Blogussion » traffic

Going Viral: Stop-Motion, Hip-Hop, and Alex Fraiser’s Disembodied Head

Nick Scheidies — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:00:02 +0000

Do you want to know how we used the three things above to spike our traffic from 20 visits a day to over 2,000? It’s time you start thinking outside of the box when it comes to marketing and promoting your blog — way outside of the box.

Your Problem: No One Cares About You or Your Blog

(Except your mom — and she could be jiving too)

Q: What do you call a million people all shouting the same thing at once?
A: The Internet.

If you’ve ever tried to drive traffic to your blog, then you’ve probably felt like one of the million people all saying the same thing: “Hey — come listen to what I have to say!”

It might work. But one-in-a-million isn’t very good odds. So, even though you provide good content, you utilize every social media site around, and you get fresh ideas daily from sites like Blogussion, nobody really seems to care.

All of those things are good — and that’s exactly your problem. They’re just good. Good isn’t good enough. You are remarkable — and it’s about time you started acting like it.

Nobody cared about us either. Until…

It was the summer of 2010. My buddy (and budding business prodigy) Nick Tart and I had just finished interviewing 25 of the world’s most impressive young entrepreneurs — including Alex Fraiser himself — for a book. The only problem was that just a select few really cool people knew about it.

We had tried spreading the word with emails, articles, and comments — but we were only making ripples where we wanted to make waves. That’s when we had a kooky idea: make a stop-motion music video to promote our book.

I got to work writing music and mixing in audio chopped-up from the interviews. Nick Tart got busy buying Sharpies and making cut-outs of all 25 young entrepreneurs. Overall, we put in around 68 hours into the song/video and the results made it completely worthwhile.

They speak for themselves:

Quit Moping Around & Create Something Remarkable

But You Don’t Like Making Stop-Motion Videos…

Good for you. They’re a pain. To find your personal promotional perfection, don’t look around at what other people have done. Look at your own life. What do you like to do for fun? What creative things did you waste your time on as a kid?

In our case, those were silly stop-motion videos, but in yours it could be anything from finger paint to play-doh to wooden blocks. Simply create something that you would want to tell all of your friends about.

And don’t play the “I’m not creative” card. If you’re one of the left-brained among us, then you can still use your technical prowess to make something awesome, like a big row of dominoes that spells out your URL.

From Hobby to Purposeful Content

Of course, you can’t just make a video of your stamp collection and expect it to be a promotional boon for your blog. You have to redirect your hobby so that it fits your purpose like a glove. Recognize your assets and your message — then start thinking creatively from there.

In our case, we realized that the audio from the 25 young entrepreneurs we interviewed was one of our biggest assets. So, we decided to incorporate some of the best audio clips into a song. We also knew that more people would recognize these bloggers by their faces and accomplishments than by their voices — so we decided to incorporate a visual component too.

You can do the same thing to promote your blog. Think about the possible ways that your creative stream overlaps with your blog. Find an idea that’s unique and exhilarating and then go for it! A few nights of hard work and you’ll have your killer promotional content.

Let Your Content Roam Free, Like The Wild Buffalo

People are incredibly lazy (as a former lazy person myself, I can vouch for this). Even if you’ve created a mind-blowing song/dance/paint-by-numbers-drawing for your blog, nobody’s going to share it unless it’s really, really easy for them to do so.

Here are the three ways we made our video more viral than pink eye:

Facebook Comments
This is a new tool that lets you put a snazzy little Facebook comment box underneath any scrap of content. It’s great because it encourages feedback, community, and it posts a link on the person’s wall.
Tweet Button
Everyone tweets. Even your grandma. That means that one or two tweets about your promotion aren’t going to make a big dent in things. But if you can attract a whole flock of Twitterers with a sleek little ‘Retweet’ button, then you’re in business.
Posted on YouTube
We uploaded our video onto YouTube so that people could easily embed it onto their websites and Facebook profiles. YouTube is also the second biggest search engine in the world and it’s especially popular with younger people — which happens to be our primary demographic.

Here’s the video that helped us go viral:

There are very few reasons not to be remarkable.

