ProBlogger: What Advertisers Want: 6 steps to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog

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What Advertisers Want: 6 steps to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog Posted: 30 Jul 2013 08:31 AM PDT This is a guest contribution from Brianne Bauer. How do advertisers determine whether a blog is worth their marketing dollars? Promising blogs start out with must-have elements — interesting content, loyal readership, eye-catching design and regular updates. But what's missing? Here are six ways bloggers can become more attractive to advertisers. Cross-Media Integration Advertisers looks at many metrics when considering advertising on a blog — page views, daily visitors, average time on site, CPM, among others. One of the growing metrics on an advertiser's radar is a blog's social media page. Advertisers not only look at how many followers a blog has but, more importantly, also look at the conversations being held on the blog’s page and social media channels. Can advertisers see themselves being a topic of conversation? Are open-ended questions being asked around a certain product? When advertisers see a blog's large following on Twitter, they see their ROI increasing. Incorporating sponsored social media posts (i.e. sponsored tweets) into your offerings will make a blog's brand more lucrative. Outside of social media, consider other media. During the past five years, I've made more than 50 TV appearances that focused on blog content. As a lifestyle blogger this was a natural fit, and this is an attractive option to heighten exposure for your advertisers. Get Advertisers Involved Offer a variety of sponsorship opportunities other than banner ads. Polls, product spotlights and giveaways are great ways to help a blog’s aesthetic and give advertisers options to showcase their brand. Some advertisers want to only participate in giveaways while others may only want to guest post. Guest posts are among the most common ways advertisers get involved with blogs. Guest posts are typically used by brands to build web traffic and to put readers in a purchasing frame of mind. Along with their content, guest posts typically have a byline and a link to the respective blog or website increasing their web stats. Note that it is imperative to remain up front with readers and disclose that a special section is paid for. Get Readers Interacting with Advertisers This is arguably one of the most important components of a campaign. If, for example, a blogger reviews a storage product like Backup Genie review and then asks readers to weigh in with their opinions, ask them if they are already using it, plan on buying it or how it would make their lives better. Getting readers to interact with a brand is what advertisers are truly searching. Know Your Blog Rank and How to Improve It There are two leading ways advertisers use to measure a site's performance: Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. These ranking systems allow website owners to benchmark their websites and give advertisers metrics for evaluation. Google Page Rank is an algorithm that ranks a site from 0 to 10 with a major emphasis on quality backlinks. It's no surprise that if the Google bots don't like something, like a broken backlink, a blog's Page Rank score could be in jeopardy. As Page Rank (PR) is slow to update (PR is only updated every 3-4 months), it's difficult to better your PR in a short amount of time. If a blog is stagnating at a PR3 for a while, it could mean there are on-page issues that should be checked using Xenu. Alexa ranking is a free online directory that measures how many daily visitors a site receives, along with other traffic metrics and search analytics. Both are important to advertisers, but Page Rank is measured on your website reputation and Alexa is measured on website traffic. Let Numbers Speak for Themselves A media kit gives advertisers a quick glance of what they need to know. It should be updated regularly (and honestly) with the blog's positioning, like this: Google Page Rank: 4 MozRank: 5.25 July 2013 Visitors: 13,485 Pageview: 72,856 Average Time on Site: 2:02 Bounce Rate: 72.42 Bloggers should be forthcoming if certain stats don't scream success. Share additional facts such as: Strong niche following for Topic XYZ Active in social circles (only share follower number if blog's social media has more than 5,000 followers) Blogs for two group blogs Contributing blogger for major Topic XYZ website Know Your Advertising Options What better way to help build your brand than to hit the pavement and meet advertisers, share your inspiration for the blog and why you think they would benefit from advertising? But if being in the field isn't your thing, let those who specialize in blog advertising help win new advertisers. Adsense and Amazon Affiliates are among the leaders but research to find a good fit for your blog. It's getting easier than ever to garner interest from new advertisers, but harder to weed out scammers. The longevity of a blog is on based consistent, quality content (and ranking!) but bloggers monetize best when they deliver results to advertisers. Brianne Bauer has garnered publicity for lifestyle brands like Paramount Pictures, and personalities such as Mariel Hemingway and Cheryl Tiegs. With a background in magazine publishing and corporate PR, she is now a freelance publicist and writer based in Minneapolis. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger What Advertisers Want: 6 steps to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog

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ProBlogger: Gmail Trying to ‘Fix’ Our Inbox and What it Means for You.

