With the torrent of data, tools and blog growth formulas out there it’s very easy for the average blogger to get bogged down and experience burnout as plans at the end of the day amount to zero. There needs to be a way to spend more time doing meaningful work and less time trying to figure things out. The starting point for achieving this will be learning how to use the data we acquire about our audience and niches efficiently; organizing and maximizing our days for best results. Dashboard tools are excellent for helping practically any practitioner make sense of their world. Here’s how:

Identify & Focus Only on What Matters

Referring to the Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule, for many activities, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. For example, 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients or 20% of your time produces 80% of your results. Therefore, it’s up to you to figure out what tasks fall within the 20% and pour your energy there. The rule applies to blogging as well and you need to determine, for example, whether sharing and outreach activities on Facebook in fact produce more meaningful results and referrals to your site than Twitter does. Or whether spending more time doing outreach and engaging your community is more powerful than trying to write 20 articles for the month instead of 5. You’d be surprised what you discover and as you find your answers this will be the starting point for organizing and investing in your daily activities.

As you make sense and reveal more of what will actually make your blog grow and strip away the unnecessary or less important tasks you’ll be closer to victory.

Making Sense of Data from Multiple Sources

As you narrow down your focus and discover clues to what works, it’s time to start collecting richer data, making better use of tools and develop a simplified method of tracking everything. There’s an unlimited supply of tools online like Moz, Google Analytics, GetResponse and Google Trends that provide powerful feature sets and rich data to power any marketing campaign. The problem typically lies in connecting all the data points together to form a useful and cohesive image of how all the pieces fit together to grow your blog. The human mind cannot visualize, summarize and make these connections entirely on its own and that’s where a service like Cyfe is great for piecing things together. Cyfe is an online dashboard and data visualization tool that allows its users to pull data from over 60 data sources to create custom useful and insightful graphs, tables, lists and other data presentation formats. One of the great features here is that through customizing your dashboard you can specifically pull exact pieces of information with the most meaning for your daily campaigns. For instance, you may want to only see data relating to time spent on site and exact pages being visited via Google Analytics in relation to the delivery of an email marketing campaign in real-time. The dashboard makes combining varied pieces of info to make a complete picture a possibility.

Example dashboard

Since we’re such visual consumers our brain absorbs visual data at a much better rate than simply plain text or a flood of raw data. Custom visualizations will help you make more sense of everything.

Monitor Campaigns in Real-time

Another powerful ability that dashboard tools will afford bloggers is real-time monitoring. While too much time shouldn’t be spent on monitoring but instead on action, custom dashboards will significantly cut the time it takes to login to multiple services and accounts to review campaign progress and performance metrics. Monitoring becomes much more meaningful as the relationship between all activities can be viewed in action with a great view of how everything works together to drive the blog forward.

Having a comprehensive view of all elements of your blog and marketing activities will in the end help you focus more on work that matters while understanding your niche. Goals and targets will prove so much more realistic and with greater impact as you witness all pieces of your online business work together as one.

The post How Bloggers Can Better Organize Activities & Targets by Using a Dashboard Tool appeared first on The Blog Herald.

With this explosion of volume in content being both produced and promoted, the web has gotten very noisy and average content for the most part is being ignored. Bloggers and other content producers will need to step their game up, recognizing and employing what’s proven to work along with a little tenacity to push the limits and status quo and try something new.

Keeping it simple, here are 5 key approaches you’ll need in your online marketing strategies.

Use Interactive Media or Be Ignored

Audio and visuals matter more than ever now, especially as more of the world gains access to stable high speed mobile internet; it’s become a standard. It’s all about getting into the minds of the user and the more you understand consumer psychology the more you can relate to your audience’s desires and what they respond to. The fact that photos make up 93% of the most engaging content on Facebook only reinforces this and is still driving huge success for marketers taking advantage of the platform regardless of the algorithmic changes that have recently impacted Facebook’s organic page reach. We are visual consumers, our food has to look good, our clothing has to be attractive and content online has to be entertaining and visually inviting for us to engage it.

In addition, due to our shrinking attentions spans, our brains consume images, video and audio at much faster rates than basic text.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Use attractive featured images for your blog articles that are appealing and express what the post is about.
2. Use images and graphs to represent statistics and other interesting information. That’s the reason infographics have done so well over the years at increasing traffic and engagement.
3. Make images and other media emotional

Genuine, Helpful & Emotionally Engaging

Think about what entices you about article headlines that make you want to click them and read further. You’ll discover that the content you often click on and engage with connects with you on an emotional level or is hard-hitting on a subject that matters most to you. To first get the message across to  attract readers, your headline has to achieve that emotional nudge or make an offer readers cannot refuse – something controversial, newsworthy or super useful that aims to solve commons problems towards adding significant value to your readers’ lives.

Check out this video by GoPro, great example of content that evokes an emotional response:

Then you’ll need to deliver on your promise or lose your reputation and your marketing efforts become stunted. If your post headline is offering something “Amazing!” then ensure that you’re honest with yourself first and your readers that it certainly is. If your content isn’t achieving this in this age readers will pass and your results will mainly be poor.

Mobile-friendly Content

Every social network and major website is positioning itself to be mobile-first or mobile adaptive; inline with the upward trend of mobile device usage for consuming content online. It’s only common sense, if more of your users are using mobile devices to access your content then you need to present it in a manner that guarantees a beautiful user experience.

For bloggers, it’s vital that whether you’re hiring a developer, purchasing a WordPress theme or developing your site yourself it absolutely needs to be mobile responsive; there’s no compromise here. A couple years from now if your blog and other content isn’t suited for mobile your viewership and engagement will literally be zero.

Check out Google’s Mobile Playbook; very interesting guide on serving your mobile audience from the company who’s investing the most in this area.

Promoted Content

Your content won’t sell itself and you’ll need to perfect your process for distributing content to achieve wide viewership. Promoted content is now a convergence between organic discovery, social conversations, paid amplification and native advertising. Assigning a small budget to test the waters on Facebook, Twitter, use free content discovery networks like BizSugar or Triberr and a content amplification service like Outbrain will be worth it as you’re able to target your content to very specific audiences for higher conversions. The trick here is to know who your audience is.

In addition, spending on social and native advertising is increasing as more companies begin to better understand the social web’s value. As more of your competitors use these tools to push their content, bloggers will need to begin investing more in building their business online.

Quality vs. Quantity

There was a time when the more articles you published, the better your search engine results would automatically be as your pages get crawled more often and is loved by Google because of fresh content. Unfortunately, this is no longer true and a successful content marketing plan does not work on the basis of just simply having tons of content, especially if you’re trying to serve a market with substantial competition.

You’ll achieve greater results from posting 4 articles per month that are well-written, 1,000+ word pieces providing powerful insight and a unique and rich experience for your audience than publishing 30 mediocre ones. Your content absolutely has to make a bang serving your community. Instead, focus your energy on the highest quality you can push out with an emphasis on originality and distribution through an engaged community that will be willing to share your stuff because it’s good and they respect your contribution and input.

Content marketing is here to stay and for bloggers, the approach has to be a well planned one based on work done to intimately understand the people you’re targeting to consume your stuff. It’s not a walk in the park anymore and will require a complete investment of time, effort and at times money.

The post The Best Content Marketing Strategies Bloggers Should Focus on in 2014 & Beyond appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Though many through being positive and focused have indeed achieved massive goals, there is an even greater number of us who are still struggling and will continue to struggle until we change our game plan. Blogger burnout, depression, hopelessness and frustration can be a thing of the past if we change our attitude towards the small steps we must take on our journey to success. Indeed, the cliche, “it’s not winning that counts, it’s the journey” will have more meaning to you after reading and executing this.

Why & How to Develop a Winning Process

Imagine an army of 100,000 ants; do they not always seem to work in perfect unison? They do not speak, they don’t have a vast array of technologies at their disposal to help achieve their tasks and yet they always get the job done regardless of how large or technical it may be. They achieve this through execution of processes that the entire colony knows and acts on day-in, day-out. An individual ant doesn’t have to think about the success of the entire colony, he’s just focused on completing the small tasks assigned to him coming from within his instincts and his DNA. He doesn’t dream, he doesn’t question “why” and yet they achieve what they must. That’s the power of consistently executed processes.

How does this apply to your blogging success? The fact is that we’re creatures of habit and if we can form the right daily habits that are necessary for achieving positive outcomes we’ll be well on our way to success. The problem here is that we’re trying to “save the world everyday” and when we fail to do so we burn out, we’re disappointed and are tempted to give up because failing can be such a horribly emotional event. Fortunately, there’s a better way and what we have to do is change our approach and attitude towards our goals.

Here’s how to achieve this:

Focus on small daily tasks – Forget about the goal of earning $100,000 from your blog by the end of the year. Certainly, within your heart you know that’s what you want to accomplish but it’s not what you need to be thinking about all the time. It’s too much to handle and it becomes tiring everyday imagining that huge mountain of a task you need to scale; it’s the fastest way to get fed up.

Instead, as you start this new journey, set yourself a few minimal tasks that need to be accomplished daily. Whether it’s writing 200 words per day, connecting with 2 new bloggers daily or adding a page to that eBook you’re working on. What you’re doing here is laying the foundation to form new habits but in the beginning it’s important that you do not overwhelm yourself – doing more is not necessarily better at this point. Initially, make your minimum set of tasks simple and easily attainable. This will guarantee your daily success to fuel doing more in the future. Remove yourself from the emotions associated with achieving that big goal and just establish a routine of meaningful work.

Reward yourself for accomplishing each day’s tasks – At the end of each day ensure that you schedule some time to do something special or fun for rewarding your minimal achievement. If you didn’t achieve your minimum, skip the reward.

Increase your minimum daily tasks – After a few weeks of achieving your minimum daily tasks you’ll be well on your way to forming new success habits. Start gradually increasing the quantity or intensity of the small tasks you’ve assigned yourself. Slowly adding more to your daily accomplishments.

What’s happening here is that you’re taking the easy route to forming new habits that will inevitably support your success rather than trying, from day one, to comprehend entirely how you’re going to earn $100,000 from tiny new blog – which is almost beyond comprehension. Give your mind and soul a break and think on the smaller daily tasks and wins. After a few weeks to months you’ll develop habits for success which you can execute with minimal effort as it will be a natural part of your daily life. While others are struggling to understand the bigger picture, you’re conquering each task, one step at a time that will get you there – minus the burnout.

Set the Goal & Forget It

I’m not saying that visualizing your objectives is not important, however, it does not belong in your head every minute of the day. It’s not magic and since we’re so emotional it gets frustrating setting our mind and hopes on something that’s not immediate before our eyes – again, that’s why so many of us burnout before reaching close to our dreams.

Set the goal, write it down once, establish the minor tasks you need to achieve daily to get there and focus each day on knocking off those tasks. You’ll do yourself a huge favor by easing the stress and pressure of the ultimate success; you’ll have more breathing room to actually enjoy the journey.

Evaluate

At the end of 3 months or so, or however long it takes for your new habits to form, assess the work you’ve done, feel good about what you’ve accomplished so far, evaluate your market to identify what needs tweaking and repeat the habit building process. Evaluation will be vital since our environment changes so frequently and these can impact the work you’re doing.

Conclusion

Ultimately, after spending some time on this approach you’ll realize that things aren’t as serious as they’re cut up to be and you’ll have more freedom to relax, work and believe in what you’re doing because you’ll be continuously achieving something positive each day. That’s the best high you can ever get addicted to. Remember, start small, win each day and before you know it, the time and effort you’ve consistently invested will almost magically start paying off as you work to tangibly secure each day’s work.

