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- Launch a Brand New Blog … with Authority
This guest post is by Jane Sheeba of Find All Answers.
Launching a new blog today is not the same as it was a few years back. Things were a lot easier and diluted in the past decade, but now, the competition is dense, given that thousands of blogs are launched every day. Every niche has become competitive, forcing bloggers to try to rank highly for less-competitive keywords.
How can you stand out in that sea of competition? Authority!
Authority makes you notable and noticeable. Authority can be built over the time, as the blog gets older and gains readership.
But how about new blogs? Can you launch a new blog with authority? Yes, you can.
Launch a second blog
When you already have an established blog, it will not be hard for you to launch your second blog with all authority. A very good example was the launch of FeelGooder. Even though it’s not a second launch, it’s among the most successful launches Darren has done.
We all know how authoritative are ProBlogger, Twitip, and Digital Photography School.
With this mighty empire on hand, Darren didn’t need to do much when he launched FeelGooder! Just a post on ProBlogger about how FeelGooder had come about was fine: people rushed to FeelGooder. Even without worrying about PageRank, and despite the newness of the blog, authors were eager to guest-post on it, myself included.
Well that’s the magic. When you already have one or more established blogs, it’s easy to authoritatively launch a new blog. People will believe you, trust you, and know about your content even before the new blog goes live.
Building your social empire
You don’t have to have an established blog to launch a new blog with authority. You can launch your first blog with authority. The key is simply to make yourself known on the Internet. Create your social empire. Be one of a kind.
Social media
Let’s make one thing clear: building your social empire doesn’t mean creating accounts on every social site out there. Anyone can create multiple accounts in Twitter as long as they provide unique email addresses for all of them. But that will not build your authority.
You have to provide value wherever you are, even without a blog. Share high-quality content in your niche, among your followers and friends. Do not go on an auto-follow or auto-friending campaign. Do not go on a “follow me and I will follow you” campaign. I know that’s tranquilizing, bit it’s important that you don’t lose control. If authority is your goal, you must always aim at quality.
Tweet and share the best of the blog posts you have read on the Internet within your niche. Occasionally be funny, make personal tweets, share and comment on others’ shares, retweet good information, and so on. These are the components of social engagement. This is about building relationships online.
Guest posting
Can you write guest posts without having a blog? Absolutely. If you can write high-quality, unique articles, submit guest posts to blogs you already know. Aim for publication on the blogs whose content you promote to your social networks. They should be able to identify you, and if your post is on-target, they’ll let you in.
In the author bio, include links to your Twitter or Facebook page to gain more followers and friends.
But don’t be impatient and start writing and submitting articles just like that. You have to guest post effectively, even if you don’t have a blog.
Launch with authority
I think there are four essential steps involved in launching a blog with authority.
1. Keep your blog offline until you post enough content
How can a new blog have “enough content”? It’s possible… Depending on how often you post, the time it will take you to develop “enough” content will vary. But if you’re posting every day, you might keep your site a “secret” for, say, about two weeks. Here’s how.
- Do not submit the blog to search engines until you have enough content.
- If you’re using WordPress, go to the Dashboard and click on the Settings tab, then on Privacy. Click on “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors,” and save the setting.
- If you’re using Blogger, go to the Settings tab of the Dashboard and take care of the two items shown in the figure below.
Caution: Don’t forget to change those second and third options once you launch the blog officially, or it will never be found!
2. Remove dates and time stamps while launching
All major blog platforms will allow you to remove dates and times from your posts. Select this option as you launch your blog, and turn it on later, down the track, once your blog is up and running successfully.
3. Launch without comments
One of the factors that decide the authority of a blog is the number of comments the content attracts. And we all know that a newbie blog will most likely not get a good number of comments. Instead of showing a poor number of comments in the early stages of your blog, it may be better to shut down comments altogether. Once your blog gets momentum, you can open up discussions to readers.
You can get more comments at the initial stage while your blog is still not officially “live” (as I explained above). For this, I assume that you have built your social empire already.
- As soon as you launch the blog, let your friends and followers in all social networks know. Ask them to make comments on your blog.
