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- Do You Spend Enough Time Looking at Your Stats?
This guest post is by Deb of Science@home.
Do you spend enough time looking at your stats?
What a statement to start with, given that the mantra seems to be to check once a week and don't waste too much time on your stats. And I agree with what seems to be the reasoning—if you are spending all that time looking at your stats, what else could you be doing that's more productive? There also seems to be an underlying feeling that for us little guys the stats might be just too darn depressing, so staying away might be good for your mental health and motivation.
But I'm going to fight back for the little guys and stats junkies and say that if you use them right, stats are an extremely useful tool for building your community. Because for most of us, most of our community doesn't talk to us. The number of comments, Facebook likes and Twitter replies is miniscule compared with the daily number of hits on our blogs, and when no one's answering your questions you need another way to learn what makes them tick.
Readers are people (image is author's own)
Your stats are the key to finding out what is important to all those people who have found you and like you but aren't saying anything. I know it's traditional to try to talk to those people and get them talking to you, but to get those comments in the first place you need to learn about the silent majority. The more you find out about them, the more likely you are to hit on what's important to them.
Here are four ways your stats can help you learn about your community.
Nationality
It's obvious, but can be important. Do you need to be aware of the seasons, holidays, and traditions of your readers? Even though I'm Australian, many of my readers come from the US and a large number are from Europe. This makes me consider how to balance my stories of running around in the bush and make sure I offer indoor activities too when my readers are snowed in. Plus it determines when I post and tweet—my posts go live in the early morning to catch US readers in their evening.
Origin
The big players are search engines and social media, but sometimes you get a spike in traffic from a specific forum or web community. If it's public that's great—you can get in and talk to the people thinking of visiting your site. But even if it's private, it tells you something about your visitors—if you're getting hits from a site on baby names, can you do some posts aimed at babies to capitalize on their interest?
What's happening in their world?
One day I had a spike on a post called “13 Things to Do When it's Raining.” Sometimes you can capitalize and sometimes you can't. But the image of mothers all over the US East Coast being stuck inside and searching for something to do with their kids struck a chord. It made them into real people with real lives and problems that I could relate to, rather than “readers” or “hits.” And that's at least as valuable as knowing which social media network they prefer, because it makes me write for them, rather than numbers.
I had another spike just after the earthquake in Japan on a piece I'd written earlier about plate tectonics and earthquakes. That was emotionally confronting—at once I felt horrible it was happening, and guilty for doing well out of it, but at the same time I was glad I could help explain it to people searching for an answer. It reminds me to take responsibility for what I write, because you never know when it might stop being interesting and fun, and become important.
What do they want?
One of my most popular posts of all time is about starfish babies. A bit of digging showed me that most of the information out there about starfish either doesn't mention babies, or is fairly static. Looking at this and my other long-term popular posts taught me a lot about my audience and what they want to know. They are parents, teachers, people who are looking for understandable explanations of the quirky details kids demand. And they've secretly always wanted to know but none of the “official” information sources would give the information to them! The strange searches that bring people to your site are not just cause for amusement (although that can be fun too)—they tell you who your readers are and what they want from you.
Once you start getting readers who aren't personally related to you, just looking at numbers is a waste of time. But don't avoid your stats completely, because if you learn to listen they are your community talking to you.
If you've ever wondered why Daddies are bigger than Mummies or other weird and wonderful questions, Deb has the answer at Science@home. Plus lots of things to do with babies, toddlers and kids whether it's raining or not.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Do You Spend Enough Time Looking at Your Stats?
Переслать - The Mottos that Landed Me a Post on Problogger.net
This guest post is by Magz Parmenter of Tangerine Turtle.
Close your eyes for a minute and think about the biggest goal you have right now. Is it becoming a full-time blogger? Would you like to speak at a conference? Maybe you want to sell advertising on your blog. Whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, you need to take the advice in this post. It's how I succeeded with one of my biggest goals this year: to write for problogger.net…
I was going about my business, writing a post for my blog when I got a little pop-up message in the corner of my screen. It was Darren Rowse, you know, the Darren Rowse, from Problogger. Here’s how the conversation went:
Darren: "Hi Magz, I read your blog and liked what I saw. How about doing a guest post on problogger.net?"
