Successful Blog

“The Secret” for Bloggers

by

You’ve heard of The Secret, the system that applies the laws of attraction to fulfill your wildest dreams?

Basically, you write down or make a tangible representation of your goals and then let your subconscious mind do the work of drawing those things into your life.

I do think there is magic in documenting your dreams, but I have a slight twist on The Secret that I’d like to share.

Step 1: What do you want?

Make a list of all the wonderful things you’d love to happen for your blog. For example:

  • 20 comments per post
  • 100 social shares
  • TV interviews or appearances
  • Asked to guest post for influential blogs
  • Linked from other blog sites
  • Listed in top blogs roundups
  • More than 200 subscribers

Step 2: Give it generously.

Start doing all of those things for bloggers you admire. Sincerely get out there and comment, share, ask them to guest post for you. Ask them to do a video interview on your blog. Write a big list of bloggers you feel need more attention. Subscribe to new blogs.

Then watch what happens.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Twitter as @rhogroupe

How to Write and Get Your Work Published

by

By Alisha Webb

Many people feel as though they have a story in them, or simply the innate ability to get an important message out there, but the majority don’t really know how to go about doing this. Here are some tips as to how.

getting published

The yearning

Writing is in your blood, at least it should be if you feel like you have something to say that you would like to get published. If it’s not in you, then it can be the hardest thing in the world to push and so perhaps you shouldn’t even begin to try. If you feel that it is there, however, but you don’t know how to let it out, then this might be the right place for you.

Writing cannot be learned in the same way that you used to read your textbooks at school in order to fill you in on the parts that you weren’t sure of in your English literature exams. It can, of course, be studied, but the dedication and need to get published goes a long way past any kind of formal training.

Routine

From afar, writing might seem like some romantic pastime; a passionate, instinctive practice that soars through the writer and forces itself onto the page. In an ideal world this would be true and it would also be very easy. Unfortunately, this type of gift is a very rare one and the vast majority of all writers really have to force themselves to put the words on the page. The double misfortune is that those words often just do not want to come and instead you are left staring at an empty page.

Once you have accepted that the words do not always, or even often, flow like water, it is essential that you designate a part of your life to writing. You name the time, as this is preferably done daily, and then you eradicate everything else from your life during that time. This is not a magic trick that will unleash your natural powers, there still will be many hours sat alone and wordless, but this 100% commitment to your work on a daily basis is of paramount importance if you really hope to eventually succeed.

Admit your imperfections

A big predicament many writers find themselves in is that they are unable to ever finish the work they have started. It is very easy to fall into the trap of being incapable of letting your work go. You must admit that nothing will ever be perfect and know when is the right time to call it a day on a certain piece of work. If you don’t do this you run the risk of getting stuck in a rut which you can’t move on from. It is much better to have two or three “finished” pieces of work that you are not completely happy with rather than dwelling needlessly over one that will never get finished. Even the great novels that you read at school would be tweaked by their authors if they were able to go back to them now. Accept that yours is not everything you hoped for and move onto the next one that you promise will be better.

Read

You cannot operate in a vacuum. If you want to get published you need to be aware of the places where your finished work could find a home. Being aware of what is out there and sending these people your work often helps you make initial connections that will prove more fruitful in the future. This is an essential part of the process. Reading other people’s work can give you the confidence to see that there is a market for the material you yourself are looking to write.

Do not fear rejection

Sending out your first piece of work to an editor can be the most nerve wracking thing in the world. You have laboured over this piece of material for hours and now you have to let somebody tell you that it isn’t any good. You have to be ready for rejection. It is likely that you will be knocked back many more times than you are accepted, but this is all a part of the real learning process. Never take praise or criticism personally and be thankful for all and any of the comments that you get. The flutter you feel in your stomach when you see an email or a letter come back to you from an editor is one of the best feelings in the world. Remember that this feeling comes before you know whether the answer is a positive or negative. It really doesn’t matter all that much. If you are a true writer, you will carry on regardless, and one fine day they will be writing English literature textbooks that include your own work.

Good luck.

Author’s Bio: Alisha is a British writer working out of Barcelona and a content developer at York Notes; you can connect with her on Twitter.

Book Review: Born to Blog, by Mark W. Schaefer and Stanford A. Smith

by

Were you “born to blog?”

