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This post is the last in a series of posts by Hendry Lee. Check out part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

Website tracking is one of the least discussed topics. When it comes to blogging, most people only think about how to produce content, promote and make money. Well, newbie bloggers often overlook the importance of content promotion, which I talked about quite thoroughly in the last post.

It’s true that for professional bloggers the ultimate goal is always to make moolah. However, thinking that the only thing you need more of to make more money is traffic is self-limiting.

Oftentimes, it is more effective to optimize web pages and overall site before getting more traffic. And I should assure you this should be the way to go in the future. Those who are able to squeeze more value per visitor will have more competitive edge.

They afford to pay higher cost per click in search engine, for example. And that strategy alone is capable to kick their competitions out of the first page of the AdWords listings.

Every Page is a Landing Page

It is necessary to position each blog page as an independent landing page.

Although quite a number of people enter your blog via the home page, remember that many new visitors come because of links from other blogs or sites. Referral traffic may enter your blog straight into any page. Search engine traffic also makes every page a possible entry page.

Also remember that new visitors usually attempt to find a way to get around your blog and look for interesting content. If you fail to make it easier on their part, most likely they will just leave.

It is the purpose of the landing page to help the readers find their way and engage them as long as possible on your site to consume your contents — or to take action as soon as possible. Whatever it is, you don’t want them to randomly browse your blog.

Define your most wanted response for the visitors and work on getting as many of them towards it. It may be as simple as clicking on your ads, or subscribe to your e-newsletter.

Quick tip: If you are offering a product or service, most likely direct sales will convert much weaker than if you capture their information and follow up.

What to Track on Your Blog

That highly depends on your goal(s). Most bloggers need only a bunch of metrics. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone who needs to look for all combinations in the analytics report.

Last time I read, Google Analytics have over 80 reports with hundreds of detailed views of the data. Who has time for all of those, right? With the sheer amount of data available, you need to know which metrics are important.

The following is a list of them. Some of these metrics are nice to have. Others are necessary to help you make decisions.

RSS Feed Metrics

RSS provides another way for content consumers to get updated content from your blog by pulling data from your server as new post becomes available without giving away their name or email address.

Despite its anonymity, you are still able to get some insightful marketing metrics out of it, namely:

• Subscribers / readership. Google FeedBurner lets you track subscribers who access your feed in given day, week, or month, including aggregated subscription data from web-based news readers like Google Readers and Bloglines. What this number shows you: Level of engagement and influence, content consumption trend. Based on this you know when to release news or update your blog.
• Robots and feed readers. Which news feed robots and software fetch your RSS feed and how many unique subscribers available for each of them?
• Items use. Which type of content the audience likes most? Obviously if the trends move toward one topical matter, you should blog about it more often to increase engagement.
• Revenue. How much do you earn from your feed? If you set your analytics software correctly, you will be able to track sales and other goals from RSS readers as well. I’ve created a WordPress plugin called RSS Feed Campaign Tagger (RFCT) that will help you track links within your RSS feeds via Google Analytics.

Email Marketing Metrics

This is another bonus section for bloggers who also send out email newsletters. Email has been around much longer than RSS feeds and it is one of the most measurable online marketing and advertising channels.

Here are some metrics you need to pay attention to if you want to engage and target your prospects / customers via email:

• Sent and bounces. The number of subscribers obviously is also the “sent” number. Bounces occur when emails are undeliverable for one reason or another. Clean list should have minimal bounce rate.
• Delivery rate. Ideally, number of sent minus bounces should be the the number of delivered emails. But alas, nowadays spam filtering prevents even legitimate emails from reaching user’s inbox. You may need service such as Delivery Monitor for complete metrics on deliverability.
• Open rate. This metric is overrated but still it shows you if people are interested in your email or otherwise.
• Click-through rate, or CTR, is the percentage of people that click after opening the email. The higher the percentage, the better response you have from the recipients toward your message.
• Actions. What the email recipients do after visiting your site. This metric is measurable with web analytics software.
• Unsubscription rate. The number of subscribers who decide to cancel subscription to your e-newsletter. If the number is high, you are doing something wrong.

Social Media Metrics

Discussions about social media metrics are heating up, but there’s no single answer to every situation out there. Some of the traditional metrics are still useful for tracking social media activities, because eventually you are leading people back to your web site or blog.

The agreed consensus right now is to measure everything you can. Sure, you are going to throw away some of the metrics, but at the same time you will be able to tune in to the metrics that matter most to your business. It is different from one business to another because of the diversity of social media.

Engagement in social media may be used as currency to the success of your campaign. Most marketers are confused about how to measure engagement. And as you know, if you don’t track, there is no way you can improve. The question will finally lead to, in this example, how do you communicate with the audience to increase engagement?

While this metric may be nice to have, let’s face it, it is quite subtle to track. Right now, it is not possible to track how much time people spend to read your email, or if they remember your brand more than ever after reading your story in one particular issue.

Now the good news. Those metrics don’t matter.

Most marketers, for instance, are satisfied with email metrics, although they are not able to get the same information as above from their email marketing campaigns. Even if they are able to do so, again the number is useless. Each individual has different engagement level toward a business or something. And there is no step-by-step system that guarantees it.

If testing everything sounds too much work, start with something that you care about. Are you interested in knowing how well your Twitter friends respond to a mention of your blog post? If so, use URL shortening service that allows you to track clicks. It is possible to track even further through clickstream analysis how those visitors interact with your web site.

While it is impossible to track how many people actually like your brand after befriending you in Facebook, you can measure the number of people that visit to read your blog and later buy your product or service. After all, that should be the (engagement) metrics you should care about.

Some other metrics are harder to measure because the lack of control on your part. While you can measure how many clicks you get from your blog to your Twitter profile, you can’t be sure about how many of them really turn into followers because your recent followers may come from other places. You get the idea.

Web Site Metrics

Over the years, marketers have developed quite a good set of metrics for measuring various activities and campaigns. Big companies need to know precisely the ROI of advertising and activities around various media. Individual bloggers may also learn a lot by analyzing these metrics regularly.

With so many things to do and so little time, it pays if you focus on the 20 percent that brings in 80 percent the results (The Pareto principle).

Below are a few metrics webmasters and bloggers usually focus on. You may not be interested in all of details, but knowing all of them gives you a picture of how well you are doing with your site:

• Number of visitors. Traffic, for many bloggers, is the only thing that counts. If everything else is the same, more traffic simply means more revenue and sales. That’s true but nowadays, knowing more metrics can be really helpful if you want to survive and thrive in the market.
• Pageviews. Pageviews should be greater or equal to the number of visitors. It shows how people are interested in pursuing your site further after the first page, among other things.
• Page / visit. On average, how many pages each visitor sees before leaving your site. This is important to measure stickiness.
• Time spent on site. The average time a visitor spends on your site. This shows if the visitors actually spend time interacting with your site, i.e. reading, listening to audio, watching video, etc.
• Bounce rate. This metric measures the average percentage of visitors who visit a page, but bounce away without visiting another page. Particularly interesting is bounce rate of individual page, such as landing page because it shows you how well it works.
• Referring sites / pages. Who sends you most traffic? Perhaps you are guest blogging in 5 different blogs at a time. Based on the referral traffic, you will be able to decide which blog to focus on and which one requires you to change your approach. And that’s just one example. Tracking which source of traffic brings you most email subscribers, for example, is possible with the right analytics setup.
• Search engine keywords. What keywords did people search to find your site / blog pages? This may as well serve as the foundation for your keyword research and expand your content.
• Geographic location. Based on the IP address of the visitors, you can identify the geographic locations of your readers.
• Clickstream. By definition from the standpoint of web analytics, clickstream is about logging a user’s activities on a web site. With the understanding of visitors’ behavior, you will be able to optimize your web site to enhance user experience and conversion.

Web analytics is a topic of its own but you don’t have to be an expert to start getting value from the collected data.

Recommendation: Start collecting data with Google Analytics (hosted) or Piwik (standalone, self-hosted) today. Even if you don’t use the data right away, you will be able to see a lot of interesting data such as how your traffic grows one year from now, among others. Log analysis tool such as Awstats (comes with most hosting packages) is not enough.

Sales Metrics

As the primary goal of every business web site or blog is to increase bottom line, it pays to know the figures related to sales.

You may not sell a product or service on your blog yet, but if you put ads on your blog, you are selling something. Virtual real estate or ad space is still a product you sell to advertisers, just that you may be tracking an entirely different set of numbers.

If you are just getting started, these figures may not mean anything to you. But believe me, they will become crucial as you grow your blog.

• Conversion rate. The number of your visitors that subscribe to your email newsletter, or buy your product or service, is your conversion. It depends on your most wanted response.
• Cost per lead. For most professional blogs, a lead is a prospect. In corporate world, both of them are very distinctive. Knowing your cost per lead gives you an advantage to compete in paid search and other media.
• Customer acquisition cost. The cost associated to get a customer. Optimizing your sales process can help decrease the cost, which translates into higher profit margin.
• Lifetime customers value. Knowing this figure means you are able to invest at the customer acquisition stage.

