take a look at Amazon, you’ll find loads of customer reviews for every product. They’re not there just for the sake of it. People are simply very interested in other people’s opinions.

If you have access to reliable customer reviews or opinions that you can legally use, by all means include them in your review. Try to find both positive and negative ones.

Finally, share your personal opinion about the product. Mention whether the product is worth buying or not, and what your overall experience of it was.

Don’t be afraid of speaking your mind freely here. If you love the product, say that you do. If you hate it, people should know about this, too.

Also, include your affiliate link if you want to recommend the product to your readers. You don’t have to make it look overly promotional—a big Buy Here button might be too much. Simply hooking up your affiliate URL to the product name is usually enough.

That’s it for my advice on writing a proper product review, but feel free to share your own thoughts and ideas. Do you write a lot of reviews? Have you experienced any difficulties getting products? I’d love to hear your tips, too.

Karol K. is a freelance blogger and writer. Currently, he’s all about providing blogging advice to real estate business owners, and getting the word out about las colinas real estate.

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5 Steps to SEO Friendly Split Testing, Sans Stress

This guest post is by Justine Smith of FreshBooks.

Split testing.

For many bloggers, the very words inspire visions of code and feelings of stress.

Also called A/B testing, split testing is an art that allows you to divvy up your blog visitors so one group sees a slightly different website than the other group.

While split testing for Adsense has been covered on ProBlogger before, doing split tests for your blog can be just as beneficial to help ensure that you’re giving your visitors exactly what they want.

To start you off on the right foot, here are my top 5 tips for SEO-friendly split testing that won’t damage your blog or stress you out.

The first thing you need to address is keeping those test pages from getting indexed by the “Big G” (a.k.a. Google). There are several ways you can do this. It sounds a little techie, but I promise it’s painless.

First, use canonical tags. Using the rel=canonical tag lets search engines know where your “original” page is located.

Next, use your robots.txt file. A robots.txt file is created to provide critical information to search engine bots, and is one of the first things they will look for before they crawl a site.

With a robots.txt file, you can keep them from crawling as well as indexing certain pages, including your test pages. Just be aware that SEO-savvy competitors will often look at your robots.txt file to get ideas from your secret test pages, so be careful of what you include.

Use the noindex meta tag on your variation page. Again, this tells the Google Bot to back off.

And don’t forget to check your work. You can input site:yoursiteurl.com into Google search to verify that your test pages aren’t getting indexed. You can also use tools like Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO to see if there are any external links pointing to your test pages. If there are, your site could get indexed—so be sure to check your work.

JavaScript is a programming language that’s used to make web pages interactive.  In the context of a split test, it is a piece of code you place on a web page that enables you to actually ‘split’ traffic between your control page and your testing page.

Search engines aren’t supposed to see or index Javascript, and usually they don’t.

To split traffic between pages A and B, JavaScript is often used at the top of the control page. Common sense tells us that if search engines aren’t supposed to follow the JavaScript then they shouldn’t index the test variation URL.

Unfortunately, sometimes they do it anyway.

So once again, check your work. Do a site: search for your test URL every so often to verify the test pages aren’t being indexed. You can also segment your site analytics by search referrals and note the top entry pages as another way to see if any of your test URLs are getting indexed by accident.

Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. Besides the option to remove your accidentally indexed pages, this toolset gives you a plethora of other free tools that’ll get your site much more search visibility.

Also, be mindful of:

Keyword cannibalization: This is where two similar pages wind up competing for the same rankings. Ultimately Google will arbitrarily favor one and ignore the other. There are several rank-boosting benefits that can be lost when this happens, so do your best to avoid it.Duplicate content: This is another biggie that can have similar results to cannibalization. If you don’t keep careful tabs on this, test URLs that are indexed could result in your important pages getting de-indexed. Not exactly what you were hoping for, right?

This is a case where small changes can add up to big gains. Did you know a simple color tweak could make a big difference on your conversation rate? The bonus is these changes won’t affect your rankings in any way.

Consider testing:

Headlines and calls to action: Simple changes like text size or typeface can be a great way to shake things up and impact conversion rates. Different people respond to different things, so making changes will help you to gauge what your readers respond to best. Just be sure when changing text size not to use the header H1-6 HTML tags, as those are reviewed by Google.Colors: Another great way to split test without messing with SEO is to play with colors on your site. Once you get a good look at all the areas where color lives on your landing pages, the possibilities will seem endless. Speaking of color…Text color: This is also something that can be tweaked. Changing a few important words to another color can make a difference. Just remember not to use too much color, because then it just becomes distracting and folks are put off. You can also change highlighted text, both by changing the color of the highlights and also changing which words are highlighted.Adding and removing graphics: Finally, manipulating your graphics can also effect conversions. Simple changes like removing graphics from your site altogether are easy to implement. Google does index photos but it’s not going to break your SEO if you no longer have them on your site. By the same token, you can also add photos to spark a change. People respond to social proof, so adding images like press logos and testimonials from people who adore you can go a long way in increasing response rates of your visitors. Just be sure not to mess with your existing photos’ ALT text too much, since this might already have been indexed.Changing graphics: These can be simple changes. You can swap out an illustrated graphic for a photograph, or see if people respond better to stock photos or real-life snapshots. Or you can play around with the positioning and size of your images. If the thought of changing your graphics makes you queasy, you could try simply playing around with the things that compliment your graphics, such as using borders, overlays and text on top, just to see what happens. Oh, and tying in with the call to action tweaks from earlier, you can also tweak that Buy Now graphic you may be using. Rumor has it The Belcher Button with its orange hue, and credit card images make a huge impact on buyer numbers.

As the “artist formerly known as Google Website Optimizer”, Content Experiments might be of interest in your split testing fun.

This is basically a quick and relatively easy tool that you can use to create A/B tests without being overly technical or messing with a lot of code. You can test your main pages and even get email updates about how your experiment is faring.

Split testing is an essential long-term tactic for a variety of business types, including freelance bloggers and even bigger companies like FreshBooks, who use the results to make educated decisions about how to write and design for potential and existing customers.

Now that you’ve ventured over to the geek side, it’s easy to see that split testing isn’t nearly as scary as many people tend to think. As long as you know where some of the hiccups lie, there’s no hair pulling, code whizzing, or messing with your hard-earned rank required.

Justine Smith is the Outreach Manager at FreshBooks, the #1 Cloud Accounting Specialist for Small Business Owners.

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The Well-rounded Blogger: How to Become the Best at Your Craft

This guest post is by Brandon Yawa of Brandonyawa.com.

It goes without saying that every writer who has excelled has his or her niche.

A “niche” gives writers a focal point, a demographic, a particular place in the world where his or her voice resonates. But niches without proper attention kill great writers.

You are walking down a busy street and fall. Unfortunately, you break your leg and the ambulance rushes you to the nearest Orthopedist. You meet Dr. Niche in his blue scrubs with his head held slightly higher than everyone else’s, suggesting overwhelming confidence in the subject at hand.

He looks at your leg, and in what seems like a millisecond, your leg is in place and the cast is fully set. Baffled by the expertise of Dr. Niche, you ask, “Is there anything I can do nutritionally to speed up the healing process?” Dr. Niche’s skyscraper deposition lowers as he almost incoherently mumbles, “That’s outside of my niche . . .”

Dr. Niche is absurd.

Great writers do not become so specific that they lose sight of the body in writing. Whether your niche is creative writing, blogging, non-fiction, or poetry, it is equally important you understand the mechanics of all the above. Great writers use the knowledge of writing to excel in their niche. Okay writers use the knowledge of their niche to excel in their niche.

If your specialty is blogging, expose yourself to other areas—poetry, literature, creative writing—and familiarize yourself with the mechanics of all of them. You’re not exiting your specialty; instead, you are arming yourself with more tools to excel in your niche.Don’t limit yourself to only writing about your niche. Live a little outside of your comfort zone. If you’re a poet, write what you know about blogging. If you’re a blogger, write a poem. Don’t just familiarize yourself with the mechanics; actually contribute your voice in other realms.Look at your voice like you would Dr. Niche. Dr. Niche is a genius if the world and the human body were limited to just bones, but it’s not. If you want to be a real world genius, don’t limit your voice to one particular thing.Separate the content your readers want from what you have to do as a professional to evolve. Continue to produce the content your readers look forward to, but practice new ways of delivering your content in privacy.Start today, not tomorrow. Don’t get into the habit of putting off what will make your voice special today. It’s a really bad habit that needs an entirely different blog.

The blogging world has shown that one person’s success can be countless people’s success when we share our experiences. Go out, try these new methods, then comeback here and share your insights. We look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

Brandon Yawa is a retired pro athlete turned blogger. His motivational blogs combine lessons learned from surpassing the limits in his life, with a deep-seated passion to help people transcend the limits in their lives.

