Blog Tutorial- Learn to blog and make more money blogging

How to choose most popular social network for your blog # 3

2008-07-18T23:30:00.004+05:30

Earlier I have talked and helped you in answering two questions that help you in choosing right social network for your blog.In this post I would talk off third and the last question- What niche do you cover in your blog?

Niche is important for deciding the right social site for your blog.Different social media users have different tastes. For example, Digg users like tech and news related topics.So, it is of prime importance to know the tastes of the social sites user. If you have a blog on history and you are using a social site with majority of users inclined towards geography then you will hardly get any purchase from that site.

So, just do a research on different media sites and try to find out what topics are liked by the users of a particular social site.But the qquestion that arises here is ,How can I know the tastes of the users of a social site?

Well that is not a difficult task but it requires a lot of work to research it.There are different methods I employ to research this but none of them is perfect.So, what I do is combine different methods to research.I use a combination of three methods to find the tastes of the users.By doing this I reduce the errors in research and thus try to reach a near correct result.I would talk about these methods in following paragraph.

Take a look at the frontpage of social sites you are researching-

This I think is simplest method and and gives best and nearest results among the three.Just take a look at the front page of the social sites and see what sites are appearing there.Note down the site title and niche.Do this for minimum of one week.After you are done doing this, just see what niche or category has most featured on front pages of a particular site. This is most suited for social bookmarking sites like digg.

Take a look at the tag cloud of the social site-

Tag cloud give you a broader idea about the likings of a social site user.You may wonder how tag cloud can help you in choosing the right social site for your blog?? OK, let me explain the things in some detail. Take a look on this image of one of the pages of stumble upon.

Click to enlarge

On the right side of this image you can see the tag cloud. Just see the words that are written in bigger font in this cloud.Then see whether your your blog is about this.For example, one of the words in tag cloud is business (written in bigger font). So, if your blog is about business the social site can be of your choice.

Take a look at the categories-

Categories can be quite helpful in deciding the social site.Just ask a question to yourself. Is there any category which describes your blog or in which your blog can be fitted? If you don't find any category for your blog then probably your blog is not suited for that social site.

Based on these three factors and others I have discussed in earlier posts you can reach to social media site of your choice.In any case go for 2-3 best suited social sites to get maximum from social networking.Social networking is all about communicating with your target audience and the first step is choosing a social site where you can find plenty of target audience.Once you are not taking this first step with caution ,you may fail in social network marketing.

How to choose most popular social network for your blog- #2

2008-07-11T01:25:00.004+05:30

Image via WikipediaEarlier in the series of this post ,I have helped you to answer one of the questions to choose most popular social network for your blog. Now I will move on to the next question- What do you want social sites to do for your blog?

As I have said earlier , social sites can be used in a variety of ways. They can be used to drive traffic to your blog, they can be used to build relationships and increase sales or they can even be used to build links for your blog. So, answer of this question is quite important for choosing right social media site. Let us expand this in foollowing paragraphs.

Social sites of choice if you are there to drive traffic-

This is probably most important reason why bloggers participate actively in social sites. The most efficient social sites in this regard are stumble upon and digg. Of course, there are some other second tier choices like reddit and newsvine. So, if you are there for traffic you should focus on these sites.You don't have to actively participate in conversations here, only thing you have to do is bookmark your posts and encourage your readers to do the same.

Social media sites of choice to build relationships-

One of the reasons why you need to build relationships with others is because you want to win trust or you want to highlight yourself as an expert of some field.For this you need to be personal with your target audience.You have to converse with them. And that is why, you have to choose a social media site that has a messaging interface to make connections with others.Facebook ,orkut and different forums in your niche are excellent examples where you can communicate with others.

Social media site of choice to build links-

Yeah !!! social media sites can be used effectively to build links and increase your pagerank.For this you need to research and find out which bookmarking sites don't use "no follow". Some of the examples of social media sites that don't use "nofollow" are furl and blinklist.There are still some more and I am working on it.I will produce a list of dofollow social sites soon.

So, you can see ,how the answer to the above mentioned question dictates the choice of the social media site. Most of the times you have many reasons to use social sites.For example ,you wish to increase hits on your blog as well as build links from social sites.In this case the choice can be different.Just find out what do you want from social site and choose the one that fulfills your need.In every case, focus your attention only on 2-3 social sites as it is not possible to focus on every site that comes your way.

How to choose the most popular social network for your blog?- #1

2008-06-26T23:23:00.007+05:30

One of the main reasons why many bloggers fail in social networking is, they don't choose a social site which suits their blog's need.For example ,it is unlikely to get purchase from digg if you have a blog on history because Digg users love tech stuff and newzy material.That is why choosing a right social media site is of paramount importance if you wish to market you blog socially.In this post and two other posts of this series you would learn to choose a right platform to network.

In the earlier post of this series I have given an outline of social network marketing.I have talked about three questions you should ask to yourself to be able to to choose a right social platform.In this post I will talk of first question and how the answer of this question helps you in choosing the most popular social site for your blog.

The first question was-

What do you want your blog to do?

Whether you want your blog to make money for you through adsense or through affiliate marketing or you just want your blog to make you famous through your opinions or is it just a fun for you.

The answer to this question is vital in choosing right network for your blog.Why ?? well, I will show you the reason in the paragraphs that follow.

Social media of choice if you want your blog to make money through adsense-

If you are planning to make money through adsense then you should care about traffic.More traffic means more clicks and more clicks mean more money, isn't it? So, if this is the case you would go for a social media site that brings in a lot of traffic to your blog like, stumble upon and digg.

Social media site of choice if you want to be an affiliate marketer-

As an affiliate marketer you need to build trust because people seldom buy from someone whom they don't trust. So, in this case your social media site of choice would be one that allows you to communicate with others through a messaging interface, like facebook, orkut etc. You can't build trust unless you talk to your target audience.Social bookmarking sites like,digg won't help an affiliate marketer in building trust.

