Blogussion » hard work

Use Your Lowest Quality of Content for Improvement

Derek Jensen — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:00:46 +0000

Say what?! Yes. By finding and using your lowest quality content whether it you measure it by the number of retweets, comments, trackbacks, or just the copy and message you can improve your blogging practice. We should all want to improve our practice of blogging and make it clear to your audience that you are serious and here to play.

Just looking at some of the content here at Blogussion, I noticed so many posts that could be improved. Either the idea or message could be better or that message or idea has evolved.

Surely, we up’d our game here and say we are your perfect seat to evolve the blogosphere. If you have decided to go change or improve a direction with your blog you should take this post to heart and put it into action.

Define Your Lowest Quality

I’m asking you to use your lowest quality of content for improvement because this is ultimately the areas where you can improve your blog and your blogging practice. What’s better than pulling up an old article that never the light but deserved to for your target readership?!

What posts have received the lowest amount of retweets or overall shares? … this tends to answer how well someone is willing to pass it onto others. It has to be good!
What posts received the lowest amount of comments? … are you encouraging discussion or it might not fit the voice they’ve come to connect with…
My favorite: what content do you just find to be of low quality by not even looking at the retweets, shares, or amount of comments?

Your definition of “lowest quality” needs to be yours. But I want to push you to deliver the best and quality content to your readers! Surely don’t make your definition something that just doesn’t even matter to have it being defined. Make sense? If not, I’d love to hear your comment.

But before you begin making improvements you need to define what is considered to be your lowest quality of content.

What Improvements are Needed?

The improvements I’m talking about are NOT fixing spelling or grammar mistakes. The improvements I’m talking ARE:

Adjusting the voice of the message to match with your true values, belief, and personality.
How are other perceiving or responding to the message you are striving to deliver? Make those needed adjustments.
Do you need to try out podcasting, internet broadcasting, or offer paid content?

Surely there is more improvements that you could make. You as the voice and direction of your blog has to figure out what improvements could be made to better match what you are good at and what you’re striving to achieve. We all want to have a successful blog!

You might be thinking you need to improve your SEO, interaction with others to promote your content, or that your message and quality of content just sucks.

Every blog and blogger will have different and unique improvements.

Feeling the Glory

Once, you have defined your definition of lowest quality and make the needed improvements, feel the glory!

It’s about feeling like you are making a difference in the blogosphere with your content in whatever category or interest you strive to aspire. Start feeling the glory today by looking at your lowest quality of content for those needed improvements. Only you wanting to make the change will make the change!

What prevents you to make improvements?

Photo by Mariano Kamp

Obtain A Beneficial & Continual Focus with Your Competition

Derek Jensen — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 05:00:24 +0000

During the creation and expansion process of our blog we tend to focus on what our competition is doing or not doing. When it comes to creating a blog you have a set mission or vision that fits your inner thoughts and voice. Instead of solely focusing on your competition, focus on and compare with their talents, skills, and perspectives.

When you think of the content that is present on Blogussion what other blogs do you think of? This is what Alex and I have been thinking about when working on the redesign for all of you.

When looking at the competition of blogs about topics related to the practice of what bloggers do the obvious few competitors are ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, Daily Blog Tips, How to Make My Blog, and Blogging Tips.

I’ll be focusing on what we truly need to look at when it comes to our competition. We can compete with or against them by doing something better or just making slight changes. Instead, let’s just look at the overall feel and movement our competition is going or has been going. As I said before, “focus on and compare with their [competitors] talents, skills, and perspectives.

To do this we will analyze our own blog, then the competitors, and bring it back to our blog for improvement and a better overall continued focus.

I’ll be using Blogussion as a case study, but please think about your blog of course.

Find the True Differences

When looking at your competition begin to find the true differences. These true differences are not just your voice and unique community but deeper. Why is your voice (content) and community unique?

Asking and Reading What Others Think

Surfing the web I found the following words on Blogussion:

Blogussion is run by 16 year old Alex Fraiser and his blog serves differently to most “make money online blogs”. He offers great how to advise to customise and improve your blog as well as offering a great insight into how other blogs make it big. -Michael Dunlop
I’ve always been a huge fan of blogs, namely up and coming stars. Blogussion caught my eye a few months ago, and I’ve been following their articles ever since. Jam-packed with blogging and internet traffic-related SEO articles, Blogussion is one of the top blogging resources on the web today.- Jake Rocheleau
For a beginning blogger trying to figure out where to start, there is probably no better blog to read than Blogussion. -Blake Waddill
I strongly suggest that you go and have a look because it really is great and gives loads of fantastic tips on blogging.-Genevieve

Additionally, you should ask your readers via Twitter or Facebook what they think of your blog’s content and overall feel.

Taking a Quick Glance at Your Competition

Now that we know what others think about us and why we stand out we can look more into why our competitors are standing out.