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Blog Design for ROI, Rule 1: Prioritize the Opt-in Form

This guest post is by Gab Goldenberg, author of The Advanced SEO Book.

Are you writing phenomenal posts only to have your poor design fail you? Here’s how to fix that, with rules that will guide you whether you create a custom theme or just pick a theme and adapt it.

Today’s post is the first in a series on blog design for ROI.

Lots of articles give blog design rules or guidelines, but no one I’ve seen explains how these rules achieve your goals.

So let’s look at a business blogger’s possible ROI goals and how the design can help one achieve those goals:

earning ad revenueearning revenue from selling your own products and servicesgrowing your email list, RSS + Facebook, or Twitter list (listed in decreasing order of value)building a community or audience—especially as reflected by comments, forum activity, etc.developing connections and networking.

Every blogger’s first goal should be developing repeat traffic from a loyal audience. Everything else—sales, links, social sharing, networking opportunities—is attainable from this.

In practical terms, the most direct way to achieve this is to blog regularly and to build an email list. Blog design can’t motivate you to write regularly, but it can maximize the number of people who subscribe to your newsletter.

Q: How does your blog design help you build your list?

A: It makes the newsletter subscription call to action the most prominent element on any page, be it the homepage, an individual post page etc.

Sandra Niehaus of Closed-Loop-Marketing wrote an excellent guide to the factors of visual prominence (or “pop”), and I encourage you to read it.

Notably, Sandra highlights the following factors, which are within reach for every blogger to use.

location on the pagewhitespace around an elementcolour (saturation, hue and contrast).

Have a look at Derek Halpern’s Social Triggers. The design is brilliant with regards to building an email list. Here’s what an individual post page looks like:

Notice how besides the logo, the next most noticeable things are the email optin area and Derek’s face, followed by the title? Derek is making excellent use of both location, whitespace and color to draw attention to his opt-in box.

Even top marketers like Derek can improve, though.

If you look at the above screenshot, the email opt-in stands out—but it’s trying to shout over the logo and the further branding in the image box embedded in the post.

It’s easy to understand that Derek wants to brand himself and his blog as an expert source, but the large logo and face staring out are very distracting. Derek would likely increase his conversion rate by making the logo smaller and removing his face from the promotional box within his post.

What about branding? Branding is the result of relationships and getting your message out—two things which email does significantly better than a one-time view of a large logo and face.

So what lessons can we draw from Derek, on prioritizing our opt-in form in the blog design?

This is the most prominent position you can place anything on the page, and since this is the call to action we care about, it fits here best. This is also why Google suggests placing AdSense ads there.

Failing this, you should still get it above the fold, and you can see that Derek did so at the very top of his sidebar. (Personally I’d love to see it integrated in the post’s upper right corner where his Insider box is, but that’s not always possible.)

Note how it’s not squished between anything else? There’s also whitespace on the right and left margins, so this stands out even more.

Keep your logo small: look at Amazon’s for a good example of smart use of space. Also, avoid using a headshot above the fold, unless it’s integrated into your opt-in box.

Even this second point is debatable, as making the box too loud can make it physically hard for people to draw their eyes away from the opt-in to read your content. Or you could use a grayscale headshot in association with the author credits, or else resize the face image to be quite small.

The point is to be warily careful in using faces because they’re such a visually dominant element.

I attribute this prominence to people skipping down to the conclusion of a post to learn quickly what matters, as well as to being curious what others said and/or to see replies to their own comments.

Again, Derek does a good job with his placement, whitespace, and color contrast.

So that was rule number 1: give the top spot in your visual hierarchy to your email list’s opt-in form.

I’d love if you could comment with other examples of bloggers whose designs do a very good job of persuading people to join their lists.

At this time over the next few weeks, I’ll share the other steps involved in designing your blog for ROI. To follow along, add ProbBlogger’s RSS feed to your reader!

Gab Goldenberg wrote The Advanced SEO Book – and you can get a free chapter here. Gab and Internet Marketing Ninjas, the folks behind the Blog Design for ROI series here on Problogger, are offering to mail you a free print copy of the Blog Design for ROI guide as a small book. Get your free copy from seoroi.com/blog-design-for-roi/ .

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Use Word-of-Mouth Promotion to Boost Blog Traffic

This guest post is by Jeszlene Zhou of First Communication Job.

I love the idea of using a blog as your personal hub, and how it creates a centralised space for all your social media sites, your portfolio, and more.

Most bloggers and social media professionals promote a link to their blog or website, and shamelessly direct traffic towards their personal hub. Yet interestingly, they do not promote their personal hub via word-of-mouth in the “real world.”

Here’s a true story. Over the past few months, I’ve attended a few social media conferences, and met dozens of social media professionals. However, in all that time only one person invited me to view her blog.

What a pity, as the events were filled with bloggers and social media practitioners with great online influence—perfect for the community engagements we spend hours seeking to build behind our little screens. Great opportunities to increase blog traffic were wasted. In fact, paying hundreds of dollars to attend industry conferences without telling the people you meet about your blog is like having a trade show booth that doesn’t display its marketing materials.

Word-of-mouth promotion, despite its bad reputation, does not have to be shameless and annoying. There are many soft-sell methods to bring your message across. Here’s a basic Who, What, Where, When and How for using word-of-mouth promotion to increase your blog traffic.

You—and everyone! If blogging is the home of your core business, your blog should be shared with as many people as you can possibly reach—even if they are not heavy internet users.

You’ll never know who might visit out of mere curiosity, or if they will share your site with others.

What is your blog about and why it is different from others? Communicate your blog’s URL and unique selling point to create interest in those your speak to and eventually drive traffic there.

Sometimes it is wiser to connect first in your target audiences’ preferred social media platform—in certain contexts, communicating your LinkedIn, FaceBook or Twitter profile might be more appropriate than giving out your blog URL.

Just make sure that all your social media profiles have links back to your blog, so that these new connections can flow through when they’re ready to find out more.

Everywhere appropriate! I would list industry conferences and networking events as the top venues for word-of-mouth promotion. But as long as you’re having a conversation with someone, why not bring up your blog?

When people ask “what do you do?”

Instead of listing your day job, which you might be dragging your feet to on a daily basis, why not mention your blog? It makes you sound more interesting and can be a fantastic chance for you to generate interest and traffic to your online presence.

However while being opportunistic is important, be patient and wait for an appropriate opening so you don’t appear pushy—which can have the reverse effect on your sales and promotion efforts.

The elevator pitch is a great tool many sales people use on a daily basis, and Harvard University has created The Harvard Elevator Pitch Builder for novices to use.

You can also bring up an interview request or a guest blog invitation when appropriate, instead of limiting those queries to email engagements. And if a sales pitch isn’t your style, why not let your business card do the talking? While many consider cards to be increasingly obsolete in today’s digital world, a physical piece of information still serves to reinforce that first contact. Furthermore, if everyone else is stopping using traditional cards, carrying one will definitely help you stand out!

There are many great sales books that will help to improve both your face-to-face communication techniques and online engagement skills, one of them being Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I highly recommend this book to get a better understanding of successful networking through building mutually beneficial relationships—lessons that are applicable in both off and online interactions.

However, the best word-of-mouth promoters are people who practice, practice, and practice some more. So the next time you meet someone face-to-face, give this a go!

What are some of your experiences at networking events? Do many of the people you meet tell you about their blogs? What are some offline methods you use to encourage friends, family members and others to visit your site? Have you visited a blog through word-of-mouth?

Please share your thoughts, ideas and stories in the comments section below!

Jeszlene Zhou is a communications practitioner. Her blog, First Communication Job discusses tactics for entering the fields of media and communications, including professional blogging and social media. Be friendly, say hi to her on twitter too!

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Forget Everything You Think You Know About SEO

This guest post is by Mark Collier of www.DropMining.com.

For the last year I’ve been spending my free time after school conducting Red Bull-fuelled coding sessions in the pursuit of one single goal: to bring more science to the SEO industry.

As an industry we are still only taking our first few baby steps into the world of maths, stats, and data-driven decisions. For a seemingly data-dependent industry, SEO professionals are influenced to a surprising degree by rumour, anecdotal evidence, and unscientific tests.

SEOMoz were the true visionaries in conducting correlation studies to analyse search engine algorithms. With my project, I hoped to take it that little bit further and analyse more factors on a larger dataset.

After analysing the top 100 search results for over 10,000 keywords I had gathered 180,000,000 (one hundred and eighty million) data points on 186 potential factors in the Google algorithm. This has lead to the most comprehensive published research into Google’s algorithm, and some pretty incredible findings.

With so much data and so many findings it would be impossible to go through them all here on Problogger.net, so in this post, I have hand-picked all the most important findings for bloggers.

