Blogging Tips

Blogging Tips That Work
http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tips/blogging-tips-that-work/
Almost six months have past since I published the first post on Blogsessive and during these six months this blog has passed through a series of events and changes that made me rethink my strategies.

As you’ve probably seen by now, whenever I’m sharing blogging tips with you, I always try to explain how they work through my own perspective. There are two reasons behind this approach:

* First of all, it stands as proof that those blogging tips work;
* Second, it provides information on how the tips where applied and also effect of their usage.

So, after six months of “competing” in a pretty crowded niche I’ve come to realize that Blogsessive has grown in a natural way, with about 160 subscribers, loyal readers and commentators, friends, social media profiles, on the point of entering Alexa’s top 100.000 and many more encouraging statistics.

Blogging tips that worked for me

What have I learned from these six months of Blogsessive experience? Read on as I’m going to share it with you.
Make use of your previous experiences.

At first, I had only my experience in working in the online industry for a long period of time. This experience served me well by knowing a lot about how websites and blogs should be structured and how they should look like. This has brought many visitors on Blogsessive, partially because of the design.
My personal interests in writing and my musical background helped me present every piece of information in a reader friendly way. The effects? Growing a base of loyal readers and encouraging personal interaction.
Don’t take tips for granted. Pass them through your own filter.

As most of you, I’ve read maybe thousands of post on blogging and blogging tips. Some where new, others brought nothing new to the table. Some where helpful, others where not. The hardest part is to choose the right ones, and that can only be achieved by applying them to your blog and experimenting with twist and changes until they show the best results.

For example, one of the tips I’ve encountered most was the famous “comment on blogs in your niche”. Some people spend hours every day commenting on blog posts and in the end, it still doesn’t prove efficient. Why? Because every blog you comment on has a different community, built around the blogger’s personality. Some readers will interact with you and follow the links you post and your profile link, others won’t. Pick the one that provide the best reaction to your comment and stick with them. You’ll win a lot of time and still get good results for your commenting actions.
Experiment with new approaches or old ones with a personal twist.

In any given niche, most things have been said and done already, but bloggers still find ways to become unique and successful. How? They simple add new, personal twists to their articles. Let’s take those “link round-up” posts as an example.

You’ve seen them on every blog, organized in weekly or monthly series. Some bloggers simple publish a simple list of linked titles; others go beyond, by adding their own views on the topics those posts approach. Some examples of adding a personal twist to these posts are my “Best Blogging Tips from the World’s Top Bloggers” posts that you can read here and here, or Alina’s Monday Reading Roundup posts on WordsOfABrokenMirror.com.
Build strong relationships with other bloggers and your community.

Although this does not need an actual explanation, I’ll give you at least two reasons why you should do so.

As I’ve already told you, the past two weeks have been totally crazy, keeping me away from my regular publishing flow and to be true, they caught my quote off-guard. This is where people like Hendry Lee and Eric Brantner, both readers of Blogsessive, came and helped with their wonderful guest posts.

With Alina’s help (and not only) those posts even got some great promotion and managed to attract over 5000 visits in a period of time when I couldn’t possibly be publishing anything.

So, judge for yourself how priceless blogging relationships are!
Do not ignore the social media.

Yes, everyone says so and I’ll say it again. Make use of social media. Make contacts, share opinions, share links, help others promote content and you’ll get the same in return, but be careful. Social media can eat up a lot of your time, so much that you can neglect your blogging responsibilities. Find the right services for your, the ones that provide the best results.

For me, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Digg and FriendFeed work best. So, they are the ones getting more of my attention. I use other services only occasionally or simply to help out friends. Experiment with different services, according to your goals and find out which one works best. If you’re looking for better conversion, try exclusive, niche social websites like Sphinn, for example. Try them out.
Learn from your blog’s statistics.

Even if some will jump and call you a stats-wh*re, do what you need to do. Some people write on blogs simply as a way to share their daily experiences and expect nothing in return. The ones that try to make a living out of blogging or want to make their blog a promotional tool for additional services are pretty interested in their stats.