- Join a commenting tribe—a small group of people who share links to their posts. You give and get. For instance, if the group at the tribe has 20 members, you leave comments on those 20 links and you’ll receive 20 comments on your posts. It’s a good thing to do!
- Find a handful of blogging buddies; again this is a give-and-get proposition.
- Register your blog at ComLuv.com and do a search for CommentLuv-enabled blogs in your niche. While leaving comments on those blogs, you can display of the last ten of your posts after your comment (I have given some more details on this at my earlier post on relationship building for bloggers). This will give you good exposure and kills two (or three) birds with one stone—you get backlinks, you make buddies, and you create an online presence.
4. Launch with a premium theme
If you are willing to spend some extra money, I strongly suggest you launch your blog with a premium theme. It’s worth it.
Wait! Don’t rush yet to search Google for “Premium WordPress Themes.” Not all premium themes will do what you expect.
I can suggest two premium themes that makes blogging easy and elegant: Genesis and the Thesis frameworks. I recommend Genesis even though I have not used it—Darren seems to be doing great with it. I recommend Thesis because I use it at my blog and am extremely happy with it.
What will a great premium theme do for you?
- It makes your blog look professional.
- It comes with clean coding.
- It takes care of basic—and some advanced—SEO.
- It comes with elegant skins and designs.
- Professional support is available when something goes wrong—you don’t want your blog to look amateurish, with broken layouts and code. We’re talking about authority here, after all!
These are the basics of launching a new blog with authority. What other tips and advice can you add?
Jane writes about Blogging Tips, Relationships and Self Improvement at her blog Find All Answers. She gives you two two ebooks titled “Problogging for Newbies” and “Your guide to Better Time Management” for free. You can connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
Launch a Brand New Blog … with Authority
Переслать - The Four Os: a Four-Step Guide to Successful Blogging
This guest post is by Adam Best of FanSided.
I spent the previous decade figuring out how to "make it" online as a writer. Led Zeppelin's "Ten Years Gone" comes to mind. Eventually, with the help of my brother, I made a bit of a splash on a Kansas City Chiefs blog called Arrowhead Addict. That effort went so well we decided to make a business out of sports blogging and started the FanSided Network. What started as one lonely Chiefs blog is now a family of 175 sites, with over 300 bloggers and millions of readers.
I've gone from figuring out how to blog to figuring out how to make bloggers better. As FanSided's Editor, that's my job. In a day and age where Charlie Sheen has dubbed himself a "genius warlock with tiger blood," I'm gonna take the high road and just say that I know a thing or two about blogging. Ah, screw it. I'm a Blogfather and I'm here to make you a blogger they can't refuse.
My blogging philosophy, the Four Os, has guided FanSiders for years. Hopefully, this blogging code will now help guide some of you. The Four Os are:
Blog Original.
Blog Often.
Blog Outstanding.
Blog Obsession.Drumroll please (I picture a grand total of six of you tapping your pens on your desks…).
Blog Original
Elvis. Bowie. M.J. Madonna. Kanye West. Lady Gaga. All talented musicians? Yes, but it was their originality, even eccentricity, that allowed their talents to come to the forefront. Am I saying that you have to wear one glove, paint your face, announce that George W. Bush hates black people, and then die eating a sub on the toilet? No. What I'm suggesting is for your blog not to be a carbon copy of the existing powerhouse blogs in your category of choice.
Because almost anybody can jump online and start a site, it's a copycat world out there. Everybody is involved in the same rat race to be first to get to the same story, the same video, the same meme, and then be first to market that post. What happened to establishing your own voice? What happened to being a trend-setter?
You don't want to be viewed as a walking, talking spambot. Nobody really breaks news at this point. C'mon, everybody already heard about it on Twitter. My little sister broke the story on her Facebook page before most blogs did. Your focus should be on crafting original content that's well written and different from anything else you can find on the Net. Research your niche; figure out its staples and what's missing. Look outside your niche for inspiration. Put together a game plan to make your site one of a kind. Don't be afraid of trial and error either. Your audiences will eventually only remember your hits, not your misses, and if you compile enough hits you'll be well on your way.
Say what you will about Lady Gaga and her idiosyncrasies, but there's only one of her and her schtick feels more natural than gimmicky. She's made herself an indispensable part of the music scene. You'd be wise to do the same in your category.