Good luck!

The post Want an Insanely Successful Blog? Perfect Your Process, Focus Less on the End Goal appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Therefore, collaboration is a powerful practice for vastly improving the quality of whatever it is you’re offering your audience and community. Whether it’s advice, commentary or products and services. Partnering with the right players in your niche can have an astounding effect on your business as you align yourself with the success of others and through sharing resources, your experiences and opportunities are multiplied.

Evaluate the success of various blogs across the web such as Social Media Today, Smart Passive Income and BrainyMarketer (which is fairly new and has grown a great deal in short time span) for example, you’ll see that community building and collaboration were and still are integral to their success. Through pooling resources with other bloggers, conducting interviews and communicating directly with their audiences with a real focus on relationships, they have found what works.

As you contemplate on kicking your blog into the next gear, try to identify opportunities to collaborate with other bloggers to create content that better serves your audience. In doing so, here are a few tools that will help you make the most out of your experience for maximum impact.

ClickMeeting

Hosting meetings and webinars online are powerful for taking your ideas to an audience separated by geographical boundaries while keeping the experience personal and intimate. Keeping team members engaged and contributing requires that you create a culture of trust and reliance on each other towards achieving common goals and ClickMeeting is a premium product that supports this very well.

Through features such as audio/video presentations, desktop sharing, recorded meetings and allowing for connections from absolutely any device with an internet connection you’ll have the tools necessary to build strong long distance relationships and collaborate in an effective and interactive manner.

Trello

Trello is a delightful collaboration tool built to bring teams together in the most intuitive and user-friendly manner possible. The app uses a card-based system for keeping your ideas and “to-do’s” as simple and straight-forward as possible. This systems helps users to perfectly visualize all stages of work that needs to be accomplished without digging deep into the details. This means that problems can be solved quicker and work completed faster.

It uses a simple drag and drop system which is used to move task / information cards from column to column and people are assigned to each card by dragging their profile picture onto the card.

Also, touted as one of the best mobile and tablet collaboration apps on the market, the mobile experience is smooth, has a easy learning curve and simplifies collaboration where many other tools fail.

Freedcamp

Freedcamp is a free, secure and complete collaboration tool built for more than simply assigning tasks. Backed by an open source community, the web app enables you and your collaborators to get things done with a focus on discussions, assigning tasks, adding responsible users, setting timelines and milestones, collecting and reviewing feedback and the ability to create multiple workspaces for an unlimited number of projects.

It’s a simple web app that provides a distraction-free experience that not only works for teams but even for the individual blogger with a need to keep work and ideas organized.

Coggle.it

Coogle.it is not your average collaboration tool but is a simple yet powerful mind-mapping app to help individuals and teams plan and get complex tasks done cohesively by merging and visualizing itineraries and scope. Coggle.it is amazing for bringing large scale ideas together to help envision how each step, task and stage connects with the mission as a whole. Whether you’re trying to plan upcoming blog posts, visualize how a year worth of online activities work together or assigning tasks to team members, the app serves well.

The design and features are very intuitive and easy to understand; making planning, collaborating and recording thoughts as seamless as writing on a sheet of paper.

Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking / collaboration tool that can be very useful for the team that deals with a torrent of content. It’s a curators dream as the app excels at facilitating the collection of all kinds of media via the web browser from websites, your mobile phone’s image gallery, voice notes, video, and practically any kind of media you can get your hands on via any device.

Although I don’t consider Evernote the most powerful collaboration tool, it is particularly useful for large teams of bloggers and other types of content curators who collaborate on large volumes of information. The app facilitates managing large amounts of data with a well designed archiving and document sorting system. Excellent for individuals and large teams of content creators.

The post 5 Essential Collaboration Tools Bloggers Can Use to Grow Their Community appeared first on The Blog Herald.

For clarification, DDoS attacks happen through an overpowering of numerous computers, usually through the use of bots, that continuously send traffic to an IP address or website. As simple as this might seem, the effects can be brutal to a website. What’s worse is that the typical common security protocols that are set up to defend against hacking and intrusion just don’t work against DDoS attacks and taking matters into your own hands, whether it’s through WordPress security plugins or code tweaks and improvements are not sufficient.

Luckily, there are a couple ways to protect a website from DDoS attacks.

Using a Cloud Security Provider

Using proprietary technologies, a number of web security companies have begun releasing different forms of protection from DDoS. These include the likes of Prolexic and DOSarrest, for example, which has a fairly decent track record of mitigating web security threats. However, much of what these products do happens behind the scenes. In the push for full disclosure, more companies and website owners are relying more on cloud security providers, like Incapsula, who not only provide free usage of their CDN but also powerful DDoS protection at fairly reasonable pricing for anyone serious about their website’s security.

Where other services just kind of tell us that things are being handled, Incapsula offers some pretty slick monitoring options that take your website security a step further than a service: It’s a tool. Going beyond just DDoS traffic mitigation, Incapsula protects against other forms of attacks and site outages (both malcontent and accidental) while simultaneously offering a speed boost through those same site mitigation channels; along with pretty much guaranteeing 100% up-time for complex applications through load balancing and failover, spread across multiple servers. What’s even better is that they provide visual and trackable insights into the site’s performance and health.

Sophisticated web threat protection is becoming more available and affordable and it’s a valid inclusion among tools bloggers and other marketers normally utilize.

Self-Protected Domain Infrastructure

Bearing in mind that DDoS mitigation is not for the faint of heart or the modest wallet, I know there are some DIY admin types who live for the thrill of getting their hands dirty. Protecting against a DDoS attack on your own is a massive undertaking that’s easy to get wrong, which would leave you just as unprotected as if you had done nothing at all. But, if you’re up for the task and have the skillset required (seriously, be honest with yourself on this one, you or your client’s product is at stake here), the following Cisco reading material will get you moving in the right direction… if you really know what you’re doing:

Cisco’s Guide to Defending Against DDoS Attacks (A novella’s worth of information at 9,067 words, but absolutely solid information)

Discuss Options with Your Hosting Service

Of the many web hosts online offering bottom dollar deals to get your website up and running , a vast majority of them don’t have the infrastructure set up to properly deflect a DDoS attack. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your cost-effective host, whichever it may be, doesn’t have protection, but that doesn’t mean that they do, either.

Simply put, you should be contacting your preferred host(s) directly to determine precisely what they have in place to protect your site/sites from malicious attackers. Additionally, you absolutely need to know what their policy is on how to deal with sites that are suffering attacks that break through or overwhelm their servers. The punishment of a week or two of downtime from your host can be more damaging than the original attack itself since it’s more likely that your account will be blacklisted or suspended rather than the company taking full responsibility. Your best bet for protection via a web host is going with a premium provider like WP Engine who pride themselves on running very secure and well managed hosting environments.

The most important thing you should keep in mind is that, for relatively little time invested, you can set a site up to be guarded against incredibly expensive attacks. There’s no reason to find yourself in a situation where you’re looking for protection after a DDoS is launched. The risk for loss of traffic and in some cases, sales, is much too great.

The post How to Protect Your Blog From an Advanced DDoS Attack appeared first on The Blog Herald.

It’s quite valid to ponder which medium, platforms, tools and social networks will result in greater benefits for your brand and business. Unfortunately, many miss success employing tactics through mediums that seem to only work for some. There are many tried and tested techniques and reasons for choosing each medium, so why doesn’t it work for so many who try?

Let’s explore what each platform offers and find the clues to creating killer content with that viral potential.

What’s the Impact?

Video in the last couple of years has started to seriously take off thanks to YouTube, Vimeo and a lot of other startups that have popped up in a short period of time. In addition, as our attention spans continue to degrade, science says it’s now less than gold fish, video seems to be the logical delivery tool for content since it requires less effort versus dissecting and reading a well thought out article. We want to be entertained, like the king who grows impatient with his court jester who is failing to make him laugh.

Here’s the impact that video has on us:

More consumers are not only consuming video content but also ready to share it as 90% of viewers tend to share what they’ve watched while most visitors to text based articles read only about 50% of the content. Video is growing in popularity and use which is influencing massive investments into creating more content here at all levels; enterprise, small business and by individuals.

We’re simply consuming more video while traditional text based blogging and promotion seems to be fading.

However, while text based content is wielding less impact there are still creators who constantly deliver. Innovative websites like Copyblogger and Mashable seem to always be at the bleeding edge in their respective niche and purposes. Yet, I’m certain, as impressive as those sites are, their content does not perform as well as the trends we’re seeing in video consumption.

Does this automatically mean as a content producer or entrepreneur you need to immediately ditch your blog and start shooting videos? Yes and a bigger no; here’s why.

What’s your Personality & DNA?

Here’s the reason why so many of us fail when we do the exact things and follow the footsteps of other online marketers who’ve made it big – we’re going against our DNA; we’re doing the opposite of what makes us absolutely comfortable and fulfilled. For example, Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, has always had an explosive personality; shouting, screaming, full of energy and always having fun with whatever he’s representing.

This works for him because that’s how he’s most comfortable and alive and it brought him his own success. Now picture Bill Gates, a more introverted character, try to go against his DNA, trying to mimic Steve because that seems to work for him. It would be a mess and we’d all be ashamed of Bill. And while, the majority of us seem to respond better to the outgoing characters, there’s no shortage of the cool, quiet and calm successful ones. These successful people remained true to themselves, stuck to their DNA and it worked – regardless of what market trends and studies of their time dictated.

How do You Choose Your Medium?

Do not focus on all the numbers I presented to you earlier, leaning towards video being the next big thing. Instead, test the various platforms to see which one allows you to shine and feel most comfortable. If you enjoy talking more than writing and can keep the attention of a live audience then video may be better for you. If you’re a strong writer and can engage, educate and inform readers in a fluid and effective way then forcing yourself to do video may produce very poor results, regardless of how “great” the medium is.

Spending time to do something which, deep inside you don’t feel comfortable doing, or that goes against how you’re made to perform is the fastest lane to failure. Experiment to see what suits you best and pour your all into that and make it yours. There are many of us in our 9-5 jobs who are dissatisfied because we’re doing the opposite of our dream of being a poet, many have launched businesses solely based on the fact that it’s proven to make money. Certainly that is ONE valid reason but it should not be your all.

To conclude, as the tides of content consumption shift, your best bet is to stick with what allows you and your expertise to shine; whether video or text, anything less is selling yourself short. Your ability to create awesome content and products that people will gobble up in droves will improve in leaps and bounds when it is absolutely where you want to be, fulfilling passion, purpose, fun and necessity for your audience. Stick to your DNA; stop swaying in the wind with the crowd.

The post Which Medium is Best for Delivering Content that Goes Viral? Video or Text? appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Imagine getting an endorsement or mention by the likes of marketer and influencer, Gary Vaynerchuk or a business catalyzer like ex Y Combinator chief, Paul Graham. Such exposure would no doubt be a strong boost to help propel your business into the view of valuable potential clients and add years of credibility to your name.

Therefore, we can conclude that marketing doesn’t really need to be a lonely game and there is great power to be leveraged through other well-seasoned practitioners in your niche or related industries. Collaborating, associating and acquiring endorsements from businesses and professionals who already have influence is one of the quickest ways to get your brand noticed.