If you can think of a few good reasons to be average, then ignore everything you just read. Otherwise, get out there and start transforming something you’re passionate about into a perfectly mind-blowing promotional campaign for your newly-remarkable blog.

Ready to jump in with DIY marketing? Or are you convinced that your hobby is too weird, dorky, or illegal to be transformed into eye-catching promotional content? Hop on down and join the brain-storming in the comment box below.

Photo by Fergus Ray Murray

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.

Corner The Market: Become A Big Fish In A Small Pond

Andrew Henderson — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:00:38 +0000

Are you drowning in a sea of bloggers who are blogging about the very same topic you are? Is your voice getting lost in the crowd? Are you tired of being non-existent among search engine results pages? If so, it's time to get with the program and start "Cornering the Market!"

Like many others out there, I thought I should blog about my passion. Which I certainly would encourage everyone to do. However, what do you do if your passion is a popular one? Are you up for the challenge of competing in a saturated market? In this post, I will explain why you may want to consider blogging about a topic somewhat "off the beaten path" in an effort to run a successful blog and perhaps even start making money.

See The Beaten Path and Avoid It

People tend to think alike

In my experience, I have found that most people tend to think alike. As a website developer, I’m often being presented with proposals for starting blogs, usually fashion, celebrity gossip, or finance. I think starting a blog is a great idea for many reasons, but my advice to these people is, "you had better be one heck of a salesman, writer, and personality." Otherwise, be ready to hustle.

Me, I’m into the development of internet culture, application websites in particular, and how people are using them. A little over a year ago, I decided I was going to start my own blog about web culture. Nearly every day I myself read several popular blogs on the subject. Clearly there is a demand! How could I go wrong?

Then it occurred to me, the internet is flooded with bloggers and teams of bloggers like TechCrunch practically shoveling first-rate content at us on a daily basis! How was I supposed to compete with that level of content flow? So much for being the Web culture guru!

Recognize The Opportunity & Do Your Research

Eight months later, a friend approached me about developing a craft beer blog. He was an avid fan of craft beer, very knowledgeable, and seemed enthusiastic about starting the venture, so I told him I would consider it. Craft beer wasn't exactly my passion, nor did I have what I felt was the required knowledge to be an authority on the subject. Nonetheless, I did some research on the beer industry and took a look around the Blogosphere to see what sites were covering craft beer.

I was pleased to discover that few beer bloggers appeared to possess the skills or resources I have as a website developer and video editor. Furthermore, it didn't seem as though they fully understood many of the aspects of blogging that we discuss here at Blogussion, things like proper internet marketing strategies.

After doing my research, I felt the niche was ripe for the taking.

As I worked on the design of our blog, I continued to study other successful bloggers and learn the tricks of the trade. I decided our site would approach craft beer from a different angle. It would be more about entertainment than information, since many blogs were already covering that area of the industry. This turned out to be a good decision.

Enjoy The Success & Build On It

In what felt like no time (half a year to be exact), our traffic is doubling from month to month, our brand is becoming widely recognized within the beer community, and we are now in the process of developing advertising relationships. Not to mention, nearly half of our traffic is Google organic!

Of course building the blog and community has been and continues to be a lot of hard work. There is still lots to do if we are to be as big as I hope we can be, but in a relatively short amount of time we were able to start building what I see as a promising community of dedicated viewers, and I believe that’s because I (along with my partner) recognized a need and sought to fill it.

Look beyond the obvious

There are so many needs out there not being met. Unfortunately, most bloggers are supplying ones that already are. My advice is to look beyond the obvious. Why attempt to grow your blog on land that is already being tilled? I’m finding running a promising blog with an active and growing community to be exciting and a lot of fun. Who wants to run a blog where no one comments? Perhaps providing a useful resource for like-minded individuals was my passion!

If you see an opportunity, but don’t possess the knowledge on a subject, find someone who does and team up. Let your job be managing the blog and promoting it. That’s plenty. Take it from me.

What do you think?

Is "Cornering the Market" a valid approach to running a blog or should we stick to our passions no matter how popular or competitive they may be?

