Entries Tagged 'blogging' ↓
October 11th, 2013 — blog, blogging, blogging for business
A blog is nothing without traffic. 
Getting more people to your blog is a constant battle, but one that must be fought. So how do you go about it?
What can you do to encourage more people to read your blog?
1. What do they want?
The only way you’ll get people to stop and read is if you’re offering them what they want.
Yes, that one is obvious, but there are still a lot of bloggers out there who write about stuff that interests them rather than thinking about what they’re readers want.
You can spot hot topics by watching what trends on Twitter, or common themes that appear on Facebook. A more obvious one is to just ask them.
2. Promotion
Make your blog social.
By incorporating the social sharing buttons after each post, you will encourage your readers to spread the love by telling other people about your content.
You can also promote it by having a link to your blog in your email signature, email marketing and newsletters.
3. Niche
Making your blog niche specific will encourage more readers. As people get to know what you write about, you’ll soon become the ‘go to’ blogger for that subject.
4. Guesting
A great way to encourage new streams of traffic to your blog is getting some good guest bloggers on board. Check out other blogs in your niche and see if you can persuade them to write for you.
Not only will you get great content, you will also attract their fans, opening up your blog to a whole new audience.
5. Titles
The titles you use on your blog posts are everything. They are what will draw people to your blog so perhaps its time to rethink them.
People love ‘best’, ‘top tips’, ‘how to’ and that sort of thing, so use them.
6. Frequency
The more often you blog, the more people you’ll attract.
7. Authentic
Being authentic and writing about things you’re passionate about will bring readers your way.
If you’re just writing about something because it’s the thing to write about, people will pick up on it because your writing will lack conviction and emotion.
Writing a blog is a labour of love. But if you want it to be successful and attract readers it’s important to think about who you are writing for, why you are writing and what your readers will get out of it.
September 11th, 2013 — blog, blogging, blogging for business, social media
It’s an age-old problem every blogger faces – how can you be sure you’re writing the right kind of posts that your readers want to read? 
You could blindly write about anything that came into your head, but how can you be sure that’s what your readers want to learn about?
Or you could blog smarter.
How about using your social connections to discover the topics that will perform well and be a hit with your readers?
After all, what’s big in your social sphere will be big on your blog, right?
1. Title
You already know that the headline of your blog post has a huge effect on its popularity.
If it’s eye-catching, people are more likely to read it.
The best headlines (and the most successful ones) are those that show an obvious value to the reader. So, all you have to do is take a look at the leading brands and thought leaders in your industry and find out which of their articles are performing best.
Track them down on Twitter and Facebook and look at the blogs that are getting the most hits. What are they talking about? What issues are they addressing? Then use that knowledge to create your own post.
2. What do you want?
One of the best ways to generate a fresh list of blog topics is to ask your readers.
Don’t just write ‘what do you want to read about?’ Instead, think about a particular area and ask what issues they face, what do they need to make their lives easier etc.
Then, once you have received feedback from them, you’ll have a ready-made list of topics to write about. What’s more, because the list came from your readers, you have an eager audience ready and waiting to read your words of wisdom.
3. Facebook Insights
If you use Facebook Insights you’ll get a birds-eye view of the most popular posts you’ve written in terms of their overall reach, engagement and how many people are talking about them.
This type of information is priceless as it means you can identify the main topics your audience are interest in to boost your post’s reach.
4. Tweet
You can also identify your most popular posts using a tool called Social Sprout. This shows you which tweets had the biggest impact so again, you can make sure you provide more of that type of information for your followers.
As you can see using your social connections as guidance you can take the guesswork out of your blogging. Now you can be sure that what you’re ‘putting out’ there is what your readers want.
Author: Sally Ormond, Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd. Follow her on Twitter and Google+
September 4th, 2013 — blogging, blogging for business, Time management
How many times has someone suggested a marketing idea for your business to which you’ve responded: “But I don’t have time for that.” 
It is our favourite excuse, used across the board, outlining our inability to find the time to exercise, socialise, meet up with family members, wash up, tidy a room…the list goes on.
But it’s also one of the feeblest excuses.
If I said to you: “If you want to grow your influence and online visibility, you must start a blog.” And your response was: “I don’t have time,” it would signal to me that you simply can’t be bothered. It would be better to say, “I don’t want to.”
Get your priorities right
If you don’t want to do the stuff you should do, fair enough – it’s your life/business.
But if you want to give it a go because you know it will be good for you or your business, it is very easy to find the time you need.
Think about what you do every day.
How many of those activities are necessary?
You could probably cut out the game of solitaire you play when you think no one’s looking. Perhaps reduce your coffee breaks from 10 to 2 or 3. How about not taking those extra long lunch breaks every day?
My bet is that you would easily be able to find half an hour to an hour extra every day if you cut out the unnecessary ‘tasks’ you burden yourself with.
The way ahead
During your day, write down everything you do and how much time you spend doing it. Be honest, if you have a sneaky game of solitaire, watch a bit of TV or sit down with the paper, write it down.
Then think about what you don’t need to be doing and put that time to something more useful.
If you are going to start a blog, set aside half an hour a day to write one post. That’s enough to get you started.
