ProBlogger: Boost Conversions Step 2: Revisit Your Conversion Funnel

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Boost Conversions Step 2: Revisit Your Conversion Funnel Posted: 30 May 2012 07:01 AM PDT In this, the second part of our short series on boosting conversions on your blog, it’s time to look at your conversion funnel. Yesterday, the Blog Tyrant showed us how to review our offer of a paid or free product or service. Through that analysis, you should be able to pull together some detailed and valuable information about your product. That’s great, but the other aspect that the Tyrant touched on was your conversion funnel. I want to take those ideas a step further today. Understanding your conversion funnel We’re talking in this series about conversions for any product or offer—so that could be a product or service you’re selling, or it could be a free subscription you offer on your site. Whether it’s free or sold for a price, your offer has a conversion funnel. The Web Marketing Ninja showed us this one in his article, How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel for Success: The key is that at each point in your conversion funnel, you’ll lose potential customers. As the Blog Tyrant explained yesterday, you can use your blog stats package to review where, exactly, those losses are occurring. And as the Web Marketing Ninja explains in How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel, the best thing to do is put measures on each point in the funnel so that you can understand what, exactly, is happening at each point in the conversion process. He says that looks at as much data on each point in the sales process as he can—and that includes bounce rates, time on page, entries and exits through the page, traffic sources, and so on. So the conversion funnel review process might look something like this: Go through your site, and map each step in your conversion funnel. Look at your analytics work out what you’ll measure at each point in the funnel. Put numbers against the metrics you’ve decided to measure at each step. Understanding the data Once you work through this process, you’ll find yourself armed with a lot of data. How you interpret that data will go a long way toward boosting your conversions. For example, finding that you have a high exit rate from a page in your funnel means people are leaving it—you’re losing potential conversions at this point. That’s good to know, but that information alone doesn’t tell you what you can do about it. In working out implications of that information you may need to also look at bounce rates for the page, and where the traffic it receives is coming from, for example. This information can be a big help in making the right choices when it comes to tweaking the funnel. For example, let’s imagine that we’re analysing the About page for ProBlogger the Book. Now this page is the second in my sales funnel—the default page is at http://probloggerbook.com/. Most visitors go straight from that default page to Amazon or B&N. But let’s imagine that a significant percentage click through to the About page … and then exit without clicking on one of the Buy buttons, or subscribing. If I look at the data, and all I see is that this page has a high bounce rate, I might be tempted to try a range of different strategies to fix that. But what if I look at the traffic sources and notice that a large percentage of users are arriving at the About the Book page through search engines? The About page doesn’t have any Buy buttons above the fold, so if users are coming from a search engine, where they’ll likely also see an Amazon or B&N link in the results, they may immediately think, “Oh, this is just marketing information. I’ll click back and look at the details on Amazon—I know I can buy the book there.” In this case, my strategy for tweaking the sales funnel will differ from the ideas I had when all I noticed was the high bounce rate. My efforts might also include improving the search rank of the default sales page for the book, if it’s appearing below the About page in the SERPs, but converting better. As you can see, understanding the data as a whole is very important if you’re to make decisions that will have the best likelihood of positively affecting your conversion rates. Focus on key points of loss As you review your funnel, you’ll also need to consider where to focus your efforts to improve it. While the data may reveal a number of areas for improvement, you’ll likely find that some will produce a much bigger bang for your buck—as the Ninja explained in this recent post. If your time is limited—and whose isn’t?—you’d be best to focus on these pages, if not exclusively, at least initially. As you’re looking at those pages, don’t limit yourself to considering one or two factors. Often, we can become fixated on things like button size or placement, and forget about other considerations that might be negatively impacting conversions. These could include: headlines, sub-heads, and scannability of the content how we’re using images and where they’re placed whether the language on the page resonates with users the strength of your calls to action links to other content, including navigation links use of testimonials offers of samples the page’s purpose in the conversion process, and whether it meets that from a fundamental, usability standpoint. These are just a few ideas, but consider them broadly. For example, reviewing the strength of your calls to action is on that list—but that doesn’t just mean the calls to action to buy your product. The ProBlogger Book sales page includes subscription box. Should that remain on a low-performing page? Should it be removed? Is it likely to be diffusing the strength of my call to action or is it providing a valuable mechanism by which I’m capturing new subscribers who may not be ProBlogger regulars? My analysis of the data, coupled with my strategy for the page and goals for the conversion funnel, should help me determine the answers here. Match the changes to your users A quick final point: you’re not in the dark when it comes to trying to work out what tweaks you’ll make. In a later part of this series, we’ll find out how to conduct split tests that will help you to test various incremental changes so that you can see which ones work best, and use those. But even before you get that far, the audience research that the Blog Tyrant was talking about yesterday should give you some insight into how you can alter points in your conversion funnel to match the needs, characteristics, and expectations of the audience you’re seeking. He mentioned, for example, that video can be useful for certain audiences—perhaps that’s something I should consider adding to my book’s About page? I know from my other data and reader feedback that my regulars love video content, so it seems like it could be a good idea… Ready to act? Once you’ve finished reviewing your sales funnel, you’ll have a pretty clear idea of the possibilities before you for boosting conversions. It’s time to act. Tomorrow, Tommy Walker will step us through the changes he actually made to his own website in an effort to improve conversions, so that we can get a first-hand account of how all this research feeds into practical alterations to things like page layouts, calls to action, images, and more. But in the meantime, I’d love to hear your tips or extra advice for reviewing conversion funnels—whether for a paid or free offer. Have you ever done it? What secrets can you share from your experiences? Let us know in the comments. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Boost Conversions Step 2: Revisit Your Conversion Funnel