I know that some will not agree with my statement but I still believe it’s true. Bikers have a saying about motorcycle crashes: “There are two types of riders: those who crashed and those who won’t admit it.” Same goes for statistics. Keeping a close eye on stats, but not letting it take over too much time out of your blogging activity, will help you better understand the effects of you actions, of your writing and SEO efforts. Analyze your analytics. You’ll be learning a lot about your blog from those stats.
Conclusions

Everything you do or try must be first passed through your personal filter. There are not 100% guaranteed truths, only realistic tips that you can build on.
From your own experience, what tips worked best for you and you blog(s) and what personal twist did you gave them?
============================================
10 Characteristics of a Successful Blogger


Although being a successful blogger is not an easy task, it’s not one that should frighten you. Before asking yourself if you can be one, take a moment to think about what you do and how you do it, and see how many characteristics you can tick off from the following list.
1. A successful blogger knows what he wants

He always has a target and a strategy. He likes to be organized and has solutions for “unexpected situations“.
2. A successful blogger knows what he’s doing

He is well informed and likes to read a lot about many things, not only about niche related stuff. He has a good background and solid experience in his field.
3. A successful blogger knows how to do it

He knows that “quality is not an act, it’s a habit” (Aristotle). He takes time writing and rewriting if necessary, until he achieves the best result. Also, he knows that being consistent is his strength.
4. A successful blogger is a good friend

He doesn’t see other people in his niche as competitors; he sees them as a fresh source of knowledge and experience exchange. He will always link to them whenever they write something great, as he knows that a link is a sign of appreciation.
5. A successful blogger is a good communicator

Whether it’s his writing style or his commenting activity, he’s always there when the discussion gets interesting. He’s not ashamed to ask and always glad to share some advice.
6. A successful blogger has a personality

He knows that in order to make yourself heard, you need to have a unique tone. Copy-paste is not his style, even if things have already been said. He’ll always look for that something that nobody thought about. He’ll always look to develop the topic under his signature.
7. A successful blogger is always ready for change

He knows we live dynamic times that require a dynamic mind and personality. He’s not only ready to adapt, but also he likes to keep an eye on future developments in his niche, and not only.
8. A successful blogger knows his value

He has a good sense of self-analysis. He’ll never sell himself short, and also, never truly overrate. Knowing you value means knowing your flaws. Knowing your flaws means knowing what to improve.
9. A successful blogger wants to be better

He never thinks about becoming successful. He constantly tries to improve, as, the better the quality he will provide, the more appreciated he’ll be. He’s constantly climbing a mountain without a visible top. He know how much he has climbed, knows he can go further and simply presses on.

And last, but not necessarily least…
10. A successful blogger is a healthy blogger

“Mens sana in corpore sano” (”A healthy mind in a healthy body” - latin proverb). He knows that in order to keep a sharp mind, a healthy body is required. He values his sleep hours, his meals and he has a good working schedule.
Over to you

So, after reading these ten characteristics, how many can you tick off from the list?
Do you have what it takes to be a successful blogger?
===========================================================
Writing Reader Engaging Posts
http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tips/engaging-writing/

From where I stand, the greatest advantage of blog writing is, without doubt, the instant feedback. Unlike classic media, like newspapers or magazines, our blogs give us the possibility of getting valuable opinions on every post that we publish. Of course, not all feedback should be considered valid, but this is a matter of personal choice and analytic skills.

Writing reader engaging posts is definitely one of the biggest challenges of every blogger, since these posts are usually excellent ways to create and grow a community around your blog. At a short glance, among the advantages of writing reader engaging posts we find:

* Community growth - Obviously, writing quality posts has the power to turn casual visitors into loyal readers, as long as you maintain a good flow;
* Social media exposure - The more interesting and better written the post, the more people will want to share and recommend it across services like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx and so on;
* Conversations - A good post is more likely to entice readers to engage in commenting. This is a great way to further develop the topic or even generate new content ideas;
* Networking - Engaging posts are great ways to network with other bloggers in your niche. Write something appealing and you’ll surely make their link-round-ups;
* Quality traffic - Of course, all of the above are great ways to generate either a great deal of traffic or quality traffic.