The following thoughts are of Michael Dunlop and will be used to get a general sense of the difference Blogussion has from competitors mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Problogger: Problogger offers all the advice new bloggers will need to improve their newly created blog. With subjects covering almost everything anyone would ever need to know about, there is little reason to use Google to find it.
CopyBlogger: Copyblogger offers some great tips, tricks and advise on how to write better blog posts, create better blog copy and all in all, a better blog. A definite recommendation for the more advanced blogger taking it up a notch.
How to Make My Blog: They teach everything you need to know about starting your own blog (if my eCourse wasn’t enough) – a great resource for anyone wanting to set up, customize and launch there blog.
Daily Blog Tips: Daily blog tips to creating a better blog, covering all the new blogging guidelines, updates and tricks as they come out.

Doing a Compare, Not to Just Contrast Yourself

What does that mean? Compare your blog with the competing blogs with the intent on not just being different or better than them.

Reflecting on Your About Page

Know that we know what readers and other views think about our blog and our competitors’ blogs we can see if that matches up with the about pages when looking at the story and/or overall mission. This is usually when we have to make improvements to our blog to either make it more known to the readers what your blog is truly about or to improve your content, design, and community interaction.

First look at the chunk of your about page that would strive to sell you blog over your competition.

This is what is currently written in our about page:

We are a blog about blogging that provides outstanding tips for excelling your blog in a variety of topics. Whether or not you are someone who earns an income from blogging, or someone who wishes they were – we will teach you how to create a blog that truly stands out from the crowd.

Established on the turn of the New Year of 2009, Blogussion has proven to be one of the top blogs in the whole “blogging tips” niche. With a consistently updated blog, a rapidly expanding community and much will to continue on and expand – Blogussion is a blog that should be in any bloggers feed reader.

After looking at your about page and what people say about your blog you can start to compare with your competition. Remember we are not comparing to just contrast ourselves. We are trying to establish the better thought of what to focus on when it comes to our blogs and our competition.

Also think about visiting your competitors’ about pages and see how their message is either working or suffering. Also consider looking at these about pages.

Adjust & Improve to Compete Better

Yes we can all have different stories, prove to be better than our competitors, or establish different overall missions. What we need to do on a constant basis and will be more beneficial to our blogs in both the short and long run.

Focus on continually matching with your reader’s thoughts and growing those same thoughts.
If your reader’s thoughts are missing your true importance or distinction this is your fault. You cannot benefit from your community helping you out against your competition if they are misguided.
Don’t just make changes to be different. Make the changes that you want to make that go in favor of your strengths and your passion.

The Beneficial & Continual Focus

Don’t compare and contrast with your competition to be better

Building our blogs is put on our own time schedule. This usually correlates with the purpose of your blog and how bad you really want it.

I’m focusing on the bloggers that want it really bad and want to really stand out from the crowd in their niche and their competition. To do this you need to obtain that beneficial and continual focus with your competition.

In this article we looked at the importance of the relationship between your readers and the mission you are actively pursuing which is shown through your community interaction, content, and design. This relationship is the focus we need to have and observe how our own personal talents and skills will strengthen our blog’s mission and community to compete.

Our competition did not just create their blog to compete or be different. They created because they knew what they were good at and just strived to only get better. If I were you I would give this focus a shot otherwise you could be running into a passive failure. But, you are not alone we all make mistakes. Having a better focus always helps though.

Photo by Adrian Boliston

Observe to Steal and Conquer Instead of Following Footsteps

Derek Jensen — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:03:23 +0000

Warning: I’m not telling you to do any unethical or unlawful activity. Hear me out for at least a few seconds. If you see an opportunity where someone has already started something but hasn’t taken the right direction, please act upon it and deliver.

“Stealing” is merely innovation. You didn’t invent it, but you are innovating and stealing in a good way.

The best inventions are ones that become inovations.

The number one example I can think of is how Apple is know as innovators. Many people in the tech and developing industry know that Apple is very strict and somewhat harsh to inventors bringing their inventions into them. They are strict and harsh in the ways that they are very willing to turn down many requests or inventions that they’ve received. Why? Many inventions are just too outlandish or Apple doesn’t see their invention being right for this specific time in society.

So many bloggers say how they wish they would have done what others are now doing. Be that blogger that takes a risk and “steal”.

The True Importance

We need to be in the mindset of observe to steal and not follow.

I want to talk to you why it’s important to “steal” that idea or invention from the artist, inventor, or initial person who came up with it. When looking or reading successful blogs or places on the interwebs you begin to admire their work and go down “their” path. Why do we go down “their” path and why am I using quotation marks around “their”?

We go down the path of these successful people because we see them making money, gaining popularity, and/or we want to see the benefits sooner rather than later. When referring these successful people and “their” paths, it’s merely us following them. We retract their footsteps because we want them to lead us down the right or exact path as them.

Is this right? No. I’ll tell you what is right… It’s important to see how these successful people get to where they are and take advice or tips from them so we don’t make “stupid or dumb” mistakes.

These footsteps are for merely us having to learn not follow. It’s time to observe to steal from an artist.

We can always change our plan of action into becoming successful. We just need to adjust now rather than later.

Plan of Attack

On the Same Page

Remember as I’ve said before, “stealing” is merely noticing the potential of something and acting upon it before they or others do. This will involve risk, planning, and execution.

Discover the Opportunity

What happens you see an opportunity? I’m not talking about the opportunity of taking the advice from the followed footsteps and add your originality to it as basic as your own voice.