Social media site of choice if you want to be famous-

Many people blog to build a profile or to become famous.If this is the case with you ,you need to communicate with other people in your niche.This can be done through comments in blogs and forums of those people.Once people in your niche come to recognise you as an expert you would become famous in your field.

So, you can see how answer to this question help you in choosing the most suited social platform for your blog.I will suppose that you would have answered this question for yourself.Many a times you blog for more than one reasons.For example, you may wish to make money through adsense as well as an affiliate.In that case you can choose a combination of two social sites or even one if it is there.

In any case you have to choose a social site that suits your need.

Social network marketing: Taking your blog to next level

2008-06-24T00:43:00.005+05:30

Image by glenn.batuyong via FlickrOne of the reasons most successful bloggers are successful is because they market their blog through social networking.The reverse is also true, most bloggers fail because they don't market their blog socially.Social network marketing ,also called as social media marketing, is one of the arsenals that web 2.0 has given us to promote our blog.But most of you are not able to take full advantage of it because you simply don't have an idea how to use it.

I am writing a series of post where you can learn about social network marketing and thus, you will be able to promote your blog socially. This is the first post of the series and in this post I will just outline the things that you would discover in the rest of the posts of this series.But before I would do this, it would be nice thing to define social network marketing.

What is Social network marketing?

"Social network marketing is a process of building relationships with target audience, to market principles and ideas for the purpose of societal benefit by winning trust."

If you take a close look onto the definition ,you will find three key factors of social network marketing-

Building relationships with target audience.
Marketing for purpose of societal benefit.
Winning trust.

These three points are key to social marketing and through out this series I will expand upon these three key factors only.

Now the next question that would be hovering in your mind is- What should I do to market my blog through social networks or social media sites? Well, social media sites are complex to deal with as you have to deal with a variety of people having different behaviours and opinions.But this can be made easy if you can follow a couple of steps.These couple of steps are part of social media optimisation.

Social media Optimisation-

Social media optimisation is simply the things you do to market your blog or products socially.You have to follow just a couple of steps (with a few sub-steps) to successfully market your blog socially. These steps are-

Choose most popular social network that suits your blog's need.
Apply some social media marketing tactics.

Choosing the most popular social network-

One of the mistakes most of you do while using social media sites is, you don't research to find out which network site is suited for your need. I have seen many bloggers using all the social networking sites that come their way.So, they will stumble, digg , and reddit and will twitter also without researching what they really need to use.

Choosing the most suited social sites is not hard either. Just you have to answer some questions-

What do you want your blog to do? Whether you want to make money through adsense or through affiliate or you just want to get noticed or is it just a fun for you.
What niche do you cover in your blog? Whether you write about computers or making money or news orany other thing in this world.
What do you want the social sites to do for your blog? Whether you want to build links or get subscribers or generate some traffic through social sites.

The answer to these three questions are vital to select suitable social sites for you and your blog.I have separate posts on these questions where I shown you how answers to these questions affect the choice of social networking sites.

Applying social media marketing tactics

Once you are done choosing a social site for you, the next step is applying some tactics to make your social network marketing campaign more effective. I have categorised these tactics into three steps-

Creating the hook- This is basically a tactics to tell others , how you are different from your competitors.
Communicating like a skilled person-The way you should communicate online to make an impression and win trusts of others.
Redirecting the users to your blog- It is quite easy to redirect users to your blog once you have won the trust. But you need to be careful while doing this as you may loose the trust by doing it wrong way.

I will discuss these three points in separate posts.

This post was just an outline about what you will learn about social network marketing in this series of posts. Social network marketing is crucial for success as a blogger.Without networking it is impossible to be successful so, you must learn the art of networking on popular media ssites.

I hope you would enjoy this series and be benefited from it.If you fear loosing a part or whole of the series , you may subscribe via email to get the posts delivered in your inbox.

Drive traffic to blogs through search engines: Tips SEOs forgot to tell you

2008-06-20T22:34:00.008+05:30

Image by ocean.flynn via FlickrAfter reading out the title you may have guessed , I would talk about search engine optimization.But in this post I would not say a word about it. I would not talk of keyword research or anchor text optimization or anything else about SEO. Instead I will talk of how you can apply SEO techniques to get more hits (not high search engine rankings).There is some difference between getting more hits and getting high search engine rankings.You will unfold the difference between the two somewhere in the following paragraphs.

Optimizing just your home page is biggest mistake-

I have seen many bloggers who have optimized their homepage quite well but if you take a look at inner pages they are poorly optimized.Even the best of your keywords can't drive loads of traffic if you have just optimized your main page.To drive more traffic from search engines you need to optimize many of your pages. Just create many entry points to enter your blog.

Let us take an example. Suppose you have one page beautifully optimized and it gets 50 visitors per day from search engines.50 visitors from one page is impressive ,isn't it?But since you have just one optimized page , you will not be able to go beyond that number. Will you? Now what happens if you have 10 such optimized pages.Do the simple maths and calculate.You will get 500 visitors and what if you have 50 optimized pages.My god!!! you have thousands of visitor just from search engines.....

So, the first lesson is optimize SOME OF YOUR inner pages apart from your home-page.

Optimizing all your pages is not easy (possible) either-

To succeed as a blogger you have to update your blog frequently, means, you have to write daily ,right? Right!! So, you are already in a pressure of writing daily and once you start optimizing each of your pages ,you will feel additional pressure. The pressure of doing keyword researches and building links for all your posts.

But all SEO experts told you to optimize your all pages, isn't it? Ok ,they are right. But they write for all the pages on internet and they most importantly write for websites which are not updated as frequently as blogs. So, a website owner can afford to optimize all of his/her pages but same can't be said about blogs.