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Gmail Trying to ‘Fix’ Our Inbox and What it Means for You. Posted: 29 Jul 2013 08:34 AM PDT If capturing and sending email is a part of your blog, it might be your newsletter, affiliate programs, sales email or even just reader comment notifications there are some changes (that have been looming for some time) now ramping up to a level that will impact the way you create and send emails … Email services providers are taking matters into their own hands to fix our inbox’s.   … and when Google start leading the charge with this, we all better pay attention. The reality is that when it comes to our own inbox it’s a never ending stream of important stuff mixed with the boring but essential stuff, mixed in with the junk mail and spam. Sorting and organising takes time and if your not on top of it,  the important emails get lost in the noise. It’s a problem we’ve been trying to solve since the dawn of email: We were given functionality to use such as folders, and auto-filter rules We were given blocking tools such as spam filters and junk folders We were given techniques to try such as inbox zero All of these things were created for users to help themselves — of course if they wanted. I realised this was all about to change when providers started to play with the idea of proactively helping us manage the legitimate emails in our inbox by trying to figure out for us the important emails over the normal. Google's priority inbox is a great example of this. However now Google have taken another step and are organising into groups our email for us.  Based on their own rules by default. If you’re a Gmail user (not everyone seems to have this yet) at some point you’ll see a primary inbox, a social inbox, and a promotions inbox magically appear. Google will, using it’s own wisdom by default, sort all your email into these groups. You will be able to ‘train’ google by dragging emails from one inbox to another and hidden nicely away in the settings you can turn it off. But if history is anything to go by only a small percentage will actually do either of those. So what will this mean for sending emails right now? Time will only tell what the open and click through rate implications of not being in the primary inbox will be as more users are provided the service and actually realise there is now three inboxes instead of one.  But I’d be pretty confident in saying though we’ll all be aiming for the priority inbox. Mailchimp have already release some peliminary findings, with a noticeable impact. So not only will you have to be thinking about spam filters and trash folders and how your email looks on mobile, you’ll also need to be mindful of which default Google category your email if going to hits. Oh and that’s of course after you come up with some great copy! You can go on the front foot with your users and ask them to tell Google to shift you to the priority inbox, but that’s difficult right now as not all Gmail users have the service. I would say your best action right now is to both track closely your open rates and click thoughts and start testing different approaches. Just like SEO and spam, Google won’t share with us it’s rules for classification, so we’re going to need to figure it out on our own.  You might want to play with text emails, you might want to play with different from addresses and service providers. It’s time to re-test some of the assumptions we’ve made when it comes to email. What have we seen with our own emails. We've noticed on dPS that both our launch emails from new product (this week) as well as our weekly newsletter were put in the 'promotional' tab. What was probably more concerning what that the confirmation (opt-in) email from our newsletter also ended up in promotions tab. Open rates were slightly down for both.  So we're keeping an eye on things – but I feel it's still too early to tell.  I have received direct emails from a few people I subscribe requesting to be moved across to the priority, to but without knowing exactly who has the change and doesn't it's bit early in my opinion. But that’s just the beginning When spam filters first arrived there was period where they needed to earn our trust.  We needed to believe that they would do a good job of keeping out only spam and not the stuff we wanted to receive.  Over time they succeeded and the performance of spam filters are hardly given a second thought.  Once that same trust is given to the automatic organisation of our legitimate emails the complexities of this will skyrocket.   More venders will get involved, more rules will be put into play. What I Like about this For those creating quality content for the inbox that people want to read these sorts of systems are designed to work for you.  If your emails are a priority for your recipients you should benefit from this by default. There will be some slight adjustments to make I’m sure. It’s more those that are trying to push their way into peoples inbox’s that will feel the impact more than those who’ve earned it. What worries me about this change Even as a bit of a nerd I struggled to 'train' my inbox. It was even harder do the same via my phone.  So that has really drawn me to the conclusion that our challenge is not going to be in educating our subscribers it's going to be squarely at working within the rules that Google won't share with us.   We can't forget that Google have a commercial interest in this, and the idea of paying for the priory inbox isn't without question.  Nor is the idea of 3rd party messages appearing in the promotions tab either. Fun times ahead. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Gmail Trying to ‘Fix’ Our Inbox and What it Means for You.