The true opportunity is when you see something not being done and truly feel there will be great benefits to a group of people. Sometimes this opportunity is not one you invented but one you discovered and feel it’s not being done correctly.

Put it in Your Name and Roll

Don’t be afraid to take credit for either coming up with something awesome or discovering something awesome and implement it in ways that you deem would be better.

When I discovered something that someone intially had but thought about it in a different way on how it would be implemented and adopted it felt strange to take credit. But, I knew if I would take credit I could roll with the idea and not be bogged down by the thought of whether to continue or not. The inventors might be frustrated if they discover what you have executed, but don’t have their frustration effect you and your idea.

Inventors are rarely innovators because they are focused on creating something new. They aren’t focused on it being adaptive or fitting with society at that moment or in that form. Be the innovator.

Review and Execute

Brainstorm, imagine, discover, observe, and execute.

Those five words pretty much highlight and sum up the items needed to be completed to steal and conquer and not follow in someone’s footsteps.

The key one though is executing. I’ve personally struggled with this. I’ve brainstormed, imagined, discovered, and observed so many times and during my time I’ve helped out so many. I’ve helped people with my ideas or innovative ideas instead of executing them in the a creation of mine.

Be an Innovator and a Leader

Once you execute you can begin to lead this thought of what I failed at doing in the beginning. Go out and lead the thought of not following people in their footsteps. Successful people want us to know of their footsteps and to not go down the same ones that they totally found as mistakes. We have every reason to go down their mistaken steps to prove them otherwise, but what is important is to not strictly follow them.

If you and I could be more innovative with our thoughts and passions we can not only lead others but we can feel a much larger amount of gratitude.

Innovate and lead instead of following footsteps striving to just break into the market and make some success with a lower amount of gratitude. Not to bring up debate, but think about the ways of Apple instead of Microsoft when referring to music. Sorry, I had to.

You will ultimately stand out and get noticed and make those inventors and other innovators jealous.

Photo by Kenny Louie.

The Essential Code for Aspiring Bloggers

Derek Jensen — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:00:30 +0000

Trust me I don’t want to bore you. I know the best part about being a blogger is the practice being very casual whether you are blogging for the intent of making money or not. I do know though that blogging can get carried away and make the practice of blogging look corrupted, tarnished, or the thought of blogging being dead.

Dear current bloggers or bloggers that have already aspired to be one, use your ability, power, and voice to relate to these words and thoughts.

I asked the people liking us on Facebook earlier this week about this post being published to get any input added before so many others would add input.

David Risley has wrote a code of ethics for bloggers, but I’m going to take a different approach.

The approach here will center around the true definition of a blogger and having that definition not be corrupted by “bloggers”. We want anyone aspiring to be a blogger to know a few core values that make blogging fun, sometimes a profession, and respected.

These are going to be to the point as I could elaborate on some all day. The point is to get the point and the message.

Stay true to your voice and passion. Many can strain away from this, especially when they see other the opportunity to make money. The money might come in the short term, but you’ll be “broke” for the long term.
Offer transparency / authenticity. Think of blogging as a journal that others will want to read because they know your talents or skills related to whatever you’re blogging about.
Experiment and have fun. Blogging is not meant to be tiresome even though you might get writer’s block. Just be careful not to get too carried away with your experimentation. No one likes a messy lab.
Give your community a feel for your voice and style. Are you the one that says it how it is? Are you that calm writer? Or do you write deep, thorough posts?
Be responsible for your creations. Tim O’Reilly called for a blogger code of conduct where we must be responsible “for your own words and the comments you allow on your blog”. You have the power to accept or decline.
Connect with the community. If people know you don’t respond to any or some of the comments make them aware of that. But, make an effort to connect with people similar to your content along with people supporting you.
Always improving and learning. The blogosphere is immense but only the good who improve and learn over time will stand out.
Get the basics. This will include how to have a good designed blog, quality vs quantity, commenting that’s not spam, and getting a gravatar.
Know what lies ahead. Many existing bloggers are bloggers no more because they were unaware of what they were getting themselves into. Especially if you plan on being a professional blogger.
Visit ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, and Blogussion. These are essential places that offer a different focus and perspective for bloggers and content creators. I had to include us!

What Would You Add?

A blog is in many ways a continuing conversation.

I surely did not cover everything. The above “code” is developed overtime by and for bloggers so join the efforts to make blogging awesome in the times to come for any aspiring bloggers.

Photo by Jo Naylor

21 Reworks to Achieve a Better Blog in 2011

Derek Jensen — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:16:18 +0000

It’s 2011 and the way people are sharing items, talking with others, and getting their content is changing at a rapid pace. This pace might increase, but more importantly we need to be ready and stay on the leading edge. Whether it be your blog design, content, marketing, or how you’re making money we can all achieve a better blog in 2011.

Just before the new year you’ve probably noticed many blogs changing their design, adding to their content base, trying different marketing methods, and making money in different ways. In the blogosphere we’ve been entertained by some major reworks to prepare for 2011 and I’ll focus on a few out of the many hundreds of thousands in the first two categories.

The 4 categories we will be focusing our reworks on will be design, content, marketing/sharing, and making money. The methods, concepts, and ways behind each of these categories are changing especially for 2011.

