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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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5 Steps to Increasing Your Blog Comments

Filed Under Bloggy Questions, Comments, Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

by
Virginia Cunningham

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You’ve created a blog, made a few posts, maybe even installed some ads for the extra income. You’re locked and loaded to take the Internet by storm. But where are all the comments? Where is the dedicated audience breathlessly hanging on your every word?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to succumb to the tumbleweeds just yet. If you’re eager for more fans, here are five steps to increasing your blog comments.

1. Comment On Other Blogs

Before anything else, you need to establish your presence in your field. This is most easily achieved by commenting on other blogs and making a name for yourself as someone worth listening to. By making smart, funny and helpful comments on other blogs, readers will be interested enough to follow you back to your own.

2: Respond To Comments

No one likes to be ignored, and if your commenters feel like they’re shouting into an empty void, they become much less likely to comment in the future. To gain (and keep) an active community of followers, you’ll need to make a habit of responding to their comments. Answer their questions. Suggest new tech. Outsource their problems if you have to. Regardless of the content, just make sure their comments don’t go unnoticed. They’ve taken time out of their lives to comment on your blog; the least you can do is offer them the same courtesy.

3. Create A Community

It’s basic psychology: people like to belong. Take advantage of this by turning your commenting pool into a community – a place with its own language and lingo, a place where people can build friendships and swap stories without feeling out of place. If something happens to one of your followers, spotlight it. If you think two people would really get along, mention it. Make introductions among your followers. Create memes. Reference inside jokes in your updates. When new visitors feel the urge to “fit in,” you’ll know you’re doing it right.

4. Ask For Opinions

The best thing that can happen to any blog is a lively debate, so inspire some passion by soliciting the opinions of your followers. Make polls, ask leading questions (“what do you guys think?”) and encourage the most vocal of your readers. Don’t be afraid to touch on scandalous topics, because those often create the most heated (and long-running) exchanges.

5. Be Interesting

What makes you comment on a blog? What pushes you from a mere reader to an active participant in an exchange of ideas? It wouldn’t have happened if the blog wasn’t interesting or engaging enough to merit your response.

To this extent, if you want comments, you just have to be a good blogger. You need to be active, interesting, and well-informed in your field. Your post should be entertaining and relevant. Your comments should be smart and useful.

Simply put, if you want more comments on your blog, make your blog worth commenting on.
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Author’s Bio: Virginia Cunningham is a freelance technology writer based in Los Angeles, California. She currently blogs about id security, social media and gadgets.


Thank you, Virginia! Engagement is always a noble quest.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Why Working Bloggers Should Hire a Personal Accountant

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | Leave a Comment

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Blogging is a great way to make extra income or to work from home. You get to set your own hours, write about what interests you, and control your earnings potential. However, this type of work does not make you immune from tax responsibility. No matter how much you make blogging, and no matter if blogging is your primary job or just something you do on the side, you will have to report your earnings and pay taxes on them.

Before you get out your tax forms and start filing yourself, consider these reasons why you should hire an accountant to help you instead:

You Have a Greater Responsibility

There are many overlooked benefits to working for someone else — namely, that a corporate employer pays payroll and social-security taxes on your behalf. If you earn more than $400 a year from your blogging work, you are considered “self-employed,” and you will have to pay your own payroll taxes and a self-employment tax. Depending on the type of work you do and how much you earn, you may have other tax obligations. An accountant can help you understand all of your responsibilities and ensure that you are being compliant with the law.

Deductions are Available

You know how so many large companies and the millionaires who run them are able to minimize the amount of taxes they pay? They hire accountants to help them find deductions. You can do the same.

Working for yourself entitles you to a number of deductions, which may include your cell phone bill, Internet service, computers and other equipment, part of your rent, items to give away on your blog, and more. An accountant can educate you about all the deductions to which you are entitled and help you minimize your tax obligation, helping you to keep more of your earnings.

Small Business Guidance

Accountants have expertise in the tax code and can offer guidance about the intricate laws that govern small businesses. If you hire an accountant, you can get advice about best business practices as you grow. For example, you may learn that you need to improve your record-keeping practices, or maybe you’ll learn that buying a computer with energy-saving technology can entitle you to credits. Not only will an accountant help you shape the best tax situation in the current year, but he or she can also help you ensure the best financial health of your business going forward.

Audit Advice

Did you overlook reporting earnings one year? Or did you incorrectly report some deductions? If previous reporting errors have resulted in an audit, an accountant can offer you advice on dealing with the IRS and on what your rights and responsibilities are. An audit can result in serious fines and other legal trouble. Hiring an accountant can ensure that you have someone working with you to fight for your interests and minimize the repercussions. If you hire an accountant to help you file your taxes, you are usually entitled to free assistance if an audit of that tax year is conducted.

No matter how much money you make blogging, you are required to report your earnings to the IRS and to pay the appropriate taxes. An accountant can offer you guidance and expertise to minimize your tax responsibility while still ensuring that you are in compliance with all the rules and regulations regarding your business.

