BLOG POST TIPS

1. Know the ins and outs of your blogging platform. This helps you be sure your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast. If you’re not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.

2. Establish categories and stay on topic. Whether your new blog post is a stand-alone post or part of a series you’re writing, it should fit into your blog categories as well as your overall content strategy. Meaning that you want to stay on topic and have your posts fit into the categories you’ve established. When selecting your categories, ask yourself, if they make sense, and fit into the objectives of your business. Having clearly defined blog categories will help you continue generating meaningful content and topics for your blog.

3. Create a meta-description. Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don’t create a meta-description, which is a concise summary of your page’s content, a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead. This will not give the reader a full sense of what they’ll get from reading your post. A planned description will give them an idea of why they should read your post, and make them want to read it.

4. Use an editorial calendar. Most bloggers find it helpful to use an editorial calendar for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details. This will help you produce consistently.

5. Create a good design for your site. In order for them to want to read your post, they have to stay on your site. The design is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views, and conversions. Have a professional look, and they’ll take you more seriously and be more apt to stay online to read the quality content you produce.

6. Identify five metrics to keep an eye on how your blogging is 6oing such as: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares. This will help you keep track of your viewers, and give you a greater sense of when you get it right, and when you don’t.

7. Be sure to include your name, title, and a way readers can contact you. Readers are not only interested in the content in your blog post. They also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization. Sometimes you’ll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of “admin.” Even if the blog is only written by you and you’re the administrator of the blog, let the readers know who you are.

8. Publish and promote your site. Publishing and promoting are important stages of creating a successful blog post. One thing you want to do during the publishing stage is to ensure that your post has some kind of call to action. Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy. Utilize blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word. Take the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

9. Try answering questions. One effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors. If it is a popular question, giving people the answer they’re looking for can help build your audience. You can also ask have your readers to write questions. When they do, you can take the answers for these questions and use them for future posts.

10. Make your work stand out. When you’ve been blogging for a while, chances are good that you’ll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely. Instead, you can take that opportunity to see what worked and didn’t work in their post. Then, use that knowledge to write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area. You may find a few articles that have good “parts,” but they fail to have a good “whole.” If you use the information from the good parts of several articles to create your own article, yours will stand out. It will be good in its entirety.

11. Write user-centered/valuable content. One big mistake a blog post can make is missing the mark of its readers, forgetting who they are and their needs and interests. If the content is user- centred, and knowledgeable, it will be a greater value to the reader. You may begin with one target market in mind, and see that a different market is reading your articles. Change direction, and focus your blogs on the needs and interests of those users. Give someone what they want, and they’ll come back to you again and again.

12.   Make sure your content is understandable.  Be sure to consider the reader’s character, context and respect for the reader’s reading level, articulate an old idea in a new way.  You

may want to give very technical information to an audience that isn’t really educated.  Break it down and present it in terms they can understand.



13.   Make your content actionable.  This means you should include a call to action, a place to comment, an invitation to share, links to related content, and a direct summary of what to do.  If they can take part in what you blog, they’ll feel like they’re part of it.  It will make them want to return.



14.   Don’t let the quantity of words dictate the quality of your post.  Some blogs have set parameters for optimal length and put a value on whether a post is short or long.  Instead of focusing on word count, a better use of your time and energy would be to focus on whether posts are optimized for mobile, use effective formatting, communicate in a clear manner and that outlining the points you want to cover.   If you’re restricted to shorter posts by the

parameters set up in advance for your blog, you can link to longer-form content you’ve developed around the topic.  Remember quality content will always reign over quantity.



15.  Determine what parts of yourself are you willing and able to share with your readers and share it.  Readers like to get to know how about writers and often appreciate hearing a few personal details and insights from the person who has taken them on a journey through a post. Business blogs shouldn’t be thought of as personal journal entries, however, you can tell your readers a little bit about how you operate.



16 Create a time and place where you can get into the zone for writing.  While it’s true that ideas for blog posts will come at all times, chances are good though that the actual writing of the post will happen in multiple drafts and revisions.   Once you’re in the zone, you can use those inspirations that came to you when you’re driving in your car, sitting at your desk, or even in the middle of the night, and go with them.