Born to Blog came along at a critical point for me. Last week, I was seriously considering shuttering my own blog, weighed down by a perceived lack of traffic, unclear purpose, and minimal comments.

But then I picked up this book, and read:

“It takes time to find your voice, to connect with your audience, to learn how to appropriately build and promote your blog, and to write in a manner that connects with busy readers.”

It was the little bit of encouragement I needed to hear at that moment, and now instead of throwing in the towel, I’m going to refocus and keep going.

Born to Blog is a pithy little book co-written by two blogging powerhouses–Stanford Smith of Pushing Social and Mark Schaefer of {grow} blog. It’s written in a similar easy-to-grasp style as Schaefer’s previous hit, The Tao of Twitter.

You’ll find tips on the why and the how of blogging, both for business and pleasure. It’s a fun read, formatted with stories from both Mark and Stanford, and punctuated by “take action” highlights.

I strongly recommend it for blogging beginners as well as blogging veterans who want a quick refresher.

Key takeaways:

  • Let your business blog be an adventure story for your potential customers. Bring them along on your journey.
  • Start with the “minimum viable blog,” the content and platform that will get you to your goals the fastest.
  • Seek out the passionate learners to be your potential blog contributors.
  • “A blog’s strength flows from reader respect and trust.” Be honest and transparent if you’re planning to monetize the blog.
  • Invest time in analyzing and evaluating what is going right and what’s going wrong so that you can do course correction.
  • Personal blogs are different from business blogs; they need a different approach and strategy.
  • You never know when your words are having an impact!

Were you born to blog?

Note: I was not given a review copy of this book; my review is unsolicited and from the heart.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Why Automated Link Building is Bad For Your Business

by

By Rob James

A few years ago, it was common practice for businesses and Search Engine Optimisation marketers to use automated link building to increase links to their sites, with the aim of boosting a website’s PageRank in Google. However, with Google clamping down on “black hat” SEO strategies in their Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, automated link building isn’t going to do your business many favours; instead, it’s better to focus on “white hat” and organic SEO to get the most out of search.

Primarily, automated link building is all about quantity, whereby you run software and join directories to multiply the number of backlinks to your page – blog comments, and filling blogs with low quality repeated content could also enable a single website to generate large numbers of links. However, while this might be an effective method for building up a page’s ranking, automated link building is less invested in getting good quality links from relevant sites, and has been increasingly punished by Google.

The main problem that Google has with automated link building is that it can effectively represent a form of spam – multiple links from low quality sites, or spamming comments boards with links, and posting content with awkwardly placed content distorts the actual relevancy of a page for users. In this context, your business may have a high search ranking, but not one that’s necessarily made up of the right kinds of associations.

Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates were consequently designed to prevent PageRank, the main Google algorithm, from being manipulated. Panda has received 24 updates since February 2011, and crawls pages for low quality features and links to duplicate content – the emphasis with Panda is on duplicated and “thin” content, where the use of links isn’t contextually motivated, and closer to spam.

By comparison, Google Penguin, introduced in April 2012, comes down even harder on automated link building through directories – if you have a portfolio of links that are mostly from link farms and other low quality sites, then Penguin will ignore or rank these links as less relevant. It’s not perfect, but it means that Penguin is going to punish your ranking if you have too many links from low quality pages.

So, what kind of actions can you take to improve your SEO without automated link building? The most straightforward method is to focus on creating original content, and on getting high quality guest posts on blogs and pages that aren’t going to get singled out by Penguin – while there are ongoing questions about how effective Google can be at identifying the right pages to disregard, it’s clear that businesses will have to spend more time on creating great content.

It’s also important to optimise existing content and pages, and to ensure that your HTML and CSS on pages is clearly set up to ensure that they can be picked up by search engines; moreover, businesses can do their SEO a big favour by investing in social media content, which can be easily shared and recommended via social toolbars and buttons. The more organic links that you get from high ranking, trusted sites, the higher the chance will be that Google will increase the value of your own website.

Author’s Bio: Rob James is an online marketer and recommends DeepBlueSky web design to help you build a high quality site. In his spare time Rob can be found blogging about the many different linking techniques out there, which ones to apply, and which ones to avoid!