Magz: "Wow! I'm flattered, Darren! Of course, I'd love to!"
Darren: "Okay, that's great. Send me something and I'll make sure to send it through to Georgina (the Content Manager at problogger.net)."Okay, I'll confess. None of the above actually happened. But wouldn't it be awesome if it did?
The truth is, if you want to guest post for anyone, particularly an A-list blogger, you have to submit your ideas to them. Let's be honest, they get thousands of emails asking them to please, please, please consider their amazing post. Particularly if you're a new blogger, or even if you're not (I've been blogging since 2005), getting to grips with pitching the big guns with your ideas can be daunting.
I'll be the first to admit, it took me a good six months of reading and researching, interacting with Darren on Twitter and learning as much as I possibly could from heavy-hitters like Brian Clark, Jon Morrow, Pat Flynn, and the Blog Tyrant before I got the courage to pitch my ideas to the guys at problogger.net.
I. Was. Terrified.
To make matters worse, I sent my pitch on a Friday, and because of various factors like the time difference from the UK to Australia and Georgina's work schedule, I didn't get an answer until 1.30am on Sunday (Monday). I was sweating it that weekend!
So, How Did I Get that Elusive 'Yes' to Guest Post on Problogger?
In my former life, I used to be a counsellor. I've always been interested in psychology and what makes people do the things they do. I'm now a Personal Coach and I love helping people find ways to be more productive and successful in their lives, whether that means organizing their homes and offices, or organizing their thoughts.
I'm also addicted to Google. (They should give me shares, really. No … really.) Finally, I love inspirational and catchy quotes. Put these things together, and it should come as no surprise that I used the marketing slogans of four major companies to help me reach my big goal of guest posting here.
1. Impossible is nothing (Adidas)
If you're struggling, this motto might seem as believable as a pink elephant flying. But here are a few thoughts that will help you:
- Your thoughts are influenced by words.
- The words you tell yourself become your reality.
- “Impossible” is a word.
- So is “possible.”
If you tell yourself (or someone else) something over and over, eventually they will believe it. That is why parents are warned about the things they say to their children. If you tell a child continually that they are no good or can't do something, they will start to believe it whether it's a fact or not.
This is just as true for adults. In January of this year I did a productivity course and it changed my life. To see what I accomplished in just six weeks after the course, click here. One thing the speaker said really stuck with me:
There is nothing you can't do that someone has already done before you.
Read it again, and then read it again a few times. When I saw the Adidas slogan “Impossible is Nothing” it immediately reminded me of that same thought. I realized these two statements were both extremely powerful tools to help me achieve my goals and be successful. I started repeating both of them to myself whenever I could. Every time I started feeling fearful or doubtful of my abilities, I would say one or both of them over and over until the feeling passed.
Do you know what? Over time, I found that I was doing it less and less. In other words, it had become my reality. It was no longer a strange sentence that I was just repeating, I actually believed it.
Impossible really is nothing: it's just a word. It has no hold over you.
2. What's the worst that can happen? (Dr. Pepper)
It's no secret that one of the main thing that holds us back from achieving our goals and dreams is fear. It may or may not come as a surprise to you to learn that many of the biggest experts out there also struggle with fear. We're all human. We all hate the thought of failure or rejection.
The difference between successful people and the rest of the world is that successful people don't let the fear win. They go for it anyway.
When you're gripped by fear, ask yourself, “what's the worst that can happen?” The Dr Pepper people took that thought and made a joke out of it, showing outrageous scenarios of things going wrong in their ads. If it helps you to remember those ads, do it. Sometimes it's good to visualize the “worst” and then make a joke of it in your mind. (That won't be appropriate for every situation, of course!)
When I was preparing my pitch to Problogger, as I said before, I was terrified.
But to conquer it, I asked myself, “what's the worst that can happen?” The worst that could happen was that they would say “no.” Okay, the worst that could happen was that they would say no and then tell me how I had no talent whatsoever and that I should find a different job and never write again. But I was banking on them being more professional than that, and from what I knew about Darren, I thought it would be unlikely that he or any of his staff would be so soul-destroying.