Design

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration. -Jeffrey Zeldman

Design is that upper most subjective element of your blog and yet it remains to be very vital to how your community perceives the view of the blog and it’s content. Without a quality and effective design we can’t stand out, attract more people, and show people the true dedication of our content and mission/vision. A design says a lot, especially when its reworked.

Why would they change their blog design? Are they minor or major?
Are they redefining their mission or going down a different path?
Is it expansion or simplification?
Reorganizing the content and user-experience in what ways and why?

Let’s now look at a few blogs that have changed their design and focus the attention to why they were reworked.

Problogger.net:Adding a featured post or a highlighted post that Darren Rowse wants people to make sure they check out along with a new professional overall layout.
CopyBlogger.com:Known for having that “CopyBlogger” free WordPress theme and really was just focused on content. Added a podcast, specialized pages of information, and a cleaner overall design.
Mashable.com:Have been through many design changes to handle the different topics, stories, and feedback covered/received. Featuring more about what is trending.
MarsDorian.com:A “simple” tagline went from “Spread Your Influence” to “The World Needs You”. These words represented the overall image and direction of the blog. A new design followed or shall I say it was a refresh.

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with design.

See what major changes you can make to enhance your content, your reader’s experience, or the mission/vision of the blog.
Do you stay on WordPress, go to Ruby on Rails, or even experiment with Squarespace or Tumblr?
Make additions or cut backs to better your power and/or your focus related to your mission/vision.
Do you stick with the blog-style layout or go more towards the feeling of a homepage. (CopyBlogger vs ProBlogger)
Are your users ultimately able to connect with your content how you want them to and how new technology would allow them to?
Navigation and what content should be displayed and the priority of that display. Consider the proximity of things such as your sharing options etc.

Content

Content is what your readers and people from the outside come to judge, observe, reflect on, share with others, and really embrace for quality and having an urge.
Your content may come in many shapes and sizes but must reflect consistency and have an good voice that makes people want to read, listen, or watch.

Think about these thoughts:

What content is popular?
Why expand your content on different formats? Good or bad? Thinking about personal strengths and not just going to other formats just because everyone else is doing it. i.e. Podcasts, Video, Live Shows, Mobile, eBooks, etc.
How could your community or future community members better grasp your content?
Re-check the quality, the relation to your voice and mission, copy-writing skills, and many other basics.

Let’s now look at a few blogs that have changed their design and focus the attention to why they were reworked.

CopyBlogger.com:Separate out the content (related to design) by putting key content on individual landing pages for people to navigate from there. They also include a newsletter for “smart people” and a podcast show.
SiteSketch101.com:Experimenting with the content… First is was like the blogging version of Mashable and now it’s back to more elaborate and “artistic” pieces of writing. The current (brief experiment) reassured the quality of the content.
VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com:The frequency of posting has dropped mainly due to the content has really all been written down and published. Now you add videos and podcasting to keep the interaction going.

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with content.

What type of content are you finding your readers more interested in and in what format is that preferred? (Take a Survey/Poll)
Reread your mission statement and about page. Are you over-delivering or just doing too much?
Try out a different format or two for your content but if your community is set on one make that dedication.
How is your content organized? Do you organize by topic or by format or both? The focus of your content might change and so should the organization of it.
Using Facebook, Twitter, and Quora as tools for the pre-production of your content.

Marketing/Sharing

How are you getting out there? Are people talking about you? In order for this to happen we push to market ourselves with our blogs but also need to think about how willing people are to share your blog/content. What two big ways do we market our blogs? Guest posting and commenting.

While this are still ways to market let’s think about these:

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with marketing/sharing.

Think about other things than just within the online realm of content creation and your competitor’s blog. What about using Quora or Facebook?
Create a viral video for YouTube that models the mission/vision of your blog. Just don’t make it a lame, cheesy blogging video. It needs to entertain.
Go offline, into the wild, and form many different groups to create a name for yourself.
Setup events and/or workshops offline, then bring them online, and that transition will be like you are their guardian for the web.
Get the organic word-of-mouth going (online and offline) through the methods previously mentioned but be sure you remain transparent.

Making Money

Yes, there are those who just blog to blog. I’ve begun to realize though that anything you create and can be seen by anyone has the potential to put some money in your bank, PayPal account, or wallet. You might not have the intentions of making money, but the possibilities are always there.

With that said many others want to make money from their blog and one common route is affiliate marketing and advertisements.

The true best way to begin making money is building a name for yourself and you can do just that from some of the marketing reworks we just discussed or by just creating something awesome (super quality) and getting noticed by the right people. If you do that you’re covered, but you do have to hold up your reputation.

If you don’t have a name for yourself just yet think about these methods:

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with making money.

You have a blog but think of something outside the blogosphere. Call this your new project that is a service or a product that could (if you wanted it to) support your blog.
Create products for your blog and charge a subscription for them to receive something exclusive to a continued discount.
Start a members area only that is different from what I just mentioned. i.e. The ProBlogger Community
Setup a paid-subscription newsletter through letter.ly or Tiny Letter
Sponsor your content. Sponsorships show more connection and relationship with the content than advertisements.