Get to Know the Powerhouses in your Niche & Help them Shine Brighter

It’s quite flattering when someone approaches you requesting an interview because of great work you’ve done. It helps to validate your goals and business and gives you a reason to keeping pushing forward and delivering quality. This is what you can offer well-established professionals within your industry or complementary niches.

Offer a different interview experience

Identify the influencers in your niche, reach out and get to know them. First, study the interviews they’ve conducted in the past and identify areas they haven’t addressed and determine how you can pull more valuable feedback and content from them that would benefit the community at large. Focus your interview on a unique perspective that is not commonly found in the community as this will bring greater value to the interview experience and make it more than average. This will not only attract the attention of the audience but also pique the interest of your target influencers who may be tired of the “same old interview questions.” They’ll have an opportunity to present something different.

Your focus on delivering a great interview experience for the influencer increases the chances of them promoting and sharing the interview with their followers, customers and community; increasing exposure for you and your brand. That’s why you invest and spend the time to deliver a quality experience. Your influencer will respect it, be willing to work with you to do more and any endorsements will simply be more meaningful.

Delivering the interview

One of the most valuable methods of delivering the interview would be via a live platform like a webinar or podcast. Webinars are super easy to setup and through the use of a premium webinar service provider like ClickWebinar, you will facilitate the most interactive and real experience for the community to engage an influencer and get actively involved in the event through questions and answers sessions and chats. You’re giving your community a forum where it is perfectly acceptable to ask questions and speak their mind with an influencer they would not normally have access to; this is valuable and will add to your reputation as a professional in your industry and exposure you to the influencer’s audience.

Collaborate & Share Reach & Resources

The first thing you should do as you search for opportunities to collaborate is to ensure that your goals and areas of strength are clearly defined and ingrained in your product and business philosophy. It should be easy for potential collaborators to see the value of what you have to offer and how it can help boost their own business.

Seek out other brands that complement your products or niche and develop ways to add value for their audience. As a very simple example, let’s say you sell an e-learning course, you can team up with a company that provides material to support your course content or a technology company you utilize to deliver your course. The company could use your business as a case study to highlight how well their products work and you in return extend special deals from the company to your audience or some other lucrative approach for your audience. Here you gain exposure to a market that is already in tune and trusts the company you’re with. The key here is to ensure that your products complement and add value to the collaboration and does not deliver as a mere publicity stunt. Make the experience as fluid and native as possible.

Always Provide Value

The foundation of every collaboration venture or interview should be executed on the foundation of creating content that benefits your target audience to a great extent. It’s not an opportunity to sell but is a chance to make valuable connections and relationships with people who can propel your business and point you in the customers’ direction.

Give first, gain insight; build relationships and when the time is right, there will be no challenge in selling as you yourself will be becoming an influencer.

The post How to Use Interviews & Collaboration to Boost Traffic & Sales Online appeared first on The Blog Herald.

However, as usual, there are a few problems that seem to be holding back the average online marketer. And as we’ve witnessed time and time again, in the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, “marketers ruin everything.” As he explains in the video below and the one here, we certainly have the wrong approach.

As online marketers, we dilute every platform that we got our hands on throughout history and bombarded each one with messages primarily geared towards selling stuff. Always trying to close the next sale or getting someone to read your new article or signup for a newsletter. It’s a torrent of people trying to sell something which in turn creates a lot of noise and eventual dilution of the message, regardless of how great the product or story is. I know I have certainly been guilty of this on many occasions!

The “Always Be Closing” Dilemma

We’ve always heard the popular phrase, “always be closing” throughout the 90’s and even today. It was popularized in the 1992 film “Glengarry Glen Ross” where an aggressive representative from a corporate office, in his effort to motivate their sales team, encouraged reps to always be in a state where you’re constantly pushing products, searching for prospects and pitching in an effort to close. When you think about it, it’s likely because of this strategy why most of us dislike sales representatives’ attitude and avoid them like the plague. It’s downright annoying and ineffective.

There’s a time to close and this article by NetHosting on sales copy is still important and useful when the timing is right. However, it should not be the main ingredient.

On social media, especially on Twitter, you’ll easily discover that every marketer seems to be selling something rather than engaging the community in real conversation and taking advantage of the opportunity to be valuable and relevant. Everyone seems to be peddling something and when you think about it, in the midst of the noise, how often do you click on a sales pitch that truly catches your eye?

Everybody is selling something and if everyone is selling, who’s going to consume?

If every single one of your tweets or posts is broadcasting a new blog post, some new service or a public pitch to hire you, then you’re doing it all wrong and regardless of how many followers you have acquired, selling will be difficult. You’re being selfish and you’re diluting the real power of the platform. Change this habit and you’ll begin to experience real, positive results.

Common Sharing Mistake

Social media is about storytelling, engagement and interaction. Unfortunately, it’s primarily being used as a distribution channel, which is very wrong. How many of you use a plugin that automatically shares new blog posts on every social network where you have an account with the same post title and message? Each social network has a completely different audience with different tastes, desires and expectations. One message or article does not fit all. Therefore, mass producing a link across all networks is a waste of opportunity and resources.

Instead, get to know your networks and the users and determine who they are, their likes, dislikes and what make them tick. For your next article or post that you’d like to “distribute”, coin a different messaged suited for each audience and assess the results and interaction it receives. I can guarantee you that overtime you’ll experience better results through improved clickthroughs and feedback. Instead of always be closing, always be valuable and relevant. Distribution comes after.

Here’s What You Should Do

Online marketing is no longer a game of random pokes and tweets but is a science that performs well when real data is used to execute campaigns. This data is free and accessible to anyone with eyes to see. Spend some time getting to know who your followers and online friends are and collect data relating to their habits, wants and needs. Oftentimes, the average user through their numerous conversations and activities online will share these bits.

Quit focusing on closing but instead launch a marketing campaign geared towards starting conversations based on the characters of the people in your network. If you see a prospect who could potentially buy your service on social media, fight the urge to picth, find out what he or she likes and start talking. Certainly, you have to genuinely care about what that person has to say, it’s marketing but it cannot be treated in that way.

To Conclude

There’s a reason why social media marketing is not converting for you and the most common reason is that networks are diluted by messages that have lost their impact. Your messages might very well be included. Blindness is not solely experienced with banner ads but is a dilemma present everywhere in marketing as we gain more control of what we digitally consume. The more native your messages, stories and presence is the more people will notice you and offer a chunk of their attention to hear what you have to say and even buy what you have to sell. So stop closing and start communicating.

The post This Common Practice & Mindset May be Sabotaging Your Online Marketing Efforts appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Unfortunately, many freelancers and businesses suffer and lack the dedication and organizational skills to follow through; leading to many frustrated and disappointed clients. Many failed projects are not necessarily from lack of skill on part of the web developer, writer or designer but due to poor time and project management skills.

Time tracking is a powerful way to gain control of your clients’ projects and can mean a world of difference as you work to standout. Also, as technology advances and we witness the rise of products like Evernote and Coggle and other design and productivity tools, we gain a better ability to produce stronger results.

Here are some powerful reasons why time tracking is one of the most important practices you can adopt in your practice.

Prevent Creative Fatigue & Burnout

Unfortunately, we’re humans and we will not always possess the energy and drive to work 24/7 passionately with enthusiasm and vigor. It’s simply not possible. There will be down time as we attempt to bang away at the keyboard to get in as much as possible.

This leads to burnout and it will do you more harm than good working excessively at any task without allotting time for breaks and leisure. Using time-tracking as a method of limiting the hours spent on creative work before taking a break or end the day will prevent your brain from crashing and burning. This keeps your mind fresh and in a healthy state for new ideas when you return.

Take note from some of history’s creative geniuses like Ludwig van Beethoven, who although worked very hard at their art, set limits on work and spent time on leisure and mental recovery. Time tracking simply helps you to know when to stop and accounts for the work completed, offering the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Time Tracking Keeps You Focused & Disciplined

There’s something special about taking a seat and hitting start on a timer as you begin your tasks. It creates a sense of urgency and purpose and you’re less likely to be distracted by the outside world and temptations to watch cat videos on YouTube.

A personal timer running in the background while you work makes you more aware of your time ticking away and accountable for it. It turns the working day into a challenge that feels like you’re disarming a time bomb set to destroy your home town. Without the anxiety and potential loss of life of course.

Tracking your work time is like having mini-deadlines, only, you don’t get fired for missing them. You simply brush yourself off and refocus. The important thing here is that you know exactly for what you’re accountable.

Develop a Killer Rhythm

For web developers and designers, developing work rhythms prove very beneficial, especially for repetitive and native tasks. Getting in the zone and working with the clock heightens your senses, blocks out the noise and keeps you on track.

As you log your time, you’re indirectly logging your workflow, revealing deeper insight into your creative process. This enables you to better identify and create work structures and models. Armed with this experience and knowledge, you discover the best practices and approach to client projects.

Time tracking is the best tactic for honing your skills and using your time efficiently as a designer, developer or business person. It’s like having a boss to keep you in check without the stresses that comes with a real live boss.

If you haven’t started yet or are doing it manually, here are 4 free time tracking apps that you can give a try and discover your unique work model:

1. Toggl – Create cool charts and discover the best use of your work time,

2. RescueTime – Find your ideal work-life balance.

3. Timesheet – Cool Android work time tracking app

4. Timely – Beautiful & powerful time and cost tracker

The post How to Use Time Tracking to Boost Online Marketing Success appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Twitter is a stage for building powerful credibility for your brand as its an open platform allowing the powerful players to get their messages out there; and when I say powerful I don’t mean the companies that can spend the most on advertising but the brands willing to connect with a global audience in unique and genuine ways. Brands can now directly reach out to and connect with people directly, in real-time and get real responses. Compare that to television or website banner ads and you’ll get the picture. Traditional advertising methods are somewhat like shooting with your eyes closed and hoping to hit something. Even banner ad click rates are at an unattractive all time low dropping from as high as 80% in the 90’s to now under 0.2%. So you definitely need a new strategy and Twitter is a good starting point in social media whether you are a car salesman, lawyer or IT solutions provider.

The most powerful feature I adore about Twitter is its advanced search feature which basically allows you to target any conversation relating to keywords your business covers. So if you want to find someone talking about bicycle repairs, you can and will have the opportunity to directly start a conversation with that person, for free!

Let’s Get Into Twitter’s Advanced Search

The whole point of marketing and advertising is getting your message to the right eyes and people, so targeting has always been a key factor in the strategy. Essentially, with Twitter’s advanced search feature, you can search for “I have a headache” and the results will show everyone who has recently said that phrase within the entire Twitterverse, within the last minute. I’m sure you can see how valuable that is for painkiller suppliers for example.

How Twitter advanced search works:

1. Go to https://search.twitter.com

2. Click Advanced Search. Then you’ll see a page looking like below:

Here you’ll find the options to search and match exact phrases, target languages, specific people in certain locations and even include emotional responses related to their tweets whether its positive or negative (Shown at the bottom with emoticons). This is targeting in its most potent form and your marketing team needs to be leveraging this powerful tool.

Let’s try searching for something, let’s say “where can I find”, matching the exact phrase. Instantly we’re provided with results with the most recent people asking a question on where they can find something highlighted bold. Match this will your product, service or target market keywords and you’ll see the power. Here you can directly respond to anyone.

Forget About Spamming Anyone

So you’re excited to start trying out this new feature and can’t wait to get the word out and promoting yourself, take it easy. There is one more thing you need to take note of and that’s never spamming or overwhelming this newly found audience with your message.