So, What the hell should I do to drive traffic through search engines-

From above paragraphs it is clear that you can't drive traffic by optimizing just your home page and optimizing all your pages is not possible. So, the big question is - What you should do to drive traffic to your blog from search engines?

Here comes the secret-

Classify your blog pages into three tiers or strata. Your home page comprise the first strata ,some of your long, tutorial type posts (pillar posts) will come in the second strata and short posts and newsy posts in the third strata. I have shown this in the figure below.

Once you have classified your posts ,focus your attention on tier-1 and tier-2, that is, your homepage and your pillar posts.Optimize these two tiers with best keywords and get some links for them. Make sure all your pillar posts are accessible from your homepage and all relevant pillar posts exchange links between themselves.

So, what is the use of tier-3? Well, tier-3 (the short articles and newsy items) are just meant to provide internal links for your home page and your pillar posts. They feed your important posts with links without getting link from them.Thus, your pillar posts get one-way internal links from these posts. Isn't this cool.

If you write a pillar post each week, you will have 24 posts in six months and if you can manage to write two, you will have 48 pillar posts.If you can optimize all these posts you will create 48 entry points for your blog. Another good news , you will have a lot of newsy items or short posts to get your pillar posts linked.

Does creating entry points drives more traffic to blogs-

In the first paragraph i have said, "there is difference between getting more hits and getting high search engine rankings."I know you are getting confused here because you have been told that higher ranks mean more hits.OK let me clarify the things.

Let us suppose you are in the top ten (1st page) for a term in google results page.Well, you have 10 other sites to compete with even if you are in top ten for your targeted keyword. Furthermore, these competitors are often the toughest one.I know you can still get some traffic competing with them but my point is to leverage your high rankings to get maximum you can get from search engines.

How can I do this?

You have to simply focus your attention on search snippet. A search snippet looks something like this-

You can see here, a search snippet has two parts-

The title which is written in blue colour.
Description which is written in black.

Both these parts are quite important as it reflects the stuff in your blog.Many people decide whether they should click the link or not on the basis of this snippet.Thus, if you can assure people that you have the stuff they were looking for ,you can make them to visit your blog.

Make sure you have written an intriguing and 'killing' title. Also , make use of meta tags to describe each of your page.This way you can get more traffic from search engines.

These are all little things but are most often not given the attention they deserve.If you have some fantastic ideas to share or otherwise my points were not clear to you then you are most welcome to start a discussion here in the comment section.I look in to every comment i get and personally answer those.

5 unique traffic generation posts from 5 unique bloggers

2008-06-17T09:14:00.006+05:30

Image via WikipediaEvery blogger wants traffic, only some of them constantly and seriously try to generate it and still fewer get it.This is the real picture of blogosphere in terms of traffic generation.If you are quite serious to generate some quality traffic for your blog ,then check out the links to the posts of some successful blogger and learn some unique and innovative ideas to build traffic.

Traffic building through offline blog promotion- By Darren Rowse

Most of the bloggers and webmasters are centered on online blog promotions.OK, online blog promotion can bring in some traffic to you but to really get piles of visitors on your blog you have to complement it with some offline blog promotion strategies.Darren has pointed out some good reasons to consider offline blog promotion and also has listed some great tips to do so.You can find the post here.

Traffic generation through google image search- By Maki

You read it right!!!!! Traffic from google image search is something that I have never thought of getting.Although I get some traffic from google inage search but I can't expect heaps of traffic from this.But, Maki , the man behind doshdosh has some ground-breaking tips to build a great deal of traffic from google image search.He has discussed a series of steps optimize your blog for google's search engine for images. You can find the article here.

Traffic generation through stumble upon- By Mani Karthik

This may sound like a repetitive and regurgitated list of tips but believe me Mani has got some useful techniques to get traffic from stumble upon.The post has been written on bloggingtips and can be found here.

5 traffic generation tips from Skellie Wag-

Skellie has got 5 great and unique tips to build traffic for your blog. All the five tips are singular and has great thoughts behind them.Read this post here.

30 Traffic building tips on daily blog tips-

This post is a bit different from others listed above.It contains views and ideas of thirty people on traffic generation techniques.Many of them are quite innovative and easy to follow.Check out this post here.

These are the unparalleled posts on the topic of traffic generation.Read them, follow them and enjoy getting more hits on your blog.If you have got some unique ideas on traffic building ,you can share it here through comment section.

Blogs I read

2008-06-17T02:15:00.006+05:30

Blogs on blogging-

Blogs on Making money-

Others-

Surefire ways to promote your blog?

2008-06-13T22:58:00.010+05:30

Image via WikipediaPromoting a blog is one of the most tedious tasks as a blogger.This becomes even more unmanageable when you are a part time blogger like me.Promoting a blog is an ongoing process and you have to promote your blog as long as you write on your blog.

If you are looking for some shortcuts then I fear I might disappoint you.I have no secrets to disclose on the topic .But if you are quite serious to promote your blog and ready to schedule the task on a daily basis then you will find this post useful.

Leverage your current visitors to promote your blog-

People are quite focussed on the things that they don't have.Same applies to blogging also.You might have been thinking of your low traffic or subscribership.But real key to blog promotion is to concentrate upon what you have.A bunch of visitors can bring in huge traffic to you if they spread just one of your post virally. This is the true value of the visitors you have.

How can I promote my blog through current visitors?
Now this is the question which needs to be answered.The ways to promote your blog this way are-

Produce quality content-How can a visitor promote your blog if you don't have a content worth promoting.Content is the soul of your blog and a blog without quality content is a dead blog.
Use "Tell a Friend" script in the post-footer -"Tell a friend" script is a piece of javascript or php code that enables your visitors to email your posts to their friends.So, only thing you have to do is to encourage your visitors to use this script to email your posts.This can be more effective if you give away free gifts to your visitors to tell their friend about your posts.Although right now I am not using this method to promote my blog but I am planning to use it pretty soon.
Encourage your visitors to submit your site in social bookmarking sites-Social bookmarking sites like stumble upon(SU) are the best place to promote your blog.Just encourage your visitors to add your posts to social sites if they liked it.