Blog Often
Let's say you own a restaurant. Let's even say your place has spectacular food, a convenient location and great atmosphere. The problem? You only serve one meal, lunch, and only serve it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If that was the case, you'd expect patrons to visit somewhat frequently during those times, but not during other times. Most bloggers serve up content about as infrequently, yet expect different results—great daily traffic. That's unreasonable.
If you are only doing three, four, even five posts per week, you are contributing on strictly a hobby level. Those who write that infrequently yet experience a great deal of success are often either already famous or write like Hemingway. Most blogs need to average a post per day. Sometimes a daily post isn't enough. FanSided is like Office Space. We can only ask our writers to wear so many pieces of flair, but our writers who wear the most pieces (post the most) get the most out of their blogs. I've been staring at analytics for years now, and there is definitely a strong correlation between post quantity and traffic.
Blogging isn't just writing—nobody alive can write four or five opuses every day. Blogging is part writing, of course. But curating, or mining the Internet for gold (news, videos, links, images, stats, quotes, tweets, etc.), is equally as important. Yes, your blog has to be your own voice, but it also has to be more. The best blogs serve as hubs that keep readers from having to surf the web. Besides, you can still Blog Original and voice your opinion when you are curating. Just make sure you interject original insight, even if you do so in rapid-fire fashion.
Another suggestion is to add a staff around you once your blog is established. There are plenty of talented writers out there who don't have the time to spearhead their own site, yet want to receive great exposure. Adding staffers will also allow you to focus more on quality over quality. Most importantly, any knucklehead can start a site by themselves. If you have a dedicated and talented staff serving under you, then you and your site must be legitimate. That's not always the case, but a blog staff presents a façade of success and perception is everything—or at least very damn important.
Make sure you have at least one quality post on your site every single day. If you're not doing so already, try it out for a month. If you already do one, do two or three for the next 30 days. If your traffic and comment numbers don't increase, tweet to me @adamcbest and let me know it didn't work. I'll tweet to all my followers that I don't know what I'm talking about. That's how confident I am in the Blog Often approach.
Blog Outstanding
Part of the problem with trying to Blog Often is that we are all pressed for time. As a result, visual appearance, formatting, grammar, title and promotion often are overlooked aspects of blogging. Compare posting a blog post to selling a house. When you sell a house, you do everything possible to get potential buyers inside, where they can envision being there on a day-to-day basis. You don't get sloppy or take shortcuts. You make sure the house is painted, the yard is mowed, and that there is no trash anywhere on the premises. You put up yard signs and get the house listed.
Most bloggers, however, don't think of blog posts as houses for sale. They assume that as long as the message is there, that's what matters. Those bloggers couldn't be more wrong. Blog readers often scan new sites before digging into articles. If your formatting sucks, they'll probably just close the tab. If you have huge blocks of text without breaks or images, they'll probably bounce. If your post is chock-full of errors, they'll assume you are either unintelligent or lazy and won't come back. If you don't promote your posts and site in general, nobody will even show up in the first place.
That brings us to promotion. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Likewise, if a blogger posts brilliant content that no one ends up reading, was it really brilliant content? "Post and ghost" is a systemic plague that has killed blogs off for years. The Internet is vast. Bloggers can't just post, step away from the keyboard and expect for readers to miracle their way to their site.
How do you promote your blog? Start with Facebook and Twitter accounts, and make sure they are personalized. Do not just use these accounts to aggregate new posts. Network with other bloggers in your niche, introduce yourself, link their site. You might think of them as competition, but most fans of any category read multiple sites. From experience, kindness in the blog community is typically repaid. After that, look at social media content communities like Digg and Reddit, and see if you can get any traction. I no longer digg, but as a former "power digger" I can assure you that these sites can point a traffic firehouse at your site.
This section is simple: if you don't take pride in your blog, how can you expect anybody else to? If you're proud of the way posts look and read, you won't feel uncomfortable promoting your site. Also, the more you promote, the more you'll stop worrying about the shameless self promotion you're doing and do what needs to be done. In reality, almost all promotion is at least partially self promotion anyway. Take pride in your blog. Eventually, you're audience will, too.