__________
Author’s Bio:
Heather Green is a freelance writer for several regional magazines in North Carolina as well as a resident blogger for onlinenursingdegrees.org. Her writing experience includes fashion, business, health, agriculture and a wide range of other topics. Heather has just completed research on health care admin degrees and online physical therapy aide degrees

Thank you, Heather!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

Filed Under Successful Blog, Writing | Leave a Comment

The Key is Know What You Want to Say

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Recently someone told me that he’s been trying to write a a blog post for almost a week now and every time he tired he ended deleting it.

“Everything I write sounds like a valley girl talking to alien first grader. Nothing makes sense. It’s all over the place.”

“What is it that you want to say?”

He started at me and then admitted, “I don’t know.”

It’s hard to write clearly if you don’t know what you want to say.

Try constructing an idea like a three-course meal.

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

If you think of an article or a presentation as a fine meal, the middle is the main course. That’s where the fine dining is. It’s the centerpiece. The entree takes the longest time and the most care. The executive chef is the one who plans it and prepares it. Put your best effort there–where it counts.

So decide what you’ll be serving as the key part of the meal first thing.

Gather the thoughts and proofs that will make the message of your post or presentation delicious to take in. Once you’ve got that underway, you can choose the appetizer and the dessert.

Maybe you’ll whet the audience’s appetite with a story that brings them to the problem you’re soliving or a question that you’ll answer fully in a very satisfying ending. Take the time to see how the beginning and end compliment each other to tie all together.

In this manner …

There’s added value in presenting your information as a three-course article. Starting in the middle establishes a clear structure that’s easy to follow. It frees your audience to concentrate on the information that reveals your story and shows your expertise.

How do you structure your blog posts and your presentations?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Engagement: Five Keys to Get People Inside What You Write

Filed Under Successful Blog, Writing | 27 Comments

You Already Know This

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After decades of print publishing, writing publicly was never a big deal for me. I didn’t have a shy moment about my first blog post. I still consider it fine writing. I did watch my stats to see whether anyone read it. Waited days on end for my first comment from someone I didn’t know.

But I was surprised to find the difference of having an audience show up soon after I wrote.
And there was the difference in how they responded.
When I’d been in publishing, people responding had always been responding from a work point of view.
This responding to ideas because they were important, interesting, thought-provoking, or intriguing was something new.

People were connecting by what they said.
Minds were meeting in what they typed and what they read.

It was different than print.

Words like conversation and community took on new meaning.
We explored what they meant.

It was different from print.

I began observing, testing, asking, listening, and learning.
Yet the more I started trying, less I was succeeding.

Then, I came face to face with the answer in a short note someone wrote on his own blog about my writing. He said my blog posts were so well written the only response he could come up with was “beautiful job.”

The blog posts I’d been writing were full, finished, final and composed.
There wasn’t much room for anyone to participate in them.

I began observing, testing, asking, listening, and learning again. What I learned were four keys to keeping the conversation open. These won’t surprise or stun you. You already know them. They’re what we all do when we talk to any person we value.

Do these four things and you’ll find people getting inside what you’re writing.

  1. Come down from the podium. Talk to your audience like a people who can listen. Let them be as smart as you are, even when they don’t know what you do.

  2. Don’t tie things up with a bow. Leave what you say a little unfinished. Don’t try so hard to ferret out everything on your bulleted list. Don’t ask and answer every question. Then your audience has room to add a word in. When a talking person fills in every idea and detail before anyone else talks, that’s called a speech. The response becomes applause or an awful silence.

  3. Blog your experience. Information is everywhere, but your experience of that information is unique and interesting. People respond to what you share that’s you. I don’t have to see myself responding the way you would for what you say to resonate.

  4. Care about what you’re saying. Care so much that you write without hesitation, without apology. Don’t shy away from the true north of what it means to you. Anything less is too complicated and makes me nervous for you. If you don’t care enough to put yourself into it, why would I care enough to read it?

  5. Make the ending satisfying and about them. Let them know again why they care about what they just read. If you end with a question, think about what you’re asking. Could you answer it? What sort answer are you expecting? As a reader would you take time to answer it?

Nothing stunning. It’s remembering that the people reading are people who want to connect with us not people who want to grade our papers. It all gets easier when we remember to let people be part of what we’re writing.

Have you found things get easier when you focus on the people reading?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

The Grinch Who Stole Blogging Past

Filed Under Bloggy Questions | 1 Comment

As your business winds down 2011 and looks forward to a fresh start, it is likely to review company practices for the past 12 months to see what worked, what did not work, and what flat out needs changing in 2012.

If your company blogs for its customers now is as good time as any to review the material you put out there for clients and others, seeing what is resonating with those who may end up putting money in your pocket.

In the event your company blog is getting little or no traffic at all, perhaps you can relate to those poor people down there in “Whooville,” those same folks who are targeted every year at this time by none other than The Grinch.

You see, The Grinch doesn’t like happy things, one of which is a productive company blog that drives traffic to your Web site, increasing the chances of selling your products and/or services.

So how can you outsmart The Grinch at his own game?

Well, you need to:

Your company’s blog can be the envy of many other businesses if you devote the right time and resources to it.

Heck, even The Grinch would smile about that.

Photo credit: holderbaum.educationextras.com

Dave Thomas, who covers among other items home-based jobs, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

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