Let me show you how powerful these numbers can be. With them, you will be able to know how much to spend and still break even or profit. You can tap into one marketing channel after another and grow your business by leaps and bounds and still know for sure after tracking that you are going to profit while your competitors may not make a decision based on this.

One last thing I must mention is that building a business involves a change in mindset too.

Just because blogging often involves getting free traffic from search engines and referrals from other bloggers, that doesn’t mean you should not buy traffic. Pay per click and media buying may be effective, especially if your blog doesn’t rank very well on several keywords that you want to target, or when you want to tap into a pool of targeted buyers who frequent other blogs.

Conclusions

Blogging in upcoming years is more about having a better strategy and execution. It is the intention of this article series to give you a new perspective into what’s coming ahead based on analysis instead of mere predictions.

Millions of blogs already exist, and the number is going to increase on a daily basis. You need to take it seriously if you want to succeed. I don’t try to scare you off. In fact, there’s no better time than ever to start a blog, contribute and add value to the Web and specifically to the blogosphere and make a killing. The numbers show us that despite the economic situations, people choose to save on gas and other things and still shop online.

All those blog readers are just like you and me. We are them. Deliver value, make them happy, before you try to get their hard earned money.

The opportunity is there. Just that you need to have the right mindset, plan and persistent to get things done.

Let me close with a quote from Zig Ziglar. “You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”

Notice that contribution comes first. Happy blogging!

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about make money blogging on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog - Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to his blogging e-course where he reveals his secret about blogging and content writing!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).

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I’ve just had word that the popular Become a Blogger training series for bloggers is closing its doors to new members in 1 week.

On 6 February they’ll stop taking on new members to their program. They already have 800 signed up members so seem to feel its best to close to new members to focus upon the community they’ve already grown.

This largely video based training has been helping a lot of bloggers. I know many ProBlogger readers signed up when it first was released in December and I’ve been getting great reports.

The training is video based (and a closed forum) and is centered around a series of 9 modules over six months (each month you get 8 videos):

1. Get Your Blog Up And Running Fast And FREE
2. How To Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Performance
3. How To Use Images On Your Blog To Make You Stand Out From The Crowd
4. How To Create A Different Dimension To Your Blog By Adding Audio
5. How To Breathe Life Into Your Blog Using Online Video
6. How To Create Powerful Content For Your Blog, Consistently and Without Fail
7. How To Create Multiple Streams of High Quality Traffic To Your Blog
8. How To Use The “X-Factor” Strategies To Put Your Blog Into Super Drive!
9. How To Make Money From Your Blog

For a taster check out these 10 free videos and their free Roadmap Report which are great resources on their own and a great way to work out if Yaro and Gideon (the guys behind this training) are your cup of tea.

This is not a course for advanced bloggers but as you can see from the list of topics covered it is geared towards those who are about to start out, who have just started out and who want to up their skill set and knowledge on many of the things you need to be able to do to take a blog to the next level.

If those fit with your situation you should check it out and consider the investment going forward into 2009.

PS: Yaro and Gideon offer a 60 day money back guarantee on this course. I’ve had a lot of interaction with both of them and this is actually a genuine offer. If you’re not satisfied in that time - just ask for your money back.

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This post is the 5th in a series of posts by Hendry Lee. Check out part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

Scrupulous readers should have noticed that blogging is not just about writing and get their opinions, rants and random stuff online. In fact, a blog is just a tool for publishing and conversing online. Every opportunity to enhance communication and reach out through various media should not be taken lightly.

As part of the online marketing mix, blogging plays a significant role because right now much of the marketing effort still revolves around driving people to your web site. When you want your prospects to buy something, you want them to visit your site and proceed to the order / payment page. If you want them to find information or read content, a web site is still the most ideal place for this.

Among those, audio and video content consumptions have shifted from computer to portable devices and TV screens. However, at the end of the process, you still need to take the audience back to the Web to increase ad views or complete the purchase. (Driving people to offline store is out of the scope of this post.)

A blog is no longer used to merely publish blog type content. Modern blog software allows you to format the layout to resemble magazines, corporate web sites or for syndicating videos. Taking advantage of this has become more important than ever in order to grow your business.

Quick advice: combine web publishing and other media to reach your audience. Not only they are cost effective but you are providing richer content experience across multiple platforms and that can bring good things to your business. Even just for online media, you can implement multi-channel marketing.

• Email newsletter. If you haven’t developed a way to reach your prospects or customers without having them to visit your site, you are far from getting the most out of your content and traffic. Despite many claims about email digging its own grave, email marketing remains a top marketing priority simply because it is still effective in drive prospects and customers back and to engage them regularly.
• Blog RSS feeds. Many people prefer to receive content only when they want to. RSS feeds provide them with fresh content without having them to give away their information. Consumers should have control and RSS feeds fit perfectly into this strategy. The good news is, all blog software automatically provide this feature out of the box.
• Podcast feed. Podcast feed is a convenient way to deliver audio, video and other content formats to subscribers.
• Other content feeds. Twitter, FriendFeed and almost every new web service now include RSS feeds as an alternative to receive updated content. Create a strategy to get people into consuming content and engage with you repeatedly.
• Webinars and teleseminars. Telephone and video seminars are capable of providing training in every topic you can possibly imagine.
• E-books. Free e-books have higher perceived value than articles. Content in this format tends to establish your expert status faster than anything else. A collection of your best blog posts can be turned into e-book. That’s just one simple example to re-purpose content.

How to Get the Words Out with Content Marketing

When I first used the term content marketing, almost no one was talking about it. Not that people didn’t do it but Larry Chase was one of the first to use the phrase. Other marketers refer to it as educational marketing. Just recently, it becomes the buzz word.

Marketing suddenly becomes fun once you approach it from the content angle. Rather than calling out to random people who are more likely not interested in what you have to offer, content marketing attracts people in. People come (call, contact, or ask) you about your product or service instead of you selling them aggressively. And when the approach you, often they feel as if they’ve known you for a long time.

It all starts with superb content.

Content marketing is effective but at the same time doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket. Sure, there are expensive ways to create and distribute content. More power to those who can afford them. But for most of us, here are some cost effective tips and strategies for content distribution and promotion. (See above for tips on affordable content creation strategies.) Don’t underestimate any one of them, as they can be far more powerful than the costly methods:

• Optimize your content for search engines. Learn basic SEO. If you don’t have the budget to spend, you can do this yourself and still get good results. Many web users refer to search engines to find information. I’m not surprised if bloggers claim that 40-60 percent of their traffic come from search engines. So like it or not, a lot of the following strategies will help you get more traffic from search engines.
• Break news. This is possible if you have insider access to news, but if you don’t, being one of the first to blog about a story may result in links from A-list blogs and news outlets. I’ve written about content filtering and keeping up with industry news in previous post.
• Send out press releases. They have to be news-worthy. If done right, you may get a lot of publicity in additional to links from authority web sites that will strengthen your positions in search engines. Media coverage may bring in a surge of traffic to your blog. Read Darren’s post on how to get media coverage for tips on how to do it.
• Hold a contest. Contest is an effective way to generate buzz around the blogosphere, especially if you are able to have other bloggers and influencers blog about it.
• Participate in contests. Bloggers often hold contests or group projects to encourage others to blog about certain topics. This may result in both links and referral traffic for your blog.
• Participate in blog carnivals. Even though you have great content, it can be hard to get links from other bloggers when you are getting started. By participating in blog carnivals, you are able to kick start your inbound link strategy quite easily.
• Linkbait. Certainly it is not the best word to describe what it does. Linkbaiting is simply the act of creating solid piece of information that catches people’s attention. It has nothing to do with baiting people into fads. Being remarkable is the idea behind linkbaiting. With great content and a bit of promotion, others will notice and start linking back to your blog.
• Write and promote your free e-books. A free promotion in one forum may bring hundreds or even thousands of downloads, which distribute your message to more audience. A freemium — to steal the term from direct marketing — is effective to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter.
• Become a guest blogger. Like what I am doing right now. Everyone should like the idea of stealing traffic from other bloggers ethically. Provide great content and help out other bloggers. In return, they will be more than happy to let you communicate with their readers. This in turn will drive traffic back to your blog.
• Contribute to article directories. Article directories are still good sources of targeted traffic, mainly because of their authority in a lot of topics. I regularly get 5-10 new subscribers to my e-course every day from this source. Focus on high-traffic sites to save your time.
• Visit forums regularly. Discussion boards are places where people with the same interest hang out, discuss and share opinions. By being a forum regular, and by contributing back, you will be able to establish your expertise and drive traffic back to your site. Some forums also accept on-topic articles.
• Use micro-blogging platform. Twitter is by far the most outstanding micro-blogging tool. At first, you may not be able to drive significant traffic using Twitter, but realize that it is also a networking opportunity. More about this in the next section.
• Lifestreaming. FriendFeed immediately comes into mind. With it, your audience will be able to get up-to-date stream of web pages, photos, music and videos that you share. I use FriendFeed’s room feature to share interesting stuff around blogging. Businesses who tap into blogging don’t have time to monitor hundreds of blogs every day, but they will be able to get links to interesting stuff online by subscribing to the feed. I’m going to push this idea further this year. Although more than 95 percent of the content I share is not mine, but over the long haul, being resourceful will be rewarding.