Make many entry points to get into your blog-

Entry points for your blog are the highly optimized pages which rank high in search engines for their keywords.Thus, if you have many entry points you have more prospects of getting visitors to your blog through search engines.In my opinion 10-15% of your posts should be optimized for search engines.If you write 10 posts a week then 1-2 posts should be written with search engines in mind.

What should I do to make entry points to my blog-

Give some time to research your keywords.
Place your keywords tactfully.
Maintain a keyword density of 3-6%
Build links for your optimized pages.

Promote your feeds to promote your blog-

Your blog and feed are the two faces of the same coin.So, promoting your feeds can actually help your blog to grow.Infact, my feeds get more hits than my blog and many of the visitors who discover my feed actually come to see my blog.

What can I do to promote my feeds-

Submit your feed to feed directories.You can find a list of feed directories here.
Make sure autodiscovery feature is working.Most of the blogs have an innate autodiscovery feature but sometimes it may not be working.
Leave your feed's link in your signature whenever you comment in forums and other blogs.

Distribute your articles in article directories and forums-

Submitting your articles in article directories has two benefits-

It build links for your blog.
It refers some of the visitors to your blog.

Forums, I think, are not being used properly by bloggers to promote their blog.Writing some very good comments on forums can bring in some traffic for your blog but it will be only a few even if you are commenting in high trafficked forum.To really get some purchase from forums write an article which is value packed,,addicting, attractive (you can add some more adjectives here !!!) I had once written an article on about 10 forums to promote my blog on "Tourist Places in India" and next day the traffic came rolling in.

Identify some forums having good traffic and post a new thread with a beautiful article in it and see the magic.Seriously,this has worked quite well for my blog and it can work well for you too.

Build a community to promote your blog-

The simplest way to build a community is to join communities at mybloglog and blogcatalog. Other ways of building community are-

Email other bloggers when you have produced a quality post and let them know about your post.You can even email entire post to them.Don't email all your post but only those which you think are promising.
Comment on other blogs.This is the simplest way of building relationship with fellow bloggers although it may take some time.
Giveaway links to other blogs and don't expect anything in return.
Write a guest post on an established blog of your niche.
Be active in social media sites.
Answer your emails and comments on your blog.

Although there are many more methods to promote your blog but those I have discussed are not frequently used by most of the bloggers.If you have some unique idea to promote blog you may discuss it here in comments.

What makes a successful blogger successful?

2008-06-12T14:05:00.002+05:30

Have you ever thought how successful bloggers build readership or make money or get tons of hits on their blog?Have you ever thought what makes a successful blogger successful?According to one of the surveys 99% of bloggers fail.So, have you ever thought what makes a blogger to get in the 1% list.

I had a hawk eye look at some of the bloggers over past few weeks and sorted out some of the points that make them distinguished.I have been following many successful blogs like,problogger, daily blog tips and doshdosh to name some.In this post I will share some of the tips that I have learned after looking at those blogs closely.

1) Successful bloggers consistently produce quality content- All the successful bloggers write quality content and they do this on a consistent basis. Most of the blogs have one or two quality posts but what makes a blogger successful is his quality to produce nice content consistently.

2) Successful bloggers has a optimum posting frequency- I have seen, most of the established bloggers post at least once a day. Sometimes, they post like 2-3 posts a day.To be a success blogger you have to maintain an optimum posting frequency.

3) Successful bloggers make many doorway pages- Most of the established blogs has multiple doorway pages.Doorway pages are highly optimized pages that rank high in search engines and thus act as entry points for a webpage. Having many entry points increases the traffic on the blog.

4) Successful bloggers are excellent networkers- Networking is quite essential for a blog to be highly trafficed. Networking helps a blogger in finding new readers as well as to market their blog virally.

5) Successful bloggers outsource some of their blogging tasks- This is something that only successful bloggers do. They outsource some of their tasks like, comment moderation,content writing or email replies to others. Most of the established bloggers has plenty of guest posties and also they had given the task of content writing to freelance writers sometime during their blogging career.

So, how many of these points do you follow? Tell me about your opinion on this topic and apply some of these tips yourself.

Posting daily Vs posting 3-4 times a week

2008-06-07T22:13:00.006+05:30

Image by comicbase via FlickrAfter seeing the title of this post you may have said-"Ah!!! the age old discussion on posting frequency once again." But I thought I should write about it as the discussion is still hot and almost all discussions on this topic has been inconclusive.I have seen many posts on posting frequency and found most of the bloggers leave you in a mesh between posting daily and 3-4 times a week.

There are a couple of school of thoughts on the posting frequency-

Post 3-4 times a week.
Post daily

Before I give my thoughts on the two ,I would like to discuss the pros and cons of the two-

Pros and cons of posting 3-4 times a week-

I have been posting on this blog more or less with this frequency and I am better acquainted with the pluses and minuses of posting with this frequency.Let us take the pros first.

Well the plus with this is you are able to give more attention to your post.As a blogger the quality of content you write depends upon the time you give to your post and not on your writing skills.The biggest advantage thus, is ,you are able to produce quality content.

Secondly, your blog is free from the filler posts that people often post to cope up with the pressure of posting daily.

Thirdly,it doesn't takes away the charm and fun of blogging.You can't blog if you are living with constant insistence of posting daily.It will take away the fun and fascination of blogging.Your unwillingness will be mirrored in your posts and you will loose credibility.

Now let us talk about the cons of posting 3-4 times daily.One of my observations for past few months has been-
1)I get some subscribers when I post and I loose a few of them when i didn't post for next 2-3 days.
2)My blog ranks better in search engine rankings when I post and I loose the ranking when I am postless for next few days.

