No Man is an Island and Neither is a Blogger – Get Out There and Mingle

No Man is an Island and Neither is a Blogger

If you are getting serious about blogging and are now ready to take it to the next level then you have to step out of your comfort zone to mix and mingle.

If you want to monetize your blog and gain recognition from advertisers then you will need to step up and step out. Self motivation and self promotion will aid in your success as a blogger whether you are writing full time or just part time.

Even if you are a blogger who writes to simply share inspiration, quotes or words of wisdom, no one will know that you are in the blogosphere unless you promote and connect with others.

You can ill afford to sit behind a computer screen posting great content hoping someone will read it. You need to reach out to others whether through Social Media, word of mouth, or with flyers and business cards in the grocery stores…let people know that you are a blogger – be a proud blogger, like my grandmother used to say, “don’t hide your light under a bushel…let it shine!”

With so many social media platforms available all being free sources of advertisement, you should be using them to their fullest extent. Sign up for Twitter and use it; Sign up for a Facebook Fan page for your blog and use it; Sign up for Instagram or Pinterest to showcase your pretty pics; Sign up for Google+ and Linkedin and hang out with others in the same niche.

Do you need to use them all – NO – but you should be present and promoting your posts on all of them. As times progresses, check the engagement rate, choose at least two that are providing the most traffic then put the pedal to the metal to promote and engage with others on those two platforms.

As you grow you may feel the need for speed to grow your network and become active on the others, or perhaps even move on to visual marketing and promotion. Start creating livestream videos on Facebook or create a channel on IGTV.

Building traffic and increasing readership takes time so don’t overwhelm yourself with thoughts that you need to be on every social media platform out there especially when a new one is introduced.

However, you should overwhelm yourself with the thoughts of self promotion and growing your blog so that advertisers begin to take notice, then perhaps one day you’ll be writing your posts from some far away island!

Let’s Chat > If you could where in the world would you love to be blogging from?

July 9, 2018July 9, 2018

3 Benefits of Business Blogging

Blogging is a marketing tactic that uses blog posts or articles to get your business more online visibility. A business blog is another marketing channel like social media, direct mail, and email marketing which all helps support business growth.

1 – Benefits of Business Blogging

The number one benefit of a business blog is that it helps drive traffic to your website. Do you want more website visitors. Yeah, we all do!

Unless someone knows your website and types the url into their browser you might be found, but most likely it’s by the audience you already have. They are your existing clients or customers who know know who you are but it doesn’t get you more traffic on top of what you’re already getting.

You could pay for traffic by buying an email list but “Friends Don’t Let Friends Buy Followers” so don’t do it!

You could pay for traffic by buying or boosting ads but that can get expensive and as soon as you run out of money or deplete your budget, your traffic stops too.

So, how can you drive more traffic to your website? BLOGGING!

Think about it…how many pages are on your website. Probably not many, right? Think about it…how often you update those pages. Probably not often, right?

Well, building a business blog helps with both of those problems. Every time you write a blog post it become another indexed page on your website, which means it’s one more opportunity for your website to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website in an organic search.

Google and other search engines sees that your website is active and the BOTS start checking in more frequently to see what new content is written and shared.

2 – Benefits of Business Blogging

Blogging also helps you get discovered via social media. Every time you write a blog post, you’re creating content that people can share on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest which helps expose your business to a new audience that may not know you yet.

Creating blog content also helps keep your social media presence going so instead of asking your social media manager to come up with brand new original content for social media, or creating content yourself, your blog can serve as that repository of content. You’re strengthening your social reach with blog content and driving new website visitors to your blog via your social media channels.

So, with the first benefit of blogging that helps drive new traffic to your website this new traffic provides an opportunity to convert that traffic into leads. With every blog post you write it becomes another opportunity to generate new leads. Just make sure to write a lead-generating CTA (call-to-action) to every blog post.

Often, these calls-to-action lead to things like free eBooks, free fact sheets, free webinars, free trials, usually any content for which someone would be willing to exchange their information, their email address.

Visitor comes to website
Visitor sees CTA (call-to-action) for a free offer
Visitor clicks call-to-action and gets to a landing page, which contains a form for them to fill in with their information
Visitor fills out form, submits information, and receives the free offer

Please note that not every reader of your blog will turn into a lead, however, don’t let this deter you from putting a calls-to-action on every blog post.