With great power comes great responsibility, yeah I know that’s a bit cliché, but its true. This isn’t the time to start selling, selling, selling but its about engaging in a genuine way and showing real interest in the lives with whom you connect. You can approach a complete stranger and start selling them something, that’s true, but the most valuable transactions and business relationships are gained upon the pinnacles of trust and authenticity. Genuinely seek out people in your niche and target market and seek to build relationships without being hungry for the sale. Your audience cannot be viewed as prey and the wolves in the social media world are quickly identified, called out and ignored. Be authentic and be genuine as you execute your marketing campaign.

Now go forth and engage! Start experimenting with Twitter search and you’ll see how you can reap the rewards. Remember that the stronger the relationship and trust there is in you and your brand the more likely people with refer you, spend money with you and be loyal.

The post How to Use Twitter’s Advanced Search Engine for Networking & Marketing appeared first on The Blog Herald.

However, one thing I have noticed is that not many bloggers are extraordinary in their efforts to making their blog a success. Lots of mediocrity and sub par performances are abundant as most don’t truly respect the art and are just not hungry enough to seek to be better day-in day-out. Being better requires hard work, more so than you’d put into your 9-5 job.

There will never be a perfect marketer but we can work to achieve the best of the best by continuously reading, tweaking, studying, designing and learning to ensure that we stand out in the crowd.

Here are 21 excellent resources that will help you to get started on the right track if you’re new to publishing and marketing as well as links for the seasoned blogger who needs to tip the scale.

Books That Empower & Change Perspectives

Crush It! Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion & Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk – Through his own success, Gary highlights useful, native and unique methods for making the most out of social media to grow your business online through the power of passion and a deep understanding of user psychology.

31 Days To Build A Better Blog Workbook – Darren Rowse provides a daily “things to do” course that instructs you on what to do to get your blog off the ground and begin driving traffic. Learning by doing is the most powerful way to establish new success habits.

Purple Cow – Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable – The thoughts and strategies of a marketing mastermind, Seth Godin. In this book, he provides practical and effective marketing techniques that apply easily to every online business venture.

Design & Coding

WP101 – Interactive video tutorials on how to truly make your WordPress site more than just a blog but extraordinary in design and content.

Lynda.com – This site has a plethora of unique, easy to follow video tutorials to help you master blogging, WordPress and anything digital.

WordPress Codex – From the developers of WordPress themselves, here you will find detailed explanations of every element within the WordPress CMS.

WordPress Themes

Within these sites you will find some of the best WordPress themes on the web.

Elegant Themes

Woo Themes

Studiopress

Themeforest

Awesome Sites You Should Follow & Use

Content Strategist by Contently – Possible the best site to learn about content marketing and how to embark on your own online marketing campaigns. The site is current and the team is forward thinking. Definitely alot to learn here.

Problogger.net – One of the best blogs you could ever read which gives practical advise from it’s founder, Darren Rowse, as well as the greatest minds on the net.

WP Beginner – This site has amazing tutorials for tweaking and customizing your WordPress blog.

Quicksprout University – The best place to start learning about SEO and keeping up with Google’s algorithm updates.

KISSmetrics Blog – Another marketing and analytical powerhouse

Other Online Resources

Codecademy – Although you may not be developer, knowing the basics of coding for the web will save you a lot of time and money. This site is perfect for the new and intermediate webmaster. Their real-time tutorials will help you get the hang of coding in mere weeks.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide – Forget about what so-called SEO experts have to say. Find all the information on SEO you will ever need from the creators of the biggest search engine.

SEO Book – Massive authority on Search Engine Optimization and is a powerful community for dominating your niche through search.

Google’s 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web – To be an effective publisher, it’s very important to know the basics of the web, browsers and how it is presented to users.

Web Hosting

WP Engine – WP Engine is one of the best web hosts I have used since I first started building websites. My sites have never been down with them, they provide excellent support and sites load much faster than most other hosts I’ve tried in the past. I recommend you give them a try.

Online Tools

Hello Bar – Hello Bar is a delightfully simple tool that allows you to insert a call-to-action button within a horizontal bar at the top of your site. You create your bar and CTA around one of three goals: drive traffic, collect emails or point visitors to your social media channels. And it’s free!

ListBuilder – ListBuilder is a free way to collect the email addresses of your site visitors. It was created by Noah Kagen’s company AppSumo (Noah was the first marketing director at Mint and runs an excellent marketing blog).

Conclusion & Discussion

Whether you’ve been publishing for years or a newbie, the resources above will present something new and will help to grow or ignite a passion for blogging; and open your eyes to effective ideas over-looked by the masses.

Do you have or know of an awesome resource not mentioned above? Please share it with us in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you.

The post 21 Edifying Resources To Help You Become A Successful Online Marketer appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Essentially, it’s not a decision that should be quick and impulsive. Do your research, take the time to think about the name and the factors discussed below. Whois.domaintools.com is a very useful website that provides information on whether a domain is available for registration or not or you could check the registry through any web hosting provider.

Domain Names Types

There are 2 types of domain names, those that are “discoverable” and the others “brandable.” The type you choose depends a lot on what your traffic generation strategies will be. A Discoverable domain name is one that can be found by someone who does not know about your business but is conducting searches on keywords and topics that are related to your business. These types of names are generally descriptive and depend greatly on keyword competitiveness.

A Brandable name, however, creates a distinct identity or image and evokes interesting ideas and feelings in the user. Names like Google, Yahoo and Flickr have unique character strings and will be best found on the original website. People who know of your business can easily use a search engine to reach you, though this may not be a great source of traffic initially. This means, however, that when your name is mentioned, it dominates search results and this establishes greater credibility and recognition.

Personally, I lean towards branded domain names. I love the idea of being unique and the equity it brings.

Is There Any SEO Value?

Exact match keyword domains (like www.bestcomputerstoreinparis.com) are somewhat in spammy territory now thanks to Google’s recent algorithm changes. Although the issue is debatable and depends on the naming convention used for your overall business. However, the most common use of exact match is of ill intent and are used by people trying to game search engines. Frankly, this does not work as it used to.

In this old video, Matt Cutts explain perfectly how to approach using exact match for your domain name.

Alot has changed since this video but the key takeaway here is that exact match URL’s have very little value for SEO.

Avoid Trademark / Copyright Violations

Copying a successful brand or business name might seem like a profitable short term idea since the qualities associated with those brands may be shared but the truth is that this is a recipe for disaster and will prove very unproductive. Copying trademarks will only lead to potential lawsuits that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to mitigate and lots of time wasted.

Short, Catchy, Easy to Spell & Memorable

There may be times that you will come up with a name that has some sentimental significance to you in some way and all your days you dream of launching your business with it. The reality is that if that name is too complicated and does not “roll right” with the tongue it could mean a bad start online. If your domain name requires a lot of attention to detail to type correctly then you’ve-already-lost-some-of-your-branding and marketing value.

Try to avoid using words that contain too many of these letters: “q,” “x,” “z” and “p”

Ensure the name has a nice blend. For example: Codecademy, Farecast, YouTube.

A blend combines part of a word with another word or word part. The name Microsoft combines the “micro” part of “microcomputer” with the “soft” part of “software.” When blends involve a surprising overlap in sound between the two words, they’re a form of wordplay. Farecast is like that. It combines the words “fare” and “forecast,” and “fare” resembles the first syllable of “forecast.” Don’t pile up consonants in ugly ways (like in the name Syncplicity), and don’t use important words to replace syllables that aren’t emphasized (the way the names Mapufacture and Carticipate do).

No Numbers & Hyphens

Hyphens and numbers make it very difficult when giving out your domain verbally. There is the confusion of remembering whether the number must be spelled out or typed in numerals; and hyphens are often forgotten.

Have 5 Phrases in Mind When Brainstorming

When brainstorming your domain name it is good to have 5 – 10 terms or phrases in mind that best describe your ideas. Once you have this list you can start pairing them or adding prefixes or suffixes to create a great name.

Create & Fulfill Expectations

When someone hears your domain name it is great if they can immediately correlate it with what your site will do for them and what type of content they will find there. Names like careerbuilder.com, newser.com, hotmail.com and webmd.com do that easily. Google.com, amazon.com, etc. required more branding since they were not intuitive, although they are pretty much now after great investment and hard work.

Conclusion

As domain names become even more scarce, you will need to approach the naming process in a strategic, sensible and rational way. Bearing in mind that your name is an investment in your business and can even help to determine the ultimate value of your idea in the long-term. And with domain suffixes like .guru, .expert, .io and more, there’s plenty of room for creativity.

The post 7 Tips for Choosing the Perfect Domain Name for Your Website / Business appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Today, those who are working with content monetization, online sales, and online publishing of all types are aware of the fact that marketing must be done in a careful, calculated manner in order to capture the attention of today’s information inundated consumer base.  This might sound as if it goes without saying, but it needs to be said because so many advertisers are still clinging to traditional display ads, which simply aren’t effective.  Some estimates claim that the average internet user is served 1,700 banner ads on a monthly basis.  How many banner ads do you, the reader, remember seeing over the past month? How many of those brand names do you remember?

Content that doesn’t engage, inform, or entertain is being filtered so that users don’t even see it—and not by ad blocking software on their computers, but by ad blocking “software” in their brains.  The phenomenon is referred to as “banner blindness,” and it means that those careful, calculated marketing plans need to look elsewhere for conversions.  Because not only do views no longer seem to translate into conversions, page views no longer even mean that the ads being served are being seen at all.

A New Approach

In-image advertising is moving ads off the margins of pages, out of the blank spaces between the content presentations, and into the content images being presented.  Obviously, this can be done to greater or lesser effect, but as the trend catches on, quality in-image advertising platforms like Imonomy are making it easier than ever for marketers to serve the types of engaging, intriguing, relevant and entertaining in-image ads they must in order to up their conversion rates. Ads alone can’t support publishers—it takes unique and interesting ads to effectively make a profit.  In fact, providing ineffective ads that users don’t want will only have a negative effect—it will drive them toward ad-free sites, or those that utilize better marketing techniques.  In-image advertising is the future of advertising, here are four solid reasons that advertisers and publishers should be adopting it now:

Why In-Image Ads Work

1. Visual information is better than text, and content is better than filler.

The reason that the ill-fated banner ad became so popular is very simple.  Human beings prefer to look at images, and we require less time to process the contents of an image, compared to reading text.  One study suggests that images are processed 60,000 times faster than text by the human brain, and of course, that fits with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The problem with banner ads isn’t that they’re banners, it’s that they don’t represent real content to the user, and that quick processing speed means they’re just as quickly ignored.  Their placement is alternatively out of the way and unengaging, or disruptive and irritating, because there is no effective way to place an irrelevant, unappealing ad. Content images, however, which are relevant to the information being presented, aren’t ignored. In fact, posts that contain visual imagery as content are 94% more likely to be viewed and engaged with than those that don’t feature images.  In-image advertising capitalizes on the user’s preference for pages and posts which contain images while appealing to their desire to have a page free from distractions and irrelevant ads.

2. In-image ads are relevant.

Not only are in-image ads integrated with the content users want to see (relevant images), they’re relevant to the images and the information on the page.  This marriage of content and monetization with an emphasis on relevance is a critical aspect of the success of in-image advertising.  Platforms like Imonomy don’t just tack ads on to images; they match images and ads based on their relevance to the overall topic of the page using advanced analytics.  Furthermore, platforms like this can also use sophisticated retargeting strategies which mean users see ads from the sellers they use, or sellers that are similar to those they prefer.  Relevance to the page content and relevance to the user’s personal preferences are used together to create the ads that users want to see when they visit a particular page.