How to Stop the Content Scrapers

by

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Right?

Except when someone has done a wholesale ripoff of your creative idea or blog post.

For anyone who produces online content, it’s crucial to protect your assets.

Make Life Difficult for the Thieves

Alert the readers

It’s good practice to do spot checks on your best blog posts, to make sure they haven’t fallen victim to the “content scrapers” who ruthlessly roam the web looking for content to steal. Just go to Google’s Advanced Search and type the title (or a sentence) from your post in the “exact phrase match” box.

The silver lining for these automated scrapers is that they often take the whole post without a human reading it, so you can add a note to the end of the post that will notify readers of the original source (you’ll want to include a link to your actual site):

This post originally appeared on Rosemary’s Best Blog Site. If you’re not reading this via email or RSS feed from Rosemary’s Best Blog Site, it may have been stolen.

Check referring links

In your Google Analytics, look at your referred traffic periodically (you probably already do this). If you see anything suspicious, check the source.

Watermark

Any visual content you post, including photos and videos, should have your site name or logo watermarked on it. That way, even if it’s stolen, you’re getting credit. One option is an application like VisualWatermark.com.

Excerpts only

Try changing your RSS feed to excerpts only. The scrapers often like to use RSS feeds as a funnel for content; if you’re only sending excerpts, you’ve made their job much more difficult. The Advanced Excerpt plugin for WordPress is one way to do this.

How to Do a DMCA Takedown Request

Use a “whois” lookup to find out who the web host is for the site with your stolen content.

Most web hosts will have a DMCA form on their site for you to submit your claim. Click here to see Google’s copyright infringement form (if the content happens to be on a Google-hosted site like a Blogger blog).

Unfortunately, tracking down those who have stolen your content can be like a big game of “Whack-a-Mole.” But if you take precautions that make it harder for the scrapers to get your posts, maybe they’ll pass you by.

How have you dealt with the content thieves? Please share any special tips with us.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How to Build Interest (Part 2 in a Series): Honesty

by

By James Ellis

(This is Part 2; you can find Part One here.)

I recently flew to NYC (in a plane) and I was reminded of how bad air travel is. I used to be a full-time business traveler. I know plenty of business flyers. And the simple fact is that there is no such thing as a good airline.

Oh, there are people who work in airline companies who can, on occasion, do good things. But usually they don’t. They don’t care that your luggage went missing, that your guitar got smashed, that your child traveling alone never met the airline rep you paid to make sure your child got somewhere safely. On time means pushing off the jetway, not getting where you want to go. Customer satisfaction means you only feel semi-violated getting somewhere.

But I have a way of fixing modern airlines: Honesty.

The worst part about flying is the lying, the lack of understanding how passengers/cargo are treated, the gamesmanship, the arbitrary and hidden rules. You spend a few hundred dollars to be told you will be treated like kings and then get treated like traitors.

Marketing teams think that if they tell us the truth, no one will book tickets. But I disagree. I hate being told that two airlines are merging “for my convenience” and not to lower operations costs by 0.2%. I hate being told that it is time to board passengers in Group 3 when no one actually looks to see if I’m in Group 3. I hate that we all pretend that my iPad will cause the plane to crash if I turn it on during takeoff (um… the entire plane is an electronic device, people).

My new airline will simply be called SucksAir. At no point will any of the marketing lie. I will flat out say that the seats are cramped, there’s no food for free, the air as healthy as your average flu vaccine, the drink cart will mug anyone with an aisle seat, the pilot will always sound hopped up on Valium, and the in-flight entertainment will always be commercials. At no point will anyone who works at SucksAir ever treat any paying customer like a human being. Flights will be coming and going on a schedule closer related to a Roman orgy than a German train station.

Being honest is the unique selling proposition. You know that SucksAir is a crappy airline that just happens to get you where you want to go. No more, no less.

What if you were equally honest? Painfully honest. Brutally honest. About your industry, your customers and yourself. If you can’t be stand-up comedian honest in your blog, you should stop blogging.

What’s the fear? That everyone will realize that you’re making it all up as you go along? That you think some of your customers are idiots? That there are shysters in your industry who make a pretty good living? Trust me, we already know that. It might just be enlightening to hear you say it.

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.