3 – Benefits of Business Blogging

Blogging helps to establish authority. The best business blogs answer common questions their leads and customers have. If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes. This is a particularly handy tool for Sales and Service professionals.

Can you imagine the impact of sending an educational blog post you wrote to clear things up for a confused customer? Or how many more deals a salesperson could close if their leads discovered blog content written by their salesperson?

If a prospective customers find answers to their common questions via blog posts written by people at your company, they’re much more likely to trust and view you as an expert even before they were interested in purchasing a product or service from you.

However, the best benefit of starting a business blog is that blog post are ranking in search engines which means for days, weeks, months, and years to come, you can continue to get traffic and leads from that blog post.

Your return on investment (ROI) is therefore, much higher than Facebook or Twitter posts.

If you’d like to learn more about the long-term impact of blogging and how to reap even more benefits from creating a business blog, complete the form below to request a FREE 30-minute Discovery Call.

July 2, 2018

Branding Your Blog Tips for Beginners

Have you started building your new blog yet? Well if so now is the time to brand your blog. Your blog’s brand is a representation of you whether it’s with an image or message it’s how you relate to your readers. Your brand is more than your photo or your logo and even your color scheme and fonts it’s how you want to be seen to the world.

Before you begin to brand your blog think about the content and how you want to present it. Is your blog professional or fun, is your audience mainly men or women, teens, tweens or boomers. What is your message or method, are you entertaining or educating? Above all you want to be consistent and create an emotional connection with your readers.

Once you have answered these questions, either choose a pre-made theme or create a unique design, header and logo to brand your blog and stick to it.

Your content, your voice, your style and your visuals should consistently communicate your brand’s message and style. There are a lot of blogs in the blogosphere, so try to make yours unique so that when it is seen on other social media platforms your readers will recognize it as yours.

Brand consistency also applies to your online activity. Everything from the comments you leave on other blogs and websites, guest posts written, tweets and likes on Facebook. If you build a powerful online brand you’ll establish yourself as an expert, drive traffic to your blog, build relationships and create loyal followings.

WATERMARKS

If you are going to include a logo or icon on your pictures and images, keep them consistent in size and shape. If you create a custom cover image and want to be sure the colors match your profile picture, use a color picker tool to extract the color hex code. A hex code is a six-digit code that represents an exact color recognized universally by HTML and CSS.

FONTS AND COLORS

You should limit yourself to two or three main fonts for your posts but you can break that rule when posting on social media.

When choosing colors and images for your visual updates, consider what kinds of feelings you want to evoke. For example, if you are promoting a contest, use bright, cheerful colors.

Your content, your voice, your style and your visuals should communicate your brand’s message and consistency is key.

TAGLINE

Think of your blog name and tagline like words on a billboard. Just by reading them, a new reader should get a sense of what your blog is about. A good blog name is memorable. It’s catchy and unique… and people remember how to spell it after hearing the name once or twice. Believe it or not, my tagline is

“Your Blog is Your Brand”

A tagline reinforces not only your blog’s name, but also your blog’s purpose. In fact, you may find that your tagline is simply your purpose. Or your purpose can just be a starting point. Your tagline doesn’t need to be ultra clever; it just needs to tell the reader what they’ll get out of visiting your blog and mine is helping others build their brand with a blog.

WRITING STYLE

People read and continue to follow your blog because of your voice. The words you use, the way you tell a story, the way you make them laugh or cry, remember it’s the emotional connection.

Your writing is a critical part in creating your brand but you don’t have to be a Shakespearean author, however, spelling and grammar is key. Be yourself and keep your tone consistent throughout and don’t try to copy another’s blogger’s writing style, make it your own.

Let’s Chat > Do you have other tips to share?

June 29, 2018June 26, 2018

Blogging From the Beach – What To Do While on Vacation

I don’t know about you, but we all need a break from blogging and most of us wouldn’t dare do so on vacation…or would we?

However, when it’s time to unwind and unplug from the laptop and smartphone there are ways in which to do so and still stay on top of things.