3. In-image advertising requires cognitive engagement.

Content is no longer something that users simply scroll through.  Accustomed to an app-assisted lifestyle, users expect to be able to interact with content on their own terms.  These interactive engagements are not only perceived as a better experience for users, but help to cement the experience in their memory.  For example, if a blog post about making home-made pizza features a photo of that pizza, an in-image ad may display pizza cutters or pizza stones on sale at a particular advertiser when the image is hovered.  The user may well be interested in these items because they’re relevant to the post, because the user has an interest in kitchen gadgets in general, and because they frequent the seller’s page—but they remember, engage, and click on the ad because they interacted with it.  A banner ad or a text ad in the side bar simply won’t be seen.

4. In-image advertising doesn’t detract from the user experience.

If the user browsing pizza recipes isn’t interested in a new pizza stone, they can simply move the mouse and continue browsing the page.  Advertisers face a conundrum when trying to reach consumers: they must capture attention without badgering the viewer.  There’s a reason that some users will pay for ad-free content, or install software to block ads; they don’t want their user experience to be interrupted, disrupted, or degraded by advertising.  In-image advertising is tasteful and tailored to the user, and represents a fusion of their interests, the topic of the page, and the needs of the advertiser.  Instead of detracting from the user’s experience, it can actually complement it.  Imonomy, for example, won’t only serve in-image advertising, but can help bloggers and publishers by sourcing the images to be used as well—high quality, highly relevant images that add real value to the content being presented.

The Future of Online Advertising

Users’ expectations continue to increase.  They want free content, they want quality content, they want personalized, engaging, content that appeals to their own preferences and with which they can interact. Content providers, of course, want to be able to make money from the content they’re providing, and the best compromise is providing free, ad-supported content.  However, simply having ads present on the page is no longer enough, and advertisers are becoming increasingly aware of this—making it far more difficult for publishers to make money from ads that aren’t resulting in conversions.

In-image advertising is the answer to this conundrum.  It creates conversion, elevates the quality of the content that users are experiencing, gives them the opportunity to engage, and doesn’t annoy, distract, or detract from the content they want to view. The future of online advertising is a seamless integration of quality content and relevant ads, but content providers and advertisers don’t need to wait for “the future” to provide their users and potential customers with this integration.

Advertising will never die, the medium and quality of delivery simply evolves with time.

The post 4 Reasons Why In-Image Advertising Converts Better Than Traditional Banner Ads appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The viral potential and reach of social networks is attractive for any marketer, knowing well that the perfectly placed article can lead to a flood of visitors as content is shared instantly and in real time across millions of people. Going viral is the goal. Unfortunately, virality is rare for most and publishing great content that ends up on popular social media news sites isn’t a certain formula for success without any means of it being discovered.

Therefore this phrase was coined, “content is king but distribution is queen and she wears the pants!”

So why isn’t your loud and active social media marketing strategy not producing serious results? Why isn’t your content  going viral or at least, hitting the audience you care about and want to reach?

You’re Trying Too Hard

Yes, it’s possible to try too hard. If you’re flooding everyone’s timeline with irrelevant, off-topic, overly promotional content, then there’s a strong possibility your links and posts are being ignored.

Your timeline is not about you and how great your content is, regardless of it’s quality. It’s about the genuine value you can add to people’s lives through real conversations. If all you’re doing is posting articles you’ve written then you’re damaging your reputation on social media. You’ve become one of those annoying sales people who constantly try to sell their new thing-a-ma-jig that nobody wants.

Take it easy on the promotion and spend some time getting to know your online “friends” and followers. They’re more likely to pay attention to someone with whom they have some solid relationship.

Check out this interesting tool called the Social Effort Scale. It measures whether your social media activity is effortless, trying too hard or not trying hard enough. Pretty neat.

Your Content is Bland

A large part of getting readers to your site is the title you use to describe what your articles are about. Just think about it. You’re more likely to click on something that says, “10 Secrets Revealed for Getting a 50% Pay Increase” than “How to Earn More Money  at Work.” You do not want to exaggerate but you certainly need to seem interesting.

Here are some great tips on how to spice up your article titles to attract more attention.

Targeting the Wrong Audience or Social Network

The basics of marketing everywhere dictate that you need to know who you’re targeting for your products and services. It’s one of the first things you do before launching any venture in commerce. Your blog is no different. For every article you write, you need to determine who you’re targeting and be very specific about it. Targeting small business owners in Toronto who do not have a website, is a much better strategy than everyone who does not have a website. Identifying that small business owner niche will lead you to discover where this audience spend most of their time. That’s where you need to hit.

An important note also, is that each social network tends to cater for a different cross-section of people with varying interests. For example, LinkedIn attracts more business minded professionals while Pinterest’s audience is primarily made up of mature women, mothers, etc. Therefore, promoting your “Call of Duty” fan blog on LinkedIn, will more than likely end up being a frustrating and fruitless experience. Get the idea?

You’re Not Consistent

Here today, gone for the next several months. Honestly, I’ve been guilty of this. There’s no strong relationship that is built that way. If that’s how you’re approaching your offline relationships then you can kiss hubby goodbye! It’s important to be an interactive user online, frequently engaging your community. If you can only dedicate being online twice a week because of certain limitations and circumstances, then stick to that schedule and make the best of it. Dedicate yourself and your community will trust and expect you to be there eventually.

Misguided Expectations

As said before, producing awesome content is no guarantee for virality and success on its own. Converting through content marketing doesn’t mean that as soon as someone reads your article, they’re going to buy from you, subscribe to your newsletter or share your story. Conversion requires long-term vision and consistent production of quality content. Readers won’t necessarily convert on the first visit but are more likely to do so on their third or fourth once they’ve seen you around often enough, can recall some important information they found on your blog and trust your content because they know you’ll always be there with something interesting. Think about it as you would any relationship you’re trying to build.

You’ll be disappointed if you expect your blog to take-off from the first few posts. It takes time to build trust online and your vision and work needs to be for the long haul. Through persistence, being consistent and adopting a patient mindset, you’ll yield greater results.

The post 5 Strong Reasons Your Blog’s Social Media Marketing Campaign is Failing appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Authority, in my opinion, relates more to a blogger’s ability to create new ideas that spread throughout the internet, garner a responsive following, regardless of posting frequency or any other variables, command influence within a niche and drive readers to action and perform among the changing tides of search engine, for the long-term. Authority demands respect and value.

As we see Google’s shift towards quality content and distribution and less on traditional SEO, it has become more important to begin focusing on building stronger roles within the community.  The blogs that will win it all in the coming years will need to develop a stronger relationship with readers.

Let’s take a look at the importance of building blog authority and how to get there.

Signs of the Times Through Google’s Author Rank

Many bloggers focus heavily on SEO and Google and there’s some justification for that. Throughout the lifetime of the average blog, at least 50% of all traffic will come from the Google search engine. Unfortunately, this focus has led to a dilution of the quality of content available online due to the fact that bloggers have sacrificed quality for search engine performance. Google has made significant strides in filtering low quality and there’s more to come. Bloggers need to shift to publishing outstanding, share-worthy content.

With the launch of Google Authorship, we see signs of them paying more attention to reputation and truly valuable content. Content published by reputable and authoritative authors perform better. As time progresses, Google’s algorithms will weigh this more into search engine results.

I strongly suggest setting up all your publications / blogs with Google authorship. It’s a good step towards validating your publishing presence, standing out and building a reputable history with Google. Find out more about authorship here. Also, here’s a cool tool to estimate your current author rank. Coupled with solid white-hat SEO practices, you’ll have a solid foundation for building better authority.

How to Build Authority in the Eyes of Readers

Successfully building authority should be a long-term goal. Won through consistently sticking to a well laid out and dynamic plan to deliver quality content in timely, enriching and engaging formats. While, through your personality and unique offering, creating relationships with readers that grow over time.

Ideas for improving quality & trust:

1. Put your face and personality out there – Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine. Be yourself, be authentic. Don’t “fake it until you make it,” as many people in business would say. Your audience is not stupid and can tell if you’re a fake.

2. Don’t ignore audio and video – Video sites like Youtube and Vimeo garner views in the Billions. Get your face, voice and content out there. Many persons prefer watching or listening to interesting content. In fact, these are some of the most loyal consumers who will consistently drive traffic to your website for the long-run.

3. Publish 1 or 2 definitive guides per month – Whatever your niche is, find an area or topic that requires special attention and offers the opportunity for you to solve common problems. Write a 3,000+ word guide to solve it and give more. Release it for free.

4. Spend more time with outbound marketing – As you work to perfect every minor detail on your blog, don’t abandon the need to engage other communities. Schedule time each day to talk and connect with other personalities on social networks and blogs. Having a perfect blog is not what will bring traffic and readership. You have to build distribution channels through the connections and relationships you build.

5. Look for opportunities to Collaborate – Team up with influential and experienced bloggers in your niche, or complementing markets, to bring added value. Whether it’s through special e-books, series of articles or products and services. This places you in front of wider and already qualified audiences.

Now is the Time to do Something New

The tides are shifting and 2 years from now readers will be consuming content very differently and Google will be better at delivering quality through search. The blogger who takes the time to build a brand and content meticulously, even if it means a lesser quantity, and brings value to every interaction and relationship online will be prepared for the shift currently taking place.

So turn it up a notch, do an audit of your blog and your efforts and make a change.

The post How to Build Authority to Improve SEO & Gain Readers’ Trust appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Broad niches and categories like online money making ideas, web design, blogging tools or social media marketing are heavy subjects. It’s difficult to be competitive when there’s just so much information already available for consumption. There’s a good chance that whatever you decide to write, has already been covered really well by a major blogger. So how do you stand out from the crowd? And how do you keep true to yourself as a writer and stay on point in niches that seem to be saturated?

It’s all about focus and there are gems within every niche, regardless of how saturated they may seem. You simply may need to discover your own rhythm and get a bit more specific on who and what you’re targeting in your niche.

Focus Kills the Competition

I’m sure you’ll notice that the majority of blogs out there publish on at least 10 different categories all dealing with a different subject; though related. There’s just so much to talk about and they go for whatever they think will be hot at that point in time. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with that approach. However, it’s not for everyone.

So here are your options:

1. Look for subjects that are infrequently covered in depth. Try finding topics within blog posts where there is just a brief mention of the subject but it still needs deeper clarification. A rough example can be found when bloggers write about banner advertising, the fact that they are less effective and we all now suffer from banner ad blindness along with the other reasons. These individual reasons can form massive discussion points. Create content from each reason. This approach works for almost everything.

2. Being know across the web for doing one thing really well is more attractive. Drill down on your target niche and audience and pick one theme that you know you can seriously do better than average.

3. Your focused effort on writing on one category will provide much greater value for readers who need to find answers and discussions. You will outperform bloggers who merely scratch the surface.

Your ability to focus and shut off the noise and temptation to write about everything will be a boost to your attitude to blogging as well as how your blog is perceived and spreads. There are too many “jack of all trades” blogs out there, be a “master of one.”

Your Blogging Life Becomes Easier

Focusing on one topic is simply easier. Shutting out everything else forces your mind to get really creative on that specific territory and you’ll have more room to  grow and shine. You’ll find that you won’t be spreading yourself too thin and there will be more space to life with freedom.