Tips for writing reader engaging posts

With such important advantages and assuming that the topic you have chosen for your post is interesting enough, you should concentrate on making it more conversational and giving it that personal touch. To do so, here are some of the most important things you need to consider when writing.
Write opinion posts

Even if your post is simply a news item, you should always try and take some time to express your own views on that particular topic. Some will agree, others won’t, but it definitely should a boost for the discussion.
Use the 2nd person, singular or plural

“You”, “your”, “yours” are very powerful words, mostly when used to address a single person. They establish a direct connection between you, the writer (see, I’ve just used it), and them, your readers. By using them you’re more likely to make your readers feel like what you wrote is there especially for them, thus feel the need to leave feedback and answers.
Ask questions

No, asking questions does not make you look stupid. It’s all about asking the right questions, in the right place and form. Let’s take a product review for example. Do you think that asking your readers about their personal experience with that particular product would make you look bad? Absolutely not; it will only show your readers that their opinion matters to you.
Leave path for readers to explore

Writing insightful and in depth post is important. The better the quality, the better your reputation as an expert in the field gets. Still, it’s also important to leave “unexplored” paths for readers to develop in the comments section, and why not, on their own blogs as follow-ups (this will probably get you some backlinks too). Also, if you’re trying to sell services that relate to you posts, it would be a good idea to keep some “business secrets” to yourself, or simply for future blog posts.
Focus on delivering to your target audience

It’s very important that you write with your target audience in mind. The people visiting and reading your blog have niche-specific needs. Focus on covering those needs and solving their problems. This will encourage feedback and contribute to your reputation.
Be concise and effective

Don’t strive to write a 1000 words blog post just because a famous blogger does so. Write it because that’s the amount of words required to present the topic without any useless additions. Keep your post long enough to incorporate all your ideas and short enough to encourage visitors to read it in full. Also, use enough spacings and elements that break the natural paragraph flow, like lists, subheadings, images, quotes and so on.
Writings are for readers. Sounds basic, but focus on it!

Indeed, whenever you write, keep the human factor in mind. I’m not saying to ignore search engines or social media potential. Just to write for your readers and spice up the post seamlessly with elements for SEO and social media.

Now, what was your most reader engaging and comments generating post about?
============================================================================
Research and Dominate - How to Strategically Plan Your Blog for Success
http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tips/research-strategy-success/


Blog StrategyI am always astounded at the speed I can do research nowadays. What could have taken weeks or a few months suddenly can be accomplished in 30 minutes or less. When it comes to blogging, you can now gather a lot of data for free.

This can help you even before you start a blog around that topic, so you are aware of the amount of work you need to do to be one of the best in the market.

A simple competitive analysis, for instance, can help you determine what you should do next and create a strategy to better penetrate the market. (Like it or not, when you blog, you are communicating with the market.)

What’s astounded me most is the fact that more bloggers don’t take advantage of the Internet from this standpoint.

For example, if you are looking forward to start a blog about gardening, it is impossible to dominate that niche alone unless you have a team working full time for years to build massive content for for the blog. Gardening is a huge industry. You are more likely to get into the top 10 if you target a sub niche. Rose gardening comes to my mind — not that I know anything about growing roses.

By the way, why getting into the top 10?
The Beauty of Being the Market Leader

Don’t get me wrong. You can make very good living by keeping your business small and self-manageable, if you prefer to be a solopreneur. A friend of mine is silently making six-figure income by selling to a quite crowded niche. He was not even known as the expert in the market. If that’s what you want, it is perfectly fine.