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“Melbourne Food and Wine Blogging Event” plus 2 more

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• Melbourne Food and Wine Blogging Event
• Boost Conversions Step 1: Review Your Offer
• Conversion Optimization: Our New Series

Melbourne Food and Wine Blogging Event Posted: 29 May 2012 11:59 PM PDT I’ve been excitedly sitting on this one for a while now and am relieved to finally announce a new ProBlogger event that is coming up for Melbourne Food and Wine Bloggers (and anyone else who wants to travel to Melbourne for an evening). The event is being held in collaboration with my good friend – Shane Delia – an amazing chef and co-owner of restraints including two of my favourites – Maha Bar and Grill and St Katherines Kew. Shane and I have talked for some time now about organising an event for bloggers and are today releasing tickets for the first of what we hope will be a series of events for foodies. We have lined up what we hope will be a fun and informative evening that will feature 3 delightful speakers, an insightful panel discussion and a delicious 3 course meal from the team at Maha (including wines to match each course. Here are the event details: Date: Tuesday 17 July 2012 Time: 6pm arrival Venue: Maha – 21 Bond St, Melbourne Inclusions: Event ticket with 3 course meal and win matching (served on communal tables) Cost: $120 per person Our speaker lineup for the event draws on 3 fantastic people from different areas of the food and wine writing fraternity in Melbourne. We’ve chosen a Wine writer and Food writer and a blogger. Here’s who who’ve lined up: DAN SIMS, THE WINE GUIDE A fresh perspective on wine writing Cool, calm and collected without pretentious frippery is how Dan likes to keep the world of wine. An award winning Sommelier and the engine room for many of The Wine Guide's clients and for their events that happen around Australia and beyond. Dan's excitement for good wine is palpable whether in front of a camera, or in front of a room full of bloggers, and his even handed approach to wine has drawn plenty of praise from the press and trade. Dan will share his insights on how his no-nonsense approach to writing can be applied to your own blogging. More about Dan | @dansims | Facebook  "JETSETTING JOYCE", MEL: HOT OR NOT Successes and learnings from my food blogging journey Jetsetting Joyce started blogging in 2007 when lived in London. Back then, LDN: HOT OR NOT was a simple Blogger template with hardly any pictures and maybe one or two paragraphs about where she'd eaten, what play she'd seen, what shops she'd visited and places she stayed. It was a way of keeping in touch with family and friends and was more of a travel diary than something meant for a wider audience. When Joyce returned to Melbourne 2009 she was going to quit blogging…but found that it'd become quite an addictive habit. So MEL: HOT OR NOT was born and has continued to thrive for over 3 years with Joyce's honest and informative reviews about everything Melbourne – restaurants, bars, theatre, festivals, events, shops and businesses. All written with one decisive criteria in mind – is it HOT OR NOT? Joyce's blogging addiction has meant she now also writes TOT: HOT OR NOT, a blog about parenting which started in August 2010 with her first pregnancy, plus a blog filled with cycle chic inspiration as part of her online bike shop CycleStyle. She fits all the blogging around her day job as an intellectual property and IT lawyer. (Yeah, she's a busy lady!) Joyce will share her learnings and successes and how she's applied them to her blogging career. More about Joyce | @jetsettingjoyce | Facebook  HILARY MCNEVIN, BROADSHEET, THE AGE The art of writing a review: expressing your opinion, with context and effective, thoughtful communicationHilary McNevin worked front-of-house, managing restaurants and studying wine in both Australia and the UK for 15 years before shifting careers. She studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT and during her study and since finishing the course at the end of 2007, has freelanced for Epicure in The Age as a regular contributore and fills in for senior reviewer Larissa Dubecki on the Espresso column. Hilary has reviewed for and sub-edited The Age Good Food Guide 2008 and 2009, and continues to review for the guide. She is a reviewer for The Age Cheap Eats, The Age Good Cafe Guide, Good Food Shopping Guide and Good Bar Guide. She is the restaurant reviewer for The Moonee Valley Weekly, a Fairfax publication and is a contributing food writer for Broadsheet.com.au. She contributes regularly to Winestate magazine and the James Halliday Wine Companion magazine and in July will begin writing Melbourne food news for Delicious magazine. Hilary had her first book Guide to Fish: Choosing and Cooking Sustainable Species published by Fairfax in October 2008. Hilary will share her extensive experience in writing reviews, providing key "journalism" hints and tips on the fine art of review writing. More about Hilary | @hilarymcnevin Tickets are Limited: Get Yours Today This evening is going to be a lot of fun. Not only will you hear from these panelists (and Shane and myself) you’ll have the opportunity to connect with 100 other Melbourne foodies (and might even get the opportunity to meet Mrs ProBlogger who is eying off a ticket too).’ Tickets for this event are limited – so register today to reserve a spot yourself and your friends (a maximum of 4 tickets per person). PLEASE NOTE: Registration is free via eventbrite but will reserve your ticket only. Your seat at the venue will only be confirmed once payment is collected. A representative of Maha will make contact with you to confirm your payment details once you have reserved your seat via eventbrite. View more event details and a list of attendees via http://probloggerfoodwine.eventbrite.com/. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Melbourne Food and Wine Blogging Event