The great thing about focus as well is that the pressure to publish something everyday is lessened. As a specialist in your field you can get away with posting once or twice per week as long as you make your articles very rewarding for readers. So spend a decent amount of time transforming your focus into something worth reading, containing useful insight and new perspectives.

You’re Not an Expert at Everything

I’m not trying to burst your bubble but chances are you’re good at a few things and at the same time could be the best at one. Don’t try to dip your toe in all the pools. Find one that’s the perfect depth, right temperature and size for you. One that you could master and do better than everyone else. This is where you’ll shine brighter.

I know it’s tempting to cover all the buzz around the web but trust me when I say focus is the key to your success.

The post Focusing on Writing About 1 Category May Be the Best Content Strategy for your Blog appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Image source

With all the hype and popularity that these systems have garnered, many site owners rushed to try out the many services on offer by providers on the web. Some experiences were great, some disappointing and others didn’t notice any differences in their site’s loading time. These mixed experiences are the result of a lack of information regarding one’s particular need of the service, how to implement it and what to expect.

Here’s what the average WordPress blogger should know before deciding to use a CDN.

What’s Your Content & Visitor Profile?

Think about the type of content you’re delivering via your blog. Do you use a lot of pictures in your articles, offer file downloads, selling a high demand product and host large and detailed articles with mission critical assets? If you’re delivering a vast amount of content on your blog then this means more information will need to be downloaded by your site visitors, meaning a greater use of network bandwidth. In this case you should consider using a CDN as the distributed networks will ensure that your heavy static data is delivered as efficiently as possible to all visitors from around the globe.

Your visitor profile

As your blog grows, you may notice visitors from various locations across the globe. Depending on your target market and your blog’s focus topics, you may realize that visitors are primarily from specific regions. For example, if your site is hosted in the US and you’re mainly attracting visitors from the UK or Africa, then those visitors will experience a particular speed boost through your CDN.

Also, are your visitors mainly accessing your site via mobile? Mobile users will experience slightly faster speeds than desktop users.

Note, however, a new lightweight blog with 10 basic pages may hold off a bit on acquiring the services of a CDN since there’s not much of an audience to deliver content to in the first place. You can grow into the service as your site becomes more popular and demands greater resources.

Your Web Host Isn’t Quite Top Tier

If you’re OK with using a lower-end web host for the sake of saving a few dollars or attached for some other reason then you could consider a CDN. Usually, low tier web hosts do not quite deliver great quality as it relates to speed, abundant bandwidth and reliability of their servers. So a CDN will give you an excellent boost and an extra layer of protection for your blog since most service providers host a backup copy of your site’s content in case of outages with your current host.

Don’t forget also that Google ranks faster loading sites better since it means a better user experience for its users.

Are You Serious About Security?

Whether you’re using a cheap lower tier web host or not, you need to be concerned about the security of your website. Thankfully, many CDN providers bundle their services and offer complete solutions that help to boost your website’s status for speed, availability and protection. Due to the fact that they have vast network resources dedicated to delivering high availability and up-time.

Fireblade, for instance, bundles their CDN offering with standard DDoS (Denial-of-service) protection, anti-spam and abuse protection to help mitigate threats to online properties. These services are miles ahead of what your typical hosting provider will be able to offer and are crucial in an age where websites are being hijacked without many owners even knowing.

To conclude, if you value your site visitor’s experiences, search engine performance and are serious about securing your WordPress blog, then a CDN is a worthwhile option for you. A small investment in your site’s health is a powerful preventative measure for future threats and is enough to give you a small edge over competitors.

The post How to Determine When it’s Time to Use a CDN for your WordPress Blog appeared first on The Blog Herald.

You’ll often discover that the more hype that surrounds something the faster it falls. And with the many internet marketing tactics and hypes in existence it’s really difficult to tell who and what are genuine. The hypes simply do not last. That’s my reason for shining the spotlight on a few bloggers who have fought their way from the bottom to the top and achieved and continue to maintain great success online. Study their stories and their journeys and you will find the gems and inspiration you need to seriously crush it as a blogger.

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

Pat’s story begins as an average young man with a dream of building a career in a 9-5 job. He enjoyed what he did and in 2008 he was laid off which of course was difficult and left him wondering what his next move would be. The great thing about him losing his job was that he was challenged to start thinking outside of the box and pushing beyond what he ever thought possible. He started blogging and experimenting with the web and eventually turned his online ventures into a business that generates about $75,000 per month.

What’s unique about Pat? Pat is as real as a blogger can get as he oftentimes makes himself vulnerable by sharing his business and money making investments and experiments with his audience. Turning it into a powerful learning experience for all. Those following Pat’s journey witness the successes and mistakes and are able to apply and learn from them. This is a priceless experience for readers that many bloggers are too shy or rigid to share. He wasn’t afraid to be honest.

Be genuine with your audience and don’t be afraid to share your journey and learning experiences. Set your mind to very specific goals and focus on them. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

Check out Pat’s blog here.

Brett and Kate McKay – Art of Manliness

The Art of Manliness blog is the brainchild of a husband and wife team who feature articles specifically targeted to men. Geared towards helping us to become better husbands, fathers and better men in general. It’s not about the status quo image of what many think men should be but paying direct attention to sincerity, skills and values of real gentlemen. On the surface, it may not seem like a glamorous topic but they deliver their content in a powerful way.

This first thing you’ll notice when you hit their blog is their detailed representation and play on the antiqued traditional expressions of men in the 19th century.

They’ve taken an ordinary topic and transformed and delivered it in a way that applies to both men and women, consistently over time. Creating a niche that was often ignored when they first started the blog. The blog is now amazingly successful and receives hundreds of thousands of visitors per day.

The key takeaway here is that your trump card for blogging success won’t necessarily be a popular, low competition niche but your ability to present your topics in a new and interesting format, building an interactive community and serving your audiences’ appetite well. They’ve certainly proven that content is King.

Check out the Art of Manliness blog here.

Darren Rowse – Problogger.net

Darren Rowse of Problogger.net is another powerhouse blogger who from loss and disappointment created an online business of success. Darren is from a completely different era of bloggers I refer to as the pioneers. Before Twitter, Instagram and Facebook he has been doing his thing as a blogger before 90% of the world knew what it meant to blog. The great thing about Darren’s story is that he started from scratch with his passion for writing earning zero dollars to now earning six figures per year. He went from a single blog and built out a network of profitable blogs through his B5 Media and Pro Blogger networks, eventually receiving over US $2 Million in dollars in funding. B5 Media has since been acquired by Alloy Digital, a large advertising firm.

Darren took a simple blogging idea and built out a huge network running strong for almost a decade now. His success shows that blogging is only limited by your imagination in business. His blog created diverse opportunities for him through major speaking engagements, published books, consultancy, training, photography and more. All launched through blogging.

Read more about his blogging journey here.

Conclusion

I’ve shared snippets of these bloggers’ stories because they’re just average people like you and I of whom we can relate. The common characteristics of these bloggers you’ll realize is that they took their ideas, whether simple or complex, and created brands and content that people can’t ignore. The topics chosen were not very unique as other bloggers do cover them but they took it a step further proving that regardless of how saturated a blogging niche might be, there’s still room for success through originality.

Your blog’s success is in your hands. Dare to do things with your blog you could only dream about.

The post 3 Enduring Bloggers You Should Emulate to Help Sculpt Your Blogging Journey appeared first on The Blog Herald.

To market your blog successfully you’ll have to get out of the mindset of treating subscribers and readers of your blogs as mere users or statistics and start thinking of every single reader as a valued client with whom you value and are building a relationship. Email marketing is relationship building, not mass marketing like television ads. This attitude flows into all aspects of your blogging business and will reap greater rewards as you invest more in building relationships. It’s just that simple. Yet however simple the concept may be, it still requires patience and a long-term vision since no serious relationship is built overnight.

Email marketing is a powerful method for owning your niche and still many bloggers are not taking advantage. Here are some tips to get you started and make the best out of your audience.

Building the Trust Factor

Just think about how difficult it is to trust sales people and the many random encounters you may have on a daily basis. What will be required for these persons to gain your trust? What do you think your readers require of you before they can start relying on you and trusting you?

Here’s what you need to focus on:

1. Create Content with a Difference – Identify the areas in which your blogging niche is lacking and begin offering solutions. When I say solutions, I mean valuable articles and guides that present information in a format and quality they will not find elsewhere. Deliver content beautifully.

2. Use Your Real Voice – Let your real personality shine, don’t try to copy other seemingly successful bloggers but create your own signature style of writing and presenting yourself. We’re all attracted to authenticity and are quick to identify the fakers.

3. Be Proactive & Offer Assistance – Always try to provide added value where possible. Opportunities present themselves when users comment on your blog asking questions and offering opinions – engage them and their blog in return. Reach out to others in your niche on social networks and be known, check in regularly.

The goal here is to build a reputable profile and online personality. You’d be more inclined to give someone who you trust and are familiar with your email address, right?

The Necessary Email Marketing Tools

Investing in an email marketing service from a company like GetResponse is an absolute imperative as you build out your marketing. Never try to initiate an email campaign using your standard email accounts. There are so many limitations here that will make it a huge time waster.

GetResponse allows you to quickly and easily create and design email marketing campaigns, view delivery statistics and other reports, social media integration, managing mailing lists, setup auto-responders, use pre-made responsive email design templates and a plethora of other features that will help make marketing a cinch. It simply makes sense.

Integration on your WordPress Blog

Once you’ve created an account with them you can start using their free blog integration plugin which allows you to place subscription forms at practically any location on your site.

GetResponse has a lot of guides and how to articles on getting started with their service as well as how to master email marketing in general. So they’ve got you covered.

Techniques to Acquire Subscribers & Begin Converting

Now there has to be some benefit for subscribing to your mailing list. Again I’ll ask you to put yourself in your readers’ shoes and seriously think about why you would subscribe to anything on your blog. What are you looking for or expecting to receive when you sign up to a website you’ve read? Offer something of value that is believable.

Here are some ideas of what you should do:

1. Offer a Useful Guide – Find a strong topic to write a guide that is about 3 – 5,000 words strong. Make the guide unique and break it down into 2 parts. One smaller teaser portion is to be published on your blog and the rest forms part of a PDF download or secure page. To access the rest of the information via the download, the reader needs to subscribe. Bear in mind, however, that your published article should still provide some usefulness but try to leave the reader wanting more. This is your opportunity to make a great first impression.

2. Visibility is Key – Place a subscription box at the end of your articles with a strong call to action.

3. Ask users to sign-up – Nothing beats asking. You’d surprised what you can achieve. Invite readers to subscribe to your list and briefly explain the value they can expect from you.

4. Comment Sign-up – The GetResponse WordPress plugin has a feature which offers signing-up as readers leave comments on your blog. If they’ve gone that far to leave a comment then there’s a chance they will sign-up. Give that feature a try.

The Next Steps

As you become more experienced with blogging and marketing you’ll realize that it’s all about building solid relationships. Remember that everyone counts and you should never disqualify a connection because they do not seem to have much weight or influence in that niche. It’s impossible to predict anyone’s future and the value they will bring. Of course, you’re not building relationships simply to get something in return in the future but this needs to be a genuine part of your daily blogging life.

Email marketing is still lucrative, you just need to play your cards right.

Have you been doing any email marketing for your blog or business? What has been your experience and which strategies work best for you? Please let us know in the comments below.