21 Reworks Later

2010 was a year where many new things were created, tested, and continue to be tested. 2011 will surely be more testing of new creations and how people adapt to them but this will happen at a good rate.

Blogging continues to change with everything. We just have to be willing to rework before we are worked-out.

Oh, Blogussion is Reworking Too

You’ve heard that right. Blogussion has been through a few versions over the years all adapting to the community, a change in direction on pleasing the community, and how the creators behind it all vision Blogussion. All I can show you is the new logo that could even be tweaked in the next few months as it is being continuously worked on as I speak.

Alex and I would love to hear what you plan on doing to make your blog a better blog for 2011 in the comments.

Photo by Nikko Russano

The Crucial Need for Power & Voice Through Taglines

Derek Jensen — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 07:57:03 +0000

Taglines have been around ever since we were creating something for others to view or buy with competition present. Then, people and businesses turned more to their marketing plan and brand personality when designing or redesigning their taglines. How does your tagline match up in this huge blogosphere? It’s crucial to let your voice be heard and “stand out from the crowd“.

“Stand out from the crowd” is a five word tagline, but says more than just those five words. Yes, not all of those words really help the mission and focus of the message to people, but they all work together to deliver one powerful voice.

Many of us treat a tagline as a way to describe our blog. We either say what our content is going to deliver or we simply just explain the name of our blog.

You want to be boring, unoriginal, and just clutter the blogosphere?

Center every aspect of your blog around your tagline

I hope not. I push for bloggers and people in general online to truly be who they are and replicate that through all of their online actions and the ultimate beginning it having a tagline that’s powerful and speaks your voice. My tagline describes my energy, desire, and push for people to be happy and be noticed online. I push myself to do the same and it shows I do just that inside my content.

Surely, there’s a secret to creating the ultimate tagline for your blog. It’s you, your message, and ultimately how you want you are your blog to be memorable.

Delivering Your Message with Power

Taglines are important. Without them we would have to write a very long blog name or there would be many blogs named, “Read My Content and Hear My Voice”. Yes, that might be extreme but the point is is that if your tagline is weak it’s almost like you have no tagline at all.

We want to make our message clear, but not too clear (obvious). Does your blog have a tagline such as:

An Entrepreneur Blog
Making Money Online
Blogging About Technology

If so, consider changing it. You’re not delivering your message with power. You are delivering the message that simply would say, “received your message” in a text message or email inbox.

Be creative and James Chartrand, in her post on CopyBlogger says to think about the benefits that anyone coming to your blog will gain. Along with being creative, clear, and powerful at the same time you need to think about your voice.

Listening to Your Own Voice

Your voice is ultimately the number one thing that makes a blogger truly and always stick out and be known. Their style of writing. Their focus. Their relationship with the content.

But, so many bloggers feel that by just them putting their name on a post or blog shows their voice. Well, this might be true if you have a community that talks about you and their chatter is essentially your voice.

Problem is that while you still might have this, there is still new community members. How are they going to truly know your mission and voice. Everyone first goes to the tagline to get a general sense and that is when they determine whether to stay or not. Surely an active and high quality community does help to attract them, but no tagline and your community then has every right and power to redefine you and your blog. Be careful!

It’s about you helping them and being yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What do you truly believe in?
What is a problem you currently see and how can you make a difference?
You have hidden talents, now how are you going to make people notice them?
What’s your true devotion and desire at the end of the day?

These are just some. The point is that your tagline has to be original and you have to stand by it 101% in your content and community engagement in order for it to be powerful.

Make and Leave Your Mark

It could also be, building your true influence with people. Just look at the 30 most influential people online. Each of them have a distinct place on the web. When digging through the origin of how they got this far it would come down to their very own personal mission statement. That mission statement is a tagline.

Stick to It or Rebrand

Once you’ve taken another look at your tagline and find your content and voice to not match up, rebranding is a must. Why?

You’ve gotten people to read and join something you don’t have a strong voice in anymore
Your true supporters and community will thank you later
You will be happier and more successful!

There is never a good time to really rebrand, except the sooner the better. If this is you, get to work, and hustle!

Your tagline is your engine

If not, stick to your tagline and center all aspects of your blog around that tagline.

Want more? I offer my voice at my very own blog called UniqueBlog and since it’s launch two weeks ago its been getting nothing short of a positive response.

Please know its NOT a blog teaching you how to blog or any blogging tips. It’s merely a place, community, and resource for you to discover your hidden talent and stand out from the crowd online.

I only promote UniqueBlog, because I strongly believe it to be the next blog you should all be apart of. You can even see how I got started and why I’m writing how I write today in my personal story.

How are you transforming or practicing your current tagline today?

Photo by atomicshark

Forming Your Network of “Weak Ties” for Achievement & Success

Derek Jensen — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:32:59 +0000

Everyone has their personal story of how they got to where they are right now. But, what if I asked you if you’ve formed your network of “weak ties” or what others may call an alliance or even an inner circle. These “weak ties” I want to talk about are people you have many casual talks with, but when it comes time to press forward they are there for you and will introduce you to their very own.

Weak ties are relationships that can always be brought together but strive to be as casual as possible.