Connect and Build Relationships with Others (It’s Social!)

Blogging requires you to reach out and connect with your readers and other bloggers. Relationship is an important part of it. “It is who you know.”

Building relationships with other influencers should be on everyone’s agenda. Over time, you will need bloggers to help you spread your content, product or service. By the time you need them, it is usually too late to start networking.

While certainly there’s more things to consider than just “who you know,” influencers are people who have the capability to generate buzz and bring you traffic and business. Average content can become outstanding with the right people endorsing it, but superb content remains unnoticed without proper promotion.

With the word “social” everywhere, “where to network” is no longer the right question to ask. It is more about prioritizing your time to get the most out of social sites and activities.

Here are some useful online networking tips that I hope I’ve learned years ago when I got started:

• Leave comments on other blogs Comments with nofollow attribute is still valuable because what you seek for is connecting with the blogger. I know some bloggers who leave comment in 50-100 blogs every day. If that sounds too aggressive a goal because of time limitation and others, aim for 5-10 authority blogs to start with. A tip: If you are able to grab the blogger’s attention, you will increase the chance of getting them to reply to your tweets or emails later.
• Help other bloggers. Guest blogging, as mentioned above, is just an example. Do whatever you could to help out bloggers. They will certainly pay attention to you more than to people who blatantly ask for links.
• Find the right timing. Don’t spam tens of bloggers with the similar messages. You need to personalize email and get in touch with the right blogger at the right time. A tip I learned from Maki of Dosh Dosh is to create a prospect list using your news reader. It is a neat way to track your network even if you have hundreds of them.
• Don’t overlook mailing lists and groups. People are still exchanging hundreds of messages in popular mailing lists and virtual groups such as Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. As with other strategies, the key is always in providing value. Don’t self-promote in your first message unless you want to be kicked out of the circle.
• Connect with a purpose in social networking sites. You can certainly befriend your family members or school mates, but if you are to grow your business, look for like-minded people and build relationships with them through those social networking sites.
• Use Twitter. Twitter is all the rage nowadays. While people may visit Facebook or MySpace once a week, they regularly use Twitter several times a day. This may be a more effective way to get in touch with influencers, even better than email and perhaps phone (for some people). At least warm up first and avoid cold calling.
• Meet bloggers in person. Industry events and seminars are great places to meet people besides getting cutting edge information, of course. When meeting others in person, it often results in closer relationship and joint projects. After all, people who visit those events are also interested in business.

Although social networking sites allow you to syndicate your blog’s RSS feeds and post links to your blog posts, several social sites are created just for the purpose of finding new and interesting content.

Here are some ways that will help you leverage your content and drive traffic through social sites:

• Disseminate your content through social sites. Squidoo and HubPages are just two examples of social sites that allow everyone to publish their own content and knowledge. This will increase your visibility as people start finding your content and blogs through various places.
• Provide value and steal more traffic! Digg, Propeller, Reddit and Stumble Upon are just several huge players out there. You can find niche specific social news sites and drive tons of traffic to your blog if you really work on it. Care should be taken that traffic from these sites may not be sticky, but they can still be made effective. When using such sites, remember that networking is also important to get your content noticed and endorsed.
• Help others find answers. Yahoo Answers and Mahalo Answers are just two examples where you can help others with your knowledge. Others will notice what you have to say, which in turn may drive business to you.

Diversify Your Profit Streams

For most bloggers, make money blogging is about selling ad space or getting sponsorship. While we should expect to see changes in the advertising industry and there are still untapped market for ads, bloggers should really expand their monetization options beyond displaying adverts on their blogs.

The easiest profit stream that comes to my mind is creating information products. After all, bloggers are already content creators, so this should not be hard at all.

An e-book is just an example of info product. CDs, DVDs, membership sites, seminars, group coaching, and even consulting can be considered information-based products.

Information marketing is one of the underutilized profit sources for bloggers.

The benefit is enormous. While you can increase your blog revenue at the same time, these products are also marketing tools. They make you more credible, not to mention about the additional businesses generated from consumers of the products, if you happen to over consulting and other services.

Selling other people’s products as an affiliate also has a great potential. No one could ever make products or services fast enough to satisfy all of their audience. By offering high quality and proven products to their visitors, they are doing a service. Don’t promote just for the sake of earning affiliate commissions though. Be honest, that will make you more money in the long run.

Closing Words

If you look at the list above, you should agree that it can be overwhelming even for most productive bloggers. If you only get one advice from this article, it should be that you should not attempt to do them all at once by yourself.

Instead, prioritize. Successful bloggers focus on what they know best and exploit a handful of different marketing channels to the maximum, systemize them, and whenever they are able to offload some of the stuff, pick another channel to explore. You will be surprised that even if you do one thing well, you will see significant improve in traffic and revenue to your site.

Final recommendation: spend a weekend to plan out your blogging business. It will be time worth spending.

Next post, which is the last post in the series, talks about the metrics you should be tracking so you know which strategy brings you result and which needs a fix. Not knowing your numbers is like shooting in the dark and hoping you will hit the bull’s eye. It isn’t going to happen. Driving traffic and growing a blogging business need a strategy, and based on the feedback you adjust things and take even more actions.

So… stay tuned.

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about make money blogging on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog - Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to his blogging e-course where he reveals his secret about blogging and content writing!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).

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This post is the 5th in a series of posts by Hendry Lee. Check out part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

Scrupulous readers should have noticed that blogging is not just about writing and get their opinions, rants and random stuff online. In fact, a blog is just a tool for publishing and conversing online. Every opportunity to enhance communication and reach out through various media should not be taken lightly.

As part of the online marketing mix, blogging plays a significant role because right now much of the marketing effort still revolves around driving people to your web site. When you want your prospects to buy something, you want them to visit your site and proceed to the order / payment page. If you want them to find information or read content, a web site is still the most ideal place for this.

Among those, audio and video content consumptions have shifted from computer to portable devices and TV screens. However, at the end of the process, you still need to take the audience back to the Web to increase ad views or complete the purchase. (Driving people to offline store is out of the scope of this post.)

A blog is no longer used to merely publish blog type content. Modern blog software allows you to format the layout to resemble magazines, corporate web sites or for syndicating videos. Taking advantage of this has become more important than ever in order to grow your business.

Quick advice: combine web publishing and other media to reach your audience. Not only they are cost effective but you are providing richer content experience across multiple platforms and that can bring good things to your business. Even just for online media, you can implement multi-channel marketing.

• Email newsletter. If you haven’t developed a way to reach your prospects or customers without having them to visit your site, you are far from getting the most out of your content and traffic. Despite many claims about email digging its own grave, email marketing remains a top marketing priority simply because it is still effective in drive prospects and customers back and to engage them regularly.
• Blog RSS feeds. Many people prefer to receive content only when they want to. RSS feeds provide them with fresh content without having them to give away their information. Consumers should have control and RSS feeds fit perfectly into this strategy. The good news is, all blog software automatically provide this feature out of the box.
• Podcast feed. Podcast feed is a convenient way to deliver audio, video and other content formats to subscribers.
• Other content feeds. Twitter, FriendFeed and almost every new web service now include RSS feeds as an alternative to receive updated content. Create a strategy to get people into consuming content and engage with you repeatedly.
• Webinars and teleseminars. Telephone and video seminars are capable of providing training in every topic you can possibly imagine.
• E-books. Free e-books have higher perceived value than articles. Content in this format tends to establish your expert status faster than anything else. A collection of your best blog posts can be turned into e-book. That’s just one simple example to re-purpose content.

How to Get the Words Out with Content Marketing

When I first used the term content marketing, almost no one was talking about it. Not that people didn’t do it but Larry Chase was one of the first to use the phrase. Other marketers refer to it as educational marketing. Just recently, it becomes the buzz word.

Marketing suddenly becomes fun once you approach it from the content angle. Rather than calling out to random people who are more likely not interested in what you have to offer, content marketing attracts people in. People come (call, contact, or ask) you about your product or service instead of you selling them aggressively. And when the approach you, often they feel as if they’ve known you for a long time.

It all starts with superb content.