The post How to Use the Art of Email Marketing to Launch Your Blog & Start Converting appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Unfortunately, our obsession with making money quite easily steers us from who we really are, as we lose sight of what we truly want of life and what connects with us on a spiritual and truly fulfilling level.

You’ll see me blog a lot about the foundations of making money online and how to approach your blogging business. Trying to exploit the many opportunities present in marketing, search engines and social media. On my blogging journey, I’ve made a startling discovery from looking back at my failures, successes and other bloggers’ experiences. It hit me hard that my reasons for doing everything in life powerfully determined the outcome. The quick money makers made a profit many times but the potential for long-term success wasn’t all that great, simply because of the overbearing make money mindset and ignoring my own DNA.

Let me shed some light on this.

Blogging Fueled by Passion Guarantees Success

That’s right, I said guarantee. Success, however, is relative and depends on an individual’s perspective of what ultimate success and achievement in life really means.

Whichever blogging idea you can quickly come up with is certain to have been thought of by another blogger at some point. Originality will not come from your idea itself but your approach and execution. Your level of execution and attention to details that truly matter will be more powerful if you’re passionate about the subject matter. Finding profitable systems and niches to blog in are great and will yield some profit. However, choosing topics to blog of which you have no real interest or passion for will show in your content and the overall quality of your site will suffer.

It’s a mind-numbing experience trying to blog about things of which you’re completely disconnected, regardless of how profitable they. Exploitation of profit loopholes and hyped up topics of no sincere interest to you will, in short order, destroy your drive to do anything. You’ll hit a brick wall and your business flat lines. You achieve a short-lived gain. If you can’t see yourself doing it for the rest of your life and maintaining it is somewhat a burden, have an exit strategy that allows you to cash out and transfer the value of the venture to someone else. Do not wait until you crash from burnout.

A lack of passion and genuine love for what you do may be a reason why so many bloggers fail.

The Passionate Blogger

The passionate blogger is able to use every ounce energy to build a business without ever really getting tired. There will be no stone left unturned until the desired results are obtained and he/she will have the drive and tenacity to endure until victory. Such a victory is the most fulfilling kind and is attainable for the passionate blogger.

The New Age of Content Marketing

As a passionate writer, your blog marketing strategy is going to have to kick it up a notch in 2014. You can’t simply throw up a site with mediocre copied content and expect it to rank in search engines and capture the attention and investment of users. You have to go a step further. I suggest:

1. Think Quality Over Quantity – The more content you write will not help you rank better on its own since there are so many other signals which affect virality and search engine presence. Spend more time on the end product versus speed and institute mechanisms that encourage users to share your content and subscribe.

2. Write Guides That Impact – Create free, downloadable 3,000+ word guides that go above and beyond anything else to deliver actionable and impactful content that changes lives. Just look at what Neil Patel is doing with the guides he creates. Your audience should not think or be the same after reading your stuff. That’s what makes shareable content that drives traffic and success.

3. Everybody is Relevant – Do not pay attention to the rate at which your blog grows but make every single visitor feel important and valued. If you’re only getting 5 targeted visitors per day to your site, ensure that you’re making lasting long-term connections. Each happy reader or client will add to an avalanche of profits, value and success in the long run. 5 paying customers is better than 1,000 random, disinterested blog visitors. Engage your relationships wisely.

Of course, none of this can be accomplished and sustained without drive and genuine passion. Don’t be fooled.

The main takeaway here is that you should pursue the things that ignite your passions. Life along with the challenge of growing your blog becomes 100 times easier regardless of how much work you have to pour in. Money is not success but a life well spent will never lead you to pine over regrets.

The post The Reasons Why Blogging for Profit over Passion Will Lead You to Failure appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Fear is a destructive force and those who succumb to it are defeated before the task or battle has begun. Now the most damaging effect of fear is that we either never embark on our mission, or procrastinate towards stagnation. So it is also with blogging, online marketing and every other business venture or task we take on. Our fears of rejection, failure and even success, cripple us and leave us down the road with feelings of “what if” rather than the satisfaction of “been there, done that.“

There’s a lot of discussion about the failure of a majority of bloggers and the techniques and principles one should employ to guarantee success. Methods ranging from blog publishing frequency, which platforms to use, creating original content, using beautiful themes and templates, etc. All of these are wonderful but there are many mental and emotional concepts and approaches which lead many to success and the lack thereof, to failure.

It is true that succumbing to fear is what ultimately leads to failure, since it prevents you from doing what you should do in the first place to attain victory. Therefore, let’s look at the various ways you can overcome fear and reset your attitude towards blogging.

Causes of Fear of Failure in Blogging

We all  have different belief systems and measure and model our success based on what we see around us. Many bloggers are measuring success based on what the big money making bloggers are doing. Thus comparing oneself with another. The act of comparing is unhealthy because you can never be someone else or have their success. You have to realistically find your own voice, your own niche that makes your heart sing and direct your own path with its own key performance indicators. Begin with a blank slate and set targets and goals within your limits. Be honest with yourself. It is not impossible but highly unlikely that you will make $2,000 in your first month of blogging. Don’t set that goal and disappoint yourself on day 31. However. that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ambitious but at the same time be real with your objectives and timelines.

So what ignites your fear? Ask yourself what you’re afraid of and mark them off as irrelevant, nonexistent and inconsequential because none of it really matters.

Fear Can be a Creeper

Fear creeps up and manifests in many ways you may not realize, and is closely related to procrastination as you create and find reasons to not do everything you must. Are you delaying writing that ultimate guide idea you’ve had for a while? Are you doubting your ability to blog in a particular niche? Does everything you decide to do somehow get sabotaged by your lack of prudence or attention? Does everything have to perfect and you thus proudly call yourself a perfectionist? Fear may be the source of your misfortunes disguised otherwise. Be honest with yourself, stop procrastinating and get the small tasks done today and everyday.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your blog be.

Failure is Merely a Matter of Perspective

The great thing about perspective is that it can be whatever you want it to be. Why is it that some achieve great feats while others don’t? Even though we’re all humans and blessed with pretty much the same basic features and characteristics. It’s because one person believes he can and eventually will, while the other does not. If you’ve been blogging for more than a couple of years and you’re just not seeing the results you want, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed you just may need to try something new.

If you accept it as failure then you’re saying that your experience was worthless and you haven’t learned anything. So you quit. That is not true. Over the course of 2 years of blogging I’m certain you have learned a lot about writing, web technology, marketing, promotion, engagement tactics and so much more. You’re better and more equipped than when you first started. That is powerful and that’s 2 years of experience blogging that many others do not have.

Use your previous attempts at blogging success as learning experiences that were useful for sharpening your writing and marketing skills. Document what you’ve learned, create a new game plan and execute once again. Whether it’s through relaunching your blog or creating a new one. Remember you’re smarter now and success is much closer than what it previously was. Failure is not the opposite of success, it is a part of success.

Overcoming the Fear of Failure

Fear is a natural emotion and there’s no getting rid of it, regardless of how experienced we ever become. There will always be challenges greater than us and that’s all part of living. If you have no challenges in blogging then you’re not going for a big enough goal. Take note of your response to fear; it should be a validation that you’re embarking on something that will help you grow rather than viewing it as something that will destroy you.

On the road to overcoming, here’s what you should do:

Analyze all potential outcomes – Many experience fear of failure because of the unknown. Rid yourself of this by considering all the possible outcomes of the tasks you have before you. Success is one of the possibilities!

Think only on positives – Reject negative discussions and visualize your desired victory and who you will become.

Address the worst case scenario – What is the worst that could happen if you somehow miss your mark of blogging success as you envisioned it? Seriously! You have nothing to lose. Be aware of that.

Have a contingency plan – We can only do so much with the 24 hour days we have. Create a Plan B. This offers comfort in knowing that there’s always other possibilities and techniques to try.

Set small, daily, attainable goals – Your fear of failure can be conquered over time as you learn how to win daily. If your objective is to write 30 blog posts per month, then focus solely on each day’s task. Tomorrow will take care of itself, today alone exists and is everything.

Conclusion

A little milk is going to be spilled occasionally throughout your blogging journey. You will make mistakes. However, there is no finality in whatever you do wrong. It’s an opportunity to use what you’ve learned to be a better blogger. Let your fear fuel a courageous success you can be proud of. Create your own blogging story worth sharing.

The post How to Conquer Your Fear of Failure in Blogging appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Instead of whining about the all-powerful Google we should be focused on our business of blogging and online marketing, and how we can grow and evolve with the times. SEO is rough and now is the time to innovate and be deliberate with everything we do with our blogs.

The SEO Expert of the Future

The search engine optimization expert of the future will need to be more than an SEO. Google is ensuring that no one can solely game the search engines to make profits. Sure there are still some very lucrative niche markets that are still waiting to be tapped but SEO alone won’t cut it. The new SEO expert will need to be a designer, or have an eye for design, social media marketer, brand manager, writer and advertiser. This is evident because Google’s algorithms are leaning towards popularity, relevance and authority. Achieving all cannot be done by doing SEO alone.

The new SEO expert will need to create genuine buzz and interest around their products and their clients’ by launching effective marketing campaigns that bring greater value to the end user. Your blog should not be a random splash of topics but be the result of a deliberate and well thought out campaign which brings value while monetizing. It’s not going to be about keywords and search engines alone.

Anticipating Google’s Algorithm Changes

Google’s changes aren’t very difficult to predict. Every move they’ve made is towards offering a better search experience for users. Look at every activity on the web with an unbiased approach and you’ll have an idea of where Google is going. Take, for example, the recent action against guest blogging and the My Blog Guest site in particular. Although I’d say that the penalty was a bit harsh but all around the web you see the abuse of guest blogging, plagued with spammers. The more popular these techniques become, the more they are spammed and shortly after Google has its day. It had to be done.

As you go about link-building and promoting your blog, ask yourself whether or not you’re providing value or are you just littering the web. Don’t be tempted to give into any shady schemes, it will go against you in the long run.

Where Your Blog Should be in 5 Years

As I’ve said repeatedly, there aren’t any get rich quick schemes any more. The market is maturing and it’s time to start thinking long-term with a business mindset. Be aware of SEO and keyword research, but the bigger picture is:

1. Whether you’re providing real value for your readers.
2. Are you building a brand that can be respected and followed?
3. How can you monetize your blog in a viable and respectable manner by creating products and service unique to you?
4. Are you building relationships with the people you encounter online?
5. Do you have systems in place geared towards retaining visitors and not treating them as one-off sales or clicks?

These are the ideas you need to be focusing on. In a previous article, Networking & Insight – Absolute Necessities for New Bloggers to Improve their Blogs in 2014, I talked about building relationships and networking to increase visibility for your blog. Communities like VigLink’s Publisher Roundtable become of greater importance. Not only because of the insight and research they offer for us bloggers but the forum is a powerful environment to learn and make your mark early in your game. I cannot stress enough on the results of a VigLink’s poll they are continuously conducting which gives us a real idea of what’s happening in the blogosphere where social media, earnings, SEO and other opportunities are concerned. Take advantage of these resources.

Begin building a foundation of excellence and value now, not later. If not, your blog / business isn’t worth it. It’s a waste of your time.

The post The Future of SEO – How Every Blogger Needs to be Positioned to be Successful appeared first on The Blog Herald.

