Top Ten Ways to Market Your Blog by Bea Fields
October 6, 2008 by beafields · Leave a Comment
There are many ways to market your blog, but I have found the following ten to be my most successful strategies of all times
1. My Blog Log
Join http://mybloglog.com. Once you join, you will be given a small amount of code to paste in your blog which will help you track your visitors.
Once you are a member of My Blog Log, begin visiting the members’ area of the website and start adding contacts to your account. If you don’t actually know the member, when prompted by the service to find out how you know the person, simply choose “I am a fan of this person”.
Top Ten Ways to Market Your Blog
October 6, 2008 by beafields · 2 Comments
There are many ways to market your blog, but I have found the following ten to be my most successful strategies of all times
My Blog Log
1. Join http://mybloglog.com. Once you join, you will be given a small amount of code to paste in your blog which will help you track your visitors. Once you are a member of My Blog Log, begin visiting the members’ area of the website and start adding contacts to your account. If you don’t actually know the member, when prompted by the service to find out how you know the person, simply choose “I am a fan of this person”.
2. Create Great Links, Trackbacks, Categories and Hot News Dedicate time to creating links and trackbacks. A trackback is a link back to a story or another blog. You will get visitors by using the trackbacks feature. Be one of the first to “break” a news story. As soon as you hear about something related to your subject matter, go blog it!
3. Blog Catalog Blog Catalog is similar to My Blog Log, yet it is much larger and a little bit easier to invite people to join your blog. They also have a broadcasting feature which allows you to do a little bit of promotion to their members (but be careful…too much promotion will get you banned from the site.
4. Fast Company Open a member blog through one of the big online journals like Fast Company. Each time you make a post on Fast Company, mention your blog and place the link for your blog at the end of each post. For more information, visit: http://fastcompany.com and look for the member blogs section (this is on the home page.)
5. Feedburner Once your blog is up and running, go to http://feedburner.com and “burn” your feed. Once your feed is set up, click on the publicize link, and sign up to have your visitors opt-in by e-mail. This will greatly enhance the number of pepole reading your blog (if they have to opt-in by e-mail.)
6. Article Writing The internet has thousands of article submission sites. We highly recommend that you write articles and use your blog in the author by-line of your article. This will drive more and more traffic to your site (you can also use this article as content for your blog.) Two of the hottest article sites are http://ideamarketers.com and http://ezinearticles.com. They get more traffic than most, and this is a good place to begin.
7. Expert Interviews One of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog is by interviewing experts in your industry. You can record these calls using a service like http://instantconference.com or Blog Talk Radio nd then post the interviews on your blog. The person you interviewed will more than likely link their blog back to your blog as a way of thanking you for the exposure.
8. Submit Your Blog to the RSS Submission Sites and Search Engines One of the best ways to get exposure to your blog is through RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Sites. You can begin submitting manually, yet we highly recommend hiring a company who can do this for you. For more information on assistance with blog submission, contact http://VirtualAccuracy.com. The top list of submission sites begins here: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/part-10.htm
9. Invite Guest Bloggers to Submit a Blog Post to Your Blog This keeps things interesting!
10. Additional Add your blog to your e-mail signature Add your blog to your business card * If you have a long blog name, buy a super simple domain for verbally sending people to your site (As an example, I own the domain http://learnaboutgeny.com, which takes people to the Millennial Leaders blog. When I am out and about, I simply say “Just go to learn about gen y.com, and people can remember that better than the long url for my blog) * Sign up for http://Facebook.com and use the notes feature to import your blog into Facebook * Sign up for http://Twitter.com and install the Twitter plug-in to fully integrate your blog into Twitter: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/
Revolution Templates Taking Wordpress To a Higher Level
October 5, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
This blog is a Revolution Template, and I just love it!
Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting by Yaro Starak
October 3, 2008 by beafields · Leave a Comment
There are basically two types of bloggers in the world - reporters and experts - and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).
If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.
To get more information about Yaro Starak and his Blog Mastermind Program click this link:
Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting by Yaro Starak
There are basically two types of bloggers in the world - reporters and experts - and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).
If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.
I’ll be frank, you want to be the expert.
Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.
Most Bloggers Are Reporters
The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).
There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.
Don’t Replicate Your Teacher
If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.
The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.
Even people who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.
How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.
If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.
Report on Your Process, Not Others
The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.
It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.
Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.
You Are Already An Expert
Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.
Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously, you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.
Blogs, and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.
Reporting Is A Stepping Stone
If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.
Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.
Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