However, if you want to grow big, here are a few facts. You need to think about the 80-20 (Pareto) principle. Basically it says that…

“For many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”

In niche blogging, perhaps the number is more like 95/5 or even 99.9/0.1. Only a few blogs are really going to make it to the top. Consider yourself lucky if you find a crowded and rabid niche with moderate amount of competitions.

A top 10 niche blog is only going to be more successful because of the following reasons:

1. It will only grow stronger. Once you have a lot of traffic, every time you update your blog, there will be tons of people link to you, sending you even more traffic.
2. People want to be part of it. Engagement rate becomes higher. People will spend more time on the blog than any other sites combined.
3. Credibility and trust. If you sell anything online, you should know how trust affects sales.
4. Higher advertising rates. When a lot of advertisers compete to tap into the blog’s audience, you can charge even more.

How to Become One of the Best

If you have the chance to start over, or even if you don’t, you can do the following to focus (and refocus) on your niche to zero in on something that you can possibly handle with the amount of resources you have, and become one of the best blogs in the topic. Take into account that you can always hire or outsource once you are getting the momentum and start earning from your blog.

So here it is. The key to dominate and win the game is to study the battle field and the enemies. Find out what they are doing and create strategic plan to do better. Simple enough, but how do you actually implement it?
Identify the top 10 blogs in your niche

Use keyword research tools to determine top 10 most frequently searched keywords in your niche and feed those keywords, one at a time, into Technorati or Google.

Write down the list of blogs that appear in the result pages. For Google, you may have to go to the second or third page before you come down to the 10th blog.

Using a Firefox add-on like SEO for Firefox, you can get a lot of data like Google PageRank, number of inbound links from Yahoo, Alexa and Compete ranks and other information.

Tips: You may find spreadsheet software extremely useful in organizing these data.
Perform a Detailed Analysis of What They Do

Once you get the list of 10 blogs, now it is time to visit them and do some home work.

* Subscribe to the RSS feed. You definitely want to get the blogs’ feed into your news reader. Chances are good they have a strong blog’s subscriber base.
* Pay attention to their content model and see why it works so effective. Popular blogs doesn’t always keep their blog updated several times a day. You may be able to determine the publishing schedule based of the pattern you notice.
* Observe the writing style. Some people have natural talent in writing. If that is a factor that contributes to the success, you want to know it. You will be surprised that a lot of bloggers really don’t write perfectly. They just have the passion to write conversationally and get across their message very well.
* Identify marketing strategies. You can’t always see what they do behind the scenes but sometimes you can figure out things by doing a bit more research. If you see a blog post that is very popular in social media, start thinking strategically what made it work.
* Find out how they build responsive audience. If the bloggers choose to enable comments, you will often notice a blog with 1,000 subscribers will have far more comments per post than one with 10,000 subscribers. There should be a reason behind it. I recommend make it a part of your analysis.

I’m sure there will be some other things I have missed, so be flexible and creative when analyzing those blogs.
Expand Your View to Include More Blogs

One reason why we only perform detailed analysis on the top 10 blog is to keep you from a syndrome called analysis paralysis. While this is important, you should not overdo it. At the end of the day, what really matter are content, promotion, and networking (with the audience and other bloggers).

However, once you have done the analysis above, you can expand the horizon and enrich your research by including more blogs. Not all top blogs are going to have the best of everything. Some ideas will be available in other blogs.

What you can learn from those blogs:

* Design details. I got the idea to include a content feed icon at the end of every of blog post from a new blog. I really like that idea so I test it. Perhaps it will turn more of the social media traffic into subscribers but I haven’t figured that out yet. (It seems like a few other more popular bloggers also use the same technique so I’m quite sure it will work.)
* Diversity of content formats. I started to see a few smaller blogs complement textual content with video and audio podcast. Some of them were doing very well when they posted reviews. There were always a surge in comments every time the bloggers posted new reviews, perhaps due to how he balanced the information between the drawbacks of the product and promotion.
* Methods to jazz up the posts. In recent years, I’ve seen bloggers include images from Flickr and other image hosting sites to make the structure of the blog posts more dynamic.
* Additional moneymaking opportunities. Many smaller blogs that provide monthly earnings report show that creating an e-book can help building traffic and also income. This is an example of one of the most overlooked promotion strategies bloggers make. For beginning bloggers, this means a tremendous opportunity to reach people who are otherwise not available if they don’t tap into this one idea.