17. Begin with the ending in mind.  Think of an inverted pyramid when you write. Get to the point in the first paragraph.  Let them know what they’re going to take away from your post, and then expand upon it.



18.  Write short sentences.  Sentences need to be concise.  Use only the words you need to get the essential information across. Long “wordy” sentences can make a post difficult to read, especially when you’re scanning.



19.  Write only one idea per paragraph.  Web pages need to be concise and to-the-point.  As with articles, most people usually scan web posts, so having short, meaty paragraphs is better than long rambling ones.



20.   Write with action words.  Tell your readers what to do. Avoid the passive voice.  By using action words, it will help you keep the flow of your pages moving and make it more exciting for your reader.  Give them the actions they need to take to do something, and then tell them what they’ll achieve by doing it.



21.  Include internal sub-headings.  When you use sub-headings, you make the text easier to scan. Your readers will move to the section of the document that is most useful for them, and internal cues make it easier for them to do this.



22.  Make your links part of the copy.  Links will also help your readers scan pages. They stand out from normal text, and provide clues as to what the page is about.



23.  Put your readers at ease.  You are not writing for a medical journal or literary society. You’re writing to your peers on the Internet. Write in a simple style.  If you introduce new terms, define them for your readers.  Make them feel comfortable reading your material.  Everyone enjoys a good read.  Make your readers feel comfortable when they read, and they’ll feel your post is a good read.



24.   Don’t be afraid to share your trade secrets.  The more you tell, the more the demand you will create for your goods and services.  The more information you give, the more likely people will understand that you really are an authority on the subject that you

are speaking about.  You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Give and it shall be given unto you.”  Give readers the information they want, and they’ll give you their business.









25.  If you are a business, emphasize the benefits of your product or service. Benefits are what sell, not features. The benefits may be that people can get these items in one place without shopping around, that they can save time and money, etc.  You should mention the benefits that you offer to your potential customer often.  Everyone wants to know, “What will I get from this?”  Emphasize that, because that’s what’s important to them, and they will want your product or service, because it’s a means to get that benefit.  You already know what your customers are curious about and what they need to make their lives easier. Use that knowledge to create your website content articles to give them new information and help them find what they are looking for.  



26.  Give your readers resource information.  Let your readers know the addresses of websites where they can get more information on the subject that you are talking about. These can be your own websites or they can be other resources. Don’t worry about losing

customers.  Good outgoing links from your website are also helpful to your site’s page ranking and positioning in search engines.



27.   Get a second opinion.  Getting another opinion isn’t only necessary when it’s a medical issue.  Get another opinion on your article.  Show it to your friends and colleagues.  Don’t worry if they criticize you.  It is better that your friends find the mistakes than your readers. A good editor is a writer’s best friend.



28.   Be straight forward.  Talk to your reader. Write in a style that sounds just like you are chatting directly with them. This will engage their interest. Imagine you are sitting over a cup of coffee with them and write. That way you should avoid being too long-winded.



29.  Write what you know.  Knowledge is power.  Choose subjects you are familiar with.  If you do, writing will be less of a chore when you feel comfortable with the subject.  If you know your topic well and you’re passionate about what you’re writing, that passion will show through.  It will help the reader feel it when they read.



30.  Enjoy yourself when you write.  You’ve probably tried to read a book and failed.   It’s almost impossible to read books or articles we don't enjoy, so it figures that writing books and articles becomes more difficult when we don't enjoy what we are writing about.

Since posts are written regularly, they can sometime feel like a chore.  Even as children we learn to hate chores.  Writing about things you enjoy will make it more enjoyable to write.  This way, you’ll be writing because you WANT to…not because you feel you HAVE to.

31.  Be consistent with your postings. This is extremely important to creating quality content for any platform.  Many times, writers start projects with enthusiasm and energy.  If they don't see results right away, they stop. Readers want some expectation of when they will see a new post from you, so be consistent.  You don’t have to post every day, but if you decide to write once a week, don’t skip.  Let the reader know when they can expect the next post from you.  You can add things like, “Come back next Thursday for more great

tips on how to…” If they like what they read this time, they’ll write it down to visit your site again on that day for more information.