A visitor on your blog subscribes because he is crazy about the information or topic that you deliver through your posts.Since he is crazy about the topic he likes to be fed daily.Once you disappoint him he unsubscribes.Thus, the blog subscribership suffers.In my opinion , you can still build a subscribership with this rate but the growth rate would be low and thus, it will take long time to build huge readership.

Search engines like regularly updated contents on blogs and one of the determinants in ranking a blog is the update frequency.So, with this posting frequency you loose ranks in SERPs specially if you have a competitor who blogs daily.

Pros and Cons of posting daily-

Let us kick off to the pros first.Most of the bloggers advice to write daily.The reasons they give in support of this are-

Posting daily ensures you feed your subscribers daily and thus, satisfy them and also increase their numbers.
Daily posting schedule wins the love of search engines as search engines in general and google in particular love frequently updated blogs.
By writing daily you are able to increase the numbers of posts with good pace and more number of posts affect your pagerank in positive way.
You improve your writing skills as the most important tip to become a great blog writer is to post daily.

The cons of writing daily are-

The quality of content is affected.
You are not able to give more time on your posts.
Your blog may become a clutter of filler posts.
Most importantly the zest of blogging is lost as you have a constant pressure of blogging daily.

So, after telling so much about the posting frequency, I feel, you are baffled and going to ask me one simple question-

What should be the posting frequency on my blog?

Well, I am not the one who can answer this question for you as the answer differs for different blogs and different blogger.But certainly I can help you in answering this question.Your decision on blogging frequency should be driven by asking certain question to yourself-

What your blog is about?- A blog which delivers news on it will certainly have a high posting frequency and a blog that covers very small niche will have a smaller frequency.
Have you got an idea or you are posting just to meet the demand of posting?-I have seen bloggers posting short posts just because they have to post.The result is they produce a low quality content having no value and make their blog a directory of filler posts.
Have you worked sufficiently on the post or you are posting it when it is still raw?- One of the things I have noticed on many blogs is ,they produce uncrafted content.The imperfection comes out because they haven't worked on the post and they believe they should post daily.

My final opinion on posting frequency-

In my opinion posting frequency doesn't matter if it is not too low or too high.
What actually matters is the quality of content.If you can produce quality content everyday it is good but if you can't it is fine to have a lesser frequency of 3-4 posts a week.Give the time your post deserves and never post fillers on your blog.

The best way of driving traffic to blogs

2008-06-06T01:33:00.007+05:30

Image by ocean.flynn via FlickrToday one of my reader emailed me asking the best way to drive traffic for blog.His exact email was like this-

"Blogs like any other website get traffic from either search engines or referring sites (Other blogs + Forums) or social bookmarking sites like Stumble upon. What do you think is the best way to drive traffic to blogs? On which means a blogger should particularly focus upon?"

After reading this mail i was a bit befuddled as all three methods has its own importance and to choose one of them as best is certainly going to be a tough ask. Earlier I thought to reply him saying all these method are important and you should focus on all the three.But then I thought to answer him through one of the post with comprehensive details of each of these three methods of driving traffic to blog.

Driving traffic through search engines-

Driving traffic through search engines is free if you optimize your blog yourself.All you need is basic concept of organic search engine optimization.Even if you don't know ABCD of optimization you can learn it on the net. I am a health care professional and learnt a fair bit of optimization on the net.My point is if I can learn it probably anybody on this earth can learn it.

Secondly, traffic from search engines is laser targeted if you have researched your keywords and used it smartly.Through google analytics I have found that people coming to my blog through search engines spend a fair bit of time on my blog.

The only con I see in search engines is it takes some time to rank high in SERPs.You have to optimize each and every page and build links which certainly is not a one day process.Most of the times it takes several months to rank high in search engines if you are not applying some black hat SEO.(which I think you would not be applying)

Driving traffic through referring sites-

Number of visitors coming from other blogs and forums constitutes the second best source of traffic after search engines for this blog. This traffic is also targeted and most of the times they do return and comment.But to get traffic from this means you have to endlessly comment on other blogs and forums which is certainly not suited for a part time blogger like me.But if you have got some time this can be the single best source of traffic for you.Ten comments a day will be suffice.

Driving traffic through social bookmarking and media sites-

Today this mode of traffic generation is being talked highly.But frankly speaking I am quite disappointed with the quantity and quality of traffic I am getting from these sites.Stumble upon gives some visitors to my blog.But most of the times they spent only a few seconds on my blog.The average time a visitor from stumble upon has spent is 11 secs. which is certainly not assuring.

In my opinion traffic from social sites are absolute garbage.They are like swarm of bees that come to you and never visit again without watching what you have to offer.The only use of such traffic ,as I see, is in beautifying your traffic stats.

Although I am not only one who will tell against social media but still there are some folks who get some quality traffic from this media but they are very few.

Some additional points-

The biggest challenge that you get while driving traffic is when you have just started your blog, as a new blog has neither a high search engine rankings nor it gets purchase from social media.In this case comments on other blogs are the only source of traffic.I know that will not be the huge amount of traffic but every traffic you get will keep you motivated.Just add some useful comments on every blog that comes your way when you are new.

Once you start getting some traffic from search engines you can relax a bit and keep your comment rate down.

All these three methods work in conjunction but to choose the best one from these is certainly difficult.The best practice would be to monitor your analytics and see what works best for you.For me and most others search engines work best if you optimize the pages cleverly.

Unique way of building links- I can bet you don't know about it

2008-06-04T00:21:00.007+05:30

Most of the bloggers will tell you to comment on other blogs and forums and submit your blog to directories to build links.There are many other ways they usually talk about.I know these are very effective ways of building links for your blog. But problems with building links this way are-

Often you get a 'no follow' links specially if you are commenting on other blogs to build links.(Most of the blogs now use 'no follow' in comments) Many of the directories also befool you by using either 'no follow' or robot.txt.
You can build links for your homepage and other 2-3 pages only.Most of the directories don't allow inner pages and in forums you can only leave 1-4 links in your signature.