Blog Obsession
Ultimately, your success will depend on your topic, your niche. If you think too small, your earning chances will be extremely limited, and you'll have a hard time getting noticed. On the other end, if you think big, bigger opportunities could present themselves, but so will bigger challenges. For those of you who have seen Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, let's call it Ramona Flowers Syndrome. Your new beau might seem fine at first, but a bunch of dudes were there before you and all of them are formidable. You will have to work your way to the top—if there's even room for you up there. It's kind of like making a decision between entering the main World Series of Poker event or a smaller WSOP satellite tourney.
Not only do you have to be passionate about your topic of choice, other people have to be passionate about it as well. If you're not passionate, fans of your topic will see right through you. If nobody else is passionate about your topic, you might as well print your blog posts and stick them on your mom's fridge. The number of folks who are enthusiastic about your topic will determine the ceiling of your blog venture. Some topics will leave you stranded on a deserted island with a few friends. Trust me, you don't want to be a Blog Gilligan. I've been there and there's no Mary Ann or Ginger.
When I think about the choices I make, a scene from Blow pops into my head. The one where Diego says to George, "You failed because you had the wrong dream." Your blog could fail the second you choose your topic, as many relationships often fail because the pair was just wrong from the start. Make sure you and your topic are a good match for both you and your audience, and that there is an actual audience. It's like an NFL franchise choosing between quarterbacks with a No. 1 overall draft pick. Choose wrong and it will cost you down the road, possibly for a long time. You want to pick Peyton Manning—not Ryan Leaf.
Take your time mulling your topic over before you launch your blog. If you've already launched, reevaluate your blog and ask yourself if you're covering the right topic. If you figure out you’re wasting time, that’s okay. You'll be saving time in the future.
So what do you think? Are you following these Four Os of successful blogging?
Adam Best is an entrepreneur, blogger/writer and artist from Austin, TX. He founded FanSided and currently has a couple other start-ups in the developmental phase. He has covered sports, film, pop culture and blogging all over the Net. Follow him on Twitter at @adamcbest.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
The Four Os: a Four-Step Guide to Successful Blogging
Переслать - What Do You Want Your Blog to Be Known For?
Here’s a little exercise that I do periodically to help me keep my blog on track.
It’s based upon a typical life coaching-type exercise where you’re asked to visualize your own funeral and write your own eulogy—to think about what you want to be known for after you’re gone. But in this exercise we’re going to do it with your blog.
What do you want your blog to be known for?
I remember doing this exercise on for my first photography blog (now no longer active) six years ago. At the time, that blog was simply aggregating camera reviews from around the Web for readers. It was reasonably successful (it made enough to make me a full-time blogger) but something didn’t feel right about it to me.
So I began to ask myself, “What do I want my blog to be known for?”
I projected ten years forward and began to visualize what kind of photography blog I could have at that point. I made a list (or rather something of a vision/manifesto for the blog)—one that I came across yesterday.
The list was pretty long (quite a few pages) but included the following points:
- a place where new cameras came to unlock the secrets of their cameras
- a place where people came to share their images
- a place where readers would encourage one another in their photography
- a place where readers would share their tips with one another
- a place which people see as being original in its thinking
- a place that was renowned for its advice to all levels of photographers.
There was a heap more points like these—but you get the idea.
At the end of my vision document I also wrote the following observation:
“What I am dreaming of is nothing like what I am currently doing.”
My realization was that my dream looked nothing like the current reality. I had a blog at the time that was largely aggregating and rearranging other people’s content. While it was useful to my readers (as I made sense of the masses of info out there) it wasn’t doing any of the things I dreamed of doing.
I began to toy with the idea of evolving my current blog into this dream, but quickly realized that it would probably be better to just start afresh.
Digital Photography School was born through these realizations and this dreaming.
By no means have achieved even half of what I set out for, but, having these goals and dreams in mind, I’m so much closer than I ever was with my previous photography blog.
Your turn
In the life coaching exercise when you write your own eulogy, you’re supposed to take the eulogy and compare it with how you’re currently living, so you can identify how you need to change your life to take you to that place.
For example, if you want to be known for being a generous person, but you live an insular life where you never give anything to anyone, there’s an obvious change that needs to be made.