Correlations are a useful but imperfect indicator of the relationship between two pieces of data, in this case search engine ranking and the factor being tested. They range from -1 to 1, a minus number meaning the factor correlates with a negative impact on ranking, and a positive number meaning ranking and the magnitude of the factor move in the same direction.

How close the correlation is to either of the 1's is an indicator of its importance/strength. A 0.7 correlation is very strong whereas a 0.05 correlation implies almost no relationship between the two variables.

For example, correlation studies have been used to link income to education. As we all know the more education we have, on average the more income we earn, but where did that statistic come from and why do most people believe it?

Correlations are used to prove relationships between two pieces of data, in this case amount of education and income, and to figure out how important that relationship is, by putting numbers behind the logic.

Here’s a little example (these are made up figures [credit]):

In this sample, the correlation is + 0.79. Just from looking at the data, you can see that the more time the study’s participants spent in education, the more income they earned.

This is verified by the correlation which is a positive number (when education increases, income increases) and is very close to 1.0. This demonstrates that the relationship between education and income is a strong one.

Now that you understand correlations, let’s look at what my research revealed about SEO.

I’m sure you are aware there are a whole host of WordPress SEO plugins available for your blog. These plugins tend to deal primarily with on-page SEO, for example, placing keywords in the URL, title, meta description, etc.

While some plugins deal with the indexing side of SEO, which may provide some small SEO benefit, the majority tend to focus their efforts on these on-page factors.

The truth is that contrary to all the rhetoric of SEOs and industry “experts” over the last ten years, according to my research these simplistic have almost no bearing on a page’s rank in Google.

That’s not to say that Google hasn’t developed more advanced algorithms to analyse content on a page, but certainly the traditional factors such as keywords being in title tags, h1/h2/h3 tags, etc. can be ignored when writing blog posts.

The main learning here for bloggers is that instead of worrying about search engines when you write your next blog post, you should focus 100% on the user.

Here’s the proof. Each ranking factor below is correlated to search engine ranking.

Check out all these articles in Darren’s resource on how to write a great post. Guess what? None of them talk about how users love a title tag stuffed with keywords or headings tags that are meaningless space-fillers designed solely for search engine spiders.

The only set of factors to have all the signals tested show a significant positive correlation was links.

Without a doubt, the single most important factor in gaining search engine ranking is building links to your blog.

Page Authority, an SEOMoz metric that models the PageRank for a given URL, was by far the most influential factor in the study. What this means is that it is not only important to build links to your homepage, but also to the posts you want to get rank well in Google.

When was the last time you wrote a guest post or created a viral infographic? How much time do you spend doing keyword research or doing repetitive, mundane tasks like manually optimizing posts for keyword density?

If there is one piece of action everybody who reads this post should take, it is without a doubt to create a link-building strategy for your blog.

The proof:

There’s been a lot of scaremongering about exact match domains of late, but the fact is that Google still highly values EMDs that have high quality content on them.

That’s the key. If you have a blog and you plan to publish great content that users will love then a EMD can be a massive help in getting you to #1 for that big keyword.

After seeing this significant positive correlation between EMDs and ranking #1 in Google, I looked a little deeper at the domain name market and learnt that there were over 200,000 domains expiring every day.

Bloggers can catch dropping domains before they go back onto the market and create incredible sites with them, which will have a natural advantage over the competition. Matt Green wrote a great post about this tactic right here on Problogger.net.

The proof:

I think the key learnings from all this data for bloggers can be summarised into one sentence: “write for your audience not the search engines, build links to your great content, and develop your blog on a great domain with incredible domain authority.”

Do you focus on SEO? What works to push your site up the search rankings? Share your thoughts on my research in the comments.

This guest post is by Mark Collier from www.DropMining.com and www.TheOpenAlgorithm.com

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Blogging in Brief: Targeting, Teasers, and Trends

The last few weeks have turned up some interesting new finds in the world of blogging. I’ve covered some of the more innovative ones here—let us know what cool ideas you’ve spotted in the comments.

I’m not in the target audience for Molly Maher’s Stratejoy website, and it’s clear as soon as I get to her homepage, which greets visitors with the words, “This site is for you, Cupcake.”

This is a simple, but effective way to target an audience. That single word (in the context of the page design) lets users work out immediately if this is the place for them. It’s a brave move, and it works—Molly’s subscriber base is 4,000-strong.

How closely are you targeting your readers? Are you this forward in your headlines and calls to action? Perhaps Molly’s example will inspire you to rethink some of them.

Australian blog advertising network Nuffnang has released its 2012 Blogosphere Report, which provides interesting reading for anyone who’s in, or targeting, this space.

The results show a number of interesting aspects:

The Australian blogosphere is 92% female.73% of bloggers said personal and hobby blogs were their favourites.70% of readers say sponsored posts are useful, so long as they’re transparent and impartial.95% of respondents have considered purchasing a brand or service as a result of reading about it on a blog.

Check out the report—available for free download—for more.

Our own Web Marketing Ninja, Shayne Tilley, has relaunched his website. inspired by the PB Event in October, he’s done a great job with a cost-effective theme and a little basic coding—check it out at let us know what you think.

One aspect I think is particularly interesting is the large quote he’s placed just above the footer, along with a Read More CTA.

That’s a pretty clickable page element—it really inspires my curiosity. And it takes you direct to his blog. Do you provide alternative ways to entice readers through to your blog, other than simply saying “read my blog”? If not, maybe you could try this idea for yourself.

If you’re looking for new content marketing ideas, this epic post on the value of long-form content in your content marketing efforts is one for you.

In the piece, Demian Farnworth uses The New Yorker as a benchmark for content marketing excellence. If you’re a solo blogger, keep in mind that The New Yorker probably ha a few more resources than you do to put into content marketing! That said, the post is information-packed and gives us plenty of ideas to use in our own content marketing efforts.

In the same vein, I was recently approached by Flippa for a post on using content marketing to add value to your blog. Have a look—I’d love to know what you think!

A design trend that’s definitely becoming more commonplace is the big-block header, like the ones on the Fast Company subsites. Interestingly, Fast Company doesn’t use this style on its flagship blog—just on those sites that specifically target design-conscious users.

But this trend is becoming more mainstream. Some pro bloggers using it include Jaime Tardy at Eventual Millionaire … but there don’t seem to be many others.

What do you think of this as a design trend for blogs? Have you seen others using it? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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10 Ways to Woo Would-be Advertisers on Your Blog

This guest post is by Anup Kayastha of MoneyMakingModes.com.

Earning money through blogging is an attractive and viable income source. But it is not possible unless your blog have relevant, current, and useful information for your readers.

That will not only help increase traffic to your blog: it will also attract advertisers to buy ads. but to make that a reality, you need to know how advertisers are evaluating your site.

What makes them think that your blog is worth their investment? What they are looking for in your blog before offering you a deal for ad posts?

Here are ten factors that would help you understand what the advertisers consider before they’ll approach you about buying ad space.

Your blog must explicitly announce to the potential advertisers that it is ready to sell ads. Use an “Advertise with us” banner or message so that the advertisers know that they can buy space with you.

For example, look at the sidebar of this blog. There’s an image link which clearly mentions that ProBlogger accepts sponsor ads.

Having a separate page that displays the information about ad space on your blog is very important.

Include information such as the blog’s niche, ad space rates, methods of payment, and your contact details. This shows how organized—and serious—you are about helping advertisers reach their audiences.

Take a look at the advertising page of John Chow’s site. When advertises land on that page, they can easily get the required information, like site stats, banner spot and sizes, space availability, and so on.

If your blog targets a particular niche, you must stick to it in all your blogging activities. The advertisers interested in your particular niche will critically monitor this aspect of your work.

Don’t go off topic. Your advertisers want to gain targeted visits to their product sales pages. You don’t want to disappoint them with untargeted traffic.

Most importantly, the advertiser will want to know about the traffic that flows to your blog. The blog readership, subscribers, and your reputation within your niche are all carefully considered by advertisers.

These factors directly impact the cost expectations of potential advertisers. Most advertisers are more interested in the traffic that a blog attracts than many other factors.

Prospective advertisers will analyze the placement of ads on your blog, to see if those spots will suit them.

First, they’ll ask if their ads will be visible without requiring a page scroll. If the space is above the fold, you should be able to charge more for it.

They’ll also want to know if the ad space is horizontal or vertical? Horizontal space is usually more costly because if has better readability. They’ll likely review the spot’s prominence and visibility too.

My blog, Hack Tutors is a good example of this point. You can see a horizontal (468x60px) banner at the top-right header. Typically, it gets sold as soon as the previously running ad has expired.

It’s the most popular ad spot on my blog, simply because it’s above the fold, eye-catching, and easily viewable without scrolling down the page.