32.  Re-purpose your content.  You can use a good video you made, and create a post from it, get the video transcribed, or create a slideshow version, audio/podcast version, etc. You can also take your good postings and do short videos.  Not everyone likes to read, and some would rather read than watch videos.  This way, you’re getting your content out there in many formats, so you can reach a wider audience.

Internet Marketing Survival Guide 2

What is Your Business Plan?
 
          If you've an idea of what sort of business you wish to begin with, you have to likewise set objectives or targets for that business.
Without having an objective or a target, your business activities are inescapably going to be unfocused and random as if you don’t recognize where you’re going with your business, you've no chance of attaining an acceptable destination.
You wouldn’t depart on a trip in your auto tomorrow without knowing where you’re going and either knowing how you arrive there or at least having a map or a navigation system to help you do so.
Well, attempting to run a business without having any clue of what you wish to accomplish is precisely the same as departing with no clue where you’re going and no clue about how to arrive there.
Now naturally, you wish to earn as much revenue as possible from the your business as fast as you can, but this isn't an objective or target. You have to specify how much revenue you wish to bring in and set a time scale in which you wish to accomplish that aspiration or hit that target.

Direction
On the other hand, what you must prevent is setting unrealistic or overambitious targets that you've no realistic chance of accomplishing. Irrespective of whether the sales page for the ‘how to’ product that you have simply bought tells you that you are able to make 1000s of dollars each day utilizing this particular lucrative business model, you can’t, or at any rate, you shouldn’t anticipate to begin earning a fortune immediately.
Be truthful with your target, and read around the internet about the specific business technique that you're considering following to get a thought of how much money you're likely to make. This is crucial because it helps you to have a truthful estimate of what you are able to expect to bring in, which in turn helps you to establish accomplishable objectives.
As an illustration, if you are going to produce a niche targeted blog web site that will be monetized with AdSense, this is a web site that you are able to realistically expect to generate $50-200 a month as long as you set it up properly. Therefore, if you are able to set up one a week (which should not be too hard), then after 6 months, you would have twenty-six niche targeted web sites generating $1300 a month or more.
This may not seem a great deal of revenue, but remember that this is money you're generating without having to sell anything and naturally, a few of your niche blogs are likely to yield considerably more than $50, so the real figure is likely to be greater. All the same, it gives you a realistic ball-park figure to begin with as an objective or minimum target.

                                   Creating and Establishing Your Plan

To carry on with this illustration, if you recognize that your objective is to build twenty-six niche targeted blog sites over the beginning 6 months of your business and marketing career, then you may start formulating your business plan by working backwards from this to found precisely what you have to do to hit the target.
To produce your business plan, I'd first recommend that you utilize either a whiteboard, a really big sheet of paper or mind-mapping software like Freemind to produce your plan.
The reason that you ought to utilize one of these resources to produce a business plan is that by doing so, you may add different business thoughts to the ‘plan’ in a relatively random manner instead of in a sequential way as you would if you were writing things down line by line on a sheet of paper. This lets you ‘group’ objects together as necessary once you're satisfied that you've everything noted on your plan which makes the whole planning process more consistent.

Your Road to Success
When you’re ready to begin planning, you have to brainstorm the questions that you have to address.
For example, if you are going to produce twenty-six niche-targeted blogs, are they all going to be in the same market or in dissimilar markets? If for instance you had a series of blogs that were all centered on the weight loss market, this may be appropriate in terms of linking every blog to the others and it may make things simpler if you were to become an authority on one topic instead of being somebody who tries to get by with twenty-six blogs that center on totally dissimilar markets.
How are you going to come across enough niche ideas to produce your blogs? Utilizing resources like eBay Pulse, Amazon.com, Yahoo! Answers and 43 Things will help you to muster up a list of things that individuals are searching for on the net, but what specific aspect of these interests should you produce blogs for?
You've already decided that you wish to monetize your site with AdSense but how are you going to drive targeted visitors to your blogs? Without targeted visitors, you’re not going to make any revenue, so this is an essential question to address.
One way that you are able to publicize your blogs is by issuing articles on major article directory sites like EzineArticles or GoArticles but if you're going to do so, are you going to author the articles yourself or will you get somebody else to do it for you?
What about the articles that you post on your blogs? Where are those going to come from as each of your sites will require at least 6 unique articles, so do you have the time and the aptitude to author them or not?
Videos are a excellent way of publicizing your activities, with 1000000s of individuals visiting leading video networking sites like YouTube , Google video , Daily Motion and MetaCafe daily. Therefore, if you can publish video content that's centered on the same niche as your blogs, you are able to get a ton of free visitors, so it's definitely something you ought to do.

