How to Blog Day 7 – Write a Link Post
In continuation of my review for 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, day 7 informs us to write a link post. Good idea and easy enough.
The idea is to give some other bloggers attention in hopes that you’ll make some friends. It’s suppose to help your search engine rankings too.
There are many ways to use this to create a post worth reading. The idea that is most important is that you want to build on their work. Simply linking to it doesn’t do much good.
I don’t care to see just a link, just a video to a song, or just a reference to anything. Tell me why you are sending me to a link or placing a video in your blog and what you think about it. It doesn’t take much work. If you don’t do this, why even blog? Why not just go to a book marking site and tell me to check out your bookmarks. It’s no different. I find the simple links most disturbing when in general, the person has a great blog, but I have to sift through all of the favorite links to get to the good stuff.
It’s ok to write that you disagree and why, agree and why, or add additional information. Just remember to add the “why” or addtional information.
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How to Blog Day 6 – Take a Ton of Advice From Big Time Bloggers
This is a continuation the book review for, 31 Days To Build A Better Blog.
Here’s a real disappointing chapter in the book. The author says he asked a bunch of successful bloggers what they think their most important posts were, then he links to those posts. ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income reads more like a blog than a book. I’m working off of the old version(I bought it a month ago, but it’s already old), the new version is only in hard copy and Kindle form. This would be a real pain if you don’t have the e-book form.
Here’s the thing about the gurus. Their going to sell you on their most intimate secrets of success, but you are dreaming if you think that you actually get them to tell you. They’re not going to lose their edge by telling you all of the secrets. In order to be somewhat credible, they’re not going to give you bad ideas though. To truly know what they do, you’re going to have to watch their website. Even that is not going to help because many other people are doing that too. You’re never going to learn their tricks, but the one thing they cannot hide is their content. You can learn something from their ads, their design, etc.
For example, have you ever noticed that the format that blogs are laid out in is similar. I’m starting to notice it. The colors are even common on many websites. It’s something to think about. If you’re going to copy anything others do, don’t let it be the content, follow their general design ideas and toss your ideas of being special in this area out the window. They’ve paid big money to set websites up in the best format for sales and readability. Copy that.
Remember, the Problogger book says to check all of these out in a day! No way. Spread it out over a long period of time. Try some things in your blogs and keep what works. I’m keeping a list of what works to repeat later. Keep in mind that these suggestions are coming from people who’s livelihood depends on making suggestions. If something sounds strange, see what others are saying about it before you try it.
Another trap is to fall into an education glut. This has happened to me often. You start reading “how-to-blog” blogs and never do any work. This information is endless and not all of it is worth the time reading. Read about, then try it and try it immediately.
Here’s the links that the book says to check out.
- How to Get Traffic to Your Blog
- How to Send Personal Email
- First, ten
- 21 Tactics To Increase Traffic
- Blogging In A Saturated Market Is A Poor Decision
- 21 Tips To Earn Tweets And Links From Your Posts
- Complete Guide To Finding And Using Flickr Images
- How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand
- 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog
- How to Grow Your Google Authority
- Diggbait, Linkbait, Flagship Content and Authority
- The Art of Getting Things Wrong
- How To Write Great Blog Content
- Why Bloggers Don’t Understand E-mail Marketing
- Top 10 Worst Ways Of Making Money
- Why You Should Embrace Negative Press
- Six Steps To Make More Money With Your Blog
- Re-Thinking Blog Comments
- You’re Not Just The Writer, You’re The Editor In Chief
- 10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments
- The Secret To Massive Social Networking Links
- 7 Great Ways To Connect With Others
- 43 Design Mistakes To Avoid
- How To Find Advertisers
- 50 Ways To Take Your Blog To The Next Level
- 40 Ways To Deliver Killer Blog Content
- 27 Secrets To Power Your Community
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How to Blog Day 5 – Reader Interaction
In Day 5 following the of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, the instructions are to simply interact with your readers.
This can be done through e-mail or making a post on their website. I already do this. Everything would seem pointless without doing so. I’ve made friends, learned additional information, and even swapped some free help with projects.
When leaving posts, always try to add to their conversation. It’s good for their website as it adds to the content that Google will index and it’s good for your website because you get the all-important backlink.
Reader interaction is where the big news websites will probably continue to fail. It seems that they want to maintain authority and that by staying out of the blogs, they are above the questions and conversation. They simply want to set up the ability to blog, post articles from their writers, then get money from ad revenue. When you look at the low quality of their postings, you see the results of this type of thinking. If it’s not working for mega-bucks corporations, it’s surely not going to work for you.
The individual blogger actually holds the edge here and it’s driving the news organizations crazy. How many derogatory statements have you heard about bloggers on the news? Some even want legislation to stop us! They try relentlessly to push the stereotype that anyone willing to post their views on the Internet is a 40 year old who never left home blogging from his Mother’s basement. People know better. They can interact with the blogger. These types of statements take the news agencies to an even lower level of trust and the individual blogger is gaining ground.
Again, the take-away from this chapter would be to simply interact.
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How to Blog Day 4. Analyze a Blog in Your Niche.
Day 4 of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog tells us to go analyze a blog in your niche. In my case for this blog, again I’ve violated the initial rule of not having a niche. I’ll have to go find another personal blog and analyze it.
The things there telling you to look for are”
- How to they monetize? Do they use affiliates, Ebay, Adsense, Amazon, etc.