If You Blog, You’re Controversial. But is it Worth the Commotion? – Wired Weekend

Alex — Fri, 14 May 2010 04:00:05 +0000

Many bloggers recommend as one of the best ways to bring a large surge of traffic to your site is to write about a controversial subject. They say this because there are always at least two varying opinions on anything controversial. And people just have to read what you say about it, and if you capture their interest enough – they’ll want to voice their opinion on it.

Some people just like to participate in a good debate. Others want to cause trouble. Whichever it is, a good controversy gets people talking. And as a blogger, isn’t that what you want?

What Constitutes as Controversy

Anything you write is controversy. As long as you have added you opinions into the article you have written, you will have created a controversy. Looking through the archives here, I see very few articles here that wouldn’t be considered controversial.

Many people who ready articles today on the web don’t realize the actual controversy in them. Most people who write don’t realize they’re writing controversy either. Think back to the last article you wrote on your blog. Did you add an opinion to it? Chances are you did, and chances are someone disagreed with you.

Controversy is not always popular

Just because you write your opinion on something doesn’t make your controversy something that will draw thousands of hits and hundreds of comments to your blog. If that was true, we’d all be blogging superstars by now.

Some topics have more grounds for debate than others. Which sounds like more of an interesting topic to debate about?

Both are very interesting topics, but statistics prevail and say that topic #1 (SEO) is the better grounds for debate. It is a topic that more people talk about in this niche, and something that more people think about.

In association to blogging, which do you think about more? SEO or a large ego?

Learn by Example

A few days ago I stumbled upon a really great example of an article bringing in discussion with conflicting opinions. The discussions I saw in the article had everything you would normally expect to see in a controversial topic.

Two different sides debating two different views, detailed opinions, facts, agreement & disagreement, name calling and some very long comments. This was one of the most in-depth discussions I have ever seen on a blog, and it really made me think about the effects of having a controversial issue posted on your blog receiving such a response.

Luckily, I knew that blogger. Nicholas Cardot from Site Sketch 101 is a friend of mine, and he wrote about the Thesis Theme for WordPress. It is something that so many bloggers’ use and go crazy about (myself included), and he decided to write out against it. It’s something the Thesis community isn’t used to seeing.

So the response was huge. I talked to Nick about it on Skype, and he was kind enough to give me his impressions of how he thought the post went.

In a recent article at Site Sketch 101, I found myself in the midst of a torrent of heated debate. I wrote brief article challenging the supremacy of the Thesis WordPress theme. The article was born of an email response that I had put together for a very well-intentioned blogger who had developed a skin for Thesis.

My opinions being what they are, I thought that the concepts outlined in the email were worth sharing with my readers. I honestly had no intention of creating a debated issue out of it. That was probably a bit naive of me. The comments came pouring in. Some people called me ignorant. Others labeled me as uninformed.

As I look back over the article and effect that it had on my site, I don’t regret sharing it. I believe that we should be able to challenge the way that people think. We should be allowed to post articles that go against the status quo and we should be able to do so without name calling.

I don’t believe in writing controversial topics just to be controversial; just to get attention. I do believe in standing up for your beliefs and in sharing your opinions and when that means being controversial then don’t back down.

Is it Worth it?

A lot of things can happen if a debate on your blog escalates out of control. Would you say the discussions over at Nick’s blog got too hectic? A few people seemed to have really lashed out at his ideas and defenses in the comments section, and those sort of things can really get to some bloggers.

What are the best methods for marketing blog articles? – Wired Weekend

Alex — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:00:52 +0000

Generally, when we write articles for our blog, we like them to get read. Writing content is no longer the hardest thing to do for a blog. It’s actually getting that content read that’s so challenging. Unfortunately, simply writing a blog post doesn’t just cut it. There’s still more to do.

There’s this thing called marketing, and when you actually do it, your articles tend to get read by more people. Now, “more people” can mean one or two people, or it can mean thousands of people. It’s all about how you market your blog post that gets it read.

There’s just one problem: most of us suck at marketing.