Boost Conversions Step 1: Review Your Offer Posted: 29 May 2012 10:08 AM PDT This guest post is by the Blog Tyrant. A few weeks ago I was sitting down to dinner with my big sister, and talking about one of my web businesses. “What’s your quotation success rate?” she asked me with a face full of pizza. “Pretty good,” I replied, sounding—I admit—pretty stupid. “Find out exactly what it is,” she came back. My big sister, the psychologist-turned national-sales-leader for her real estate company, then went on to explain to me how she knows exactly how many quotes she has to send out in order to make a sale. She knows how many phone calls it takes on average, what delivery method is most successful, and when to follow up the client with a phone call or an email. And she’s constantly trying to improve that quotation figure by getting feedback on her failures. While she was telling me all of this a penny dropped: this quotation (or conversion) rate applies to blogging, too. Sure, knowing why people buy your product or sign up to your email list is important. But perhaps even more important than that, is this: Find out why people don’t buy or sign up. The first of four steps If one of your blogging goals is to boost your conversion rates—for sales, subscriptions, downloads, or some other action—you don’t need to just consider your successes. You also need to look at your failures. Boosting conversions isn’t just about doing more of the good stuff. it’s about identifying the bad stuff, and doing less of that. But this is just the first step in the process. Over the next four days, ProBlogger will walk you through a process that will help you to boost conversions—for sales or signups—on your blog. In it, we’ll cover these steps: Review your offer. Revisit your conversion funnel. Revamp your communications. Run A/B tests, tweak, and refine. It’ll be quite a ride—so I hope you’ll join us for three posts that will follow this one! But now, let’s get started, and consider the question: Why aren’t people converting through your sign up or sales page? Getting started Before you can really understand your audience, your product, and where things might be going wrong, you’re going to need a few tools in hand. Google Analytics: If you haven’t done so already, go and install Google Analytics on your blog. It will take you all of two minutes, but it will provide you with essential data you’ll need to grow your business. Email marketing software: Again, everyone who takes their blogging seriously will need some form of email marketing software that works better than Feedburner. I always recommend Aweber for bloggers, as it’s easy to set up and has amazing stats for you to play with. A desire to understand some psychology: Yep, you read that correctly. I’ve always put an emphasis on studying psychology alongside other marketing techniques, because it really helps you to understand buyer behaviour and the psychology of desire, and to figure out what people do or don’t want. Armed with these three things, we’re in a good position to help grow our conversions. Conduct a conversion review As I said, my sister knows exactly how many quotations she has to make to generate a sale. In blogging terms, she knows her conversion rate, and she’s always looking to improve it by seeking feedback from failed quotations. So let’s look at three key questions that you can ask to better understand why your blog’s readers and visitors aren’t converting on a given offer (paid or free). Once you understand this, you’ll be in a much better position to dramatically boost your conversion rate. Question 1: How well does my offer suit my audience? The first thing you’ll need to do is make sure your product or free giveaway is well-matched to your audience. Pitch the wrong product to the wrong audience, and you’ll find it extremely difficult to boost conversions—that is, if you can generate any in the first place. Let’s consider the Mercedes Benz brand as an example. This is a high-quality, luxury car brand with a higher price tag than the average motor vehicle. This means their marketing methods need to be tailored to the right audience. For example, you’ll never see and ad for Mercedes in a magazine aimed at the teen girls market. However, you might see one in a golfing magazine. Why? Because the latter is read by older men who have disposable income and a desire to communicate a certain status with their car. Obviously, teen girls don’t have either of those things. This is fine for a offline brand, but how can you make sure your product is matched to your audience? Study your traffic stats. This image shows a few weeks of traffic from some old guest posts I did here at ProBlogger. As you can see, the red arrow shows a post that had a bad bounce rate, and the green arrow shows a post with a better (lower) bounce rate. As you can see, even traffic coming from the same source can vary wildly in terms of expectations and satisfaction levels with what the users find on your site. Fortunately, we have other metrics to review. A key metric is your users’ demographics—you’ll need to know how old your blog’s users are, whether they are male or female, where they live, and so on. While this basic information may seem elementary, you’d be surprised how often bloggers find new data hidden in their user stats—data that can point to fairly obvious changes that can help to boost conversions. For example, if many of your blog’s readers come from an area that’s suffering high unemployment at the moment (for example, Spain), you might need to consider changing your pitch for a product to make it either seem more relevant and valuable, or more affordable to your target audience. You might consider lowering the price—so that more people can afford your product—or increasing it, to create a stronger impression of value and ensure that you get a better margin on the sales you do make. Don’t go making any decisions yet, though! We still have some more reviewing to do. Question 2: Are customers happy with your current offering? The next thing you’ll need to do is to ask for feedback from satisfied and unsatisfied customers. You absolutely need to find out whether your offering is hitting the mark. While conversion statistics are one thing, they don’t give you a clear idea of what the customers who did convert actually wound up thinking of the product or service once they used it. If you don’t seek their feedback after the point of conversion, all the hard work you do with product creation and conversion optimization could be going to waste. Here are just a handful of the steps you can take to tap that information from your customers: Use Survey Monkey to survey them: It’s a good idea to occasionally send out a survey asking customers what they like and dislike about your offering (be it a free or paid offer), and inviting constructive feedback. Obviously you don’t want to keep surveying the same users, so you need to take care not to try to survey the same customers about the same offerings over and over. Set up an automatic email in Aweber: Aweber allows you to send out an automatic email called a Follow Up. The idea here is that after a few days of their signing up to your list (either through your subscription form, or as a result of a purchase on your site), subscribers receive and email asking whether or not they enjoyed the subscription product. If you like, you can take this opportunity to encourage them to pass it on to their friends, but in any case, be sure to ask them to email you any feedback or ideas they have to improve the offering. Email people who unsubscribe: Aweber also allows you to keep a list of all the people who unsubscribe from your list. It’s a really good idea to email them just once to tell them you’re sorry to see them go, and to ask why they’re leaving. Their feedback will often be a lot more honest than those who still like your stuff. While the criticism can be hard to take, this feedback can be a goldmine for understanding your offering’s shortcomings. Now, this all sounds great, right? Well, here’s the problem: sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about. More specifically, they