Before you know it, your days will be more productive, you’ll fall in love with blogging and your business will boom.
August 7th, 2013 — blogging, Content marketing, Content writer
It’s every blogger’s and content writer’s worst nightmare.
It’s something that happens far more frequently that they would like.
What is it?
A blank mind.
They know they have to generate great content quickly to satisfy the insatiable appetite of their readers, but sometimes, just sometimes, the ideas simply won’t come.
Why does this happen?
Probably because of poor writing techniques:
- Sitting in front of a blank screen in the hope that inspiration will strike
- Writing well to start with and then heading off in a long-winded tangent that ends up being deleted, returning them to the blank screen stage
- Constantly distracted by their Twitter feed, Facebook and emails
- Editing and formatting as they write
This doesn’t make them bad writers, far from it, but they are distractions that can seriously block creative flow.
Here’s how you can get around the problem.
1. Ideas
Most writers are at their height of creativity first thing in the morning, before their brains get clogged with client work.
That’s the time to sit down with pen and paper and brainstorm ideas. Think about what’s happened that week, conversations you’ve had with clients, articles you’ve read in the papers or news stories you’ve seen on the TV. Draw from everything you can think of and come up with a list of title/outlines for your articles.
2. Choose and plan
Once you have your list, pick the one that really jumps out at you.
But, before you start hammering the keyboard, take 10 minutes or so to write a plan. Whether it’s a list of points you want to cover, a mind map to help you visualise the way the piece will be structured or a general outline, this will help you keep focused and your writing on track.
3. Silence
Once you have your plan, you’re almost ready to get started.
Before you start typing though, switch off Twitter, log out of Facebook and close down your mail client.
It’s essential nothing distracts you so you ideas can flow freely.
4. Check
Once you have your first draft, read through it, refine it and check it for typos and grammatical errors.
But only when you have a first draft – checking as you write will stifle your workflow and clog up your creativity.
Plus, make sure you set the first draft aside for a while before you edit it.
5. Format
Now your article is written and you’re happy that it’s error free, you can go back and format it. Add in any bold headings you want, italics and hyperlinks. And make sure your paragraphs are flowing, short and easy to read.
These 5 simple steps will help you avoid wasting hours sat in front of a blank screen.
Keeping a pen and paper with you at all times will help you record ideas as they come to you (you can also record voice memos on your phone), so you’ll always have a supply of great content ideas.
Give it a try and see how you get on.
Author: Sally Ormond, Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd. Follow her on Twitter and Google+
June 10th, 2013 — blogging, blogging for business, Content marketing, Content writer
One of the biggest barriers to content marketing faced by many businesses is ideas generation.
Many decide it’s not even worth considering because they don’t feel able to come up with the constant stream of information a content marketing strategy demands.
But it doesn’t have to be difficult to generate ideas; you just have to look at things a bit differently.
How do you go about coming up with content topics at the moment?
Do you just sit at your desk and stare into space hoping for a blinding flash of inspiration to strike?
That might happen now and then, but you can’t rely on that to generate the constant stream of ideas you need.
That’s where Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Quora, LinkedIn and your customers come in to their own.
Want to know more?
Google – the ideas machine
Google can help you in a couple of ways: through Google Suggest and its related searches results.
With Google Suggest, all you have to do is enter your keyword in the Google search box and then wait for Google Suggest to do its magic.
Below you can see that I entered ‘How to train a puppy’ as my keyword and then Google provided a list of alternative popular searches, providing me with a range of topics that I can write about.
As an added bonus, when you search for that keyword, at the bottom of the search engine results page Google then provides you with a further list of related search terms .
So, from one simple action I now have multiple ideas for content generation.
Yahoo! and Quora
I’ve put these two together as they work in fairly similar ways.
Yahoo! answers and Quora provide content marketers with a plethora of information. They are a great place to start your research. Browsing both sites, using your keywords, will throw up all sorts of ideas based on the questions being asked by users.
After all, if people are asking questions it means they are looking for answers, so they are the topics you want to be writing about.
YouTube
YouTube isn’t just a video viewing website, it’s also a great source for content ideas.
It works in a similar way to Google Suggest in so far as you enter your keyword into the search box and then YouTube will list other related searches.
As you can see I’ve used the same keyword as in the Google example, but here YouTube has come up with a different range of suggestions, so now, one keyword has generated several different content ideas.
LinkedIn groups
Are you a member of any LinkedIn groups? If so, you’ve probably seen the emails that are generated when someone poses a question. Again, these questions are a rich source for your content ideas. Use them to write informative articles that you can then post on LinkedIn, your blog and other article sites etc.
Customers
Last, but by no means least, are your customers.
What better source could there be? Talking to them directly, or monitoring their questions (via email and social media) will unearth a rich source of content ideas, giving them the information they want.
Generating ideas for your content marketing strategy is easy. All you have to do is decide on the subject area you want to cover and then do one or more of the above to generate a whole raft of ideas that you can write about.
Do you use any other methods to generate ideas? If so leave a comment below and share them with us, it would be really interesting to get your take on this subject.
Author:
Sally Ormond is MD and head copywriter at Briar Copywriting Ltd.