As it happened, I got a “yes.” But if I had let the fear win and not even tried, I would not have achieved one of my big goals for this year, and you would not be reading this right now.
So, the next time you're afraid to make a move that will push you towards success with your blog, or in your life, ask yourself, “what's the worst that can happen?” The chances are, it's not as bad as you think and even if it is, do it anyway—that's what the big guns do!
3. Because you're worth it (L'Oreal)
After fear, the second biggest reason that people don't achieve their goals and dreams is lack of self-confidence and self-worth.
They don't believe they can do it, and more importantly they don't believe they deserve it!
When I was younger and the L'Oreal ads would come on TV touting “because I'm worth it,” I used to smirk just a little bit. It was a catchy little slogan; I could see how women justified lots of purchases using this mantra. But really … how many of them really believed it?
Sadly, not many I would say. Research has shown over and over how low women's opinions of themselves are. The issue isn't confined to just women either; many men suffer from the same lack of self-belief.
As I've said before, what we tell ourselves becomes our reality, and unfortunately, too many of us tell ourselves that other people are better and more talented, smarter, more beautiful, and frankly, more deserving than us. To make matters worse, we tell ourselves this over and over and over, until eventually, it's all we believe.
The fact is, none of us is more deserving than another. (I'm talking about hard-working people here; I'm not saying you can just do nothing and expect to get everything just because “you're worth it.”) I am no less deserving of success in my life than Darren Rowse or Brian Clark or any other expert out there. I remind myself of this every day.
So the next time you think you deserve less than someone else in your niche, or in the blogosphere, tell yourself “I’m worth it.” Tell yourself over and over until you actually believe it.
4. Just do it (Nike)
The last motto is one that really speaks for itself.
Just do it.
This is the last piece of the puzzle that will get you where you want to go.
After all the thinking and talking and preparing, you have to just go for it. You have to take the leap and take a chance. Doing nothing will get you exactly that: nothing.
When I was preparing my pitch, and indeed, this post, I went through all of the things I've talked about above. The hardest thing was just clicking the Send button. But that's what you have to do.
When you've done everything else you can, all you have to do is:
Just Do It.
So, there you have it. Take the advice in this post and you'll be guaranteed to achieve just about any goal you set for yourself and your blog. When you do, stop by and leave me a message, I love hearing about people's successes!
Magz Parmenter is a Freelance Writer, Blogger, Personal Coach, Organizing Addict, and Author-in-Training. She specializes in writing about personal development, organizing for success, home and family management. She'd love to hear from you on her blog Tangerine Turtle, on Twitter: @magzparmenter or Facebook.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
The Mottos that Landed Me a Post on Problogger.net
Переслать - My Secret Formula for Creating Super-engaging Blog Content
This guest post is by Kiesha of WeBlogBetter.
Many of my readers have asked how in the world I come up with such creative ideas for my blog content.
If you’ve read:
- “The Walmart Guide to Increasing Time spent on your Site,”
- “Can your blog Pass the Salad Test?”
- “Attract Readers to your blog like Mosquitos
- “What the Sims Taught me About Social Media”
- “How to Solve the Blogging Puzzle” (a post that compares blogging to a jigsaw puzzle)
…then you’ve probably figured out by now that there are no limits to the subjects I’ll squeeze a blog post out of.
I often challenge myself to find the most unlikely subject and see what blogging lessons I can squeeze out of it. While some things are a complete stretch and really won’t work, there are some surprising lessons you can pull from just about anything, if you’re creative enough.
I’m going to be honest: I’m using the phrase “creative enough,” but really what I mean is this. If you have a brain that has the capacity to think deeply enough to write a coherent paragraph or two, then you’ve got “enough creativity” to pull this off.
I’ll tell you how, but first let me tell you about a book that I read that really informs how I write today. It’s called The Medici Effect. This book talks about how it’s not completely new ideas, but the intersection of two seemingly unrelated ideas, that make a real difference in innovation.