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“The 7 Angels of Blogging DOOM” plus 1 more

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The 7 Angels of Blogging DOOM Posted: 26 Jul 2013 08:55 AM PDT This is a guest contribution from Rebekah Lambert, copywriter and owner of Unashamedly Creative. Blogging is super fun, right? You get to write your own stories, express opinions, share what you learn, explore ideas, encourage debate and create a wonderful world of content that attracts like minded people. However with all this joy inside the happy little garden of the blogosphere, there are some really poisonous, destructive people waiting to chop you down and smear their negativity all over that joy. I call them the 7 Blogging Angels of DOOM! And while they still manage to get their toxic tendrils in my head on occasion, most of the time, their negativity doesn't take root- or doesn't have hold for long. This is my guide to knowing thy enemy and counter why they do the things they do in the first place! Wrong-athor:  "That's not how you do it!" Wrongathor is a lemon lipped little critter, motivated by feeling intellectually superior. They really enjoy telling you you've got it wrong.  From how you blog to the opinions you express, you can count on Wrongathor to come up with 47 different reasons why your opinion isn't valid, your research is cock eyed and you're just wrong, wrong, wrong! Countering them: True to their character, the Wrongathor will be unable to admit they are wrong, even when they are. If you want to get a Wrongathor off your case invite them to express their opinion as a guest blog, with research and links to back up their idea. They'll either back off muttering about how unworthy of your precious time they are, or jump at the opportunity. Either way, it'll usually dampen their catcalls and screeches- and may even turn them into a loyalist because you've given them an opportunity to speak (something Wrongathors simply LOVE to do). SEO-ola: "Without SEO, you are NOTHING!" To an SEO-ola, being on top of a search is everything! SEO-ola sees Google as some kind of scoreboard and will usually come complete with all kinds of nightmare stories about the internet being a place where no-one can hear you scream without a proper ranking. They are technically savvy, and have a benchmark of ranking well to shove down your neck- and won't hesitate to use every opportunity to make you feel like you are languishing in obscurity 'coz the big Google scoreboard says so! Countering them: SEO-ola has hung their hat on being great at ranking on Google. Find the ones that get a kick out of helping others and open yourself up to learning from them. Offer to help them, promote them in your own way, and they may even swap the joy they get from ranking well with you for your skills. Knowing SEO can't hurt you, so friendship is the best approach here. Uselessys: "Why bother? You'll fail anyway" Poor old Uselessys- everything in life is a big fat sigh away from being yet another sign of an utterly pointless existence. Everyone is out to get them, the whole world doesn't care, trying something new is pointless because it's all been done before? Happiness, fame or enjoying life is something that happens to other people. Raining on your parade is their way of making sure that you, you poor naive, happy little scamp, don't let your enthusiasm lead you to a devastating fate. Countering them: You can't cure someone else's misery. Most of the time, Uselessys has chosen a path and no amount of pouring in positive thoughts, self esteem or encouragement will change their mind. The best measure here is ignore them.  They won't get your happiness, and it's not up to you to justify it. Just make sure you don't come to them to vent when things are tough, and keep on trucking. Big Chief BullyPants: "It's all about me, me, ME!" Big Chief BullyPants can't stand it when someone else tries to wrestle the spotlight from them.Whether they've imagined it or not makes absolutely no difference. To them, controlling the status quo, making sure they are in charge of everyone, and ensuring you don't get a look in is all part of the game. They are unable to respond to criticism, feedback or someone disagreeing with their opinion. As far as they are concerned, there is no right or wrong and no place where everyone fits. Unless of course where you want to fit is sitting at their feet looking upwards. If you have dealings with them, tantrums will be common. Unfortunately, they will make it their business to lean over the top of you like a dark storm cloud. Countering them: If you get the sense that Big Chief BullyPants doesn't play with others, you're dead right. Silence is a brilliant technique because