Make sure your accommodations have a free, reliable WiFi connection

This is absolutely essential if you want to blog during your vacation. Make sure that you ask about the Internet service before you book your hotel or resort otherwise, you might be thoroughly disappointed or feel anxious without a good WiFi connection.

Blog when everyone else is sleeping

Ssssh…balancing a family vacation or ones with friends can make it hard to keep your online schedule, posting, tweeting and such. So in order to stay connected with your readers, work during times when everyone is sleeping or taking a nap.

You can wake up a few hours earlier, watch the sunrise, get some breakfast, and start blogging!

Take a mobile or lightweight computing device with you

I love working on my laptop at home but it’s heavy. When you are traveling you’ll be moving around a lot, so it’s important that you take something that is light and can easily fit into a large tote/purse, a small backpack or something similar.

I have an iPad and HP Tablet, which is easy to take out of my bag when going through airport security, and carrying around while relaxing on the beach.

Capture those great moments and use the change of scenery to your advantage

The best thing about blogging while traveling is that you are in a completely new environment. This can enhance your blog writing because you have new sights, sensations and inspirations.

Even if you don’t blog about the personal stuff you can write blog posts featuring your niche from a different perspective. For example, if you are traveling to Mexico and you write about fashion, why not feature some of the local styles and fashions there?

Last but certainly not least plan!

Just like the other plans and lists you made for vacation, schedule your written posts for the week using a WP plugin, Hootsuite or Bufferapp, then pack up and go!

Do you have any tips to add?

April 30, 2018April 26, 2018

10 Basic Blogging Tips

First Impression is the Last Impression

If your blog doesn’t have decent layout and your readers are finding it hard to read your actual content, you need to fix it . It’s your blog design which is first viewed by your blog readers and if they don’t like it, they will simply close it and move on.

2. Content Quality

You content’s quality matters a great deal. If it’s really good, it will motivate your blog readers to visit your blog again and again to read your latest blogging tips and keep up with your posts. Relevant and interesting images and videos makes your posts more interesting.

No one wants to read a long wordy blog post without a single image. Also, proofread for grammatical and sentence related errors and create an eye catching title for all your blog posts.

FYI – Blog posts with eye catching headlines get better CTR (Click through Rate) in search engine results and other places of listings.

3. Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs

This is one that I personally need to do as I accept many guest posts, however, have never written one for any other blogger.

Write guest posts for other blogs in your targeted niche is one of the best things you could do to become a successful blogger. Make a list of most popular blogs in your niche and approach them with high quality guest posts.

4. Reply to Comments

You should reply to comments coming on your blog posts. If you are not replying comments, don’t expect lots of comments on your blog posts from genuine blog readers. Check your guest posts on regular basis and reply to incoming comments. Before commenting you should set an avatar with your picture on Gravatar.com.

5. Learn the Basics of SEO

You should start learning the basics of SEO. It will be your SEO skills that will take you from being an average blogger to a successful blogger. Use targeted keywords in your blog post URL, Title, meta tags, as an alternative text with images, heading tags and few times in your actual blog content. You should interlink your blog posts where they make sense.

Link to trusted websites to give additional information about a topic to your blog readers.

6. Link Building Activities

Guest blogging on other blogs will help you get some high quality backlinks for your blog from popular blogs in your niche. You cannot get much traffic to your blog without link building activities if you are blogging about a competitive niche.

7. Have a Strong Presence on Social Media Networks

You need to make sure your blog has a strong presence on Social Media networks like Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. However, you don’t need to be on all platforms, choose 2 and master them!

8. Improve Speed of Your Blog

You need to look at all possible ways to improve the speed of your blog. If you are adding images, you should optimize their sizes before uploading on your blog. You should enter cleaned HTML into your blog posts.

9. Improve Engagement on Your Blog

You should write engaging content on your blog. You should give a personal touch to your blog posts. You should ask questions; take advice and feedback from your blog readers. CommentLuv plugin to encourage visitors to leave comments and interact with one another.

10. Monetize Your Blog

If one of your primary goals behind blogging is earning cash, you should start monetizing your blog once you start seeing some traffic on it. No doubt there are hundreds or even thousands of websites claiming to help you make money from your blog, but don’t believe all of them, ask other bloggers who are more than willing to share their success stories.

Do you have any other tips to share?

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