- Their topics and style of writing.
- What type of reader engagement are the using. Twitter, replies, etc.
- Traffic and Search Engine Optimization Techniques. There could be volumes written on this, but they barely touch on it.
- Become an active reader of the blog.
The most important part of this chapter is that they finally tell you to be unique. You are only supposed to study what is being done, not copy it. To me, this would be the most important thing to walk away with. The Internet is clogged with failed blogs that are simply reposts of other posts. I don’t want to be any part of it and I see no future in it.
For those of you that think you’re above monetizing your blog, I think you’re crazy. This would be like saying that authors should write books for free or newspapers should be given to the public at cost(some are nowadays). I think my work is good enough to put ad revenue on and I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my labors. At the same time, I’ll attempt to place ads with at least some relevance to what I am writing about. With Adsense, the ads can get a little strange, but overall, they give the reader access to something they may be looking for anyhow.
How to Blog Day 3 – Blog Promotion
Day 3 of the 31 Days To Build A Better Blogbook instructs the reader to promote your blog post. Finally something really useful that many people overlook.
Some people are natural promoters, others barely talk to more than a small group of friends. Your blog is only going to promote itself to a very small degree. If you promote it, your efforts grow exponentially. When done strategically, it is the answer to “How do I get to the top of Google“. For the best answers on promotion, Google’s SEO Guide provides most of what you need to know. The problem with this book is that they only give you a few ideas on the subject when volumes could be written. I’m not going to be much help here either. For
The best way to promote your blog requires software. On my personal blog, I’m not going to go into the matters of which software I use or which is best. I don’t want to mislead and I’m not certain that what I use is best. I know what I use is very effective, but it takes an inordinate amount of time to master. The best advice I can give anyone about how to promote a blog is to start trying free and manual ways, then look for tools that automate some of this process for you. Search for “free SEO tutorials” and get started. Even a little work done in this area will go a long ways.
The sad part of promotion is that it’s not fun. It’s not what people get into blogging for. If you change your mindset, you can make it fun though. Look at it as a game. It is actually very similar to World Of Warcraft in the principles of what needs to be done. If you are blogging for dollars it can bring in some income too.
When promoting your blog, look for ways to promote that are helpful. When you post on others blogs, add meaningful content to the discussion when you make your posts. If your posting to Facebook, only post things there that you know a large number of your friends would enjoy seeing. For example, none of this “How To Blog” series I’m doing would be posted there. Only a handful, if any, would be interested. Bookmarking websites like Digg, Squidoo and HubPages types of websites, and many other Web 2.0 sites, that’s a different story. Blast away all of your posts at free for all websites like these.
If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go promote.
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How to Blog Day 2. Write a List Post.
Write A List Post!
Seriously. That’s the day 2 instruction. How many list posts that really do not need to be lists have you seen? I’m blaming this book as the cause of it. We all know what a list is and how to use it. Some of us are now claiming to have lists fetishes. This is ridiculous, but here is my list post for ridiculous statements I’ve found in the 31 Days To Build A Better Blog
Write a list post like List Post King, David Letterman. Image via Wikipedia
- You need an elevator pitch. Not everything requires jargon. A good heading that tells what your blog is about would do the same thing wouldn’t it?
- You should write a list post. Wouldn’t that come natural if you were writing about something that required a list. Now every subject requires a David Letterman style approach.
- You should promote your post. Yes, and this book should promote promoting your post and give more details about the best approach. If nobody finds your post, you’ve wasted your time. This could be considered a “secret” and only slight reference to this is a great way to keep it that way.
- Go look at other blogs and do what they’re doing. I don’t think so. Sorry, it goes against my principles. I’m here to create my own blog. If I’m going to do the same things as others, I’ll just make a huge link directory and point folks elsewhere.
- Take a trip to the mall to improve your blog. What if your blog is about a topic that doesn’t have anything to do with the mall? Loitering at the mall? Is this one of the big secrets to 6 figure blogging?
Ok, this list gets the point across. Hang in there. There are some good points in the book. Most of them are sparse on details, but there is enough to get a beginner started. I’m started to think that this book would be very good for beginners and that they’ve completely missed their target with the inaccurate title.
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How to Blog Day 1. Create an Elevator Pitch.
I couldn’t resist buying the book 31 Days To Build A Better Blog
I’ve already glanced through the book. I didn’t find any secrets. I’m worried. Another book of secrets lacking secrets. Maybe I’m missing something in these secrets books. Just to be fair, I’m going to give the book’s suggestions a try though.
I’m going to test out some ideas on my personal blog. It’s been idle for a while, so I can’t really do any harm here. I’ve already switched it to WordPress and converted the Drupal content to WordPress. I’m going to test the outer-limits of conformity. According to the book, I’ll be setting pretty on a six-figure income at the end. That will be handy.
The first lesson = “Create An Elevator Pitch”.
An elevator pitch is the sub heading of every blog. It’s supposed to be a catchy little phrase that sparks interest and tells the reader what the topic is of your blog.
I have violated the general rule that tells you to make your blog about one specific topic. This idea is pretty worthless for a personal blog unless you truly are a person with a one-track mind. So I’m going with, “My Internet Stuff” as my elevator pitch. Nowhere to go but up from a line like that. It does inform, just fails to spark interest. I hope this doesn’t blow that six-figure income promised in the book’s “elevator pitch”.