Content marketing is effective but at the same time doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket. Sure, there are expensive ways to create and distribute content. More power to those who can afford them. But for most of us, here are some cost effective tips and strategies for content distribution and promotion. (See above for tips on affordable content creation strategies.) Don’t underestimate any one of them, as they can be far more powerful than the costly methods:

• Optimize your content for search engines. Learn basic SEO. If you don’t have the budget to spend, you can do this yourself and still get good results. Many web users refer to search engines to find information. I’m not surprised if bloggers claim that 40-60 percent of their traffic come from search engines. So like it or not, a lot of the following strategies will help you get more traffic from search engines.
• Break news. This is possible if you have insider access to news, but if you don’t, being one of the first to blog about a story may result in links from A-list blogs and news outlets. I’ve written about content filtering and keeping up with industry news in previous post.
• Send out press releases. They have to be news-worthy. If done right, you may get a lot of publicity in additional to links from authority web sites that will strengthen your positions in search engines. Media coverage may bring in a surge of traffic to your blog. Read Darren’s post on how to get media coverage for tips on how to do it.
• Hold a contest. Contest is an effective way to generate buzz around the blogosphere, especially if you are able to have other bloggers and influencers blog about it.
• Participate in contests. Bloggers often hold contests or group projects to encourage others to blog about certain topics. This may result in both links and referral traffic for your blog.
• Participate in blog carnivals. Even though you have great content, it can be hard to get links from other bloggers when you are getting started. By participating in blog carnivals, you are able to kick start your inbound link strategy quite easily.
• Linkbait. Certainly it is not the best word to describe what it does. Linkbaiting is simply the act of creating solid piece of information that catches people’s attention. It has nothing to do with baiting people into fads. Being remarkable is the idea behind linkbaiting. With great content and a bit of promotion, others will notice and start linking back to your blog.
• Write and promote your free e-books. A free promotion in one forum may bring hundreds or even thousands of downloads, which distribute your message to more audience. A freemium — to steal the term from direct marketing — is effective to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter.
• Become a guest blogger. Like what I am doing right now. Everyone should like the idea of stealing traffic from other bloggers ethically. Provide great content and help out other bloggers. In return, they will be more than happy to let you communicate with their readers. This in turn will drive traffic back to your blog.
• Contribute to article directories. Article directories are still good sources of targeted traffic, mainly because of their authority in a lot of topics. I regularly get 5-10 new subscribers to my e-course every day from this source. Focus on high-traffic sites to save your time.
• Visit forums regularly. Discussion boards are places where people with the same interest hang out, discuss and share opinions. By being a forum regular, and by contributing back, you will be able to establish your expertise and drive traffic back to your site. Some forums also accept on-topic articles.
• Use micro-blogging platform. Twitter is by far the most outstanding micro-blogging tool. At first, you may not be able to drive significant traffic using Twitter, but realize that it is also a networking opportunity. More about this in the next section.
• Lifestreaming. FriendFeed immediately comes into mind. With it, your audience will be able to get up-to-date stream of web pages, photos, music and videos that you share. I use FriendFeed’s room feature to share interesting stuff around blogging. Businesses who tap into blogging don’t have time to monitor hundreds of blogs every day, but they will be able to get links to interesting stuff online by subscribing to the feed. I’m going to push this idea further this year. Although more than 95 percent of the content I share is not mine, but over the long haul, being resourceful will be rewarding.

Connect and Build Relationships with Others (It’s Social!)

Blogging requires you to reach out and connect with your readers and other bloggers. Relationship is an important part of it. “It is who you know.”

Building relationships with other influencers should be on everyone’s agenda. Over time, you will need bloggers to help you spread your content, product or service. By the time you need them, it is usually too late to start networking.

While certainly there’s more things to consider than just “who you know,” influencers are people who have the capability to generate buzz and bring you traffic and business. Average content can become outstanding with the right people endorsing it, but superb content remains unnoticed without proper promotion.

With the word “social” everywhere, “where to network” is no longer the right question to ask. It is more about prioritizing your time to get the most out of social sites and activities.

Here are some useful online networking tips that I hope I’ve learned years ago when I got started:

• Leave comments on other blogs Comments with nofollow attribute is still valuable because what you seek for is connecting with the blogger. I know some bloggers who leave comment in 50-100 blogs every day. If that sounds too aggressive a goal because of time limitation and others, aim for 5-10 authority blogs to start with. A tip: If you are able to grab the blogger’s attention, you will increase the chance of getting them to reply to your tweets or emails later.
• Help other bloggers. Guest blogging, as mentioned above, is just an example. Do whatever you could to help out bloggers. They will certainly pay attention to you more than to people who blatantly ask for links.
• Find the right timing. Don’t spam tens of bloggers with the similar messages. You need to personalize email and get in touch with the right blogger at the right time. A tip I learned from Maki of Dosh Dosh is to create a prospect list using your news reader. It is a neat way to track your network even if you have hundreds of them.
• Don’t overlook mailing lists and groups. People are still exchanging hundreds of messages in popular mailing lists and virtual groups such as Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. As with other strategies, the key is always in providing value. Don’t self-promote in your first message unless you want to be kicked out of the circle.
• Connect with a purpose in social networking sites. You can certainly befriend your family members or school mates, but if you are to grow your business, look for like-minded people and build relationships with them through those social networking sites.
• Use Twitter. Twitter is all the rage nowadays. While people may visit Facebook or MySpace once a week, they regularly use Twitter several times a day. This may be a more effective way to get in touch with influencers, even better than email and perhaps phone (for some people). At least warm up first and avoid cold calling.
• Meet bloggers in person. Industry events and seminars are great places to meet people besides getting cutting edge information, of course. When meeting others in person, it often results in closer relationship and joint projects. After all, people who visit those events are also interested in business.

Although social networking sites allow you to syndicate your blog’s RSS feeds and post links to your blog posts, several social sites are created just for the purpose of finding new and interesting content.

Here are some ways that will help you leverage your content and drive traffic through social sites:

• Disseminate your content through social sites. Squidoo and HubPages are just two examples of social sites that allow everyone to publish their own content and knowledge. This will increase your visibility as people start finding your content and blogs through various places.
• Provide value and steal more traffic! Digg, Propeller, Reddit and Stumble Upon are just several huge players out there. You can find niche specific social news sites and drive tons of traffic to your blog if you really work on it. Care should be taken that traffic from these sites may not be sticky, but they can still be made effective. When using such sites, remember that networking is also important to get your content noticed and endorsed.
• Help others find answers. Yahoo Answers and Mahalo Answers are just two examples where you can help others with your knowledge. Others will notice what you have to say, which in turn may drive business to you.

Diversify Your Profit Streams

For most bloggers, make money blogging is about selling ad space or getting sponsorship. While we should expect to see changes in the advertising industry and there are still untapped market for ads, bloggers should really expand their monetization options beyond displaying adverts on their blogs.

The easiest profit stream that comes to my mind is creating information products. After all, bloggers are already content creators, so this should not be hard at all.

An e-book is just an example of info product. CDs, DVDs, membership sites, seminars, group coaching, and even consulting can be considered information-based products.

Information marketing is one of the underutilized profit sources for bloggers.

The benefit is enormous. While you can increase your blog revenue at the same time, these products are also marketing tools. They make you more credible, not to mention about the additional businesses generated from consumers of the products, if you happen to over consulting and other services.

Selling other people’s products as an affiliate also has a great potential. No one could ever make products or services fast enough to satisfy all of their audience. By offering high quality and proven products to their visitors, they are doing a service. Don’t promote just for the sake of earning affiliate commissions though. Be honest, that will make you more money in the long run.

Closing Words

If you look at the list above, you should agree that it can be overwhelming even for most productive bloggers. If you only get one advice from this article, it should be that you should not attempt to do them all at once by yourself.

Instead, prioritize. Successful bloggers focus on what they know best and exploit a handful of different marketing channels to the maximum, systemize them, and whenever they are able to offload some of the stuff, pick another channel to explore. You will be surprised that even if you do one thing well, you will see significant improve in traffic and revenue to your site.

Final recommendation: spend a weekend to plan out your blogging business. It will be time worth spending.

Next post, which is the last post in the series, talks about the metrics you should be tracking so you know which strategy brings you result and which needs a fix. Not knowing your numbers is like shooting in the dark and hoping you will hit the bull’s eye. It isn’t going to happen. Driving traffic and growing a blogging business need a strategy, and based on the feedback you adjust things and take even more actions.

So… stay tuned.

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about make money blogging on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog - Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to his blogging e-course where he reveals his secret about blogging and content writing!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).

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A couple of weeks back I was sent these questions as part of an interview that someone wanted to do in the writing of a book.

In the end the person doing the interview couldn’t use it - so I’ve decided that rather than waste the significant time I put into responding that I’d post the answers here.

The focus of the interview seemed to be going down the route of getting ‘fast traffic’ to a blog. You’ll see this theme coming up numerous times in the questions and probably sense a little of my frustration with the idea in my answers. I hope you find the interview useful.

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers…

My name is Darren Rowse, I live in Melbourne Australia with my wife ‘V’ and two boys (aged 6 months and 2 and a half). I’ve been blogging for a little over 6 years. It started completely as a hobby but gradually grew into a part time and then full time job (and then beyond). I’ve written a book on blogging (called ProBlogger), am the cofounder of the b5media blog network and over the years have started around 30 blogs (although only concentrate on 3 today). I’m also a keen photographer and love to read.

