The secrets gathered from professional bloggers in one place.
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Professional bloggers share so much free advanced information about their blogging secrets, however finding all the information in one place is not easy. Sure you can pay big money for an advanced guide to blogging. But, we made it easier! You can scan over the notes we have taken from some of the most famous articles ever written on blogging. These blogging professionals share many secrets in these articles you won’t find in any cheesy how to blog e-book. We summarized it all for you in point form!
As part of the 31 days to a better blog challenge Day 6, Pro Blogger challenged us to read 27 must read free online guides to blogging. Summarized below are our own personal notes taken from these articles. Enjoy!
Advanced Guide To Blogging Summary Notes
“You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They’re not anonymous and they’re not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants.”, Seth Godin
You & Your Personal Brand
- imperfection and criticism should never hold you back. Professional bloggers regard criticism as free publicity and failure as one step closer to success
- build a brand (write down you blog goals and vision and stick to them)
- remember, your comments on other blogs represent you and your brand
- it’s important to get a good website design and logo so people remember you. Have a favicon matching your logo.
- people should be able to connect to the real you on your blog
- have an about page describing what you are about (A good about page to model )
- generously share your expertise freely and add your value (i.e. your brand) to other blogs
- be patient when finding new readers for your blog. Network and build slowly don’t mass market (participate in related forums and blogs: use del.icio.us, technorati.com and ask.com blog search to find tribes)
- keep learning, reading and updating your expertise
- use your personal story as the basis of your expertise
Topic
- be “the expert” in your niche
- be the first in your niche
- avoid over-saturated markets. It’s difficult to stand out from the crowd (e.g. avoid make money, SEO, internet marketing, blogging, gadgets)
Posts
- post consistently i.e. fulfil the expectations you have set. Setup an editorial calendar and record all your past post topics in it
- review your old blog posts monthly to ensure you don’t cover the same ground
Format
- keep graphics above the fold
- use large creative commons images from flickr
- use lists posts, how to posts and reason why posts — they are tried and true performers
- turn on comments (when starting out leave coments off until you have 100 RSS subscribers or > 750 visitors a day)
- use bullet points, tags, back quotes, images, short paragraphs
Content
- write a series of posts that refer to each other
- writing should be helpful and thoughtful
- try starting your post with a question to the reader
- always lead with your main point
- use stories and analogies in your posts
- write unfinished posts to encourage user comments
- use small paragraphs and small words. Re-read your posts and cut words out if possible
- write from the readers point of view. Know your audience.
- read books outside of the blogosphere for unique inspiration
- have a long term strategy. How does this article improve my blog as a whole and my brand
- use you blog articles to build trust and relationships (traffic) and then on page opt-in forms to build lists for email marketing
- use pillar articles (detailed how to articles) as the foundation of your blog. You build everything on top of these.
- use flagship content (e.g. ebooks, courses) to build your brand and to be your blog’s ambassador
- use authority content (anything that positions you as the expert in your niche) over filler content
- write very well. Press Release Guide. Blogging Writing Guide.
- give credit for your content research sources
- edit your content ruthlessly to ensure no spelling or grammatical mistakes
- be controversial provoke a response and comments. Don’t be boring
- cover only what people in your niche are looking for i.e. what they can relate to
- post useful resources posts
- topical posts (but be unique/valuable if you are just starting out. Not just the same stories as the big bloggers.
- post evergreen/timeless articles so your posts will always be relevant
- stand out from the crowd. This is less important if you niche is small
- encourage readers to subscribe to and to digg your posts
- set up an education series of posts
- don’t include too many links
- track to see what posts your audience are interested in and give them more of the same
Tone
- post with empathy, compassion, authority, humility and honesty
- never post when you are angry
Blog Design & Layout
- build an authority blog site
- host on your own domain not xxx.blogger.com or xxx.wordpress.com
- don’t use long 10+ hypen URLs in posts
- display credibility with a bio about us page
- build trust with privacy policy and contact details etc.
- leave affiliation badges etc. on your about page. Don’t clutter your content pages
- use CSS tables over HTML tables
- cloaking links looses your credibility
- animated gifs look unprofessional
- avoid java script, pop ups etc
- use a professional clean looking site themes (eg Thesis by Chris Pearson)
- allow people to subscribe by email (50% of readers prefer this)
SEO
wordpress seogoogle.com seo
Titles
- SEO friendly (include keywords) and at the same time catchy and attention grabbing. Use headlines that work.
Traffic
- include links to your blog in all your outside social media profiles (e.g. twitter, linkedin, squidoo etc)
- directory list in yahoo, google, DEMOZ and technorati
- interlink your posts internally to reduce bounce rate, you can use plugins for this (seoroi.com, prelovac.com)
- make your site links evolve as naturally as possible
- highlight only your best posts on Web 2.0 properties (eg. squidoo)
- use trackbacks
- tag your content but linkbait only one in twenty posts. Take advantage of linkbait and follow up with 2-3 high quality articles otherwise the traffic won’t stick and you have wasted the linkbaiting (tag with technorati, del.icio.us & flickr)
- it is bad practice to submit your own posts to Digg, Reddit, Nesvine etc. Instead get your friends to do it
- invite guest bloggers
- make reference to blogs you want to link to you (they will see the traffic and may eventually link to you)
- make it easy for your visitors to share with embedded “share this post” bars
- write guest posts
- give away free ebooks, promotions
- comment on other blogs as a networking tool. Think of the long term relationship building benefits. Add to the discussion and include only relevant links.
- thank stubleupon & digg users who send you a lot of traffic and become their fans and friends, comment on their blogs
Monetization
- direct advertising is best when you have a lot of traffic (more money, flexibility, credibility and independence)
- watch your daily traffic and optimize pages with > 200 unique views daily. Turn them into money pages
- better relevance of your destination page (to the traffic source search term) = better conversion
- capture leads
- adsense can be be blended into content for better conversion but doing so will loose you readers
- include ads that are better than your content
- don’t include adsense or be commercial when starting out. Attract first with great content market later.
TIP Want to be excited about life. Take the 31 days to a better blog challenge!
Sources:
Links to all source articles in this summary can be found at this link: tips-and-tutorials-for-bloggers