It’s easy to get so worried about actually writing a blog post, that we forget about the second, possibly more important part: the people who read it. Unless you really love to write, publishing articles for months straight without reactions might get on your nerves.

The Secret About Blog Marketing

Maybe it’s more than a misconception than a secret, but the most important thing about marketing your blog is not the actual promotion of the blog as a whole, but the individual articles you publish.

Tell me, which headline would get more clicks:

I can almost guarantee that the second headline would get more attention. The general tagline of this site describes what Blogussion is all about, but there’s nothing exciting about it.

It’s not to say that with a more exciting tagline (how many of you would be mad if I changed the tagline of this blog to “Blogussion – The most insane blogging tips blog you will ever f****** read”) it wouldn’t market better than an article, but it only works for so long.

Now, I can make a headline for an article whatever I want. If I promote a new article everyday, it would create more buzz than if I were to promote Blogussion as “blogging discussion, tips and tricks.”

So that’s just a useful marketing tip, if you haven’t figured that much out yet about the subject.

What can we do to draw traffic to blog posts?
Because the main idea of marketing your blog is marketing individual articles, what are some things you can do to get word out about your article? It takes a lot of different strategies and techniques, but there are plenty of things you can do.

So this weekend, I want to debate with you the tactics you use to draw attention and traffic to your blog articles. Recommend to me, and the rest of the community anything you do. From commenting on other blogs to running gnarly blogging contests, I (and many others) want to hear how you do it.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you in the discussion!

The Astonishing Power of Social Media & How to Use it

King Sidharth — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:00:34 +0000

Social Media is latest cliché in the realm of the internet, and mythical creatures called “social media experts” are at peak of their fame. I think it’s foolish how some people are tricked by these titles. There really isn’t much to know about social media, and anyone can use it. It’s very easy actually.

The Human Way

I published a post about carpets, nice beautiful Persian carpets. It was a perfectly fine post with plenty of information in it. I lovingly posted it on Twitter and Facebook, hoping to get huge response from my audience. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a response at all. Sounding familiar?

Information is obvious. Wikipedia is great at telling me all about carpets so why in world would I come to you? It’s big – information is everywhere. Why should I come to you?

You are the Best Thing About Your Blog

What’s unique about you? You know the answer. You are the answer! You are unique. Your experiences and your life are all unique; your perception of carpets and how to maintain them is even unique.

Because you are you and you have your own unique voice, I will come to you. I will read your blog over someone else’s because I find you more engaging, convincing and even entertaining. But I have to be able to find you first, of course.

FreelanceFolder is great at engaging with their audience. They actually talk to their readers (keep in mind, they have thousands of them) and see them as other human beings. If you tweet them a question, they will answer. Tweet them a joke, they will laugh. I love the work on their Facebook fan page. After promoting their post they will ask you your favourite ice-cream! No human could resist that. Do you communicate with your audience like this?

The Context

Content was king. Too many kings came around, so context took over. Everyone knows what blogging is, and if I want to learn about it, I’ll go to the one who tells me about it in the way I love and I will most likely share it.

The only catch is, you have to show me your blog. I can’t learn from you if I don’t know about you, so that’s where social media comes in. To help me find you and your own unique voice.

Write me (your reader) something funny or something I can laugh at and I will post it on my Facebook and tweet about it. I really don’t mind that I’m promoting for you either. Give me something I can share with my friends. That’s what social media is.

Be funny or clever. These type of posts, updates, and shout-outs work the best:

Funny: Jim Gaffigan
Sexy: Megan Fox
Cute: Sleeping baby, or a pet
Teaching: Alex Fraiser

You don’t have to be Megan Fox to promote your blog. But, with a little help from her (and the use of clever headlines, images and maybe some Photoshop edits), I see a viral social media post. Put Jim Gaffigans’ humor in your headline, combine it with an interesting topic, and you have a potential Digg homepage hit!

I want something entertaining and if you are that – you are also a Social Media Rockstar.