say one thing, but mean another. For this reason you have to be very careful about the questions you ask readers through any kind of survey. For example, if you ask a generic question, you probably get a generic—and inaccurate—answer. “Did you like my eBook?” “Yes it was good.” The words “good” and “yes” here tell us nothing. This feedback doesn’t mean that the user shared your offering with their friends. It doesn’t mean that it totally blew them away and they’ll be a loyal subscriber forever. It means nothing. People have changed their careers after reading Pat Flynn’s free ebook. People share it around and talk about it constantly on his Facebook page. That’s the kind of feedback you want. And to get it, you’ll need to ask more specific questions, like these: Did you share the product with your friends? What was your favorite part of this product? What was your least favorite part of the product? What did you do differently after you read the product? You could also considering surveying customers about the conversion funnel itself, with questions like these: What was it that made you want to subscribe/buy this product? Did you think the subscription/purchase process took a long time? Was it a hassle to receive the product/subscription? Did you have any trouble accessing the information, or using or sharing the product files? What did you expect to get? Did you receive it? At least with questions like these, you’re going to get some clear feedback on which aspects of your offer work, and which don’t. Question 3: How might you use this information to tweak your offering? The next step is to tweak your product or offering based on the lessons you’ve learned. Now, I’m not talking simply about matching your offer to your audience here. Rather, you need to look at ways to improve the quality and presentation of your offer, based on what your target market is interested in, and what you know is and isn’t working for the members of your current audience. Recently on my blog we talked about whether or not the free ebook giveaway is dead or not. Most people agree that it’s not, but we all agreed that the poor quality ebook is dead. People are looking for better and better quality all the time. This is where the psychology of marketing comes in to play. Here are two examples in which we can look at the behavior of an audience and try to better shape our offer to suit them: Mothers: Studies have shown that women who are mothers respond poorly to promotions and products that use hype to sell their benefits. These women are highly practical and intelligent, but they’re also tired and overworked. They just want honest, trustworthy products and landing pages that don’t “over-promote”. Women in general don’t like unrealistic marketing. Male teenagers: Studies have shown that male teenagers, on the other hand, are more likely to be interested in quick fixes. A generation of boys raised with video games, mobile phones, and the web generally show less patience and a greater desire for instant gratification than other market segments. As you can see, it’s not just about aligning your offer with your market: it’s also about making sure your product pitch, and presentation to your target market. For example, your offer might be an ebook. Great. Now, let’s imagine you’re targeting the younger male audience segment mentioned above. Tweaks you might make to your product and its pitch include: Using short chapter and section titles. Using imagery to communicate quickly wherever possible. Keeping the design and layout simple. Making sure the product delivers instantly, and communicates that it does so both in its body content and through any marketing materials. Using instant, easy-to-use marketing tools like video, which suits the instant-gratification needs of the target audience as well as the fact that they’ll be more likely to access the offer through a smart phone or tablet. By this point, you should have a list of potential ideas that you can use to try to boots conversions by tweaking your offering. Trial and continuous review The most important thing that I learned from my sister is that we should be constantly assessing and changing our product and pitch. Trends change, competitors come along, and people’s interests shift. You probably won’t make all the changes on your shortlist of ideas for improving your offer. That’s fine—you can test the ones you feel will give you the best impact, then check your results and consider the rest of your list (which you may have added to!) in light of those results. How can you choose which elements to change? The feedback you obtained from existing customers, coupled with conversion and market data, should give you a push in the right direction, but often these decisions come down to your own intuition or “feel” for your target audience, and what they want, like, and need. Don’t be afraid to change aspects of your offer, and don’t be afraid to ask people hard questions about your product. The best products in the world have all got there because of constant improvements. Once you have your new product and offer prepared, you’ll need to tighten up your funnel to ensure you’re not leaking potential conversions. Tomorrow, Darren will take us through that process. But for now, I’d be interested to hear what you’ve found out about why readers aren’t signing up for your product or service offering. And if you made tweaks to it, what did you change? Share your stories with us in the comments. The Blog Tyrant is a 26 year old Australian guy who plays video games at lunch time and sells blogs for $20,000 a pop. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Boost Conversions Step 1: Review Your Offer

Conversion Optimization: Our New Series Posted: 29 May 2012 07:01 AM PDT Of all the topics that bloggers ask me about, conversion optimization is among those at the top of the list. All of us have conversion goals of some sort. It doesn’t matter whether you’re aiming to make money blogging, or you’re in it purely for pleasure, you’ll probably want to grow a subscriber list at the very least! Some of the blogger’s most common conversion goals include: grow signups to an email subscription list attract Facebook fans and Twitter followers boost downloads of free products, whitepapers, and samples increase sales of products and services. These days, competition within the blogosphere is only getting stronger, and readers are only getting more savvy. Most of us have  good data on our blog usage, but of course boosting conversions isn’t just a matter of statistics. From your audience to your offer—and everything in between—there’s a lot to consider. So, for the rest of the week, we’re dedicating ProBlogger to the challenge of boosting conversions, with a series that’s been put together by some of your favorite experts. This series assumes that you have some kind of conversion goal, and some tools in place to make that happen—even something as simple as a Sign Up form in your sidebar. We’ll take you through four steps to improving those conversions, as we look at: Reviewing your offer. Revisiting your conversion funnel. Revamping your communications. Running A/B tests, then tweaking and refining your marketing. We’ll be publishing just one post a day, since each one is fairly detailed, and you’ll probably need some time to digest them. The first one, by The Blog Tyrant, will publish later today, so don’t miss it. Before that, I’d like to hear from you. How are your conversions looking right now? What tactics have you used to improve them? What’s worked—and what hasn’t? Share your experiences with us in the comments … and keep an eye out for the first part of our series a bit later today. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Conversion Optimization: Our New Series