2. What blogs do you own, which one is your favorite, and why did you start it?

I personally own and edit three blogs today - ProBlogger (a blog about blogging), Digital Photography School (a blog to help digital camera owners get the most from their cameras) and TwiTip (my most recent blog - a blog focusing upon Twitter Tips).

I enjoy each blog for different reasons but I guess if I had to give up two and keep one the one I’d keep would be ProBlogger - simply because it is the oldest of the three (although not the biggest - DPS is gets more traffic) and one that I’ve put most time and effort into over the years.

I started ProBlogger simply because it was a blog I wanted to read myself. I was experimenting with making blogging a business but no one else was writing about that at the time - so I thought I’d start it and journal what I was learning.

3. what is the number one thing you learned about blogging that has impacted your bottom line, that thing that makes the difference between succeeding and failing in this business?

There are so many things and to isolate one is difficult (and perhaps not that helpful as great blogs are built upon many factors and rarely just one thing).

However if I had to choose one thing it’d be that successful blogs are ‘useful’ blogs in one way or another.

Blogs need to meet a need or solve a problem that potential readers have. The need might seem frivilous (the need to be entertained for example) or it could be a need for information, community, news etc.

Meet a need and you give people a reason to subscribe to your blog and to pass it on to others. Create a blog that doesn’t really prove useful in any way and you’re unlikely to build a successful blog.

4. If you have to bring instant visitors to your blog in the next 30 minutes, what steps will you follow?

If you’re expecting big traffic quickly you’re asking the wrong guy. My strategy has always been to write content that people will want to read now - but also for years to come. Some call this ‘evergreen’ content and it takes time to write. It might not bring traffic quickly but if you write something that is still relevant in a year or more you’ll continue to draw traffic to it.

I’m sorry if that doesn’t answer your question but to be honest there’s a lot of bloggers looking for quick traffic and quick money and a lot of people promising to teach them how to get it - but that’s not my experience of blogging.

Take a long term view, build something that matters and you’ll build a blog that grows in traffic over the long haul.

5. Most bloggers like to get passive traffic… What are the one time actions we can do which will keep on bringing traffic without any effort after that?

Once again I’m afraid my answer could disappoint…. I’m not really someone who has found too many actions that will bring traffic (or income) without any effort after you do them.

The only real exception to that is to write brilliant content. When you do this it has the potential to bring traffic to your blog (via search engines) for years to come. This in turn can lead to ongoing income.

Other than that I’ve not really found too much about blogging that is ‘passive’. It’s a lot of work over the long haul.

6. What’s your most effective traffic generating strategy which works every time for you and gives the best return in terms of traffic regarding to your time spent?

Outside of writing useful and high quality content (am I sounding like a broken record yet) I’d say it is engaging in social media communities. For me one of these has been Twitter (for others it’ll be sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Facebook etc). These social networking and social bookmarking sites have the potential to spread word of your site or posts on it virally through the network and beyond.

It takes a lot of time to build up these networks to the point that they are effective at driving a lot of traffic. Start building your networks now.

7. What are your top 3 traffic sources and how exactly do you attract traffic from each of those sources?

• Google - write good content, build relationships with other bloggers and website owners in the hope that they’ll link to you, learn basic search engine optimization techniques and stick at it for the long haul.
• 2. Direct Traffic - this traffic is largely from readers who subscribe to my blogs via RSS or newsletters. The key with this is to convert first time readers to your blog into loyal readers by interacting with them, displaying subscription methods prominently, calling readers to action and building anticipation in visitors to your blog that you’ll write something that they’ll not want to miss in future.
• 3. Social Media - this is about building your network over time, writing the type of content that goes well in these networks (research what types of stories go viral on these sites) and making connections with others on the networks.

8. Let’s say you lose your name, contacts and everything. You have to start from scratch as a “nobody”. What will you do then for the next 30 days so that your blog will start getting 1000 unique visitors each and every day?

I’m not sure it’ll make 1000 visitors a day within 30 days the way I’d do it but I’d probably spend time investing into

• writing great content
• offering to guest post on other blogs (linking back to my own blog)
• networking on social media sites
• and even investing a little money into advertising on sites like Facebook and StumbleUpon (where you can advertise fairly cheaply).

Other than that I’d be wanting to take a longer term view than 30 days and concentrate on building a useful blog with lots of content over time.

9. What else would you like to share, something that our readers can immediately apply to their blogs and see results fast?

Forget the word ‘fast’.

Really - forget it.

You can probably use some techniques to get fast traffic but a more profitable strategy over the long haul is to build a blog that people become loyal to and proud to belong to over the long haul. Do this and they’ll pass on word of your blog to others for you and in the long haul you’ll see bigger growth.

In my experience - the only times I’ve had ‘fast traffic’ to my blog is once a blog has been going for significant time and after I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into it. While the traffic might come in fast - the reality is that it was only as a result of a lot of hard work in building the foundations of the blog.

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A couple of weeks back I was sent these questions as part of an interview that someone wanted to do in the writing of a book.

In the end the person doing the interview couldn’t use it - so I’ve decided that rather than waste the significant time I put into responding that I’d post the answers here.

The focus of the interview seemed to be going down the route of getting ‘fast traffic’ to a blog. You’ll see this theme coming up numerous times in the questions and probably sense a little of my frustration with the idea in my answers. I hope you find the interview useful.

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers…

My name is Darren Rowse, I live in Melbourne Australia with my wife ‘V’ and two boys (aged 6 months and 2 and a half). I’ve been blogging for a little over 6 years. It started completely as a hobby but gradually grew into a part time and then full time job (and then beyond). I’ve written a book on blogging (called ProBlogger), am the cofounder of the b5media blog network and over the years have started around 30 blogs (although only concentrate on 3 today). I’m also a keen photographer and love to read.

2. What blogs do you own, which one is your favorite, and why did you start it?

I personally own and edit three blogs today - ProBlogger (a blog about blogging), Digital Photography School (a blog to help digital camera owners get the most from their cameras) and TwiTip (my most recent blog - a blog focusing upon Twitter Tips).

I enjoy each blog for different reasons but I guess if I had to give up two and keep one the one I’d keep would be ProBlogger - simply because it is the oldest of the three (although not the biggest - DPS is gets more traffic) and one that I’ve put most time and effort into over the years.

I started ProBlogger simply because it was a blog I wanted to read myself. I was experimenting with making blogging a business but no one else was writing about that at the time - so I thought I’d start it and journal what I was learning.

3. what is the number one thing you learned about blogging that has impacted your bottom line, that thing that makes the difference between succeeding and failing in this business?

There are so many things and to isolate one is difficult (and perhaps not that helpful as great blogs are built upon many factors and rarely just one thing).

However if I had to choose one thing it’d be that successful blogs are ‘useful’ blogs in one way or another.

Blogs need to meet a need or solve a problem that potential readers have. The need might seem frivilous (the need to be entertained for example) or it could be a need for information, community, news etc.

Meet a need and you give people a reason to subscribe to your blog and to pass it on to others. Create a blog that doesn’t really prove useful in any way and you’re unlikely to build a successful blog.

4. If you have to bring instant visitors to your blog in the next 30 minutes, what steps will you follow?

If you’re expecting big traffic quickly you’re asking the wrong guy. My strategy has always been to write content that people will want to read now - but also for years to come. Some call this ‘evergreen’ content and it takes time to write. It might not bring traffic quickly but if you write something that is still relevant in a year or more you’ll continue to draw traffic to it.

I’m sorry if that doesn’t answer your question but to be honest there’s a lot of bloggers looking for quick traffic and quick money and a lot of people promising to teach them how to get it - but that’s not my experience of blogging.

Take a long term view, build something that matters and you’ll build a blog that grows in traffic over the long haul.

5. Most bloggers like to get passive traffic… What are the one time actions we can do which will keep on bringing traffic without any effort after that?

Once again I’m afraid my answer could disappoint…. I’m not really someone who has found too many actions that will bring traffic (or income) without any effort after you do them.

The only real exception to that is to write brilliant content. When you do this it has the potential to bring traffic to your blog (via search engines) for years to come. This in turn can lead to ongoing income.

Other than that I’ve not really found too much about blogging that is ‘passive’. It’s a lot of work over the long haul.

6. What’s your most effective traffic generating strategy which works every time for you and gives the best return in terms of traffic regarding to your time spent?

Outside of writing useful and high quality content (am I sounding like a broken record yet) I’d say it is engaging in social media communities. For me one of these has been Twitter (for others it’ll be sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Facebook etc). These social networking and social bookmarking sites have the potential to spread word of your site or posts on it virally through the network and beyond.

It takes a lot of time to build up these networks to the point that they are effective at driving a lot of traffic. Start building your networks now.