False Promise of Social Media

If you think you can earn millions from Social Media, forget it! It was never really made as a source of income, but as a source of communication and the start of new friendships. It was built for genuine people who want to talk as humans and make connections. Build relationships and a community around your brand. If you can just do that much, the rest will be taken care of and your audience will see to it.

Does social media promise success and money? No! It promises people. Real people. Now, what you do with them will determine your fate. Treat them like friends and they will respect you. Treat them like a statistic, and they will lost whatever interest they had in you.

So if you are looking for increase in traffic – leave social networks alone. If you are looking for friends who *might* see your new post – you are made for social media.

Entertain Me

I know I’ve said it earlier but since it is so important and so many people get it wrong, I am repeating it. Entertain people if you want to go viral on social media sites. Why do you think the entertainment topics over at Digg flourishes?

Make a funny video and post it. Crack a stupid joke, or ask a question. If you can’t entertain them, they will find someone else to entertain them.

Remember: to you, anything you write on social media sites may just be a mighty campaign to promote your blog product. But to your audience, it’s pure entertainment!

Remember #moonfruit trending on twitter? They were giving away MacBooks. People weren’t interested in MoonFruit necessarily, they were interested in a free MacBook! Bribery works! It’s a form of entertainment, and I know that campaign did wonders for the company.

Tell a story

People love stories. And people love happy stories. Be positive in your approach. You can use dark humor, but at the end – it should make your reader feel better about themselves. Making the crowd unhappy isn’t always the best approach when it comes to marketing a product. However, If I am unhappy and can relate to your unhappy story then I might sympathize. But again, negativity and trying to sell a product do not work at all.

Make me hopeful or happy or passionate and I’ll buy your product this instant.

If you entertain me with sad story turning happy and you tell me that your service/product did that, then I’ll buy it.

It doesn’t take an expert to do this all. Just a Facebook friend with good intents, or a Twitter tweep with a rockin’ audience.

In the End (Err… Beginning)

In nutshell, treat your social network profiles (for your blog) like your personal account. Be friends with your fans, talk to them – make it social. Social media is about building a community, not obnoxiously marketing your blog. Once you become friends with your fans, they will be more likely to spread your content, so it kind of works out for you in both ways there.

These were my tips and take on social media. Now I want to hear from you. What’s your approach to social media?

Blogging Isn’t All Sunsets and Tailwinds

Chris Palmer — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:00:52 +0000

Recently I’ve been going through a pretty stressful time with my blog. I’ll be the first to admit that there are some issues, and most of them are the results of feeling fear, lack of motivation, carelessness and so on.

These things include the integration of social media to drive traffic and build the conversation, getting highly targeted word-of-mouth traffic, SEO, design, content, post ideas, community building, and more.

Sound like something you could relate to as well?

I’m not just a blogger that writes like a human. I’m a human that writes a blog. I am not perfect, and guess what? Neither are you!

Across the vast interwebs you’ll find article after article about how to create a successful blog. There is a ton of great information out there for you to partake. Blogussion is certainly one of those blogs (shameless plug). You’ll find others like ProBlogger, QuickSprout, Seth Godin, just to name a few.

But let me be very clear:

It isn’t all sunsets and tailwinds

These guys will be the first ones to tell you that, too.

As a pilot, I wish I could be flying into the sunset the whole flight, and I wish there was a tailwind taking me to that ‘point B’ faster. The truth is, I go through my share of scary takeoffs and landings, hefty headwinds that seem to make the flight drag on, and plenty of vectors from Air Traffic Control taking me away from my destination.

Blogging has been the same exact kind of experience for me.

I don’t profess to be a “blogging king“ (if I was though, I’d definetely get a king suit like the Burger King mascot), I’m actually a lot like you I’ll bet.

If there is one thing I know, it’s that I know I don’t have it all figured out. With that being said, we’re all working towards a “greater goal” if we are on a site like Blogussion looking to improve our internet authorship. You and I, my friend, are moving in the right direction.

So how do you make it through all the “scary takeoffs and landings, hefty headwinds, and vectors from Air Traffic Control”?

Two words that your mother would be happy to repeat:

Don’t complain.