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“5 Fantastic Reasons You Should Attend a Blogging Conference” plus 1 more

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5 Fantastic Reasons You Should Attend a Blogging Conference Posted: 28 May 2012 07:00 PM PDT This guest post is by Ceri Usmar of Enduracom. I know what you’re thinking… Who has time for a conference? You do! You can and should carve out the time for some professional development, and conferences are a great opportunity to combine work and play. I headed off to the SheCon Expo new media conference in Disneyworld, Orlando, with my business partner, Susan, this past Memorial Day weekend. We went fully prepared to combine business and a break, and from our mindsets to our wardrobes, we were ready for anything! In its second year, SheCon is still a relatively small conference (compared with, say, the fall BlogHer conference in New York), but regardless of the size of a conference, the reasons for going don’t change.  Here are my five favorite reasons you should put a conference on your blogging calendar. 1. Fun I start with fun because my credo is, “If it’s not fun I’m not doing it.” Susan is the embodiment of fun. She had some cute, cool, crazy ideas for SheCon that really upped the ante for an enjoyable time. We matched our nail color to the corporate blue of our “transparent” business cards, which added panache to passing them out (even guys noticed) and worked as a conversation catalyst. We had shirts made that got people talking to us about who-we-are-what-we-do, and we made movies of literally everything. It’s always fun meeting people and even funner making movies with them, and posting them to boost their brands (and ours!) Aside from our own endeavors, conference sponsors and attendees almost always build fun events into their schedules. We made the most of sponsored events like the party meet up thrown by Wine Sisterhood (who wouldn’t go to something sponsored by a wine company?) and gifting suites with massages and makeovers (what's not to love about that?). Exhibitors at conferences also show up with gadgets and gimmicks to go viral: they film you, photograph you, and record you interacting with their brand, and you can post all that online. They create buzz around their booths, and run contests and sweepstakes with cool prizes in exchange for your tweets and blogs—flat-out fun in my book! 2. Free stuff I have to put in a disclaimer here: not all conferences give great freebies, and not all conferences give any at all. Blogging conferences tend to because brands want to tap into your influence—but it should go without saying that you are not obligated to blog about everything you get (and neither should you.) Select the items that fit your audience and brand, and keep the rest as gifts or treats. At SheCon, mom bloggers were enamored of the kid stuff: Elmo toys, Cuddleuppets (my daughter's fave), Justin Bieber Guitar Hero. Swag bags with tech toys and toiletries caught my fancy. Expo exhibitors threw in their promos too: “green” shopping bags, high end hair care products, food and beverages—yummo! The cool thing about free stuff is that if it's a fit for your blog or following, it's also fuel for fresh and effortless content. 3. Finding friends and followers If you’re looking for a targeted affiliate, a consultant, a strategic partner, or a few like-minded bloggers, you can find them at a conference. Introverted? You might have to dig deep or even fake it till you get comfortable networking (or you could always go to the wine-sponsored event, and courteously taste their wares until you’re loosened up enough to get it done!). Aside from connecting at the water cooler or conversing over lunch, Twitter parties and other virtual meet-ups are all the rage at conferences now, and you can fortify your following right on the spot. 4. Footsteps to follow There's nowhere better than a conference to learn live from the pros. Any session—even those that don't look useful to you—has merit, so don't judge a session by its title: nine times out of ten I can take away a tidbit that tweaks what I'm doing for the better even from an apparently dud session. Following in the footsteps of the experts in your field gives you a leg-up so you can stand on the shoulders of the giants, short-circuit your learning curve, and streamline your path to (greater) success. 5. Financial gain Let's be honest, attending a blogging conference is ultimately about making money, and I have never attended a one that does not have at least one session devoted to monetizing your blog. Be sure to make up your mind beforehand to focus on free stuff, fun, and friends that will bolster your bottom line: keeping this in mind will keep the quality and balance in your conference activities and ensure that you can build your business through the contacts you make and the information you take from the event. Of course, there are more than five reasons to carve out a few days for a conference. I double-dare you to go on and Google blogging conferences that might be up your alley. And then go to one. If you’ve been to a conference, share what you got out of it in the comments. Ceri Usmar is from Enduracom and Maximizeyourvisability.com. Enduracom maximizes your visibility by maintaining, updating, and optimizing your online presence. Our social media and writing pros generate content, articles, and blogs to take your social engagement to the next level. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 5 Fantastic Reasons You Should Attend a Blogging Conference

The Naked Marketing Guide to Getting Dramatically More Traffic and Subscribers Posted: 28 May 2012 07:07 AM PDT This guest post is by Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing. Let's be real for a second. There's a lot of information out there about traffic. Tons of it. Entire blogs. Some good, some bad, and some just in between. And tons of posts about it, too—including right here on this blog. So with all this information out there, let me ask you something: Do you have all the traffic you want? Hmmm, I thought not. Okay, then just what the heck is going on? Why isn't any of this working?! Maybe your traffic problem … isn't a traffic problem! Considering all of the great information that's out there about getting traffic, if you haven't been able to use any of it to actually get some then odds are that your problem isn't a traffic problem at all. It's not about how you're using Facebook or YouTube, or your Twitter strategy, or even your SEO activities. None of it. What you probably have is a marketing problem. You see, all of the traffic generating tools and tips generally work if they're used correctly within a larger marketing framework. Without having that kind of