7. What are your top 3 traffic sources and how exactly do you attract traffic from each of those sources?

• Google - write good content, build relationships with other bloggers and website owners in the hope that they’ll link to you, learn basic search engine optimization techniques and stick at it for the long haul.
• 2. Direct Traffic - this traffic is largely from readers who subscribe to my blogs via RSS or newsletters. The key with this is to convert first time readers to your blog into loyal readers by interacting with them, displaying subscription methods prominently, calling readers to action and building anticipation in visitors to your blog that you’ll write something that they’ll not want to miss in future.
• 3. Social Media - this is about building your network over time, writing the type of content that goes well in these networks (research what types of stories go viral on these sites) and making connections with others on the networks.

8. Let’s say you lose your name, contacts and everything. You have to start from scratch as a “nobody”. What will you do then for the next 30 days so that your blog will start getting 1000 unique visitors each and every day?

I’m not sure it’ll make 1000 visitors a day within 30 days the way I’d do it but I’d probably spend time investing into

• writing great content
• offering to guest post on other blogs (linking back to my own blog)
• networking on social media sites
• and even investing a little money into advertising on sites like Facebook and StumbleUpon (where you can advertise fairly cheaply).

Other than that I’d be wanting to take a longer term view than 30 days and concentrate on building a useful blog with lots of content over time.

9. What else would you like to share, something that our readers can immediately apply to their blogs and see results fast?

Forget the word ‘fast’.

Really - forget it.

You can probably use some techniques to get fast traffic but a more profitable strategy over the long haul is to build a blog that people become loyal to and proud to belong to over the long haul. Do this and they’ll pass on word of your blog to others for you and in the long haul you’ll see bigger growth.

In my experience - the only times I’ve had ‘fast traffic’ to my blog is once a blog has been going for significant time and after I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into it. While the traffic might come in fast - the reality is that it was only as a result of a lot of hard work in building the foundations of the blog.

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Today freelance writer Jenny Cromie shares 5 areas in which blogging can help you to improve your writing.

Several years back, a friend of mine started a blog and e-mailed the link to me and a bunch of her other friends. I didn’t *get* her blog or anyone else’s. In fact at the time, I thought most blogs were self-indulgent, boring, and poorly written. And as someone who puts a high premium on privacy, I couldn’t get past the idea that my friend was willingly broadcasting intimate details about her life into cyberspace. It was as mystifying to me as the people who go on the Jerry Springer Show and spill all.

Another turnoff was the fact that every blog I encountered seemed like the electronic version of a hard copy diary that should have remained tucked away in a box in the back of an out-of-the-way closet—embarrassing content, poor writing, and all. Why were people spending all kinds of time writing online drivel that no one really cared about? And furthermore, why were people spending all that time writing blog posts that they’d never even get paid for?

I could only come up with one explanation. In my mind, blogging was just a socially acceptable way for bad, wannabe writers to go mainstream with their poorly written rants and diatribes about things that made no difference to anyone else but the writer, a handful of family members, and other poor captive souls who loved the bloggers enough to read all their bad prose. In fact, if someone mentioned that they had a blog, my mind would click into sleep mode like my MacBook does after 10 minutes of inactivity. I’d think: Oh, one of those self-indulgent wannabe writer types. Where’s the nearest exit?

In short, blogging just seemed like a waste of time and effort. And I guess I had a snobbish writer attitude too—the idea that real writers didn’t need to blog because their writing was good enough to get published through more legitimate, mainstream ways. In my mind, push-button publishing was for the wannabes, not the real McCoys.

Fast-forward a few years. Now, everyone who is someone seems to have a blog these days. And if you’re a freelancer and you don’t have a blog, people sometimes wonder how you can bill yourself as a professional writer. Blogs aren’t just popular among individuals anymore either. Big companies have blogs. Mothers with babies have blogs. Teenagers with pimples and braces have blogs. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if some dogs have blogs too.

So this past year, I finally succumbed to this thing called blogging. I decided that since I was billing myself as a serious writer and freelancer, I needed to join the blogosphere. I started writing my own blog about freelance writing. And then one thing led to another and I eventually became the editor of The Golden Pencil, a b5media blog about freelance writing and how to build a successful freelance business.

The transformation from non-blogger to full-fledged blogging enthusiast was short—less than a year, in fact.

Now, I wonder what took me so long. I write a lot of things on a daily basis, but it’s the blogging that I enjoy most. That said, I’m not getting rich or pulling in six figures (yet anyway). But I’ve learned a few great things along the way.

My most surprising discovery? Blogging has made me a better writer. It has helped me:

1. Discover my voice

I know this sounds odd coming from someone who has written for most of her life, but you have to understand that up until this blogging thing, most of my writing was been functional. What I mean is that I write business and HR stories for various online and print publications. Throughout my career, I’ve also written newspaper articles, technical training manuals, employee handbooks, policies and procedures, press releases, and marketing materials. But what I stopped writing a long time ago was anything in my own “voice.” Blogging has helped me find that voice again, the one that got lost in between all the same assignments, projects, and stories that have thankfully paid the bills and kept the lights on month after month. See, when you blog, you’re writing about a particular topic, armed with all the facts that you’d be including in a typical news story. But I’ve learned that good blogging also means that you toss in your own observations, experiences, feelings, and unique perspectives. You create dialogues with your readers and make the consumption of information more personal—something that often makes what you have to say more relevant to the reader than just a straight here’s-the-facts-and-nothing-more news story. And I’m happy to report that since discovering my writing voice, I’ve also started to write other things. Things like that novel that I’ve continued to transfer from one New Year’s resolution list to the next for the past several years. More importantly, I’m starting to write for the pure joy of writing again—something I attribute largely to blogging.

2. Connect with readers

If you’re like me, sometimes you write stories and you think,“Gee, I wonder if this is going to help anyone?” And one of the main reasons I started writing for a living was because I wanted to help other people. I love writing service-oriented articles that help readers. But the problem is, if you write straight news stories, magazine articles, or service-oriented pieces for online outlets, you sometimes never find out whether you’ve really helped anyone or not. But for me, one of the most satisfying and gratifying parts about blogging is having the opportunity to find out when I’ve really helped someone. I love it when I write a post and then later find comments from readers who tell me that they’ve learned something or that I’ve helped them in some way. I really enjoy it when a dialogue starts between my readers and I. And it’s that potential for dialogue with readers that distinguishes blogging from any other type of writing.

3. Get feedback

I just wrote a big piece for a business trade publication, and while the magazine has a large circulation, I won’t ever know what readers thought of the article or whether it helped them or not. Like most freelancers, I like to get feedback every once in awhile. And I have to say there’s nothing more gratifying to me than getting a “Good job” “Funny article!” or “Great read!” from the people who matter most—my readers. I remember after my second or third post over on The Golden Pencil, I received a nice compliment from one of my readers. It was completely unexpected, it came at the right time, and it literally made my day.

4. Get disciplined

Blogging is a commitment, and the daily discipline of posting every day during the week over on The Golden Pencil has really helped my writing. Granted, I was writing every day before that. But blogging is much different than simply reporting on a story—it’s a more creative process. And what I’ve learned or relearned through the daily discipline of writing blog posts is that inspiration doesn’t always precede good writing. To be honest, some days I don’t feel very inspired at all when I first start writing a post. But I know that I am accountable to my readers who depend on me for fresh content every day during the week. And regardless of how sluggish I feel some mornings, inspiration always seems to meet me somewhere in the middle as my writing picks up momentum. So here’s the lesson: if you’re a professional writer or full-time freelancer you can’t afford to wait for inspiration to show up before you start writing. Otherwise, you’ll go broke. And speaking for this writer, blogging helps me make creative writing a part of my daily schedule.

5. Write faster

Many times, I write my blog posts a day or two in advance. But there are some mornings when I don’t have anything in the hopper and I have to start from scratch after fueling up with a triple expresso skim milk latté. And while no one on b5media tells me when or how often to post, I impose a daily deadline on myself. I’ve missed the mark a couple times, but I try to have a new post up by noon Eastern Standard Time every day during the workweek—no matter what else is on my schedule. My blog posts vary in length, but generally I write between 750 and 1,500 words per post. So that usually means there’s no time for slow thinking or writing. It’s amazing how much your writing process speeds up when it has to! And as someone who can sometimes get stuck in that perfectionism trap, the need for speed helps silence my inner editor so that my cursor continues to move forward instead of the write-four-words-delete-three problem that sometimes crops up.

So how have you improved your writing through blogging? Comment below or drop by The Golden Pencil and tell me all about it!

Written by Jenny Cromie, a full-time HR/business freelance writer, editor, Twitter convert, and recent author of “8 Sure-Fire Ways To Tick Off the Twitterverse” on TwiTip. Jenny also is editor of The Golden Pencil, a b5media blog about freelance writing and how to build a successful freelance writing business. Please feel free to say hello on Twitter too: @JennyCromie.

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If you’re starting out in blogging for the first time it is easy to get ahead of yourself. In this post Aileen Journey from the Problem Solver Blog shares some tips on getting going with your new blog.