Here is what happens when you complain:

You will kill all the great ideas and positive thoughts you have
You are focusing on things that don’t matter – things you can’t change
A baby gets punched in Switzerland, one of the most peaceful countries (proven fact)
When the sunset comes, you’re too grumpy to enjoy it
You miss great opportunities in the blogosphere

Be very clear. You’re not going to make money blogging as fast as your most hated rival, or have a blog look as good as that guy who spends hours tweaking every pixel…at first. The sooner you face that reality, that everything comes in time, the sooner you can use the pieces you have.

But you know what? If you’re loving what you’re doing, and you’re getting great interaction – why fret about the intangibles that you can’t control?

A blog is an evolution. It’s a flight path, just like a real airway laid out in front of you. But you have no idea what is going to happen. You can steer the aircraft where you would like to go, and fly at an altitude where you are pretty sure the winds will be safe. But at the end of the day, you and I have no idea what the actual path will be like.

There is one quote from The Matrix that is perhaps one of the best quotes I’ve heard, movie or not:

“There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path”

Speaking for myself, if I knew the path laid out in front of me with all the details and the end result, I can’t say I’d actually do it.

Part of the beauty of life is embracing the fact that in the dark of night or the hot midday, where there isn’t a beautiful sunset, you and I can still push through these headwinds, make it happen, not complain, and get on with it.

Make your blog live for TODAY and THIS moment. Find the positive in what is happening now. Don’t worry about the rest.

Besides, in these moments when you’re feeling frustrated, gloomy or fearful, it means you’re on the brink of making a major breakthrough.

Now, 3 things to do, TODAY -

Just for today (do it tomorrow to even) don’t complain or have a thought of a complaint about your blog. If you try, just shutup.
Think of ONE easy thing you can get done – and do it. Write a blog post, come up with a few post ideas, I don’t care. Something.
Report back in the comments section here and tell us what you did.

I will be doing the same thing. I’m eager to hear your reports!

Breakdown of the 28 WordPress Plugins That Have Contributed to the Growth of our Blog

Alex — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:00:01 +0000

If you use WordPress, there’s no doubt that you know of all the free plugins and modifications available for it. Without all of these plugins, a lot of the features found on many blogs today wouldn’t exist.

In this article, I want to share with you guys the 28 plugins we currently have installed here and how they have contributed to the growth of our blog.

It’s a long list, so get prepared for a little reading! Lucky for you guys, I took the time to sort this whole list out pretty neatly.

We can’t be the only ones promoting our posts, see what options we give our readers to promote our content.

Give a variety of sharing options

We use a plugin called Add to Any, and it adds a little button below our posts that gives you many options to share the post on social network sites.

Display retweet, digg it, and many other buttons

We use a plugin called Digg Digg to display the retweet button and digg button in our posts. It is much more effective than Add to any because it makes tweeting or digging a post much simpler.

How we encourage reader discussion

We take the time to write articles, so to ensure that people read them and create conversations, we use the plugins below to initiate more comments.

Create a higher incentive for commentators

Whenever someone comments on a post, we give them the ability to show their latest post on their blog after their comment with a plugin called Commentluv.

Increase comment initiatives: Remove the nofollow tag

We have also made our blog dofollow. On a blog with the nofollow tag removed, more “link juice” will be given to anyone who posts their link onto our blog with their keyword in it. If you want to learn more about Dofollow links, read the benefits of a dofollow blog and the pros and cons of nofollow and dofollow.

Easiest way to start email conversations

Communicating through email is a very easy way for readers to communicate with you one on one. It is so important that you need to have a good, reliable contact form for people to fill out. So, for that reason – we use Contact Form 7.

We also use a plugin called Really Simple CAPTCHA to protect our contact form from spam.

Keep Conversations Going

Subscribe to comments makes it easier to keep discussion within the comments alive. It allows reader to check a box, and then whenever their comment is replied to – they get an email which should bring them back to your blog and keep discussion going.

Blog Optimization

From speeding up your blog to smartly organizing it, the plugins below are not ones you want to overlook.