Advertisers are very careful to review the terms on which ads are sold to the advertiser.

You may offer CPC (Cost Per Click), CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), CPA (Cost Per Action), or some other method of selling space. The advertiser may be interested in a specific costing method, so be prepared to negotiate.

If you’ve no idea how to arrive at pricing for your ad space, you can get some ideas in this post by Hesham of FamousBloggers.

The ad posting conditions you impose will be taken very seriously by advertisers. Ad specifications—such as formats, maximum allowable file sizes, restrictions of animations, niche appropriateness, Flash requirements, and so on—are all considered by advertisers before they’ll buy.

You may not want to display colorful, blinking ads in your blog—but maybe your advertisers want to. It’s very important to clearly communicate your ad posting conditions so that your advertisers won’t be confused. Mention these conditions in your Advertising page, like iTrailMap have.

Some advertisers also get attracted by special ad offers made by bloggers. Introductory or special offers can give an added incentive to the advertisers to give your blog a try. You can offer to give a free week or month for an advertisement, or provide some other kind of special promotion.

For example, you can offer to promote their product by writing a free review or sending their product newsletter to your subscribers. Such offers can come in very handy when advertisers are considering on buying ads in your blog.

Blog statistics (other than traffic stats) are closely considered by potential advertisers.

If you’re proud of them, include your Google Page Rank, Technorati Authority, Alexa Traffic Rank, and others on your Advertising page. These ranks cement the perceived worth of a blog, and advertisers appreciate seeing blog statistics from established third-party sources.

If you take a quick look at the Advertising page on this blog, you’ll see that these statistics are clearly mentioned.

Advertisers also consider the long-term advertising opportunities provided by a blog. Their fear may be that the blog may not allow more advertisement time after ending of first contract period. For that reason, they may want to book ad space for the longer term.

Discount considerations will also become a factor in these deals. If you’re securing ad revenue for couple of years instead of months, the advertiser will naturally ask for a discount. The terms should be flexible—again, prepare to negotiate!

There are many factors about your blog that potential advertisers will consider. You can start experimenting and getting to know your advertisers’ needs. If they get some good results, they’re more likely to become long-term advertisers with your blog.

Don’t forget to ask previous advertisers to write testimonials, since most prospective advertisers will want to know if others have benefitted from advertising on your site.

Do you offer ad space on your site? What kinds of things do your advertisers want to know before they’ll buy? Tell us in the comments.

17 year old, Anup Kayastha, has 3 years of internet marketing experience and shares his tips for internet marketing, making money online and blogging in his blog MoneyMakingModes.com.

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Courting Brands to Collaborate on Your Blog: A Complete Guide

This guest post is by Anshu of Blooms And Bugs.

You may have seen other bloggers working with different brands and wondered how they did it. You may have also considered if it was a good thing to emulate.

I’m a sewing blogger and in my one and half years of blogging, I have worked with several brands from the sewing industry. Here’s the why and how of finding the right brand for your blog, and developing a successful partnership with them. I found the process was not very different from finding a life partner.

What are your motivations for finding a partner brand?

To establish yourself as an authority in your niche: Being on website of a leading brand in your niche builds your status as an expert.Extra traffic: Some brands already have very popular blogs and forums. You could leverage their popularity by collaborating with them.Building back-links: Even the websites of relatively lesser-known brands generally have good Pagerank. When your website is mentioned there, that improves your reputation in Google’s eyes.To build a network in your niche: You may get introduced to other experts working for the brand. You may even get a chance to learn the tricks of the trade from them.To get free products: Most brands are more than willing to send their products to the bloggers they work with for review, give away, use in projects, and so on. You may even get  their products ahead of launch to play with and review.To get sponsored for trade shows, conferences, conventions etc.: There are some industry shows that are not open to the general public, yet the brands you are working with may sponsor you to attend them. Here is a great post by Kylie Ofiu on how to get sponsored for a conference.To make money: Some brands will pay you to generate a positive buzz around their products.To double-dip: This is important. Almost all brands allow you to post your content on your own website after certain time. This means that while you are writing for them, you are also generating content for your own blog. However, duplicate posts get penalized by Google, so you need to weigh that against leveraging your work twice.

Any and all of these are valid reasons to work with brands, but consider what you are looking for before you approach any company. Are you looking for more traffic? Then a company with a dormant blog or forum may not be the right fit. Do you want a paid assignment? Then the brands with popular blogs may not be right, because they may already be getting traction without paying bloggers.

So be sure you know what you want from the relationship before you look for a brand partner.

You are getting ready to approach some big names in your industry. Great! But are you looking your best?

Collect your readership data, and any outstanding achievements you’ve made with your blog. Are you very popular on Facebook? Does your average reader spend half an hour on your website? Look at your stats and find the highlights.Prepare a reference page with some of your best posts. Is it something you would feel proud showing to a potential sponsor? If not, then you have more work to do before you approach a brand.Have you been featured by any reputed websites in your niche? Do you have a Featured page with those links? If not, then make one.Have you worked with another brand in the past? Do you have any feedback from them? Make sure you compile it nicely on a page that a potential partner could look at.

I can’t help but remember the analogy given by Tom Ewer in his article, 5 Things Online Dating Can Teach Your About Networking for Blogging Success.

In the subheading “Going for the hotties,” he mentions how all the newbies head for the most popular person in their niche.

I would suggest approaching some lesser-known brands first and seeing how they respond to your offer of partnership. One exception to this is when a brand already has an active program for bloggers.

An example in my case was Moda Fabrics. I contacted them barely a few months into blogging, but they already had a very active program for bloggers, and I got accepted there right away.

To contact the brand you’ve chosen, you’ll want to first prepare the message you want to convey. Make sure you answer the most important questions for them in this message.

Why them? Without being sycophantic, mention the things you appreciate about them that made you get in touch. If you can’t find anything? Back off, delete the email and run away. That person brand is not right for you. Period.Who are you and what do you want? Write briefly about your website and what you are proposing to offer them.What is in it for them? What are you bringing to the table that a) they don’t have, b) they can’t get, and c) they can’t get from 13.29 million other bloggers in your niche? Are you willing to provide excellent content for their website, using their products? Are you willing to promote them using your blog? Are you going to shout from the rooftops how awesome they are? If so how often and when? Be concise, clear, and honest. And write the offer only if you can do all of that, and then some.Why should they trust you? Highlight your best stats, add a link to your Featured page, and link to your best posts. Let your work speak for you.

Once you’ve prepared your message, find the brand’s Contact us page. Of course you can totally use it without worrying that your email will go unnoticed. I always use brands’ contact forms, and I always get a response.

So you heard back from the brand and they are as interested as you are. Before you hand them the key to your apartment and rent the truck, here are a few things you’ll want to have a mutual agreement and clarity on:

Who will do the dishes? Get a clear understanding of what you are getting (free supplies, products, backlinks, glowing introductions, promotion, etc.) and giving (content, promotion using your channels, etc.). Also, establish a time-line of what is expected when—even a rough guideline that you can both agree on will save a lot of headaches later on.Who will look after the child and when? If you are a blogger collaborating with a brand, you will likely be generating some content for them. Get a clear understanding of who will publish it and when, and who will have the rights to it. If they publish it, do you get to republish it? How soon?How possessive are they? Are they okay with your working with other brands?

What if you want to work with multiple brands at the same time? Think carefully about any potential conflicts of interest. If you are working in photography niche, working with both Cannon and Nikon at the same time may not look good for you.

Also consider your time. If you want to write for multiple companies, commit only when you can do outstanding work for each of your partners. Remember too that all this work will eat into your time for your own blog. Make sure you’re able to keep your blog alive and healthy while you take up these extra assignments?

So you hashed out the details of partnership. You have to wow them from here on in, and show that you are a keeper.

Deliver what you committed to—and then some. Deliver excellent content. Promote it the best you can, even if they didn’t ask for it—even if they are much more popular than you.

When I wrote on Moda Bake Shop, my blog was fairly small and unknown. But I promoted my post to the best of my ability and brought it into the top five most-viewed pages on their website that month.

Be generous too. If the brand has a new blog and you have some insights on specific things they can do to increase traffic, tell them (if they are receptive). If they are having an event on their website, mention it on your blog. I have even shipped some of my projects to partner companies when they needed help with trade shows and such.

Finally, don’t forget the legal stuff. According to FTC policies, bloggers need to declare anything of monetary value that they received from a business. Make sure you do this so you don’t fall foul of the law.

All good things come to an end. Maybe you want to find newer opportunities, maybe they want to work with other bloggers. Whatever be the reason, try to bid adieu on good terms.