I’m really simplifying the complexity, so you’re going to have to check this one out yourself to really get this and fully grasp the secret to creating meaningful and engaging content.
Here’s my secret formula for creating those zany analogies and surprising comparisons that I write about.
1. Pay attention to the surrounding environment
Every good writer is so because they pay attention to the details of life around them. They use those details and describe them with words that evoke the five senses: sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch.
Being able to describe an experience is key to hooking readers and keeping them engaged.
2. Squeeze lessons from personal experience
This is a direct extension of step one—if you’re paying attention your environment, you’ll discover that life’s lessons are everywhere. Blogging, like Kung Fu, is in everything!
You can pull lessons from any subject and then think about the ways they are similar to your blog topic.
This is easier if you make a list. For example, think of all the ways your experience in college is similar to your blogging experience. If I were to list mine I’d say:
- Both were baffling at first.
- Both required time studying alone.
- Both required commitment and dedication to a schedule.
- Both required one to stretch his or her thinking beyond the ordinary.
This list could go on and on. I might start with a really long list, but then I would narrow it down to the most important points, since only so much can go into a blog post if it’s to remain engaging.
3. Overcome fears and ignore the inner critic long enough to write
This step is extremely important. If you’re sitting there worrying about how crazy people will think you are or how much someone might think your analogy sucks, you’re not going to be able to do much writing. When you kick your inner critic to the curb and decide to just have fun with writing, it will come through in your writing. Confidence or lack thereof can be sensed and can weaken your credibility and authority.
4. Brainstorm catchy titles
If you’ve selected an interesting topic, then half of the work is done for you. At this point you just need to think of ways you can capitalize on those phrases that people love and that are also search engine friendly.
5. Revise and polish
This works best if I’ve allowed the post to sit for a couple of days. This gives me fresh eyes and since the mental load of revision is far less than writing, it also allows me to think of ways to inject humor, think of details I’ve left out, choose better words and also consider ways to extend the post if possible.
6. If you canít think of ideas to combine, try a dose of randomness
Randomly pick two items and think of ways they are similar and can complement each. Then boldly consider ways you could use the combination to your advantage. You may need to try this exercise a few times before you arrive at something you believe to be true genius that you can passionately use to separate yourself from your competitors.
It was the combining of seemingly random, unrelated ideas that sparked the idea to change up the blog contest game and do something different. I suddenly got the idea that I should host a reality blog contest where bloggers will team up and work together while simulaneously competing for a Grand Prize. I got that idea while reading The Medici Effect, specifically a passage that talked about what makes a good contest. It discussed the evolution of the game show over the years until it eventually turned into reality contests and shows—that immediately sparked a eureka moment for me!
That’s what combining unusual ideas should do for you and your readers. It will help you create super-engaging content that your readers won’t be able to resist.
Kiesha blogs at WeBlogBetter, offering writing, social media and blogging tips. She’s currently holding an exciting new type of contest on her blog—the first ever reality blogging contest called “Surviving the Blog”. Visit her blog for details.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
My Secret Formula for Creating Super-engaging Blog Content
Переслать - The Warren Buffett Method for Building a Successful Blog
This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.
Billionaire Warren Buffett's method of deciding which companies to buy and invest in is not only instructive for share investors, but also for bloggers. His strategy can be used in the blogging world to create a successful blog—especially instructive for bloggers who are short on time and need to make every post count.
Buffet's “Durable Competitive Advantage” concept
When Buffett analyses a company for potential, he looks for what he calls a “durable competitive advantage.” A durable competitive advantage is a unique product that has a strong competitive advantage in the market and does not have to change over time. In other words, he looks for a product that he can profit from over a long period of without changing it much.
Coke, for example, has a durable competitive advantage because it does not change over time. The same can be said for Budweiser, DeBeers Diamonds and OPEC. A car manufacturer, on the other hand, does not have a durable competitive advantage because cars change in design every few years.
Companies with a durable competitive advantage like Coke enjoy the following advantages over other companies:
- They spend fewer dollars on research and design.
- They do not need to retool their production line to cater for new models.