The same comparison can be very illuminating when you do this type of reflection about your own blog.
- If you want your blog to be known for its original thinking and you only ever regurgitate the ideas of others, you need to make some changes.
- If you want your blog to be a place of community and interaction, but you never invite interaction or interact with your readers, you need to make some changes.
You get the picture, I’m sure.
What do you want your blog to be known for—and what changes need to happen if you’re to achieve that?
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
What Do You Want Your Blog to Be Known For?
Переслать - Three Blogging Lessons from Leonardo Da Vinci
This guest post is by Martyn Chamberlin of Two Hour Blogger.
It was getting late.
The sick old man sighed and set down his brush. Learning back deeply in his chair, he gazed at his painting.
No matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t seem to finish it.
It was only a medium sized work—30 by 21 inches. And yet, the canvas seemed like a monolith of impossibility, stretching towards to the unforeseeable future…
Maybe he should just abandon it, like he had dozens of other works. This painting wasn’t getting anywhere. He couldn’t even give it a name. It was time to admit defeat.
After gazing thoughtfully at it for a bit longer, he shook himself away. Nightfall had long since fallen, and it was past his bed time.
It was May 2, 1519.
Leonardo Da Vinci never woke up. He died with his painting the Mona Lisa in his bedroom.
He never finished it.
He’d worked on it for four years, and given it nearly 30 layers of paint. But he never finished it.
Still, it’s considered the greatest painting ever brushed by mortals. Leonardo hit a home run. He created a masterpiece that would transcend the boundaries of location and time. How’d he do it?
Let’s peek at what Leonardo had going for him. The good part is that you’ll be able to apply these to your blog too.
1. He knew his stuff before he got started
Leonardo was a master at painting before he began the Mona Lisa. He spent decades learning and studying. He’d already mastered drawing and painting in oils.
There was a day when Leonardo picked up a paint brush for the first time. He made a lot of really lousy paintings when he started out—horrible, absolute disasters.
But he stuck with it and got better. After decades of unmitigated labor, he was finally ready to paint his masterpiece.
How this applies to you: If you stick with it, your blog will become a collection of masterpieces. But like Leonardo, you don’t start out professional and successful. The pursuit of excellence requires patience. Don’t let your failures discourage you. They’re essential to growing and getting better.
Nobody can create a masterpiece without lots of prior experience.
2. He had an incredible idea
Leonardo knew that people love an extra-ordinary painting, so he gave it to them. In his day, all the portraits had serious looks on their faces. He gave his a smile. That ticked people off so much, they’re still talking about it today.
How this applies to you: Don’t blog like everybody else. Stand out. Ask what nobody else is doing, and do it. Be exciting. Be weird. Be interesting. Be different.
People love to read a blog that’s got something unique about it.
3. He spent four years executing his idea
…and he still didn’t finished it.
Leonardo was a perfectionist. He didn’t slap together 30-minute paintings and shove them out of the studio. He didn’t ship anything until is was polished to perfection. He abandoned lots and lots of paintings.
Leonardo understood that creating art takes time, and creating really good art takes a really long time.
How this applies to you:No, you don’t want to spend four years writing a blog post and then never publish it! But you do want to spend a lot of time writing and polishing each article.
If you’re just blogging for fun, that’s okay. But if you want people to read it, you’re going to have to work hard at creating value for your audience. Don’t worry about “just getting something out there”—don’t ship until you’ve actually got something worth reading.
This could mean that you spend a lot more time on each article.
This could mean that like Leonardo, you abandon the majority of your work.
This could mean that you publish less often than you currently are.
One great post per week is a lot better than five mediocre ones. What if Leonardo had painted 20 mediocre portraits of a smiling woman instead of one great one? We wouldn’t be talking about any of them.
The same applies to your blog. You don’t have to give it 30 layers of paint, but more than one is certainly nice.
If you want your next blog post to be like the Mona Lisa, be patient, conceive a great idea, and execute it thoroughly. Follow these three steps and you’ll be creating art folks will be linking to years to come.
Martyn Chamberlin is an entrepreneur who blogs about copywriting and digital marketing at Two Hour Blogger. You can catch more on Twitter.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
Three Blogging Lessons from Leonardo Da Vinci
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