Now what you are going to learn here in this post is an unique way of building links. By using this technique you will be able to build links for any no. of pages (even all of your posts) and most importantly it will be 'do follow'. So, stick yourself with your seat as you are going to discover a very unique way of building links.

I discovered this technique only a week ago and felt I should share it with my readers.Actually this technique makes use of google docs and spreadsheets.Confused !! I can guess you are..... OK let me explain the things in a bit more detail.

First of all log into google docs using google account.If you don't have a google account you can open an account here for free.Once you log in to google docs the page looks something like this-

(click to enlarge the image)

Using the 'new' button on the top left corner (as indicated by a red arrow in image) you can make a new document, spreadsheet or a presentation.You can write anything relevant in your document. You can make a list of your posts, you can make a list of your top posts , you can describe your blog or even write a short post there.While preparing your document embed your blog's link or your post's link in the document. Once you finish preparing the document you can publish it as a webpage.Look at the picture below-

(Click to enlarge the image)

In the image above, you can see my spreadsheet which contains a list of RSS directories.In the right side you can see the 'publish as webpage' button under 'Share' (encircled in red and indicated by a red arrow).Once you publish your document it is published at a unique url.My document can be seen here.This document now behaves in exactly the same way as other webpage.

So, just make a document with some of the links from your blog.Publish it and congrats you have built some links for your blog.Make more documents daily and see the links building for your blog.Isn't this cool.

The best part is the links will be 'do follow' (I have checked this and found no 'no follow' tags)

There are many other websites similar to google docs.Just google it and you will get a number of these sites.You can use any of them or all of them.
Happy linking!!!

Tips to incease blog subscribership

2008-05-28T04:47:00.005+05:30

The number of subscribers your blog gets is the measure of your success as a blogger.If you have good no. of subscribers you are successful.This is why every blogger is quite serious of increasing the blog readership.Infact , you are reading this article because you also are quite serious to increase your blog subscribership.OK , I promise I will not let you down.In this post I will talk about some very good tips to increase blog readership/subscribership.I will not present you with a list of tips that other blogging guides do.Instead I will first tell you about the basics about how and why people subscribe and only then I will come up with my tips.

How and why people subscribe to a blog?

Most of the people surf the net because they are in hunt of some information.If your blog provides the information, they subscribe.But from hunting for information to becoming a subscriber, visitors pass through certain steps which you should understand to increase your subscribership.I have depicted these steps in the following picture-
The three steps that people pass before subscribing are-

Finding your blog or feed- How can a person subscribe to your feed if he is not able to find your blog or your feed at first place.
Reading your content- A visitor subscribes only if he/she reads your content and likes it.
Finding the subscription button- Once a visitor likes your content he will try to find out the subscription button to subscribe to your blog's feed.

The tips I am going to tell you in the following paragraphs revolve around these three points.

Tips to increase blog subscribership-

1) Make your blog and feed more visible-

While there are too many blogs including this one which tells you about making your blog more visible but there are very few which will tell you to make your feed more visible.A blog can be made more visible by search engine optimization, commenting on other blogs and forums, and networking with other bloggers.

To make your feed more visible-

Submit your blog's feed to feed directories- You can find a list of feed directories here. Just submit your feed url to all of these directories.This will make your feed more visible to others on the net.
Make sure autodiscovery feature is working- Autodiscovery makes it easy for feed aggregators and websurfers to automatically find your feed and subscribe to it.You only need to put a html code to enable this feature.The details for enabling feed autodiscovery can be found here.
Leave the link of your feeds url in forums and comments-I have seen many bloggers leaving their feed's url in their signature.I am not sure how much does it works because I don't do this but many bloggers tell to leave feed's url in the signature.

2) Produce original and quality content-

I am sick of telling this in almost every post I write.The reason I always talk about content is because it is the soul of your blog.Without content your blog is dead.Furthermore, Visitors will subscribe only when you provide a solid reason to subscribe.And the solid reason is the quality content.

3) Make the subscription button more visible to visitors-

Visitors can become subscribers only when they are able to find the subscription button on your blog.If you have placed the button in some corner of your blog which is barely seen then probably you are losing many many visitors per day.To make your subscription button more visible-

Use a large sized orange button for subscription. People are accustomed of watching an orange button for rss feeds.So, always use a large orange button and not of other colours. A different coloured button may go unnoticed.
Place button on the top of the sidebar and below each of your post- Again people are habituated of seeing orange button on the top of sidebar and below posts.If they wish to subscribe they will go on to see these places first.So, place it there.

4) Facilitate subscribing-

Apart from the tips I have discussed above you have to take care of other factors like, encouraging your visitors to subscribe. Explain RSS feeds to your visitors who don't have an idea what it means.And give some incentives to the visitors who subscribe.I have seen many bloggers giving away ebooks to the subscribers.Some bloggers profess to cut off the steps to subscribe to minimum.All these strategies work quite well.

Increasing blog subscribership is not an overnight process.It is an ongoing process. Focus on producing a quality content and make subscription easy.Encourage your visitors to subscribe and do talk to them every now and then and you will see subscribers rolling in to your blog.
All the best !!!!

Grab your visitors attention or lose them forever

2008-05-26T08:12:00.007+05:30

Image via WikipediaI will start this post with a small question. What is the use of huge traffic when it can't be transformed into readers or subscribers?For most of bloggers such traffic has little or no use.For transforming visitors into readers you need to grab their attention first.That is why getting hold of visitors attention is more important than getting visitors alone.In this post I will talk of ways to grab attention of your blog visitors.

I have been interacting with regular internet users for quite sometime and based on the conversation with them I came to know about following points-

Most of the visitors are focussed on information and benefits while surfing.Everytime they reach a page they will ask a question- What is there for me on this page?,or How I will be benefitted by reading this page?
Most of the internet users seek advice from professionals or experts of their field?