framework, there's no way to even know if you're using Facebook, Twitter, or anything else in the right way. It's really, really tempting to look at your problem as a tactic gone wrong. It would be so much easier to fix, wouldn't it? If you found out your Twitter headlines weren't captivating enough, then you could fix them and the problem would disappear. Of course, that's usually not the issue, and you're much more likely to spend weeks, months, or longer tweaking and testing things that won't make a bit of difference. Take it from me—save yourself the frustration and look at the bigger picture! The naked marketing guide to traffic that converts One of the biggest problems with marketing is that anyone who reads a book or a blog post thinks they've got it. They're suddenly an expert. You've probably heard the phrase "everyone's a writer?", generally said with a wince and an eye role. Well it's the same with marketing. Feel free to wince and roll your eyes. The truth is that most people aren't expert marketers. They might know some terms and basic concepts, like maybe the Four Ps of Marketing—but very few actually know what those concepts really mean, or how to use them in their business. That's where naked marketing comes into the picture—it will make you a dramatically better marketer by helping you understand why you're going to be doing certain things, and how they all fit into the larger plan for your business. Without, I might add, any of the jargon, cheap theory, or techno-babble that usually passes for marketing instruction. We don't have time to waste, so let's get started. The first thing you need to do to start using naked marketing is to figure out who turns you on. Yep. This is going to be fun! So, who's your type, really? Don't worry—we're not actually talking about fishing for singles! That would be another post entirely. But in all honesty, the very first step in getting more, better traffic—traffic that converts—is to figure out the one person you should be writing for. I’m talking about that holy grail of readers: the single individual who was made for you, your business and, of course, your blog. Spend some significant time creating a customer profile that includes everything from their age, gender, location, and income, all the way to their hopes and dreams, favorite books, and frequency of eating tofu for dinner. If you put in the time doing this, it's a short leap to imagine where they hang out—both online and offline. Are they likely a Twitter user? Maybe they spend more time on Facebook? Maybe they use LinkedIn, or even MySpace. Wherever they spend their time online is going to be the best source of traffic for you. It's not rocket science—get to know them so you can figure out where they'll be. And then? Be there! How to be sexy to them Okay, all that work you just did, finding out who your one best person is and where they're going to be? It doesn't matter unless you're giving them the right message. Getting naked is always a two-way street, and you can't just show up at the party, strip down and demand the same. (Not at most parties, anyway.) It's time to bring out your A game. You know what your best traffic source is likely to be, so you've got to pull out all the stops and create content and messaging that will be downright irresistible to your one person. So irresistible that they stop and look. The good news is that this isn't even all that hard, really. Think back to the last headline you read that got your attention. How did it do that? What grabbed your interest? I'm willing to bet that it offered you something you wanted in a place that you happened to be. So do the same, and you'll have your audience's attention. But of course, attention isn't enough. Attention has to turn into desire before their attention is grabbed by something or someone else! How to evoke desire that prompts action Getting attention isn't enough, of course. You want your new reader and potential customer to do something—to engage with you a little. You want them to be interested enough to take action. Messages (a tweet, a forum post, a status update—whatever) are sexy enough to prompt action when they speak to a problem that your ideal customer has, and promise a solution. Or when they tickle their funny bones and promise more laughs. Or offer a taste of information that they want more of. Get the idea? You know who you're talking to, and you know what turns them on, too—now give them what they want! This is very powerful, because you'll be starting a cycle in which you promise something good in exchange for a little effort on their part. At first, it's going to be a deliciously scintillating headline that promises a fantastic bit of information if they click on it. Once that happens, the ball is back in your court, and you make another offer in exchange for another action. You never ask for something that is unreasonable given the strength of the current relationship, and with each step in the process you reward them past their expectations, and their commitment to you deepens further and further. In plain English, that means that they'll start by reading your headline, then make it back to your website, then subscribe, and then buy everything that you're selling. Do you look great naked? So, are you doing this already? Are you irresistible to your target market, and are they happily consuming the content that you give them? Are you getting the traffic you want from the sources you're using? If you are, then congratulations! But if you're not, then it might be time to give your marketing a thorough review—strip it bare, see what's working, and toss out what isn't. You won't believe the difference a little "nudity" will make in your marketing! Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is the co-founder of Firepole Marketing, the "Freddy Krueger of Blogging", and the co-author (with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, and many others) of Engagement from Scratch! (available on Amazon, or as a free download). The latest and greatest thing you can get from him (for free, of course) is his Naked Marketing Manifesto, about marketing that really works! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger The Naked Marketing Guide to Getting Dramatically More Traffic and Subscribers

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ProBlogger: Secure Your WordPress Blog Without Touching Any Code