However, there’s a critical technical step which needs to be taken that I don’t believe should be outsourced to any practitioner without first understanding its importance and relevance. That is keyword research. Keyword research is essentially using tools to gather data relating to what users are searching for in search engines, the volume of searches and to discover how tough the competition really is.

“But keyword research is for people relying solely on search engine traffic,” you say? Yes, I heard you say it. Look at it this way, when investing your hard earned cash in the bank via stocks, bonds, etc. you don’t put all your eggs in one basket but you diversify your portfolio. It’s the same concept here. You’re going to do the same with your blogging business by creating more opportunities for traffic and earnings.

The Benefits of Keyword Research & What to Do with it

Let’s start with an example:

1. You intend to start a blog on maintaining BMX Bikes. You happen to be an expert and you’ve spent half of your life riding, stunting and maintaining them. So launching a blog seems like a logical step since you’ll be able to use your knowledge to create useful and original content.

2. After analyzing what you’ll need to start your blog and you’re ready to purchase your domain, etc. The next thing you should do is keyword research to determine, the exact domain name you need to invest in as well as which topics and niches within the broad BMX category you’re targeting. You get excited about bmxbikeclub.com, it’s available and ready for purchase. Before you do that:

3. Upon doing your research you realize that the keyword “bmx bike club” is extremely competitive and there are hundreds of established websites already targeting those keywords and have solid presences and respected authority. How are you going to outrank them? Depending on how strong their position, you may never outrank them. This is the reality many bloggers face without ever realizing it.

4. So you then decide to target a sub-category or topic within the BMX world that the wide majority have seem to forgotten. You discover that “pimp my bmx ride” or whatever (remember I’m just pulling keyword examples out of the air here) is a topic that no other BMX blog seems to be covering in depth and there seems to be a legitimate need based on the number of people searching for it on a monthly basis.

5. The conclusion here would be that you have a winning domain name and niche / keyword to target. The keyword, “pimp my bmx ride”, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll solely be focusing on pimping out bikes but it’s a good starting point for generating content that will:

a) Have the best chance of performing in search engines without too much work

b) You’ll be providing unique content that will keep readers coming back for more since they can’t find it anywhere else

c) Expand and supplement your content exposing it to more eyes with similar interests

Your blog now has the foundation for the best chance of success in a shorter period of time. Instead of randomly launching a blog because you like the topic, you’re using logic and proven research and statistics to make viable business decisions.

How to do keyword research to find the perfect niche

Keyword Research is a very deep topic and I suggest spending a week to familiarize yourself with the concept and other bloggers’ experiences with it on the web. The perfect blog to find detailed step by step reviews and experiences researching keywords to launch businesses is Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. Here he details his experience building an authority site that is now earning him about $3,000 per month. All because of a little research. His methods are a bit unorthodox for getting the fastest results but it shows you a clear picture of how the web works and how traffic flows. He also goes in detail how targeting long tail keywords in Google is the way to go in your SEO strategy.

He will mention a few tools you will need to effectively complete your keyword research such Google Adwords tool, which is now named Google Keyword Planner, products by Moz.com and a custom keyword research tool. However, for the research tool, I recommend using Long Tail Pro. I provides very accurate indications of search volume for particular keywords and a competitive analysis for determining quickly how strong the competition is. This information you will not get from Google.

Here’s a quick demo to give you an idea of the possibilities:

SEO will still need to be part of your blog building strategy. Perfect keyword research will give you an edge and position you to relatively quickly to gain atrgeted search engine traffic, of which you can monetize and convert.

If you’ve already launched your blog, it’s never too late to employ a new keyword targeting strategy. You’ll need to do an audit of your content, decide what you’re going to offer and align that with keyword opportunities in your niche.

The post 95% of Bloggers Ignore This Technique & Stall: Keyword Research & Targeting appeared first on The Blog Herald.

There is one medium able to hold the attention of this fast paced age and that’s video. The rise of video blogging has been a slow one but we’re seeing where many “vloggers” who took early advantage of sites like YouTube and Vimeo, are both rolling in the dough and enjoying rich experiences with their audiences. Online video has already started replacing cable TV viewership with more time being spent online.

It’s time to rethink how you distribute your content. Regular publishing on your blog and traditional social media are great techniques but let’s go a step further.

Your Blog is your Own Media House

As a blogger, you’re not very different from CNN, the New York Times and Time Warner. You’re trying to make a living from content, you’re just not a major channel or conglomerate yet. But you’re in the same business as they are. When you begin to start approaching your blogging from this mindset you’ll soon realise that there are many things lacking from your approach to your business. Think about how those major media houses present their content. It’s well branded, professionally done, targeted for their audience and they’re on the ball on meeting their objectives. That’s the mindset you need to develop.

The Benefits of Supplementing your Blog’s Content with Video

There are tons of SEO and distribution benefits of adding video to your marketing toolkit. The first obvious one is that you’re tapping into a very different kind of audience. An audience whose media consumption and sharing patterns are completely different but with an appetite and connectivity strong enough to make your stuff go viral.

In addition, Google treats video in a slightly different manner, and your content will have an opportunity to be presented in a special way. Your content, once you have confirmed Google Authorship on both your site and YouTube, will give you an SEO advantage as you work to gain command of your chosen niche and topics.

Video offers you the flexibility of presenting your content uniquely and with a lot more life as you let your personality shine, with room for animation and other types of cool tricks and graphics if you have the skill. At the end of the day, video will help you reach more people.

Whether You’re a Beginner or Pro, Get Started

Many bloggers fail to jump into video because of a fear of criticism journeying into new territory. They view it in a similar manner to public speaking, which rightfully so, freaks out a lot of people. I would advise that you do all you can to overcome your camera shyness and begin testing the waters with video. It will feel a bit awkward at first but it’s a bold move that will not only get your creative juices flowing, but help you to grow as a professional blogger. A blogger above the average with a brand to be reckoned.

In getting started, it basically doesn’t matter what type of camera you have, whether it’s top of the line, only worth a few hundred bucks or is your phone’s camera. Just get started. Its not about how fancy you can make your video, although that’s important, but it’s how good you are at storytelling. Mastering the art of storytelling is your trump card and if you’ve been paying attention to marketing on the web lately, you’ve heard of this. Tell your unique story.

Learning Resources

As a first step, create your YouTube account. Then check out Derek Muller’s series and favorited videos on creating a YouTube channel and Storytelling. He has some amazing advice for beginners and he shares some in the video below:

The YouTube blog is also a great place to learn from the experts and YouTube itself has lots of resources and tools to help you create killer content.

To conclude, I’d say test the waters, do some research on your target audience who consume videos and make your blogging brand known. Once you’ve got the hang of video as a distribution media, try other video based networks like Vimeo.com and Spreecast.com. There’s a wealth of opportunities out there, you just have to get your feet wet.

The post Your Blog Needs Its Own Video Channel – Here’s Why You’re Missing Out on Your Success appeared first on The Blog Herald.

As the challenges pile on, those who are serious are forced to raise the bar higher and do and think differently. At the end of the day, in any venture, the questions remain, “How can I make some money?” Or “How can I make the most out of my life and business?” The answer, especially for bloggers, is that we need to keep flowing with the rising standards and bring new experiences to our readers, clients and prospects.

One way to do this is by thinking of your blog as a means of delivering a service or product. If your content is an asset, then that asset should have a value and anything of value can be translated into cash in your pocket. The concept I’m most drawn to is the idea of creating digital products from your blog’s content, whether its by publishing books, offering consultation and technical services or launching a service from a hobby you’ve perfected for years. The service driven mindset has the potential to yield you massive results.

The Foundation Idea

The idea is to do some soul searching to discover what you’re truly passionate about and are they valuable enough for people to pay you for your knowledge or service. What are you really good at? Whatever it is, try to create a product or service around that, develop a vision and mission and direct your blog writing towards that. There are bloggers who have created services from:

• WordPress installation and design
• Marketing consultation
• Published Books (Printed & eBooks)
• Sold Art & Craft work
• Launched membership sites

To name a few. Many of which facilitated by the humble beginnings of a blog. The reason blogs are so powerful for launching business ideas and services is that it typically engages users on a human and emotional level garnering trust, working relationship and reliability – all critical components of making sales. This is why its crucially important for bloggers to build on these qualities and assets.

So what can you sell? What can you offer at a reasonable price to your readers? What unique value can you bring?

Package it, Brand it, Sell it

Once you’ve figured out what you can offer, think about how you’re going to deliver it. Is it digital or physical?

Packaging: This relates to how you’ve branded your blog overtime and how you’ll approach your new offering. The colors, logos, service names and imagery are essential for capturing the attention of your readers. If you decide to do some form of consultation, give your new service and its tiers a cool title, for example. Be fun and innovative. You’ve got to determine the impression you want for your service, whether its sleek and professional or fun and easy going, depending on your niche.

The whole idea here is that you have to visualize how you want your service perceived, determine who you want as customers and go the extra mile to accomplish the greatest appeal. You cannot be sloppy with this. Invest in hiring a designer to help you with this process.

Acquire Reviews and get the Conversations Started Around Your Product

So your service is packaged and ready to go. Approach others in your market to give your service, book or product a free trial. Pour your all into delivering a high quality service and learning as much as you can from their experience and feedback; and get them to write and publish their experiences on your blog. Give amazing value. Hopefully the experiences are good and as your peers and newly developed relationships with other bloggers publish and write about what you have to offer and links back to your content then you’ll see sales begin to pickup, others will give you a chance and try you out.

Leveraging an already validated blog’s audience is a surefire way to get up and running with selling your services at the lowest possible cost.

Tell the Success Stories

Stories sell! Its that simple. Have users of your services write reviews and record videos of their experiences with you. Tell the success story of a life you’ve touched because of the dollars you’ve saved them, share the story of the person who lost 50lbs because of your book or consultation. These stories connect directly with our emotions and will not only go viral quickly but are messages that will last for years to come providing you with a steady flow of readers and prospects.

Your blog will need to focus on sharing these stories and continuously providing value and insight into whatever you choose to offer. Don’t let it be solely about selling but go a step further to bring valuable, usable content to your prospective audience.

Customer Service & Authenticity are Key

As your new venture grows and you acquire more customers, you need to ensure that you’re trying to master customer service and maintaining relationships. These are vital to your success and if someone on Twitter asks you a question publicly and you’re quick to answer, provide assistance and valuable content, your reputation will go a long way and people will notice you.

You will need to come out of any shell you may be in and get out there and start talking to people. Genuine interactions build trust overtime and that’s what you need to secure success for your services and blog in the long-term. That’s what will bring in the dough.

Acquire the Tools to get you Going

Here some free and paid tools to get you started will the many directions you can take with this:

For selling digital or physical goods / services – try the WooCommerce WordPress plugin

Managing client data, workflows, sales flow and customer service – Try Zendesk or Insight.ly – Powerful client relationship management tools.

Easily and quickly accept payments online – Use a mixture of Paypal & Payoneer

Network security & more developer focused platforms – Amazon Web Services along with Forty Cloud are great for getting your cloud services secure and up and running with EC2 Security while providing powerful tutorials. Digital Ocean & WP Engine are also good starting points for going pro if you’re into building apps and need more technical features than average.

Setting up membership areas on your blog – Try S2 Member

Learn about web development and design to gain some inspiration – Check out Spyre Studios

Please share with us in the comments below some services or products you’ve successfully launched from your blog.

The post What Every Blogger Needs to Know About Creating Products Readers Will Buy appeared first on The Blog Herald.