Image by candrews

Many new bloggers read everything possible on successful blogs. There’s so much information out there, in fact sometimes it’s way too much information. I find that my blog is not necessarily far enough long to take advantage of all the information. What happens sometimes is that beginning bloggers start to feel overwhelmed and like they’ll never be able to do what’s necessary to have a successful blog. I am a new blogger. I have started and run a variety of other businesses like a retail store and an online store, but the blogosphere is new to me

I went the traditional business route and got my MBA in 1996. The world has changed quickly since then. I’ve been blogging for just over 6 months, but started my only currently running blog at the beginning of December 2008. I only “discovered” blogs about 8 months ago, previously thinking they were all personal journals. The way I see them now is that they are mini-magazines, some more mini than others. They allow people to pinpoint their exact interests and just read the information that they’re interested in.

One: Consider your reason for blogging.

Go further than to “make money” or “become famous.” Those are perfectly good reasons for blogging, but what about them are what you want. What in particular do you want to become famous for, remember John Hinckley, Jr. shot Jodie Foster to become famous. I want to be known as an expert in my field of helping people figure out how to get what they want, personally, with their children and in their relationships. As for making money, are you thinking of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or are you thinking about enough extra money to go out to eat regularly? What about other motivations? Are you trying to convey some point of view or opinion, do you want people to pay attention to some issues, do you want people to support you in some situation? Every time you consider using a new idea you’ve read about online for successful blogs go back and see if it fits in with your goal. Will it help you get where you want or would it really be better on another kind of blog? Remember, a blog that earns money is a business. All businesses need specific goals or mission statements.

Two: Do your research.

Go through AdWords Keyword Tool or Worktracker and find which phrases and words within your topic are the highest searched and the least used by others. Make a list of them in order. Make sure you only search for terms related to your topic. People arriving at your site from unrelated words will make them annoyed, not ready to subscribe. Use one of the terms you found to use as the title of your site and perhaps as titles for your categories.

Three: Put together a basic blog.

It’s great to try to get every single cool widget and plug-in on your site as the big sites have, but start with the basics. Make sure you have your feed/subscribe information prominent on each page and after each post (feedburner’s feedflare can do it easily), put together an About page. Then choose a theme, set up some categories out of the terms you found through your research, make sure your RSS is working and that’s the basics of what you need to begin with. Down the line you can add more features. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Four: Start writing posts for each of your beginning categories so there’s something for people to find when they arrive at your site.

Don’t worry about making these brilliant. Write them up quickly in rough draft then go over them and edit them. Run spell-checker and grammar checker. Don’t let posts full of mistakes be posted, but don’t try to write it in perfect verse or anything.

Fifth: Get out there!

If you’ve used your research from step two then you can relax about search engines for now. They’ll find you when they find you. Immediately, though, you can get your own site out there. Comment on other blogs (use your blog title as your name), send guest posts to the blogs that you like and read regularly, and use whatever social networking sites you already use to tell others about your new blog.

Sixth: Be patient and keep it up.

This is not my first business and not even my first online business. Things take time. Try to look at your blog every day and see what might need a little tweak. If you can find some truly computer-incompetent people, ask them to look over your blog and figure out how to subscribe. If they can’t do it then ask them what might help them. When everything else is in place, choose the kind of monetizing option you want, AdSense, affiliate marketing, advertisers, etc. and start working on setting those up. No matter what you choose, it won’t do much until your blog has some kind of traction. Keep working on improving and enjoying the writing on your blog while you work to get it to take hold.

Blogging as a business is hard, as any business is. Don’t discount your efforts just because you haven’t made it to the big time in a few months. Instead of getting overwhelmed trying to perfect every piece of your blog business, do the basics to start with and build on it from there.

Aileen Journey writes and manages the Problem Solver Blog as well as writing books, teaching college online and problem solving life with three children.

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Wednesday was the biggest day of traffic that I’ve seen to any of my blogs for a very long time (perhaps ever). I mentioned this on twitter yesterday and had a few followers request that I write up how it happened - so here’s a quick recap/timeline on the 24 hours that saw around a quarter of a million visitors to Digital Photography School.

• It all started with the publishing of this post - Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples. The post is simply a collection of 15 amazing images all illustrating the same technique (long exposure photography). The images are all creative commons images from Flickr (meaning they are all available for republishing).
• The post went live on DPS and was quickly submitted to Digg and StumbleUpon. I added a ‘Digg this’ button to the top of the post (now removed).
• I had a feeling that the post would do well on StumbleUpon so was on the lookout for traffic from there so when I noticed the traffic coming in from StumbleUpon I tweeted about the post - noting that it was doing well on SU. This was the only ‘help’ I gave the post - a viral like thing began to happen.
• Momentum from SU began to build as more and more people began to organically come from the StumbleUpon toolbar. As they did I noticed that Digg numbers began to rise also. People saw the Digg button and were clicking it naturally.
• 4 hours after it was submitted to Digg it hit the front page of Digg. It did so with around 110 Diggs. I was quite surprised by the relatively low number of Diggs that it took and the speed that it went to the front page.
• The first hour after the post hit the front page of Digg the traffic was around 28,000 unique visitors. This surprised me a little as it was midnight on the West Coast of the US and the early hours of the morning on the East Coast (not usually the best time to hit the front page).
• The diggs continued to come in. StumbleUpon traffic also continued to gain momentum. The post hit the ‘popular page’ on Delicious (where it remained for at least 15 hours… again an unusually long time - you can see the page for it here).
• Traffic from Digg tapered off after the first hour on the front page. From memory it was around 8000 visitors the 2nd hour and tapered further to around 4000 the next few hours.
• I went to bed around this time and expected things to continue to taper down and return to ‘normal’ sorts of levels while I slept.
• I woke up the next morning to find that DPS had had another big spike of traffic just after I went to bed. Most of the traffic came from Digg. Getting a 2nd big spike of traffic from Digg wasn’t something I’d experienced before but it had definitely happened. It came around 7 hours after hitting the front page of Digg and send around 25,000 visitors in an hour (and quite a few more in the hours that followed). It turns out that the post had gained so many Diggs that it hit the ‘Top in All Topics’ list which sent it a second wave of traffic.
• Over the next 6-7 hours Digg traffic again tapered off (but was still significant). StumbleUpon continued to send good traffic and I began to see a lot of secondary social media sites sending traffic (sites like popurls (it was the #1 story there for quite a while), Wykop, Jimmyr and plime) and also quite a few other blogs and websites (big and small) like The Agitator, Monitor and Naver. Interestingly many of the links were from non english sites. I have included a screen shot (right) of the top 15 sources of traffic to the post over the last 36 hours.
• Today things are somewhat quieter in terms of traffic - but they are still around double a normal days traffic. Most of the traffic now is coming from StumbleUpon and secondary links from blogs and websites. From past experience this will continue for a while. StumbleUpon has the potential to send decent traffic to a post for weeks (and months). In the long run I expect StumbleUpon will probably send more traffic to the post than Digg (although Digg has currently sent triple what SU has).
• What will generally happen next is that a little search traffic will come in because the post has been linked to from quite a few sources (Yahoo currently sees a couple of hundred incoming links - Google sees quite a few more).

So what impact does a rush of traffic have on a site?

Beyond getting a rush of adrenaline and perhaps a bit of an ego boost - what impact does a day like yesterday have on a blog?

• Ad Revenue - traffic to the site yesterday was around 5-6 times normal levels. Conversion in terms of ad revenue was not that high - but did see a good bump. For example AdSense earnings were almost three times higher than normal.
• New Loyal Readers - it is too early to tell how many of the 250k readers subscribed to my RSS feed yesterday (it is at least over 1000 new subscribers) but I can see that newsletter subscriber numbers were considerably up on normal levels. On an average day we get around 450 confirmed new newsletter subscribers to DPS - yesterday it was around 1000 (and there will be more as some take a while to verify). Today it’s over 800 (and will probably hit 1000 again). While a 1-2% conversion rate doesn’t sound like much it can actually be quite significant. 2000 new daily readers over a year or more really adds up to a lot of new page views on a site.
• SEO - one of the best parts about a day like yesterday is the extra links that point at your blog once everything dies down. As mentioned above - there are around 200 links pointing at the post mentioned - some of which also point to the front page of DPS. There’s no real way to tell what impact this has on a blog but it is a significant number of links and will add to the authority of the page and site in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
• Buzz - another benefit that is difficult to measure is that of ‘buzz’. There’s something very uplifting to an online community when they get noticed by other parts of the web. I’ll highlight what happened in the weekly newsletter that I send our regular members tonight and I find that doing so helps lift the morale around the community. It’ll also send a fresh wave of traffic to the post as people go to see what caused all the traffic.

All in all it was a good day. I’m most happy about the conversion to new readers than happened and about the SEO boost (I’m also happy that the servers didn’t skip a beat) - however I’m very aware that the extra traffic is relatively fleeting and today it is back to work.

Social Media Traffic Tsunamis are exciting events but the real challenge is to keep growing your loyal reader base by providing quality content day in day out. Speaking of which…. it’s time to get back to work.