Ideas are around us. You can often trigger your mind by stimulating it randomly, such as what we use in this section.
Review

I hope you jot down ideas as you go through the process above. Based on your notes, you should now have an idea about what to do to build your blog and dominate the niche.

It is hard to work based on scribbles of notes though. The next step is to plan your approach to produce content, promote it and use marketing strategies appropriately.

Finally, if you haven’t yet implemented an action management system like Getting Things Done, I recommend you to take a look at it. It will make your life more organized.

Take action!
-----------------------------------
Learn from the Greats: 7 Writing Habits of Amazing Writers
http://writetodone.com/2008/09/04/learn-from-the-greats-7-writing-habits-of-amazing-writers/
Finding the ideal working habits that will allow me to write as consistently as possible is always something I’m exploring as a writer.

As I’ve said before, I try to make it a habit to write first thing in the morning. It helps me to focus and ensure that I’m getting my writing done.

I love reading about my favorite writers and what writing habits led to their success. Below, I share with you some of my favorite writers’ work habits … and it’s obvious that there’s no single way to success. Some like to write a certain number of words or pages every day, others were happy to write a page or a sentence. Some liked to write long-hand, others did it on index cards. Some wrote standing up, others lying down.

There’s no one way that works. Do what works for you (and share it in the comments!). But maybe you’ll get some inspiration from these greats, as I have.

1. Stephen King. In his book On Writing, King says that he writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays. That’s a lot of writing each day, and it has led to some incredible results: King is one of the most prolific writers of our time.

2. Ernest Hemingway. By contrast with King, “Papa” Hemingway wrote 500 words a day. That’s not bad, though. Hemingway, like me, woke early to write to avoid the heat and to write in peace and quiet. Interestingly, though Hemingway is famous for his alcoholism, he said he never wrote while drunk.

3. Vladimir Nabokov. The author of such great novels as Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada did his writing standing up, and all on index cards. This allowed him to write scenes non-sequentially, as he could re-arrange the cards as he wished. His novel Ada took up more than 2,000 cards.

4. Truman Capote. The author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood” claimed to be a “completely horizontal author.” He said he had to write lying down, in bed or on a couch, with a cigarette and coffee. The coffee would switch to tea, then sherry, then martinis, as the day wore on. He wrote his first and second drafts in longhand, in pencil. And even his third draft, done on a typewriter, would be done in bed — with the typewriter balanced on his knees.

5. Philip Roth. One of the greatest living American writers, Roth works standing up, pacing around as he thinks. He claimed to walk half a mile for every page he writes. He separates his work life from personal life, and doesn’t write where he lives — he has a studio built away from his house. He works at a lectern that doesn’t face the view of his studio window, to avoid distraction.

6. James Joyce. In the pantheon of great writers of the last century, Joyce looms large. And while more prolific writers set themselves a word or page limit, Joyce prided himself in taking his time with each sentence. A famous story has a friend asking Joyce in the street if he’d had a good day writing. Yes, Joyce replied happily. How much had he written? Three sentences, Joyce told him.

7. Joyce Carol Oates. This extremely prolific writer (see her bibliography on her Wikipedia page!) has won numerous awards, including the National Book Award. She writes in longhand, and while she doesn’t have a formal schedule, she says she prefers to write in the morning, before breakfast. She’s a creative writing professor, and on the days she teaches, she says she writes for an hour or 45 minutes before leaving for her first class. On other days, when the writing is going well, she can work for hours without a break — and has breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon!

Tweet