First things first. We need to form our very own network of these so called “weak ties”. Now, I formed mine by establishing a connection with someone, then they knew someone, and then I met another person who happened to be Rob Rammuny. Rob and I really connected and he would be my first “weak tie”. From then on I began to build this network. This could happen to you. It’s all about the right action, amount of effort, and what you’re willing to put on the line for others.

The Choice is Yours

Like with everything you have to decide and in this case you have to decide whether forming a network of “weak ties” is what you want. Believe it or not I know many bloggers or people on the web that continue to do great things because they have formed this kind of network. You might notice whenever someone endorses or promotes a product on their blog, more than likely that person is apart of that person’s “inner circle“.

This is no membership kind of status, its merely a knowing of great people that you have trust in and want to carry out a casual conversation.

Importance of this Network

When deciding to adapt to something like this and start putting it into practice you want to know the benefits. Here are some and really will all depend on the chemistry of your specific network:

Talking about any blog expansions before you test it out in your community.
A start of getting something to go viral and getting yourself to truly stand out.
People will start to see your network and appreciate you and everyone else in the network. Support goes up!

Time, Effort, and Many Conversations

Everything, if you want it to be done right in your personal way, takes time and effort but many people still don’t get this.

Think about your true friendships. They just didn’t happen overnight and there is no such thing as an overnight success. It’s about time and using the time to your personal fullest with as much effort as possible.

This kind of network of people takes that along with many conversations. These conversations could consist of the following:

Seeing something you’ve done, here’s my input.
What you do in the free time and how’s your day going?
I came across this and thought you’d be interested.

These are of course just some of so many ways to get conversations started with people that you would like in your network. Just refrain from too much self promotion and the possibility of annoying them.

Also strive to brings these conversations offline over a good and comfortable amount of time.

Who to Look For

Now, who should you be looking for to join your network?

It’s really all up to you, but think about who is at your or around your level and who is higher than you or really who influences you. For example, I think Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Darren Rowse, and Matt Cheuvront are higher than me. I determine this by overall community response.

It’s all a matter of you pushing them and them pushing you

Then, I look at who is around my level. This is everyone else. Most people know who is higher than them and they look up to them for advice. But, many of us don’t know who we should talk to that is not in this “higher level” group deemed by the general audience.

This is where you have to decide the following:

What’s their mission, vision, and purpose?
What do they really care about?
What drives them?

All of us need to think about:

How will this person benefit me if I make good conversation with them?

Who knows the people you begin to network with might have their own network and then many more doors open up for you.

The First Steps to Formation

Know who you’re looking for and that you can help them and they can help you.
Treat your conversations as if you were standing next to them, striving to get somewhere in a healthy manner, but as casually as possible. (No sales pitches here)
Start building the relationship without becoming annoying. Make them your friend. Begin achieving success together.

Do you have this kind of network? If not, why?

Photo by Daniel Zedda

Battle of Consistency: Don’t Pull the Plug on Your Community

Derek Jensen — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 04:00:19 +0000

Consistency is talked about in terms of importance from day one when we start blogging. It’s important to have consistency because we want our audience to know we mean business and we’ve got to build our credibility early on. Remember and know that the consistency of your blog does not just mean frequency of publishing, and how it can effect your community. It can be tough, just don’t pull the plug.

I’m by no means going back to the basics of how you need to: decide your niche, create quality content, and having a community behind it all.

Always keep the basics in your head. Overtime we tend to lose focus of them.

Instead, I will tell you why we tend to always battle with consistency and the outcomes that could happen if we lose this battle. Do realize though you always need to keep in mind the basics of blogging if you strongly want to succeed in whatever you are doing or even in building your personal brand.

Now if you are familuar with what I believe in and how I see blogging, then this type of post won’t be of surprise to you. I believe in attracting a community without worrying about SEO and that we all need to stand out from the crowd.

I call it the battle of consistency because all of us bloggers will experience a time where we find something else to do, change our minds, want to expand our blogs, or just find ourselves not happy at what we are doing.

And “pulling the plug” is us doing something that would disrupt your community if you still want the same mission or purpose to continue. So, I noticed and experienced some issues that lead us to this battle. Let’s explore!

Other Projects

You know those other projects. Usually when we start one, we think of another by ourselves or usually when we start connecting with others on the web. This is great, we are happy, but before we know it we can’t manage what our blog or first project. Our community starts to notice the frequency of our posting going down, the quality of posts going down, and then they move elsewhere.

Think about all the time you have put into building your initial blog and in creating a community around it.

If you tend to always have this issue, you should think about picking something you want to talk about at anytime but form it as your personal brand. In other words have a blog or place and a community that supports you and everything you do or will do.

I’ve dealt with this ever since I started blogging in 2008 by having multiple blogs because I have so many ideas, but I’ve focused on one with having my personal Tumblr on the side.

You do this or think about if you should start a new project and you won’t pull the plug on your community.

A New vs. Different Passion

Passion is something that defines us. We change. Our passion changes

Yes, there is a difference between a new and a different passion. It’s merely about the development of you versus a change of taste all together. Whichever one you feel you are creating for yourself, both will change your overall consistency on what you are currently doing.