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Secure Your WordPress Blog Without Touching Any Code Posted: 27 May 2012 07:03 AM PDT This guest post is by Karol K of ThemeFuse. Right now WordPress powers 48 of the top 100 blogs online. More than that, WordPress actually powers 19% of the web as a whole. Essentially, this is great. Such a strong community of users and developers means that the platform is sure to evolve even further and provide us with lots of cool features that are yet to be developed. Unfortunately, this creates some dangers as well… Whenever there’s a big number of people trying to make something happen, there’s another group of people trying to take it all down. The cases where a blog owner loses complete access to their site are not uncommon. Actually, sometimes even whole domains get hijacked, and I honestly have no idea on how that’s done. But we don’t have to know how hijacking a domain or stealing a blog works to be able to implement some basic security precautions. And that is exactly what this post is about—making your blog secure without playing with source code, understanding things, and stuff. Typical WordPress security problems WordPress as a whole (a website management platform) is very well designed. It doesn’t have any preposterous security issues that beginning programmers could exploit. The problems, however, arise when you try to tweak your installation of WordPress by adding new plugins or themes, implementing hacks, or doing anything else that interferes with WordPress. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should settle for the default installation, not use any plugins, and only blog using the default theme. What it means is that you simply need to be careful when installing new stuff on your blog, as well as when setting up your blog for the first time. Let’s start by discussing some of the common security problems you’ll need to handle. The basics Excuse me for being obvious, but you really need to start with proper usernames and passwords for your user accounts. Everyone realizes the importance of this, but not as many people implement the best practices. You must use complex passwords—letters, numbers, special characters, spaces—and usernames that are not obvious. A password of “admin,” for example, is extra-obvious. For more information on account security, see my recent guest post here on ProBlogger, which explained user accounts and roles, and how to set them up properly. The name of the next problem in line: shady, untested plugins. WordPress plugins have a fair amount of power over how your WordPress installation works. If a plugin contains some buggy code, it can crash your blog completely. The same goes for code that’s not secure. Finally, if one of your plugins doesn’t implement any security features, it can become the point of entry for malicious bots or direct attacks by hackers. Remember, the weakest link is where the chain breaks. You only need one low-quality plugin to get into trouble. The advice I have here is: don’t use any plugin that hasn’t been updated in a while, or hasn’t been officially tested with the newest version of WordPress. Being up to date is always the best precaution. Also, plugins that are more popular are usually more secure as well. There’s one more big issue we have to in terms of shady code, and that’s WordPress themes. I will say this again—and I’m not sorry for it—free themes are evil. Well okay, not all of them. There are two kinds of free themes: (1) the good ones, released by quality theme stores as a way of attracting new customers by spreading one or two great free themes, (2) the evil ones made primarily to look great, attract many users, and use the space in the footer for SEO purposes. These SEO-focused themes often use some strange, encrypted PHP code that can’t be removed, otherwise the theme stops working. This code usually displays search-optimized links (sometimes in an invisible font). You never, let me repeat, never want to have encrypted code on your site. Even when you get the theme for free in exchange for hosting this encrypted section, it’s not worth it. If you’re planning to use your WordPress site as the base of your online business then buying a quality theme is a must. If you have a bigger budget, you could even hire a developer to build your theme on top of some popular theme framework. Since we’ve now covered the basics—user accounts, plugins, and themes—let’s look into some of the things that you can do to actively make your blog more secure. Steps to better security First, let’s talk through some of the best practices in terms of security. Then, let me show you some cool security plugins. Hosting security Yes, it all starts here. The story is similar to the one about WordPress themes: if you want to have a secure environment, you simply need to invest money. Don’t use free hosting. Make sure that your web host implements basic security features and that it has good reviews among users (search on forums; Google is likely to display only affiliate reviews, which aren’t always credible). Secure your own machine first This is not something that comes to mind immediately when we’re talking WordPress security, is it? But what’s the point of securing your WordPress installation on the host if you have a malicious key-logger installed on your computer that will pick up your password and send it to the attacker? You always need to start by securing the machine you’re using to connect with your WordPress blog. There are many good antivirus apps available, so I won’t discuss this any further. Just keep in mind that this issue is equally as important as anything else described in this post. Update, update, update Update WordPress. Update your plugins. Update your theme. Try to install these updates immediately after the alert apepars in your Dashboard. Here’s why. Fixes to new bugs and security holes are always a big part of every update. The minute an update gets released, all the changes are announced in the official doc that goes along with the update. If a hacker wants to attack a site that hasn’t been updated yet, they just have to take a look at the document, do a little research and tackle the holes that the new version fixes. For example, here’s an excerpt from the information on the newest version of WordPress: “WordPress 3.3.2 also addresses: Limited privilege escalation where a site administrator could deactivate network-wide plugins when running a WordPress network under particular circumstances, disclosed by Jon Cave of our WordPress core security team, and Adam Backstrom.” Essentially, such information is a guide for hackers on how to attack outdated sites. So be sure to update everything, without delay. Back up regularly No one likes to get hacked, but we can’t assume that it won’t ever happen. You always should have an up-to-date backup of your WordPress site, just in case something goes wrong and you have to restore your blog. You can do backups manually, or you can sign up to a paid service or simply get a plugin to do this for you (more on this later). Delete plugins you don’t use There’s no point in occupying your server’s resources with stuff you don’t use. The same advice applies to themes. Leave just the theme your blog uses, and delete the rest (you can leave the default theme, just in case). Handy plugins to improve your blog’s security Everybody loves them some cool plugins, right?! So here’s a list of the ones I recommend you use to make your blog more secure: AntiVirus: This plugin protects your blog against exploits, malware, and spam injections. It scans your theme’s files and notifies you if anything suspicious is going on. Online Backup for WordPress: This app is the one I use for my backups. You can use a schedule or perform backups by hand, and have them sent to your email address or made downloadable. The plugin backs up the database as well as the file system. Secure WordPress: This is where you stop scanning and start acting! This plugin performs a number of security tweaks to your blog. There’s no point in listing them here, so I invite you to check for yourself. Also, you can