Organize your feed readers into one place

With FeedBurner FeedSmith, you will be able to keep track of every last subscriber if you use Feedburner. With this plugin, you can get a more accurate number of people who subscribe to your blog as it will make everyone subscribe through FeedBurner.

Move JavaScript files to the end of your page, decrease load time

Plugins and themes often call a lot of external scripts. JavaScript can really slow down the loading time of your pages, so by using a plugin like JavaScript to Footer, you can move the scripts from the header to the footer, which will significantly decrease the loading time on your blog.

Save your blog from pinging suicide

Every time you update a post, WordPress sends a ping to any ping service. If this happens too much, your blog can get labeled as a ping spammer, and you can miss out on plenty of traffic without these ping services on your side. We combat it with MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer.

How to get pages and pages of content seen by search engines

A sitemap is important for your SEO. It allows search engine bots to easily navigate through your blog and index the pages within your blog. With Google XML Sitemap Generator, a sitemap will be created for your blog automatically and will be updated as you add more pages (posts) to your blog.

Reduce image sizes significantly and decrease load time

Images are an important part of your blog, but they also can increase the loading time of your site. With a plugin like WP Smush.it, images will be compressed when you upload them and the best part is it does it all in the background without interrupting your publishing process.

Speed up your blog through page cache

The best way to speed up the loading time of your blog is to cache the pages with a plugin like WordPress Super Cache.

Making content more accessible

It’s important to make as much content as possible within easy reach of your readers so good content doesn’t go to waste. Here are the plugins we use to keep as much content as we can visible.

With the latest posts by category archive, we can do just as it says – display a list of the “x” latest posts from any category. I wrote a tutorial a couple weeks ago using this plugin as an example to create a favorites post list.

Show off Popular, Recent and Similar Posts

In our sidebar, we display the most popular posts on our blog, under every article on the blog, we show a list of related posts, and on our Archives page, we show our most recent posts. All of these plugins help get the most relevant content to our readers.

We chose the three plugins above because of how easily customizable they are, but they do require the Post-Plugin Library plugin to function.

How to create a great archives page

On our Archives page, we used a plugin called smart archives reloaded that creates a very organized list of your posts sorted by month.

See how we used this plugin to create our archives page →

Numbered Page Navigation

Rather than using the “previous” and “next” page links to navigate through our pages of posts, we decided to create a numbered navigation so you can easily select what page you want to jump to. We used WP Page Numbers.

See more benefits of this plugin →

Breadcrumb Navigation

At the top of our content area, we have a breadcrumb trail that lists what page you are on, and the pages you visited to get to that page. It’s very useful for not just SEO, but for driving more clicks to sub pages.

Miscellaneous Features

Below are just some of the cool little features we added to our blog to switch things up a little.

Create a Stream of Quotes

In our sidebar, we have a section dedicated to blogging quotes. We found an amazing plugin called Stray Random Quotes which comes with great features to create a random quotes section like we have in our sidebar.

Display Latest Tweet(s)

Another feature within our sidebar is the latest tweet spot where the most recent Twitter updates from our @Blogussion account are displayed.

RSS Reader only messages

Some people choose to read our blog content from their feed reader without visiting our blog. With the plugin RSS Footer, we can add extra bits of information after each post that will only show up to people reading through our RSS feed.

Useful Admin Options

The plugins we use below add some pretty nifty options to our admin panel that make us depend less on 3rd party applications and more on WordPress.

Spell & Grammar Check Articles

It’s important that your posts are published with the best grammar and spelling as possible. Content should not only be informative, but clear and easy to follow. We chose to go with After the Deadline, which is probably the most effective plugin of its kind for WordPress.

Traffic Tracking

I like to open up my WordPress dashboard and see what the daily traffic stats are for the blog. So, I use a plugin called WordPress.com Stats to get a very accurate reading of daily pageviews, most popular post of the day and more.

Stop spam in its tracks

Everyone knows this and probably uses Akismet. It’s probably the best anti spam plugin for WordPress.

Backup your database

Backing up your blog is a very important precaution you should take every day. With WP DB-Manager, you can get a backup of your database with many options to make the process more automated.