I had a problem where I did not know my passion and it took two years and 5 different blogs later to know my true passion. This is my knowing your passion is so key.

A New Passion

A new passion is one that develops after your initial passion for whatever you are blogging about. This new passion eventually develops into another project. Now, you have to make a choice of where you split your time and if the passion is really different you have now two communities.

Everything is possible and I truly admire how Gary Vaynerchuk can manage his two communities: wine and brand consulting

Just know now that you have more than just one community, unless you are able to tie them all together into your personal brand. And if you “unplug” one community you have a different passion.

A Different Passion

A different passion is what I experienced many times for myself, so in advance I apologize to anyone that I’ve connected with in my earlier days. I know I’ve unplugged my communities and these are just mistakes that I’ve made. But, now I’m telling you to strive and prevent this from happening.

Never be afraid to do what you love. Just know the risk in your community.

So, a different passion is when you decide what you are currently doing is not you or you’re just not happy. The biggest fear and form of inconsistency from this is that your community is unsure to be your community because you might have a different passion the next day.

The “Huh?!” Expansions

Sure, we can always make quick improvements to our blog. But, when it comes time to really expand we could lose focus. This is why its good to practice mind mapping for your blog in the beginning stages so you have an educated guess on how/where to expand.

I’m calling it a “huh?! expansion” when you confuse your community with whatever expansion you decide to take. No, I’m not saying to make announcements because you should incorporate them into your overall content somehow. I am saying that you can’t just expect to have your community follow or support you after some changes that effect the feel of your blog, unless you’ve created a blog focused around just you there could be more flexibility.

An example of some sort of expansion would be to move to advertisements on your site. Everything is a debate and should be tested, but its your choice whether it’s there permanently.

You and your community have to be comfortable together in every expansion and this is all up to you. I would suggest forming some type of inner circle or alliance so they can be the part of the community that stays and influences others to stay plugged in.

Know that a strong community can do great things for you, just don’t disrupt them. Caring and knowing will lead you to win the battle of any consistency.

What’s your battle of consistency story?

5 Ways to Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic

Onibalusi — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:00:26 +0000

One of the major problems many people face is getting traffic to a blog, and the truth in the online world is that traffic is very essential to any online business you do; it is traffic that brings about people that buy.

This post will be talking about 5 ways you can significantly increase your website traffic.

1. Blog Commenting

I just began to realize the power of blog commenting. Blog commenting is a powerful way to get traffic to your website especially if done wisely and on a large scale.

One major thing about blog commenting is that it also helps you build a great brand when people begin to see your comments every here and there.

It is very important to make use of avatars when trying to get traffic to your blog through blog commenting because this will help people take note of you when they begin to see you everywhere every now and then. Being the first person to comment also helps a lot because most people are likely to visit the websites of a few of the first commenters and they rarely visit the rest.

When commenting to get traffic, quality is better than quantity because a lot of bloggers will delete your comment if you write generic comments and readers tend to click on valuable comments more than any other comments because they believe someone with this type of great comment will also have something similar on his blog.

2. Guest Posting

7 of the top ten referrers in my analytics data are from my guest posts and all of them sent me over 150 unique visitors. Guest posting is really effective and the power of a guest post should never be underestimated.

One thing I have come to notice with guest posts is that people prefer quality over quantity; if your guest post is a great one then you will get more visitors from it than just writing anything.

Many people tend to write just any guest post because they believe since the blog is not theirs then their best post should be on their blog, this is not supposed to be because of several reasons. One major advantage of submitting quality guest posts is that it helps you build a relationship with the blogger and his readers but if you just write anything there is a probability of the blogger declining your post, and if he doesn’t his readers will not visit your blog. The better your guest post, the better your result.

3. Blogging Communities

This is one underutilized traffic generation strategy many bloggers don’t use, many bloggers tend to give excuses that they are busy, If you are busy then you might want to be submitting your guest posts to blogging communities every weekend.

Some of the best blogging communities are MMO Social Network and Blog Engage; these two networks have sent me hundreds of visitors over time.

One major thing to consider when trying to get the best from blogging communities is that you have to have high quality posts and you also have to build relationship because people tend to vote up people they know and if you have an high quality post people will be more inclined to visit your blog.

4. Forum Marketing

There was a time I signed up to the warrior forums and with only 50 posts I had already gotten over 70 visitors to my blog, I didn’t post a link to my blog in my posts, it was in the signature.

You can get great results from forum marketing if it is done properly, one great thing to consider when trying to market your blog through forums is that it is very important to try as much as possible to help others and not just spam people for your benefit.

If your aim is to go to forums to go and spam then within a short period of time you will be banned but if you focus on helping as many people as possible the end result will be you lasting longer in the forum, having more friends and building more stronger relationship and you will also have more traffic and authority.

Some great forums to get started are the Warrior Forum and Digitalpoint Forum.

5. Mailing List

I wouldn’t have put this on this list but it is also a very effective way to get traffic to your blog. I was checking my overall stats today and I discovered that my mailing list has sent me hundreds of visitors, this is a good number because I only sent my posts to them a few times.

One of the major benefits of a mailing list is the instant result it provides, people tend to respond faster because they are closer to their email than any other thing.