choose which ones you want to enable and which you don’t need. BulletProof Security: The list of things this plugin does is quite impressive. It’s a really serious piece of software. Just to name a few features: protection against XSS, RFI, CRLF, CSRF, Base64, Code Injection and SQL Injection hacking attempts, one-click htaccess protection, wp-config.php protection, and loads of other tweaks. It’s really worth looking into. Hide Login: This plugin has a very simple idea behind it. You can use it to hide your login page. In other words, it creates a custom login URL. It also lets you create a custom admin URL (instead of domain.com/wp-admin), and a custom logout URL. Other considerations Content security Your content is the most valuable asset on your blog. You naturally don’t want it to get stolen by some evil content scrapers and SEO marketers who just want to launch thousands of sites with content from various RSS feeds. Unfortunately, you can’t protect against this completely. There’s always a danger that someone can steal your content and republish it without attribution. But you can make it just a little harder, or at least let everyone know that your content is protected. Try checking Copyscape. It’s a service that searches for copies of your content around the internet. If it finds some, you get an alert and some instructions on how to get it taken down. Copyscape offers a couple of different services, so it’s good to pay them a visit and choose one that suits you best. The just-in-case approach No matter what you do to protect your blog, something bad is always possible. That’s why you need to have a strategy set in place for the time when something goes wrong, and you need to act fast. I invite you to check out two of my own: how to restore your blog after a crash, and what to do when you lose access to your blog. And I truly hope that you’ll never have to use either of these guides. How secure is your blog? There you have it. I think that’s it when it comes to securing your WordPress site without going into code and implementing various tweaks manually. There’s always a never-ending stream of things you can do, but if you take care of just the ones described here you’ll have a pretty secure blog, and you’ll be ready in case something bad happens. How diligent are you when it comes to your blog’s security? And what security tweaks would you add to this list? Karol K. is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland and a writer at ThemeFuse.com, where he shares various WordPress advice. Currently, he’s working on a new e-book titled “WordPress Startup Guide – little known things worth doing when creating a WordPress site.” The e-book launches soon, and now the best part … it’s free. Also, don’t forget to visit ThemeFuse to get your hands on some premium WordPress themes. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Secure Your WordPress Blog Without Touching Any Code

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ProBlogger: 5 Surefire Ways to Never Get Noticed by Anybody

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5 Surefire Ways to Never Get Noticed by Anybody Posted: 26 May 2012 07:09 AM PDT This guest post is by Steve of thecodeofextraordinarychange.com. I’m a quiet man. Shy in some circumstances. I like my own company and my own time. Left unchecked, these qualities would be enough to ensure that I lived out the rest of my life as a small man in a tiresome job, never making a difference and never getting noticed by anybody. But I can’t imagine a worse hell than that. Really, I can’t. I know that I’ll never leave my fingerprints on the world unless I deliberately engage with it, and I’ll never put my dent in the universe unless I get out there and punch at the edges. You need to leave a trace; you need to affect the world; you need to be in the light. Here’s how people spend their lives in the shadows without ever being noticed. 1. Don’t pay attention to what matters The most unhappy people on the planet are those who don’t listen to and don’t pursue what matters to them most. They won’t have set out to be unhappy, they’ll simply have their lives eroded by the continual exclusion of what matters to them in preference of what they think they ought to be doing. What matters to you is what counts.  What matters to you amounts to a hill o’ beans.  What matters to you is enough. You always notice someone who honours, expresses and demonstrates the things that matter most to them. 2. Don’t stick your neck out Raising your head above the parapet might just get you an arrow right in the kisser. So valuing your face, you decide to stay put, crouched behind the safety of the castle wall and safe from the vicious marauders. Only thing is, there’s a whole world beyond those walls. A world that needs you to be a part of it and people who want to see you rise. Safety is too high a price to pay for dying a long, slow death. You always notice someone who stands up when everyone else remains seated. 3. Don’t show any heart Science and logic are good allies to have these days. Building a high-converting sales page, writing magnetic headlines and creating a solid business plan are all good things to do among many others, but if those things become your sole focus then you’ve already lost. You become so focused on the cogs, levers and whirring wheels that you lose site of why you switched the contraption on in the first place. You’re so busy operating the machine that the difference it can make becomes forgotten. You always notice someone who weaves heart, honesty and vulnerability and into their actions. 4. Don’t raise the stakes There’s no prize for running the three meter sprint. You don’t get an award for writing a dirty limerick. There’s not much point in attempting the perilous trek across your back yard for charity. The easy stuff is easy; any Tom, Dick, or Harriette can nail it without thinking too hard or risking much of anything. But if there’s nothing at stake for you personally then are you really in the game or just treading water and kidding yourself about the waves you’re making? You always notice someone who’s willing to risk their world for what they believe. 5. Don’t innovate When life gives you lemons, what do you do? Do you make lemonade, or do you complain that you really wanted to make a peach cobbler and that the large pile of lemons on your floor is just too yellow and lemony? If lemonade isn’t your thing, make a lemon meringue pie. Make candied lemons. Make a to-scale model of the Taj Mahal out of the darn things if you want to. You don’t have to do what’s expected or what everyone else does. You can create something wild, unpredictable or unexpected from what you already have. You always notice someone who builds something surprising from what’s right in front of them. So. What’s your next move? Steve is a superstar confidence coach who helps you build an extraordinary life. He also makes a fantastic ragu, and while he can't promise you a batch he’ll promise to help you put your dent in the universe, which is probably a better deal.  Get more of him on Twitter and Facebook. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 5 Surefire Ways to Never Get Noticed by Anybody

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