Share With Us

What plugins do you guys use on your own blog? Did you happen to see any plugins from our list that you use at your own blog? Share all of your plugin inquiries in the comments section below!

Photo by baboon

Blog Optimization Series: Search Engine Marketing (2/3)

Janith — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:53:57 +0000

In the first installation of our Blog Optimization Series, I went over the basic fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization. It has been some time coming but I’ve spent a good deal of time – researching on the latest on the next installment. The second addition to our series will be Search Engine Marketing.

The back-door into SERPs, maybe? If you have the $$, it’s the easy way to get traffic from Search Engines. If your one of the many, that can throw money for the better of your website – let’s take a look at some of your options and a few pointers on the sidelines too…

Search Engine Marketing

If you’ve been following this series, you might remember in the first post – I went over why people optimize their blogs for Search Engines. This is a long and strenuous process, that can never be completely done – because not matter how well you optimize your blog; there will always be something more you can do (even add another inbound link.)

So, is there any hope for those that are not consistent? Perhaps not so much of a solution but an alternative to gradual SEO would be to throw money at SEM. Search Engine Marketing is utilizing the services provided by big-named companies, to sell ad-space.

Google Adwords or Facebook Ads just might ring a bell in your mind, but what differentiates a SEM campaign from a good SEM campaign? It’s about planning, managing and knowing not one, not two but as many of your options as possible. Let’s break it down to a simpler format.

Designing the Campaign

Just like any other project – a design sketch of the campaign is required. Before you start spending money like there’s no tomorrow; it’s absolutely critical that you have a basic idea of the concept of SEM and also a definite plan.

Your plan should include aspects of your campaign such as budget, start dates, end dates, minimum expectations, PPC (price per click). A campaign without a design usually runs into trouble sooner or later because many people overlook the simple things.

Managing the Campaign

Once you have a design, traffic won’t start flowing in. You have to keep a constant eye on how the statistics are performing, and which areas needs your attention/supervision. Many people assume that SEM is a “do once and forget” technique to conquer the SERPs but they couldn’t be further from the truth.

Just like SEO is a constantly updated process – SEM requires an ever watchful eye; to pick up on trends and assign profitable PPC rates for specific keywords. The design + management of SEM campaigns can be out-sourced to the millions of SEO Companies out there – but there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do it yourself? Save money, and you know what exactly what is going on within the campaign itself.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is the big-daddy of all PPC Advertising program. One of the most significant earners for the multi-billion dollar company and a program that offers a lot for the little guy. We haven’t been exploring the possibilities and features of Adwords here @Blogussion but there’s so much to it – that I won’t be able to cover it in one post.

So, going by a generalization that we all have heard about Google Adwords – I would encourage you to take it for a spin. Learn as much as you can about the program from as many useful sources of information as you can find, then play around with it a little while. For some people Google Adwords is their key to success, for other’s nothing more than a waste of time.

Yahoo Search Marketing / Microsoft adCenter

Almost the counter-parts of Google Adwords, these two programs are the closest competition to it. On a personal level, I haven’t explored their full functionality but on a search engine basis – they won’t be that dissimilar to Google Adwords. Depending on the Search Engine that best suits your interest, the three services will provide a range of options and features to help you rake in the targeted traffic from around the SERPs.

Social Media Ad Networks

If your site is so more socially-orientated - you might find advertising on social media networks; such as Facebook to be a gold mine. Obviously, you won’t appear on the front pages of these media networks, but you’ll reach a fairly high percentage of users with the correct research + PPC rates.

It’s important that you target your site to specific social media networks. For example, advertising your blog about penicillin on Myspace wouldn’t be your best bet. Search around niche-specific media networks that offer paid advertising and you’ll be raking in some very loyal readers.

Stay Tuned!

Search Engine Marketing is a very broad topic with many outward branches, but hopefully this can give you a little bit of intuition of what it is – and how people can manipulate it for their own benefit. Websites such as SearchEngineWatch, come up with some nice tips and tricks when it comes to SEW – something we can all learn from.

Stay tuned for the next and final installment in the Blog Promotion Series : Social Media Optimization!