Say your goodbyes in a note: Tell the partner how much you appreciated working with them. Also ask them to write you a letter of recommendation where they specifically mention how helpful you were and how well received your contributions were.Bring your stuff home: Unless specific arrangements are made otherwise, your content is your intellectual property. Give it rightful place on your website.Hang onto the memories: Put their feedback in your Featured page.

So that was my experience of working with various partner brands. How about you? Have you partnered with any company in your niche? What was your experience? What are the pros and cons of working with them? Chime in with your experiences in the comments.

Anshu blogs about sewing on Blooms And Bugs. It all started with a couple of dresses for her daughter…and just never stopped. Here is a list of the sewing tutorials she has written.

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One Essential Characteristic of a Pro Blogger [Not Your Everyday Blog Writing Advice]

Each week, my Content manager Georgina turns away around 20 or so posts for publication at ProBlogger. She tells me that maybe 5-10% of those are of a publishable standard, but they just don’t fit our audience or purpose. The rest aren’t pro-level pieces.

Image courtesy stock.xchng user Valsilvae

Forget for a moment that these are guest posts—which are supposed to be bloggers’ best content.

Instead, I want to think about what that means for the average blogger, toiling away on their blog day in, day out, trying to reach and captivate their audience.

Pro blogging isn’t just about making money through a blog. You don’t need to write a word to do that. But I think most of us would expect pro bloggers to be able to write reasonably well.

Why?

Because Pro bloggers need to be consummate communicators. Whether they hire others to write for their blogs, or use video, audio, or images rather than text, clear expression is a hallmark of any pro blogger.

Clarity doesn’t just mean error-free writing. It means:

content that touches readers, showing you empathize with themrelevant, helpful contentconsistent information, in terms of frequency, tone, etc.content that delivers what it promises, and has integrity.

A blogger might use writing for a range of purposes, too:

to attract readers, and keep them coming backto promote their blog or sell somethingto approach potential collaboratersto build relationships and networksto make money directly (e.g. through an information product).

There’s plenty of great quality advice about writing and content marketing online. Writing tips abound.

This week, we want to present a few different takes on writing for your blog. Over the next four days we’ll publish some posts that focus on some nitty-gritty aspects of writing—ideas that go a bit deeper than usual.

Our first post will look at writing product reviews that deliver real value. Among other things, the post explores the challenges bloggers face in exposing the negative aspects of a product they’re reviewing and may want to encourage readers to buy (if they’re an affiliate for it).

Handling that tension is exactly the kind of thing that pro bloggers work to master. This post will show how showing the full picture supports authority, and can actually encourage more sales than a purely glowing review.

One great thing about blogging is that everything we do is practice—each post we publish should be an improvement on the last one.

Looking to leaders for advice on writing is an excellent way to develop your skills. Our second post will reveal the thoughts of some of the world’s greatest writers, and provide starting points to help you apply that advice in your own posts.

When bloggers think about content marketing, we often ponder the question of content reuse. If you do it right, it can be an efficient way to get the most out of the time you spend writing—it can boost your visibility, your publishing schedule, and your available time.

Our third post this week explains how freelance writers can best reuse their freelance content on their own blogs. This isn’t a straightforward topic, and this post highlights the potential advantages and pitfalls so that if you’re a freelancer, you know where to start looking into content reuse.

For many bloggers, after high-school or college essays, and workplace emails, blogging is the first focused writing they’ve done.

We’ve all heard the advice that if you want to be a great writer, you need to be a big reader. But the final post in our series shows that to be a better blog writer, you need to be a better writer, period. It prompts us to look beyond blog posts for opportunities to write, and topics to write on. It shows that through experimentation, we can learn skills out of context that we can bring back and apply to our blogs.

The advice we’ll cover this week goes beyond the everyday. It assumes you’re already serious about being good writer, and are facing the challenges of becoming a great writer. There’s no hype in these posts, and no write-your-way-to-a-million-dollar-income-in-five-minutes advice. They’re posts that aim to provide a different perspective on post writing.

Where are you at as a writer? Are you ready to challenge yourself to become better? Or do you think you’ve reached your limits, either in terms of potential, or interest in writing? Share your perspective with us in the comments.

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Set a Posting Schedule that Encourages Shares and Pageviews

This guest post is by Lindsey Dahlberg of Bloggingtips.com.

We’ve all heard the saying, “great content gets shared.” But what happens if yours isn’t getting shared? Does that mean you don’t have great content?

Not necessarily. It could mean you have top-notch content, but you’re not posting it at the most opportunistic times of day.

Maybe you aren’t interested in social shares but would like to know why your killer content isn’t generating lots of pageviews.

Perhaps you’re suffering from the same malady: your content isn’t getting viewed because you aren’t posting on the best days of the week.

According to Shareaholic, the day and time you post your content will determine how many social shares and page views it receives. The following information was taken from data received in 2011 (social shares apply to Facebook and Twitter).

If your top priority is social shares, you’ll want to know the best day and best time to post your content. Here is a breakdown of both those stats.

According to research, content posted on Thursdays gets more shares than any other day—10% more in fact. From there, sharing days decrease in popularity as follows: Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Sunday, and Tuesday.

We can take two things from this information. First, people are using Facebook and Twitter at work. Second (and more relevant to you!), posts made later in the week do better than posts made earlier in the week.

Now that you have determined which days you should be posting, you’ll want to know which hours are best.

According to Sharaholic, 27% of all social shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST. There is a definite surge of activity between 9am and 10am. After that, social shares are on the decline for the majority of the day. There are two other small peaks of activity around 2pm and 9pm.

Apparently, we like to take in our information with the morning news, get an update after lunch, and check in before bed.

One popular blogger shares his posting schedule. He posts at 4:30am. That way, his content is ready for his US audience while his UK audience is still awake and active.

If you are interested in driving traffic to your blog, and you’re not too particular about social shares, your posting schedule will be completely different.

The four best pageview-related posting days are the same as the social share posting days. However, the winners are in a different ranking. Of the top 100 pageview days in 2011, 43% landed on a Monday. Tuesdays received 28%, Wednesdays 24%, and Thursdays finished the list with 5%.

Note Saturday and Sunday didn’t make the cut.

Most pageviews take place between 7am and 1pm EST, Monday through Friday, with the majority occurring between 9am and 10am. From there, views decrease significantly.

There are several takeaways we can gather from these statistics.

First, you need to determine how you want your audience to find your content. Do you want them to click from Twitter? Do you want them to subscribe via email? The answer to these questions will determine how you implement a response to these statistics.

Second, these statistics should act as a guideline only. They provide a nice place to begin your testing. However, you’ll want to check your own numbers and adjust from there.

These statistics don’t apply to everyone and they aren’t carved in stone. Pageviews and shares can vary from topic to topic, time zone to time zone, and country to country.

Third, you should determine which time zones read your content and when. Some businesses focus on the US east coast, since the majority of the country resides there. However, other companies draw a large band of followers from the west coast or Europe. Use your site’s analytics to determine where your target audience lives.

Lastly, be ready. Have your content up before the peak viewing time occurs. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to let viewers know it’s coming. A simple social media post along the lines of, “check the blog tomorrow at noon for a hot new post—you won’t want to miss it!” couldn’t hurt.

If you have been churning out stellar content and not receiving the traffic or social shares you’d like, try making a few changes to the times at which you post your content.

Lindsey Dahlberg is a blogger at http://bloggingtips.com and http://ppc.org/.

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Branding Your Blog: You’re Doing it All Wrong

This guest post is by Julie Cottineau of BrandTwist.

A while ago, on this very blog, I read a post about how to make a five-dollar logo for your blog.

There were a few things about that post I disagreed with, but chief among them was the assumption that a cheap logo was somehow all you needed to brand your blog.

A logo does not make a brand.

Logos are important, but what’s most important is to have a crystal clear brand promise. This is important in every line of business, particularly in blogging, where competition is brutal and securing a loyal readership is the only way to make your overnight success last more than a few days.

The most important part of your brand is largely invisible—at least, at first.

It’s the promise you make to a visitor the first time you meet.

It is more than just a half-hearted promise to try and be interesting and entertaining. It is a promise to deliver a specific and predictable result every time.

Whether you commit to always making your reader laugh out loud or go into deep thought, to giving her investment advice she can act on immediately, or a gluten-free recipe that her children will like, your brand is the one aspect of your blog or business that people can always trust that you will never compromise on.

It should be said that DIY brands rarely look as good, or work as well, as the owners think they do. On the contrary, 100% homemade brands often look unprofessional and unreliable.

Unless you’re an expert marketer, designer, copywriter, and web developer in addition to your day job, there are lots of things you don’t know and skills you don’t have. You should admit that to yourself, and invest in some outside expertise. It doesn’t have to break the bank. You can pick one area and start there, but please do make building your brand a priority.