To do so, you require video ideas and the equipment and/or resources essential to make these videos.

Do the ideas you have demand utilizing a digital camcorder, and if so, do you have such equipment or can you afford to purchase it? If on the other hand your videos are going to boast ‘action’ that may be recorded from your computer display, you don’t have to purchase anything as you may utilize free recoding software like CamStudio.
As you'll find out if you have not already, there are virtually 100s of different ways you may drive targeted visitors to your web site, and each time you come across a fresh traffic generation technique, you ought to add it to your business plan ‘chart’ or mind map.
This is why you ought to utilize a resource like a whiteboard or mind mapping software where you may add fresh data in a seemingly random manner as all of your new traffic ideas need to be grouped together into a total traffic generation sub-plan.
You ought to likewise have a content creation sub-plan and so on till you've all necessary parts of your business plan gathered.
If you search the net, you may discover lots of places where there are free business plan samples available. Frequently, these business plans are complex and really wordy, primarily because most are business plans that are mainly designed for handing out to potential business investors.
If you're in a position where you’re attempting to invite outside investment into your new business, producing an equally detailed business plan of this sort may have some value. However, assuming that the business plan you're producing is only for your own use, it makes far more sense to keep it easy and straightforward instead of making it overly complex and lengthy.
To continue with an earlier analogy, what you have is a roadmap that gets you from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’, not a high-definition atlas of each country on the face of the earth.
The simpler and more aboveboard you can keep your plan, the better your plan is likely to be as simplicity makes it far easier to center on the most crucial aspects of what you're doing as there is little or no clutter to distract you from your primary targets.


Don't be Afraid to get Help

     I've already suggested that there's a vast amount of data about making cash on the net out there in the market and that this flood of information may frequently be more harmful than it is helpful.
And the fact is that if you're like most individuals who have just began or are about to begin their own internet marketing business, you’re likely doing so on your own, so faced with this massive data mountain, it's really easy to become befuddled, distracted or ambushed.
For this reason, it might add up to attempt to find somebody with whom you may work and from whom you may learn. There are a few different ways you may do this, with the better option for you likely being dependent on how much experience you have and where you are in your new career at the minute.
If you're somebody who's already mastered particular basic online marketing skills, your knowledge allied to any previous experience that you
've already adopted means you've an asset, albeit an intangible one. In internet marketing, possibly more than in any other business environment, knowledge and experience represent true assets and if you've an asset, you've something that other marketers will put a value on.