- They have a long life span in the marketplace.
This means that more money is available for profits and re-investment, allowing more to be achieved with less.
Applying Buffett's principle to blog strategy
Buffett's strategy is a great strategy for time-deprived bloggers. Simply put, it states that rather than buying companies that have time-sensitive products—or writing posts that are time sensitive—buy companies who products are evergreen—or write posts that are evergreen.
Rather than building a news site, which is what many bloggers do, build a resource. Build a source of information for your chosen topic. Write posts that focus on principles rather than techniques. That way your posts will be as relevant in four years as they are on the day you write them.
On my blog, for example, all the posts are about principles of consumer psychology. Each post adds to other posts and completes the overall picture. When I am done, I will have covered most of the principles of consumer psychology.
Exceptions to the rule
This does not mean that you cannot write about time-sensitive topics. You absolutely can and should from time to time (topical posts can bring you a spike of traffic in a short period of time). But the bulk of your blog should comprise of posts that are timeless. This way, if you are only writing one or two posts a week, you are making every post count not just for that week but for months and years to come.
If your skill lies in acquiring and communicating breaking news and trends, this strategy is not optimal for you. Similarly, if you can find ways to generate a lot of content quickly through crowd sourcing (think Huffington Post, Wikipedia, and ProBlogger), this strategy is not necessary for you. If you have the time, skill and strategy to write time-sensitive posts, by every means do so.
But for the rest of us, who are short on time and need to get the maximum mileage out of our posts, concentrating on evergreen content is a winning strategy.
As Buffett once explained, "There is a huge difference between the business that grows and requires lots of capital to do so and the business that grows and doesn't require capital."
Translated into blog strategy, this means there is a huge difference between the blog that requires breaking news to stay relevant and make money, and the blog that grows because its posts are as relevant today as they were two years ago.
Which strategy do you use on your blog, and why?
Aman Basanti has written for a number of A-list blogs including ProBlogger, MarketingProfs and Business Insider. He shares his secrets to getting guest posts on A-list blogs in his new FREE e-book – Guest Posting Secrets: 25 Tips to Help You Get More Guest Posts. Visit Ageofmarketing.com/guest-posting-secrets to download it now for FREE (No opt-in required).
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
The Warren Buffett Method for Building a Successful Blog
Переслать - How to Use Conversion Optimization to Grow Your Blog
This guest post was written by Alex of ToMakeALiving.
It's pretty well established that to grow your blog you need to write well, and you certainly wouldn't struggle to find a dozen or so posts which offer suggestions that mostly boil down to "learn to write good content." Well, duh…
But assuming you can write, there is plenty of other stuff you can do to improve your blog.
So rather than launch into yet another checklist about how to make a nice looking, effective blog post, I am going to share with you a more scientific method: conversion optimization.
What is conversion optimization?
Quite simply, conversion optimization is the process of using measurable behaviour data and testing small or large changes to see what effect they have on the page or site.
Basically, you can change absolutely anything on your site and actually test it to see what works best. So rather than spending hours umming and ahhing over exactly what shade of grey to use for your text, you can test a number of shades and get a precise result.
Why is it so awesome?
Well, as I hinted at above—and I'm sure you've all done this once or twice—most bloggers design their sites based on how they like them; this is totally missing the point, though. Assuming you want to grow your blog, it is your users that matter, not your own personal tastes.
Your personal preference on how to lay out your navigation might turn out to be less desirable than a layout that you would have rejected. Small things really can make a big difference, and I don't know about you, but I would rather pick the setup that gets and keeps the most readers.
How to get started
Like I said, we are going to do this scientifically, no guess work involved. So we are going to start by finding the right application. Google have a free Website Optimizer, which works just fine if you are on a budget.
If you can afford it though, I highly recommend Visual Website Optimizer—it is far easier and faster to use, which means you will use it more, and that's a good thing.
What can you track?
All manner of things. But we are talking about your blog here. So what matters most for your blog? Well here are the things I tend to track:
Bounce rate
If you can reduce your bounce rate, you will retain more visitors. That's got to be good, right?