It’s what sets you apart, helps readers quickly understand what you are about, and creates loyal followers.

If you really don’t have more than $5 to spend on design, you’ll be better off spending your fiver at Starbucks. After all, you’re not very likely to get a good logo and visual identity for that kind of money.

So sit down with your grande latte and your free wifi, and be sure to take in your surroundings, because there aren’t many who do brand as well as Starbucks.

What’s special about Starbucks is not just the coffee. It’s that they stand for way more than that. Their brand promise is about community and you can feel that in every single touchpoint, from the comfy chairs, to the online community.

Think about how your brand can show (not tell) what it stands for, like Starbucks does. Even if you exist only in the online world, the types of topics you cover, the products you offer, and the other blogs you link to all serve to create an impression for your brand.

Another thing you can learn from Starbucks is the effective use of color. You can see that green from miles away, and instantly recognize the store as a Starbucks.

So take a few minutes to pick a fresh color scheme for your brand. Something that really makes you stand out in your space. Your colors shouldn’t conflict with the promise you’ve made—for example, a site promising inner peace and a site promising playfulness should probably choose different colors—but that’s the only rule.

Almost everything is allowed, and bravery is usually rewarded.

Start out with a single, strong color you’d like to use, then use a tool like Kuler to find other colors that go well with it. 

Ideally, you’ll put together a palette of colors that is uniquely yours, instantly recognizable to anyone who knows it, and that you can find ways to implement on your blog, across your social media properties, and in your product designs, both online and offline. Be creative.

It’s no coincidence that Starbucks has its own language (including words like barrista, grande, frappe, and so on.). This vocabulary helps support the brand’s promise that this is not your run-of-the-mill coffee shop.

Think about your blog’s tone of voice. Is it authentic, distinctive, and consistent? Are you falling into the trap of over-complicating things with big, boring words, and overused jargon? Are you conveying your personality and making it easy for people to understand what you are offering and why they should care?

There is a lot of brand power in the way we say things, not just in what we say. Have someone else look at each of your posts before it goes up and make sure you are choosing words wisely. We all know how hard it is to edit our own work.

Now, these are some quick tips. There’s a lot more to learn about brand. But the key message is that it’s always a good idea to invest in your brand. If you don’t have the money to invest, at least invest the time and energy to learn, and the thought and creativity to do a good job with what you have.

How’s your brand looking? Share your ideas for blog branding in the comments.

Julie Cottineau is former VP of Brand at Virgin and executive at Interbrand. Recently she founded her own brand consultancy, BrandTwist, to help small businesses and entrepreneurs, and will soon launch Brand School, an online course about building, growing and monetizing a brand.

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The Day A Spider Monkey Tried to Kill Me (And What it Taught Me About Getting More Blog Readers)

This guest post is by Logan Marshall of the Free Life Project.

The hot Costa Rican sun filters through the canopy, warming my back as I walk up a small path towards the house where I am staying. I can hear the calls of howler monkeys in the distance, echoing through the rainforest like prehistoric dinosaurs.

Caught up in the magic of this place, I am barely aware of my surroundings—marveling at the exotic wonder that surrounds me. Massive, vine-covered trees erupt from the soil. Vibrant red flowers pop out against the canvas of dark green…

And then it happens.

Triggered by a flash of movement, my eyes shoot upward to see a full grown monkey charging towards me, its eyes fixed on mine as it rockets across the forest floor.

All of the sudden, the world is moving in slow motion. Panic floods my body as I realize what is happening.

Twenty meters separate us, then ten…

In an act of unrestrained desperation, I turn and sprint towards the beach, hurtling away like a man on fire.

I am running on the edge of collapse, crashing through the jungle in a frenzy of pure terror. My heart pounds in my chest. My lungs burn. I can hear the soft footsteps coming closer and closer…

That, my friends, was a (slightly dramatized) true story.

Yes a monkey actually tried to kill me. Yes I screamed like a nine-year-old girl. Yes I left Costa Rica the next day.

But while that story hopefully had you engaged and chuckling at my paranoid idiocy, you’re probably wondering what it has to do with blogging.

Well, I’ll tell you.

It’s a ridiculous example of how to “hook” an audience and engage them enough to keep reading. A model of how to look blogospheric boredom in the face and proudly give it the finger.

When it comes to blogging, people don’t want to just receive an endless stream of instructions (no matter how good they are). People want to be entertained. They want to be engaged, excited and captivated.

As David Mamet puts it:

“The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned in to watch drama.”

This is why the Hunger Games can attract the entire US population while the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica rests on a dusty bookshelf next to the works of some high-browed and equally lifeless academic professor.

It’s boring. And we humans will do everything in our power to avoid the crushing grip of boredom.

Online, most blogs are cybernetic reflections of Ferris Bueller’s Economics teacher: dry, painfully boring and utterly devoid of life-enriching color.

With this in mind, it’s your job to break through the clutter and offer your readers more than just good content. Offer them an experience. An adventure. A vibrant integration of valuable information and galvanizing awesomeness.

Let’s begin.

There’s a disease ravaging the western world. A life-sucking affliction slowly making its way into the cracks and crevices of our lives.

No, I’m not talking about physical obesity or technological addiction, although these are both equally dangerous.

I’m talking about what John Naish calls infobesity.

Yep, infobesity. As Naish writes,

“We are so wired to gather information that often we no longer do anything useful with it. Instead of pausing to sift our intake for relevance and quality, the daily diet of prurient, profound, confusing and conflicting information gets chucked on to a mental ash-heap of things vaguely comprehended. Then we rush to try to make sense of it all … by getting more.”

There’s a ton of information out there. You know that.

Especially when it comes to the online space, we are drowning in a sea of contradictory messages: “Just learn blogging, PPC, affiliate marketing, SEO! Try this one magic formula and it will instantly transform you into the supreme master overlord of all things awesome!”

Yeah … I think I’ll pass.

With so much information fighting for our attention, people don’t really pay attention to any of it.

They ignore it. They block it all out … unless you can find a way to break through the clutter and give them an obvious reason to watch, attentively, like a seven-year-old at Sea World.

This is your mission. Let me show you how.

Okay. So you understand the importance of being interesting and the reality of information consumption.

Now it’s time to switch gears and dive headlong into the practical section of the post. The “meat and potatoes.”

While there are undoubtedly more, I’ve identified six primary ways to eradicate the “customer coma,” capture attention, and turn your blog into the next big TV drama.

Stories have been around for thousands of years. Since the very creation of language. They are the purest form of human communication.

As Robert McKee puts it:

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

Agreed. Stories are insanely powerful.

They have the power to captivate an audience, skyrocket your email open rates, and have your readers excitedly awaiting your next piece of content like it’s the finale of Lost.

While I can’t go into all the details in this post, the essence of effective story telling can be condensed into one single sentence.

As Andrew Stanton puts it:

“The greatest story commandment is: make me care.”

Such great advice.

In every piece of content you create, every story you write, keep this at the front of your mind.

The reason why my sister (and thousands of others) will dress up like Hermione Granger for the Harry Potter finale is because they care about the characters. They desperately want them to succeed. To make Voldy pay.

With this in mind, your job is to make people care about what you have to say. To create suspense. To evoke emotion. To get them to “feel” why your story matters.

Do this, and watch your success skyrocket.

Have you ever watched Lost, 24 or another hit TV drama?

You probably have.

They’re insanely popular, captivating the minds (and destroying the work ethics) of countless people all over the world.

But why are they so addicting?

Simple: they employ a little-known suspense-building tactic that makes people have to know what happens. A trick that leaves people on the edge of their seats, counting down the days until the next episode airs.

What tactic am I talking about?

Two words: open loops.

I was first introduced to open loops by the (storytelling genius) Andre Chaperon…and they’ve made big-time difference in my business.

Here’s how they work. You’re fully captivated by a story, you’re on the edge of your seat, wanting desperately to know what happens.

The action rises.

The tension builds. And then…

The episode is over. You have to tune in next week to see what happens.

Here’s an example.

Get it? You build the action and suspense…and then leave the story unresolved. Unfinished.

This “lack of closure” causes people to return week after week because they need to see what happens. Once a “loop” is opened, it’s human nature to want to see what happens. They can’t not know what happens.

How do you apply this to your blog or online business?

Here’s what I do: instead of writing isolated blog posts or email messages, I create context around my content.

I “continue the story” from one piece of content to the next. Leave stories unresolved so that people watch their inbox like a hawk, eagerly awaiting my latest “episode.”

This is my primary “anticipation building” weapon. I leverage it in my content, emails, even guest posts.

Use it at your own risk.

Video wins. It has the highest perceived value, crushes long-form sales letters, and captures attention far better then plain old text.

Why? Because it “leverages the senses.”