My point of telling all this is, if you are able to convince your visitors that you have useful information and you are an expert in your field, you will catch hold of their attention.Now, million dollar question is, How can I tell visitors that I have great information and I am expert? I find three ways to grab attention of visitors-

By writing a 'killing' title/headline-

If there is one thing on your blog that is always read by each of your visitors then it is your title.So,write title in such a way that it clearly answers the questions-

What information is there on your blog?
How visitors will be benefitted from this information?

If your title contains the answer of these two questions you will surely be able to gain attention of your visitors.

By using interesting images on the top of your post-

Sometimes images speak louder than the words. The role of an interesting image in grabbing attention is invaluable.

Just take an example-

I found this image on one of the blogs while surfing.Actually I stopped and read whole of the post after watching this because this picture looked so interesting to me.So, you can just see the value of images in grabbing attention.But to really get some purchase from images you have to place an engrossing and relevant image.

By blog design-

A beautiful , unique design can make your blog stand out of the crowd of millions.After talking to hundreds internet users I came to know that people on the net access the expertise of a blogger by the design of the blog.This is especially true if they have to make a decision in few seconds.

Although I feel it is insane to judge expertise of a person by blog design but since most of your visitors have this kind of attitude ,so, you have to live with it as a blogger.

Attracting your visitors attention is important as it will convert a lot of your visitors into readers and even subscribers.A great content has got no meaning if it is not being read and grabbing attention of your visitors ensures that your content is read.

10 super tips to write better content on blogs

2008-05-22T22:36:00.005+05:30

As a blogger much of your success depends upon quality of your content. You will be appreciated if you are writing original and quality content otherwise you will fail miserably.This is the reason why content is called king.In this post I will talk about ten powerful tips to generate awesome content on your blog.

I will not preach about making things scannable or making your significant point bold or other stuff that is widely discoursed in every blogging guide.Instead I will talk of some slap-up points to make your content better.

1) Recognize your audience-

Just ask yourself, Who your audience will be? Or, for whom you are writing? Whether you are writing for newbies or intermediates or savvys .Plan your content once you answer this question.

2) Use colourful verbs in place of tired overused verbs-

Verbs are like condiments. Just like condiments add flavour to food, verbs flavour the content.And once you flavour your content blog visitors will relish it.Let us take an example- Take a look at following sentences-

"The whole SEO is such complex that sometimes I get confused."

"I am perplexed due to intricate nature of SEO."

Both these sentences mean the same thing but in later case the verb 'confused' (no doubt an overused verb) has been replaced by more attractive verb 'perplexed'. Also, see the word 'complex' has been replaced by more appealing word 'intricate'.

Where can I get colourful verbs from?

Now this is a question which needs to be answered. Well just download a thesaurus from internet.They are available for free , just google it and get it. Thesauruses contain list of synonyms.What you have to do is to identify overused verbs and replace them with vibrant synonymous verbs.

3) Use active voice rather than passive voice-

The benefits of using active voice is that subject comes first and some worthless words are chopped off.Take an example-

"John killed Michael" (active voice)

"Michael was killed by john" (passive voice)

In this example, the subject 'John' comes first and and useless words 'was' and 'by' were cut-off by using active voice.

4) Write 'you' centred content and not 'I' centred-

Although it is not possible to use 'you' focussed content everytime but use it most of the times in your content.You focussed content makes your discussion personal with your blog readers.

Example of 'I' focused sentence- "I will provide you with latest information about blogging on this blog."

Example of 'you' focused sentence- "You will get latest information about blogging on this blog."
Now just judge which statement looks better to you.

5) Don't write useless sentences and words-

I have seen some bloggers talking about their pets, or girlfriend or running nose on their blog.Don't do this.These things doesn't matters to your visitors.Visitors come to any blog in search of information and not to know about your running nose.

Your every sentence should either be an information or an elaboration of an information.

6) Don't preach, demonstrate-

Preaching is like muttering a confounding theory without proofs of whether it will work or not.While demonstration is backed by some solid facts ,citations or images. Evidencing your facts makes you much trustworthy.So, make your points backed by some solid facts, citations and images from trustworthy sources.

7) Be personal while interacting through your content-

Write as if you are talking to your readers.Think how would you have talked with your friend on a particular topic? Use the same sentences as you have used while conversation with your friend.(often with some refinement)

8) Break longer sentences into two-

Longer sentences look clumsy and are often hard to understand. So, break longer sentences into two easily digestible sentences.

9) Be simple and clear-

If you close your eyes, can you visualize the idea behind every sentence? Is every sentence as tangible and concrete as possible? If you can’t wrap your arms around your message, neither can your readers. Rework sentences to ensure they’re clear and concrete.

If you’re struggling to explain a technical or abstract concept, grab a pencil and sketch it. This exercise forces you to simplify and distill your idea and may spark helpful ways to present the concept to your readers.

10) Be a ruthless editor-

Writers often fall in love with their own words.But be ruthless with your words.Cut words, sentences and even an entire paragraph if they are not needed or otherwise not in good shape.Sometimes you may have to delete your entire post and start afresh. But if you are not satisfied with your own writing your readers will not be either.So, just cut cut and cut untill you are satisfied.

Check for grammatical and spelling mistakes. Nothing hurts you more than a bunch of grammatical and spelling mistakes.So, be in the hunt of mistakes while editing your content.

Writing better content for blogs is a time consuming process and needs a lot of motivation. But once you are able to keep spirits up you can be a better writer of blogs. Earlier it takes much time to write a content but as you go on writing the process will become a bit easier and less time taking.

How to Master the art of of Comment making on blogs?

2008-05-16T23:26:00.006+05:30

Is your blog not getting the traffic you have expected? Are you getting occasional or no comments on your blog? Are you blogging without being noticed? If your answer to these questions is 'yes' then probably you have not mastered the art of commenting or haven't commented on blogs at all.