Signups
You are hopefully trying to get people to sign up to your mailing list. The better your sign up form works, the more subscribers you will get.
Key pages
You can track specific pages and navigation paths from one page to another, for instance, from a particular post to a page which tells people about one of your affiliate products.
Once you get to grips with the process, you can start testing other elements, but these are good things to start with because they are simple to test and they will make the biggest difference to your blog.
Setting up your first experiments
Actually using the software is simple enough, and you'll soon get to grips with it, so I'm not going to go through the nitty gritty. The biggest challenge starting out, though, is thinking up some experiments to run. So here are a few ideas.
1. Look and feel
How many times have you been torn about what color to make your text? What font to use? What background image looks best? Well, for our first experiment we are finally going to answer that question.
For my first experiment, I created three different backgrounds—one was just plain light blue (this was the original one), one was busier, with black swirls, and one had a color gradient. I ran the experiment with all three backgrounds being split equally among users.
The aim of the experiment was to see which background produced the lowest bounce rate across the entire site.
The results were actually pretty surprising—the swirly background came out with the lowest bounce rate, at 51%, and the second-best was the plain blue, which came in at 62%. So overall this one experiment helped me to reduce my bounce rate by 11%.
2. Signup form
For my next experiment, I decided to test whether a popup would increase my sign ups, and also whether a popup would increase my bounce rate. My main concern was that I didn't want to push away or annoy my visitors, but I did want more people to subscribe to my blog.
I created a simple signup form, and set it so that it wouldn't keep appearing for repeat readers. Then I ran an experiment that tested this popup against pages where the sign up form appeared as a widget in the side bar.
As expected, the popup increased signups; the shocking thing was by how much—across just over 1000 visits, the popup form produced 72% more signups. Even more surprising was that the bounce rate was actually 0.5% lower than the signup form.
3. Key pages
For experiment number three we are going to target a specific page. One of my key navigation pages is 8 ways to make money. I wanted to experiment with how best to lay out the page in order to get people to click through to a relevant strategy, and not exit the site or go elsewhere.
I tried a grid layout of 2×2 panels against a simple list. I also tried pages with and without small descriptions for each section, and I tried different bullet points. All in all there were about 6 or 7 alternatives, so I let the test run for a while so that I could be sure I had enough data.
The results showed me that a 2×2 grid layout worked best, short descriptions did help, and bullet points didn't make any discernable difference either way (so I got rid of them). Overall, I was able to improve the goal rate (visitor clicking on any of the eight "strategies") by 46%.
Building your own experiments
So there you have it: three experiments to try out. As you can see, these are all pretty simple. The key is that you are testing them with real visitors so that you don't have to rely on guess-work.
Sometimes you might find that the best layout is the one you already had, but if you keep testing different variations, you can really improve your blog, one small change at a time. I started with things like background images and other simple changes, but you once you feel confident you can change headers, tag lines, navigation—or whatever you want.
Just imagine if you could halve your bounce rate and double your signup rate; wouldn't that help you to grow your blog much faster?
Targeting specific pages
Just a final thought: once you are happy with your overall site layout, you can start trying to improve individual pages. I always start by looking at my analytics—one option is to look for any posts that have a relatively high exit rate.
These are pages which are losing you traffic, so again, if you can reduce your exit rate, you will retain more traffic and increase the time that people spend on your site.
Your actual experiment can involve changes whatever you like. Simple things might be adding/removing/changing images. You could also play with headings and subheadings, and you can even try a complete re-write of the page or test long copy vs. short.
Summary
I hope this post has given you some inspiration to go and get started with your own simple experiments. You can do a lot to improve your blog by simply getting in the right mindset. Results vary and you can never be totally sure what will and won't work, but when you can see the numbers in front of you, and a clear improvement, it is very encouraging.
Have you tried conversion optimization experiments? Share your experiences in the comments.
This post was written by Alex from ToMakeALiving a site dedicated to showing you how to earn money online. The site covers all kinds of money making strategies and gives you the complete guide from planning to monetizing.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
How to Use Conversion Optimization to Grow Your Blog
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