Instead of relying on mental imagining, video gives you the full experience. You can hear it, see it, “feel it,” and often read it too.

With this in mind, instead of putting out the same old posts, mix things up. Include video, audio, images, and text. Send people on what I call a “discovery adventure.”

The key is to always make things interesting and exciting. If you get bored reading your content, chances are it will tranquilize your audience.

One of the most fundamental rules of blogging is this: people follow bloggers, not blogs.

You’ve heard this before, right? Well, it’s true.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, people do not want cookie-cutter information delivered to them from some impersonal void. They want to interaction, entertainment, and connection.

You see, there’s a saying in internet marketing that goes like this: “Make fans over friends, and friends over followers.” Simply put, people like to do business with people they empathize with, and the best way to foster this is to infuse personality into your marketing. Not a bland, neutral, “corporate” version of your personality, but a strong, exaggerated, larger-than-life version.

Your “super alter-ego.”

The key here is to take the aspects of your personality that people will connect with, and blow them up. Amplify them. Don’t be afraid to take a stand.

As D. Bnonn Tennent puts it:

“You gotta be hot! You must have more personality than you know what to do with—a personality that appeals to your ideal prospect. Then you simply write to him directly as one person to another; as if you were having a conversation.”

Online, most people shy away from comedy. They say it doesn’t work. They say it turns people off.

Well, this is absolutely false. I don’t know about you, but when someone makes me laugh, I instantly like them. And I want to be around them as much as possible.

As Dan Kennedy puts it in his book “Make ‘Em Laugh and Take Their Money,”

“The ability to get those laughs, to make people relax and be uninhibited and enjoy themselves, to leave their worries behind and enter a different mind space, to feel a sense of shared, funny futility over life’s problems and puzzles, to trust you enough to open up and laugh with you…is as necessary to a performer or speaker as an audience itself. For the speaker seeking to sell, it is the golden key to the vault.”

Such great advice. And this doesn’t just apply to speakers, but also to bloggers or any other form of content creators. If you can make people laugh, you’re golden. People will like you, trust you and want to do business with you.

Don’t believe me?

Just look at Frank Kern, Andy Jenkins, David Siteman Garland and Marie Forleo. All wildly successful. All notoriously funny.

Of course, you don’t have to use comedy. It is possible to persuade and connect with people without ever eliciting a chuckle (and to be honest, cliched or “cute” comedy probably won’t get you anywhere.)

But if you study and master the skill of authentic humor, people will flood to you with open arms.

The sixth and final strategy is to combine all of these tactics and hook people right when they land on your site. The second they arrive.

How?

Well, there are really only two steps:

Understand the norms within your niche. Get a good idea of what most people are doing.Go out of your way to violate people’s expectations and do something surprisingly different.

It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

If everyone has their blog on their homepage, create a nerdy presell page or ridiculously awesome music videos.

The key is to make people stop dead in their tracks and think, “Wow! This is so cool! I’ve never seen anyone do this before. I should learn more.”

Do something bold. Do something epic. Do it fast.

Ultimately, you gotta realize that creating average content and posting it on an average blog is not good enough. Not any more.

The blogosphere is too darn crowded, there’s too much darn competition, and the rent is too darn high.

As Glen Allsopp puts it,

“People do not have the time to read your content. They really don’t. We’re busier than ever, have shorter attention spans and more people in our entire history own websites they want us to visit.

How many marketing bloggers do you think wrote something today hoping that you’ll read it?5,000? 50,000? I don’t know, but it’s a lot. If you did nothing but attempt to read all of the marketing content that is published today, you wouldn’t be finished this year. In other words, it’s no longer enough to be part of the top 1%. You have to be in the top 0.1%.”

In order to stand out today, you need a remarkable approach. You gotta innovate, get creative, and fascinate each and every person who visits your site.

And most importantly, you can’t let people doze off into a semi-conscious browsing state. Ever. You must hook them immediately, plaster their eyes to your content and suck them into an inescapable vortex of dramatic, suspenseful, hilariously entertaining awesome.

This is how the game is played. These are the new rules.

This is how you win.

Logan Marshall is on a mission to help aspiring entrepreneurs change the world with their message. If you’re one of them, check out the cinematic trailer to his upcoming blog.

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5 Ways to Use Images to Make Your Posts Irresistible

This week on #blogchat on Twitter, we discussed the use of images in blog posts, and I thought that some of the advice we covered there might be useful for you too. So here are my top tips for using images in your blog posts.

At Digital Photography School, I include an image at the top of every post.

This provides a visual point of interest that draws people to read the post. Whilst the audience is particularly visually oriented, I think this is true across the board. The web is filled with rich media, and great images now. So the more you can do to make text-based posts visually appealing, the better.

In fact, some of our most shared posts on dPS are composed almost entirely of images, with little to no text at all.  Take a look at the stats on your blog for posts with images, and compare them with posts that don’t have images. You might find that the former do better with readers. They’ll almost certainly be more likely to be shared.

Image courtesy stock.xchng user L-O-L-A

Using an image at the post’s top is a default for dPS, but we also often images later in posts, too. In this way, they act almost like sub-headings to draw people down the page, and keep them engaged throughout the post.

Not only do those later images catch attention, they provide visual respite for the visitor who is diligently reading through the whole post, from start to finish. So these images serve all kinds of readers—not just scanners.

I think the trick with this is to take care with the images you use. If the reader scans from the top image to a subsequent one, you may—or may not— want that subsequent image to jar for them. It’s important to choose those images carefully, so that they tell the story you want them to.

Images in your posts also grab the attention of users who are subscribed to your RSS feed. In that case, they can mean the difference between your post being read or ignored.

If you think images are eye-catching on your blog—which is already heavily designed and strongly visual, just imagine what they can do to get attention in a less designed, more texty environment.

I choose images for blog posts based on the feeling that the image gives me more than anything else. And I’ve really found this to work well.

Often here on ProBlogger, guest posters will send us generic clipart-style images to accompany their content, and we avoid publishing these.

The best images are the ones that evoke a feeling in you and your readers. Clip art probably won’t do that! What does are images that contain people. We’re human, and biology has preprogrammed us to look into each others’ eyes.

So I find that using images with people who are looking at the camera tend to be the most engaging.

Images are important—and not just to those embracing Pinterest as a medium for growing their readership!

A good image is sometimes as important (if not more important) than a good title for a blog post. On dPS, sometimes I’ll take longer choosing the image for a post than writing the post itself.

You may not spend that much time on your image selection, but if you’re not paying much attention to it, I encourage you to build some time into your posting schedule over the next few weeks to source really strong, eye-catching, and engaging images. You never know how your readers will respond, but you might see longer visits, and more sharing of your content if you do.

Are you already using images on your blog? What types work best for you? Share your advice in the comments.

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The 4-Step Guide to Building Your Authority

This guest post is by Derek of Fear No Goal.

If you want people to visit your blog—and stay there—you have to be an authority figure.

This is definitely true if you are trying to solve a common problem. You have to know and understand what you are talking about.

When people know you’re an expert on a topic, it gives them comfort. They know that they can trust you. They are going to put their faith into you over and over again. That means you cannot fail your readers. They have to be your main focus. They deserve an expert, they deserve great advice, and they’re expecting it from you.

You have to deliver.

How do you become that expert? How do you become that person that they go to for advice and guidance? Here are four steps you can take to help build your authority.

This one tip can make the process very easy. You must focus on something you know or are willing to learn.

If you are interested in your topic, writing for your blog will be much easier. If you are already an expert, you shouldn’t run out of things to write about.

If you are an expert, your advice will be sound and your readers will be able to achieve success with the information you provide them. Good advice builds credibility. Your audience will return to you more often if you’ve proven that you are an expert.

You may not be an expert in the topic you choose to write about, but being passionate about it can go a long way. You’ll be learning as you go. You will be able to supply information to your readers about was or was not successful for you. It may take longer to build that credibility, but it is definitely possible this way.

Another benefit of building yourself up to expert status from scratch is that you can relate to your readers. Very recently, you were in their shoes. You are searching for information, just like your audience. You will be able to form a connection that few other bloggers can establish.

Take a look at Darren here at Problogger. He has become the expert on blogs and monetizing blogs. Darren knows his stuff; he has been through it all. He gives out quality posts consistently.

If you take a look at his posts, you will see he speaks with authority. Darren is the authority to anything related to blogging, and people trust him—expert and novice bloggers alike.

This is a huge aspect in the development of your blog. It will definitely keep first-time readers on your blog while keeping long-time readers coming back for more.

If you speak with confidence in the information you are supplying, it will spark your readers’ interest. They will definitely be more willing to try out the advice you’re giving.

How do you speak with authority and confidence? Good question. The biggest point is to watch the words you use. If you use words like might, could, and may, then you are not putting confidence into the information you’re supplying.