I myself have been a kind of blogger who doesn't care of commenting on other blogs because of time constraints. I started commenting only recently and I can see the results coming as a spike in my blog traffic. Also I have been able to come closer to some of the bloggers of my niche.

I have noticed that not all comments translate into traffic or relationship. But there are some specific types which bring in more traffic and buzz than others.Based on my own experience and after talking to some of the bloggers I have come up with a list of some tips to master the art of commenting which I will discuss in paragraphs that follows.

Be an eager participant rather than just a comment maker-

An eager participant adds value to the post and injects some useful thoughts into the post through his comments. And one who is just a comment maker will write one-liners like, "Great post" or "hey! visit my site example.com" or something similar having no value.These sort of comment do more harm than benefit in long run.It is better not to comment if you have no ideas or thoughts. Commenting just to make comments doesn't help in anyway.

Treat Your comments like very short posts-

Yeah !! Comments are not just thoughts they are actual content and may contain some valuable information like actual blogposts. Just think, if you have to write 5-10 lines on a topic on your own blog what those lines would be? Those 5-10 lines you think off is your comment.Of course, the information you deliver through those lines should be unique.

Remember the words that has come before your eyes million times- 'Content is King'. Producing quality content will boost your blog's reputation no matter whether you are pouring it in your blog or somewhere else through comments.

Don't cross the fine line between being critical and being harsh-

Different people have different views or opinions on a topic. As a blogger I would love to get some critical comments simply because they add a different angle of perception on topic. Most of the bloggers I know don't mind critical comments either.

But criticism should be constructive and should be done in a humble way. Don't bash the blog author with aggressive words.Be polite while presenting your angle.While criticising a point or post as a whole make sure you support your views with some solid facts and citations. A poorly supported critic may bounce back on you and hurt your reputation as a blogger.

Try to build relationship with blog author and readers-

Much of the bloggers success depends on his/her potential to build relationships.Although there are many techniques to build relationship but the best I reckon is to get a bit personal in your conversation.The more personal you become the more chances are there that you will get closer.Be helping and expect or demand nothing in return.

Make your comments stand out of others-

OK you have poured in a great piece of advice or information in your comment but what if it doesn't get noticed.The whole effort will go in vain. Most blog readers read a few comments and then skip others.This is particularly true if a post contains a large number of comments.Let us suppose there are 100 comments on a particular post.Now the readers will not be able to notice all of them if you are not making your comments stand out.

Most of the blogs allow certain html tags ,like, bold, italic etc. Just make your important points bold. Things written in bold can draw the attention of readers as they are easily visible stand out of the things written in normal text.

I think comments are the most potent way of building relationships and network, the most vital thing to become successful blogger. Unlike social bookmarking sites comments help you drive targeted traffic and that is why I think every blogger should learn the art of commenting.

If you have anything to add or otherwise anything to share on the topic you can let me know through comments.I will be more than happy to hear from you.

How To Make Money Using RSS Feeds ?

2008-05-15T14:23:00.002+05:30

RSS, (Really Simple Syndication) has become so popular today and is being referred to by internet users as "Pull" Technology rather than "Push" Technology.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone who logs on to the Internet has not heard of "Spam." Most, If not all Internet users are inundated with these
advertisements, that we did not ask for or request.

For those of you that may not be familiar with the term, rest assured we're not talking about canned meat here. LOL! Rather, it is unwanted advertising from people that we neither asked for or requested to recieve. Spam is "Push" technology. "Pushed" in your face and inbox, wanted or not.

Many believe this brand of "Push" technology is or will be, the death of email. Yet, as long as there are individuals and companies that continue to use the illegal spam process, email will be around for
a long long time. The irony being, companies are raking in millions, selling spam solutions, to people and big corporations, that are Not Working!

RSS, is the Total Opposite of the above "Push" technology. When subscribing to an RSS Feed, subscribers "Pull" information into their RSS Readers and can only be done so if someone voluntarily subscribes to a particular RSS Feed. If they find it's not the information they want, they can simply unsubscribe and never have to recieve another message from the owner of that particular feed. Hence the term "Pull" Technology.

Utilizing RSS "Pull" technology has become a popular source of income for webmasters that use RSS Feeds on their websites. Here's How:

Let's say, you set up a one page mini-site or you could even set up a Blog. A Blog would be a quick and easy
alternative.

You can then host ads from either Google Adsense or the New Yahoo look alike Google Ads. When someone visits
your page and clicks one of your ads, You Get Paid.

If you've followed along and done the steps above, you've created a good starting place. You're going to need to
make sure your pages are optimized properly. This will ensure you get your page ranked high in the search engines.
Like any site or page, the more targeted traffic you get, greater are the chances that someone will click your ads.
Which increases your Income.

Now, by using the power of RSS you increase your pages earning potential. When you add an RSS Feed
to your page, you convert it into an ever changing, dynamic web page. Bringing you an abundance of visitors who, in all probability will return to read it.

Especially if you add 10 or 15 RSS Feeds to your page. You will create a dynamic, ever changing, self updating page. Providing valuable content that readers will want to read, over and over again.

Any web page can be turned into a dynamic web page. Just use the free RSS creator software called "Carp" This is one of the most popular free versions and can be downloaded here: http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

After you set the program up on your website and added the proper code to your website, then you will
need to collect RSS feeds that relate to the topic of your web page.

You've got your web page, It's topic is about writing articles. Go to Google News, Get their RSS Feed Code, Insert it into the designated Carp Coding, then make the necessary changes found below: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=writing+articles&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

Same with Topix.net, adjust the code like this: http://rss.topix.net/search/?q=writing+articles&xml=1

Once you've got your web page uploaded, It will automatically pull in fresh content from Google and Topix about writing articles.

Do these things for any web page and watch your search engine ranking soar and also your Income!