Tags: Blog Promotion

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This post is the 3rd in a series of posts by Hendry Lee. Check out part 1 and part 2.

Whether or not your like it, blogging is going through an evolution. Although it has only been around for less than a decade, we have seen quite a lot of impacts it brings to businesses and publishers. In the upcoming years, more radical changes will be happening, as blogs are going to be around for quite some time.

As a blogger, you have no choice but to adapt your strategy accordingly. Technology-wise, blog software is going to be much easier to use. It will also be seamlessly integrated into other tools such as micro-blogging and social networking.

However, the most prominent change for web publishers is strategic wise. While site building through unique and quality content production is still the way to go, and although link development and site promotion are still very much the same old advice, how bloggers should execute them have pretty much evolved.

This means that not only new bloggers need a whole new set of strategies to get across their messages and be noticed, but existing bloggers also will see a large shift in how they reach their audience including new ways to tap into new audience that is otherwise not available before.

Building Strong Foundation - It Starts Within

Blogging is easy, but that doesn’t make the foundational part optional. Many new bloggers overlook this part because they don’t want to waste time but in return they go in circles trying to figure out how to grow their blogs to get more traffic and revenue.

Your blog is the only thing that you have full control of. It just makes sense if you start there. Once you get a head start by getting the house in order, it feels better knowing that whatever you plan from there is likely to have more impact. Even a little boost in search engine position is worth it, if you take into account the traffic and revenue that you’re going to generate for years to come.

One thing you should be aware of though, it is easy to over-organize your house that you never move beyond those activities. That happens to all of us, even to go getters who persistently take action. It’s just natural because as human being, taking actions to grow a business often put us outside of the comfort zone.

Brand Your Design

When Kubrick was first introduced as the default WordPress theme, everyone thinks it is cool but nowadays whoever uses it — even if he modifies the header color or image — is at risk of turning off the visitors.

Boring themes make people want to click the back button of the browser. First impression counts so it is worth it that you hire a designer to create a brand new design from scratch.

If you are tight on the budget, pick a design that suits your blog best and customize it. A good theme designer is able to turn an existing design into entirely unique work.

No matter which way you choose, just remember that while design is important, it is not everything. Most successful blogs have been through a redesign or two. While optimizing your blog design is necessary, it is not that critical when you are getting started.

Just get a unique one up and move on to content production and promotion. A makeover can come later. Again, prioritize.

It is critical that you don’t skip this step though. Although there are ugly sites that work very well, it can be hard to establish credibility or show to others that you are serious about your business unless your design is professional. Moreover, bloggers will be more hesitant to link to amateurish blogs.

Related articles:

• Blog Design for Beginners
• How to Choose WordPress Layouts (Themes) in 7 Simple Steps

Optimize Your Blog Theme

When it comes to blog theme design, less sometimes means more. Know which elements you want on your site and add nothing else to your design.

If you are to sell advertising space or earn money by displaying ads, you may want to reserve space for those ads, but avoid burying your content for ads. Remember that visitors come for content, never ads.

Your goal with site design is to keep the readers on your site or blog as long as possible or take whatever action you want them to take quickly.

Steve Krug has written a superb book on web usability. It is considered a must read for whoever wants to create a web site or blog. The title is Don’t Make Me Think.

Another thing to optimize is search engine wise. While the visitors must be at the top priority, you should also optimize your blog so it benefits your rankings. Although more and more the criteria for rankings are external — things you have no or very little control about — never underestimate on-page factors too.

For long tail keywords, on-page optimization and site authority may get you to the top spot on the search engine listing almost overnight, if done right.

I’ve put up quite a lot of articles and pointed to resources about blog SEO on my site. Take a look if you find this a challenge or if you need to improve on your search engine optimization.

Tweak the Back-End (Dashboard)

WordPress is now the dominating blog software, so this post presumes that you want to use it for your site. Out of the box, WordPress is already very usable but there are a few things you should tweak to optimize your blog.

Some of the things you should pay attention to include:

• Allow post notification. This may slow down posting but you should enable the option to attempt to notify any blogs you linked to from your article. It sends pings to the corresponding blogs so the bloggers are aware about you referring to their work. This is often a great way to start a conversation, especially if you publish insightful post on your blog.
• Populate update services. WordPress has a list of blog pinging services you should have on your blog setting. By default it is only one entry, i.e. rpc.pingomatic.com, which pings other services on your behalf.
• Optimize your permalink. Permalink is the URL that identifies your blog post, category, archive, etc. Search engines are now able to index dynamic pages with simple parameters but you should take advantage of clean URLs to make your URL friendlier. Remember that if you include keyword in your URL, it may appear as bold in search engine listing, which increases click through from search users to your site.
• Publish full feed. This is enabled by default but you should make sure you have it selected. There was a debate about whether to use full or partial feed of which hands on I think the winner is full feed. If you are reader-centric, there’s no argument about it. Period. And in the long run, loyal subscribers will also benefit your traffic wise.

Keep Up to Date on Industry News

Whether you have been following the niche for some time or you are new to it, there is one thing bloggers should be good at. Getting up to date on the industry news is necessary if you want to be the go to person for your niche.

It is also very likely that you have a list of favorite blogs and news sites. Add them to your favorite RSS reader and make sure you make time to go through the list. If you haven’t made your decision about which news reader yet, you can’t go wrong with Google Reader.

Look for filters in your niche or learn how to create filters yourself. There might be blogs or web sites out there that track events and news around your industry. You will save a lot of time going through tens, if not hundreds, of RSS feeds yourself.

News sites usually allow you to filter your favorite news and grab a customized RSS feed. Learn how to do this effectively. Remember this is a one time process that may save you time repeatedly.

By using news reader, you are able to keep up with the news more efficiently compared to visiting every site. That saves you a few hours a day.

Learn How to Monitor Brands

Just like news, you also need to monitor certain brands. By brands, I mean any name that you are interested to keep track of. If your are an individual blogger, your name is your brand.

Basically what you do is to create RSS ego-search feeds. Rather than doing it regularly, you let news readers fetch the search result automatically to your news reader.

What is an ego search? Simply put, it is a search you perform to monitor for mentions of your product name, personal name, or company name.

The usage, however, is beyond egocentric though. Nowadays, it is absolutely impossible to visit each site just to see if it mentions the name you care to track. By performing ego-centric search via RSS feed, you will be able to know if someone happens to be interested in the topic you are writing, link to your blog, or mention your name somewhere in the post.

In other words, this is also important for conversations. Isn’t it one of the reasons you blog in the first place?

Plan Your Response Mechanism

Conversations may only happen if two or more parties are participating in it. With a blog, you may join conversations at any time, both as a conversation starter or to respond to other bloggers.

I’m also partially guilty for this in the past but responding to a conversation is important and may benefit bloggers. You can use it as a way to establish relationship with other bloggers but also to manage your brand and straighten the issue when — not if — one surfaces.

Nowadays, micro blogging tool such as Twitter is a quick way to credit people and quickly respond to conversations. A blog is necessary only for comprehensive response that doesn’t fit into 140 characters.

As you go, you will discover brand monitoring tools that will help you become more responsive to on-going conversations but I recommend starting with Technorati, Twitter Search and Google Alerts.

Become an Expert on Your Topic

No matter which niche you decide to blog about, it pays to become an expert on that topic. Being a thought leader certainly helps in building your audience, but if that’s too high a goal, at the very least you want to be resourceful.

That doesn’t come out easy. A bunch of articles don’t help at all unless they are really useful. Ability to reach out is also necessary. Spend some time to research on a topic that you like but rather than paying attention to the information, examine which content you really like as a consumer.

If you find that you could improve what you’ve found, you are ready to compete for the long haul.

People go online to find information. Even when they are ready to purchase something, they want to know if there is a better deal elsewhere.

Your role as a blogger should be to publish good information the visitors enjoy reading. That’s how you become the go to person, build your audience base, and finally monetize your traffic — if you aim for the long term instead of just expecting the visitors to click away and earn you advertising revenue.

It is astonishingly easy to become an expert nowadays. Go to Amazon.com and purchase 5-10 books about the topic you are blogging. Spend some time to read it. Surf web sites and blogs. Think about various issues related to the topic. Get involved to get hands-on experience. The more you immerse in the topic, the better expert you become. But reading is a great way to start.

Review

If you have been accustomed to traditional method of web publishing, some of these may be new to you. Blog software, for many of us, is an awesome way to get content up online but bloggers should know more!

Blogging is about joining conversations and if you read Cluetrain Manifesto, markets are really conversations.

Starting conversations is one thing but being proactive in responding to the market is necessary. You want to immerse in the market instead of broadcasting your message out aggressively.

Also in this post, you’ve learned why you should brand your design and optimize your blog properly. With that, you are ready for content diversification, which is exactly the topic for the next post.

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about make money blogging on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog - Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to his blogging e-course where he reveals his secret about blogging and content writing!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).

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