If you are giving your readers good information, and they follow the information you give them, then there should be no question that they will be successful. Not only should you be confident, but you should instill confidence into your readers too.

Have you ever visited The Simple Dollar blog? Trent Hamm has emerged as the expert in saving money and creating a stable financial future. Bring up one of his posts on simple money saving tips. As you read, you’ll notice quickly that he knows what he is suggesting works. There is no question in his mind.

He gives you specific examples. He tells you that if you do X then you will save Y. No maybes, no mights, no coulds: only results. That’s what people want—results. They want to know that if they do what you say, they will have success. Trent does a great job of this.

If you are giving your readers advice, then you’d better have tried it out yourself first. The easiest advice to give is advice on what has or hasn’t worked for you. You have to give your readers information that you know works.

If you speak from experience, not only will your information be more detailed, it will also be more reliable. This is a great way to establish credibility.

Readers love to hear about your experiences, too. This adds a personal level to your writing. And so your credibility builds, because your readers know that you tried each piece of advice you are sharing with them. Besides, how can you be confident in something you’ve never tried?

The first time I visited Life Without Pants, I was hooked. Matt Cheuvront shares his life experiences on overcoming challenges and working towards goals. Not only does Matt do a great job of describing his experiences, he’s great at making the lessons he learned relevant to his audience. This is powerful, because he is doing two things.

First, he’s sharing his experiences, which most audiences love. We all love a good story. He also gives the reader something to walk away with and incorporate into their lives. Whether it is a philosophy or a specific action, Matt is giving his audience usable information from his own experiences. That’s pretty powerful!

If your give information that’s supposed to help your readers, but it doesn’t, think about how bad you’ll look. Those who give out bad information do not tend to last in blogging. People can tell very quickly whether or not you are lying.

Real experts will also know when you are lying. If you have a comments section, they will point out how wrong you are very quickly. You can’t just post something telling people it will help them of you really don’t know if it will. This is a big credibility- and authority-killer.

Don’t take an article written by someone else and market it as your own. This is another huge issue that will kill your authority. Come up with your own unique material. People want new and useful information. If you steal other people’s work, you will lose all respect from the blogging community.

Blogging is all about building relationships with readers and other bloggers. Taking others’ content will make others never want to work with you. It will forever tarnish you and your brand and. Keep it honest and your authority will soar.

Neil Patel at Quicksprout is well-respected around the blogging community. If you have never heard of him, just visit Quicksprout and see how popular his blog is. Neil has had his share of successes and failures. He makes that very public. He is also very open about things that do and do not work.

He has established himself as an authority figure as a result of this. His posts are honest and genuine, and include loads of valuable information. Model yourself after Neil and be honest and helpful when you write. You’ll have a following similar to his, active and hungry for knowledge!

Well there you have it. These are four ways of increasing your authority and expertise. If you practice these tips regularly, people will learn that they can trust you and the information you provide. They will come to you more often for the information they need.

Become an authority figure and success will find you!

Derek is the author of the blog Fear No Goal. He has a Computer Science degree and currently works as a programmer for a major retail company. His writing is meant to inspire, motivate and help people to reach their goals, no matter what they are.

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Revealed: The Super Powers James Clear Used to Become a Full Time Blogger in 6-Months

This guest post is by TT Fong of SpikingStrengths.com.

James Clear runs the blog PassivePanda.com, which generates a full-time income. It took him only six-months to reach that point.

After studying his site, listening to several interviews he’s done, and talking with him live, I uncovered one of the secrets to his success.

This secret? He taps into his strengths or “super powers” while building and growing his blog. Here are three key lessons I learned from him about Super Powers, and how to use them for successful blogging.

I gave James an assessment which identified his top five strengths (out of the known universe of thirty-four). I refer to these strengths as Super Powers, interchangeably.

In a nutshell, Super Powers are those latent gifts everyone has which allow them to be energized, learn quickly, and develop certain expertise in less time and effort than others.

Most focus on understanding the right tactics to building a blog. James certainly uses those that worked well for him.

But without leveraging your Super Powers, even the right tactics may not give you the desired results.

Why not?

Because it is your specific strengths that shape the tactics and strategies that work best for you.

In other words, an approach may work best for someone with strength A. But those same steps may not be right for someone with strength B.

If you have similar strengths to James, you could learn his specific tactics. And, if those tactics indeed played to your strengths, you’d likely see similar results.

But if your Super Powers were different from James’s, following in his exact footsteps may not lead you to where you want to go.

In other words, the foundation to your blogging success depends upon understanding and using your Super Powers.

Let’s use what I learned about James to illustrate this idea. Here are the top five Super Powers we came up with, based on the assessment:

futuristicstrategicfocuseda learnersignificant.

I’ll explain in more detail how these can be applied to understand his business, and also how you can apply your own strengths to build up yours.

Here are three lessons you can learn from Passive Panda’s success.

Building a blog or a venture that matters takes time. We’ve all heard this advice: “It doesn’t happen overnight.” “It takes longer than you think.” “You have to pay your dues.”

Even if it doesn’t take quite that long (and it doesn’t have to—James hit his stride in six months), what’s missing from this common advice is that it takes energy to sustain effort over time.

Willpower alone isn’t enough. Relying on brute force is a recipe for dissatisfaction at best and burn-out at worst. The answer? Doing the work that, itself, gives you energy.

And the best way to do that is to align your work with your strengths.

James’s Super Power of “Significance” gives him the energy to start, build, and sustain his blog and business. For him, this means always driving towards a way to impact as many people as possible.

When he hits the inevitable areas where the going gets tough, he can keep going by tapping into this strength.

So what can you do?

Understand which of your Super Powers motivates you. If it’s also Significance, then you want to have impact just like James. But if it’s something else, understand and link you blog and activities to that. While Significance, a desire to impact large numbers of people in a visible and tangible way, can be a powerful motivator, so can Belief, Achievement, and Harmony.

What’s important is that you find the thing that gives you energy. Then tap into it from the beginning of your blogging journey.

Passive Panda is in what James calls the “make money” niche—perhaps one of the most crowded on the Internet. Yet, in a short period of time, he grew his audience and now stands out in his field, attracting the attention of entities like US News and World Report and American Express.

In fact, his “space” is actually a conflation of several competitive markets—personal finance, freelancing, entrepreneurship, and career development. On the surface, this could make it even more difficult, yet he still manages to stand out. How?

One way was through the unique application of his strength as a Learner. Because of this strength, he’s able to, for example, interview 70+ people for a single post. As a result, his posts have the kind of uniqueness that separates his blog from the pack.

Here’s an important note: while the tactic is successful and makes sense, it wouldn’t necessarily work for others, such as myself, with a different strength profile.

My reaction to learning the amount of research he did was, “No way could I do that. Just thinking about it exhausts me!” The many others who have a similar reaction would probably not take this approach (or if they did, wouldn’t do so for long). As a result, he clears the field and emerges as a unique voice.

So what can you do?

Figure out one—actually, I recommend two strengths that, when applied to the way you develop your content, give you “energy,” but also help you stand out in your space.

In the end, for your blog to become a full-time gig, you’ll need paying customers—ideally, the same people who read your blog.

To do this, you’ll need to find a way to not only stand out but deliver value.

One of James’s other strengths is Focus. While he’s certainly able to apply this to the actual building of his business, what’s interesting to me is how his customers value this Super Power.

His popular course, “The Remora Method,” helps people to increase their own focus on the immediate next step to build their freelancing or “side gig.” The course structures behavior around getting clients to focus. His direct, 1:1 interactions over email all focus on helping someone take that specific next action.

Especially for someone who realizes that they need focus, or want the step-by-step progress that focus generates, this Super Power provides great value that people are willing to pay for.

So what can you do?

Think about how your strength can be the vehicle for delivering a product or service that your customers will want. This will help you to lay the groundwork so your blog can ultimately support you as it does James.

Your strengths (aka Super Powers) are a valuable source of the basic building blocks to building a blog. Upon them, you can then layer the great tips and tactics out there (such as those on ProBlogger!).

This foundation includes:

having the energy to pour into the blog, so you can…stand out in the way you develop content, so you can…deliver value to readers who become customers.

James shows how it can be done. And when you listen to the interview, you’ll get a peek into something even bigger he has in the works (as a result of the Super Power of Significance). I believe it is by understanding how his Super Powers enabled all the moving parts to work, that you can discover the deeper drivers of these tactics and, more importantly, better see your own, unique path to entrepreneurship.

TT Fong uses his strengths to help people discover and apply their “Super Powers” to do remarkable things with greater ease and less strain at SpikingStrengths.com. He uncovers how successful people build businesses, careers, and teams by spending time in their “spikes” — check out the cinematic trailer of the interview series.

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