I have also observed mails I sent and I discovered that your titles matter, I have had sent emails have as low as 15% open rate and I have also had emails have over 35% open rate but what matters most is the title. If you have a cool and attractive title then you will get more results than having generic titles.

Getting traffic to blogs used to be a difficult task and I started noticing a difference over time. It is the tips in this post that is helping me get thousands of visitors to my 3 months old blog every week, use them to your advantage and you will be amazed at how they work.

It is also important to know that getting traffic takes time and requires constant effort, if you are dedicated to making the effective use of the above tips then in no time you will be getting a lot of traffic on autopilot.

Mind Mapping for Blog Expansion & Making Smart Mistakes, Part 2

Derek Jensen — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:08:17 +0000

In part one of using the practice or method of mind mapping for our blog expansion I covered a few beginning steps to always keep in the back of your head and the start of building your blog. We start by brainstorming and then organizing all the thoughts to reality. Now, in part two today I want to continue and tell you how I have used mind mapping for building my blogs and making smart mistakes. We’re getting into the “meat and potatoes” now. Are you prepared and ready?

If you have not read part one please do so to get the full benefit of part two.

Quick Review

1. Brainstorming + Organizing Thoughts

Brainstorming is where we dig deep into our passion, purpose, and start thinking about the intial workings of our expansion. This is where you grab a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or use some software such as MindNode for Mac users.

Organizing All Those Thoughts (Reality)

The time has come now to organize all of these thoughts or ideas you’ve brainstormed. Organize them in terms of reality and the true you.

Here is where you refer back to those beginning steps I previously talked about and these same steps are going to help you throughout the whole mind mapping process. Remember we are out to make smart mistakes while expanding your blog.

Continue to read part two (steps two and three).

Beginning the mind map practice is easy. You start with your blog name as the main node/block, then think of things such as the following to add to your mind map (sections):

Post Categories
Social Networking Communities
Ways of Promotion
Goals
Products / How to Make Money

These are just a few things I’ve come up with but should surely be considered into being apart of your mind map and blog expansion. Remember to think about the obvious parts of your blog that should be apart of any expansion. After you have considered some of these and/or your own to your mind map the real fun and work begins for building your blog.

2. Breaking It All Apart

Now, we’re going to break the main sections of your mind map (figured about above) apart to make certain that you don’t kill your blog.

Analyze Your Sections

A basic mind map is put together by staring with your node (in this case your blog name). We then create sections from that which are the things you have previously defined to be apart of your blog for the expansion process. Well, from these sections begins the deep analyzation of how and where you want your blog to go.

Ask yourself, “where you want your blog to go”?

For instance, say you want to make money with your blog and to do so you want to create a product. Remember this product is just one of your several sections and focusing on this section is just as important as every other one (all working together).

Think about everything that you want in your product. What role does it play? How will it help and attract the community you have built and/or want? Will this product be one that is used to urge your community to promote your and your blog? Will this product be an introduction to another product you have in the works? All of these are a few questions that a “simple” product plays in expanding your blog. You just need to show it on your mind map.

Immediate Action

Now, that you have your sections all analyzed, it’s time for immediate action on them.

Trust me this could take some time and thought. But, its important and worth it as I wish I would have done this with my previous blogs.

In all sections think about the needed steps to reach whatever you have planned or visioned for each each. Then analyze and rank those steps to the importance and impact each one will make on building your blog for each section. These are the steps for immediate action. Don’t worry about the others right now. It’s time to build, get going, and start making those smart mistakes I’ve been talking about.

Think, Conquer, and Implement

It gets even more interesting. Break down those immediate action steps even further. What will it take for me to accomplish this today, tomorrow, and this week? Ask yourself this and keep pushing for more steps, analyzation, and deeper thoughts under each immediate action step you’ve decided on. We’ve got to conquer these steps that form the initial beginning of our blog in order to expand.

Last thing with all these steps is you can’t just leave them hanging in the thought process.

You need to implement them. If you don’t implement you won’t know your smart mistakes. Don’t want to expand or not?

3. Keep Looking Back to Keep Moving Forward

If you don’t implement you should not worry about reading the rest of this post. I strongly believe that making mistakes and building off them creates one of the best ways for success. I’ve personally experienced it (why I believe it), but I’m not at the point of success yet. We all are bound to make mistakes, but we are better if we can point them all out and go forward.

Know Your Mistakes

These mistakes could be the wrong steps you took for immediate action or what kind of sections you came up with for your blog. Read back through this post and think about the “what if” scenario and really anything could be a mistake. Everything is prone to a mistake, just know yours.

Build Off Your Mistakes

Knowing is half the battle. After knowing think about what happened and what you need to improve on or do differently. This is called building off your mistakes and you can’t build your blog without doing this.

How have you built off your mistakes? Any case studies?

Return to the Map and Keep Editing

Finally, return to the map you initially created. Use it as a historical but ongoing path of your blog’s development and expansion. Mark the mistakes and always be editing the map for a smart expansion for you and your blog.

Please know that this would be greatly helpful when used when starting your blog, but it can be implemented at anytime

Photo by Lisa Bettany