Take A Good Look
What this means is, if you've something valuable to bring to the table, you may seek joint-venture partners with whom you may work.
When internet marketers arrange joint-venture partnerships, the common idea is that each member of that partnership bring something valuable to the table which the other partners can't bring, and has suggested, with experience and knowledge under your belt, you've an asset to provide likely partners.
To discover individuals with whom you may ‘team up’ in this way shouldn't be particularly hard either. For example, the first place I'd seek suitable partners would be the chief forum sites in the niche in which you’re operating.
In a JV operation, you and your partner (or partners) would all be equals in the project, but for this to occur, you have to have some skill or ability to bring to the partnership table.
If you don't as yet bear these skills or powers, your situation is somewhat different. In that case, what you ought to be looking for is a teacher or mentor instead of a partner. What you truly require is somebody from whom you may learn, somebody who will train you from the ground up so that you learn everything that you have to know from an authority.
There are a lot of ways that you may find individuals who would be willing to and capable of mentoring or teaching you everything you have to know about online marketing. But remember, you have to learn from somebody who truly knows what they're doing so you may learn the stuff that truly matters whilst avoiding the distractions.
Therefore, finding a mentor is basically a two-stage process, as you first need to find somebody, and second you have to verify that they've the ability or experience to give you what you require.
The 1st strategy for finding someone who may genuinely teach you what you have to know is to do so is through the leading forum sites in your market sector. Running an aboveboard Google search for forums in your niche will show you which are the most popular, as they'll be the ones at the top of the search results page.
More often than not, if you are able to find a forum site that's obviously the leader in your market sector or niche, you'll find that most of the ‘big names’ in your industry will participate in that forum.
These individuals are unlikely to be regular contributors, primarily because they abide by the advice that I gave you earlier about avoiding spending too much of your time on bulletin board sites.
After all , the ‘big guns’ of the internet are too busy earning millions of dollars yearly through their net-based business activities to spend hours daily on a forum.
Nevertheless, it's a fact that even the top boys in the industry will contribute to the leading forum sites in your market sector from time to time, and all you need to do is to spot who they are.
Luckily, this isn't especially difficult, as other members of the forum will commonly point you in the right direction if you watch what is going on closely enough.
To take this concept a step further, suppose that by utilizing this method, you've discovered somebody who's obviously an authority in your market, a well-known expert in your niche.
Quite clearly, you can't simply come straight out to ask this individual to help you. After all, they don't know you from Adam and till you've done a lot more background research on them, you don’t know whether the business idea that you’re thinking about adopting will place you in direct rivalry with them or not.
Therefore, once you've found person, you have to do your background research to discover as much as you can about them. In addition to establishing whether you're going to be in direct rivalry with them or not, this research may help to uncover a few more highly cogent factors.
First, it will let you build a broad picture of their business interests, experience and skills. This ought to help to clarify whether they're the sort of individual you ought to be approaching for assistance or not. Having this background will also make a difference when you first approach them for their help.
The 2nd thing that you might discover is that they may already have some sort of mentoring or training materials available, meaning that rather than having to approach them directly to ask for help, you may sign up for their program or product instead.
The point to remember here is that the individuals who have reached the top of the tree in your industry have done so for a reason. Essentially, they had a well thought out, professionally developed business plan which they followed with determination and total focus so that they accomplished what they set out to accomplish.So, there must be a second option because if ‘plan A’ doesn’t work, you must have an alternative ‘plan B’.
In this case, the 2nd option is to look at sites that allow finding mentors for individuals who need them. This marketing site site <http://www.warriorforum.com> lists dozens of sites where you ought to be able to find a suitable mentor with whom you may work and from whom you may learn, so I'd definitely recommend that you take a look.
Consequently, if you think that having a mentor will help you and you can't find anybody suitable through your own efforts on the leading forum sites in your niche, this is a great site to begin your search for a valid ‘plan B’ option.

                                         Final Words

31
As you ought to hopefully comprehend by now, getting beyond the newcomer stage of internet marketing isn't anywhere near as hard as some people may imagine it would be.
All that's truly necessary to step up to the next level is to adopt a more professional, businesslike attitude to your marketing actions, and everything else will fall into place almost mechanically.
Many internet marketers seem to feel that marketing on the net is somehow a fresh sort of business, one where you may afford to be far more casual and laid-back than you may in traditional ‘real life’ business.
And while there's a degree of truth in this - you don't have to commute or wear a collar and tie for instance - to believe that net marketing is a completely different sort of business is an error.
Marketing and selling on the net is precisely the same as marketing and selling in your local shopping center, and the disciplines that you'd need to apply if you're running that sort of business are precisely the same too.
For instance, it's essential that you're organized and that know what you're going to do every time you fire up your PC in advance of doing so. You have to stick to both your ‘big picture’ business plan and your daily schedule as nearly as possible, and when a task needs to be done, you must make certain that it gets done either through your own work or because you arrange for somebody else to handle the task.
Most especially, if you don’t want to be a fledgling forever, you likely need to rethink how you're operating your business on a daily basis.
If you're not already adopting a thoroughly businesslike, professional attitude as highlighted, you have to begin doing so and even if you're already relatively businesslike, you need to ‘up the ante’ by becoming more of an ultimate internet marketing professional with each passing day.
It’s not hard and it may be accomplished, but the only individual who can take you from being a newbie to being somebody who's enjoying a great deal of internet marketing success is you.

Now you know how to accomplish it, it is time to begin making whatever changes are essential to take your business and your internet earnings to the next level.