it gives them nothing to stand on. If you have to deal with them on a regular basis, giving them something they can be in charge of that doesn't involve other people is your best bet. Putting them in a leadership role involving people will usually encourage their stand over tactics, but giving them someone without a human can satiate their love of power and make them feel important. If you have nothing to give them, adopt the toddler approach. Ignore them when they are out of control, don't let them run the show, put them on time outs if necessary and reward good behaviour with plenty of praise. Annie 1 Candothat: "Oh please, my cat could do better!" Annie is a 5 minute expert. She only has to look at a concept sideways and she knows what's what. Not known for seeking out too much depth, Annie is the sort of person who does a few things well and thinks by nature, the rest is in the bag! Countering them: The standard Annie counter is demonstrating what goes in to doing what you do. Have a conversation with them, show them your plans, send them a few links, recommend some helpful books and videos, and most of the time, Annie will be uttering "wow, I never knew how much went into it!" before you can bat an eyelid. Vomitron: "You must write DAILY to succeed!" Vomitron skipped the memo on relevance and went straight the paragraph about blogging often improving search rankings, and has been stuck there ever since. They don't get that an informative post every week is far better than a nothing piece every day. To them, one line mini blogs of commonly known info is quite fine and are puzzled by people who throw a little more into things. Countering them: Go easy on old Vomitron, bad habits are hard to retrain. Demonstrating how social sharing helps rankings more and that this kind of peer validation only usually comes with content human beings (not search engines) like is key. Asking questions about what they actually care about, sharing articles that show a tremendous following that have depth and layers, and gently pushing them into the new world with encouragement will have them calming down their pukedom and getting back to decent writing in no time. Nitpacka: "But what about paragraph 4 section c…" Nitpicka has already made up their mind about you and is looking for the one liner they can attach to in order to take you down. They'll pick something completely trivial in a blog and make that 20 word their lynch pin for a thousand word campaign. The Beastie Boy's lyric "They can't, they won't, and they don't stop" has had a lasting effect, that's for sure. Countering them: Some Nitpicka's do no research whatsoever and come entirely from the gut. You'll spot this kind because their argument won't reference things of any great note. Therefore they are usually defused with a quick injection of factual information. Or at least sent to the benches, looking a little sillier. Others come prepared with facts for that one line, and forget the whole picture. It is this entire picture you need to focus on. You need to keep reminding them they've picked a drop from an ocean and are basing the entire contents of their argument on it. All else fails, wear ear muffs The doom bloggers do have their own valid points, but so do you. Being different, having a diverse approach and remaining true to your own goals and voice is what will make your blog work for you in the long term. Yes, you will have to face off with tumbleweeds on your blog when you first start. No, not everyone will understand why you do it. And maybe some will seem to do it better. But isn't that like anything in life? The truth of the matter is, if the bloggers of doom had it right, they'd be famous. Or they'd have blogging so sewn up that none of us would want a look in. Or they wouldn't be so worried about anybody else they'd feel the need to breathe down your neck because they'd be too busy blogging. So don't let the doomsters get you down. Blog on fellow word nerds and don't look the bloggers of Doom get to you. What other bloggers of doom have you come across? What do you to put a sock in their mouths?   Rebekah's a word weaving ninja who combines 17 years marketing experience with creativity and in-depth knowledge of consumer behaviour to build copy and campaigns customers love. Well, at least that's what her mum keeps telling her. You can catch up with her rambles at Unashamedly Creative or read some confessions here. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger The 7 Angels of Blogging DOOM

7 Reasons I LOVE Running Webinars for My Blog Readers Posted: 26 Jul 2013 08:33 AM PDT Over the last couple of years I’ve run semi-regular webinars for ProBlogger readers (sign up to get invitations to these free webinars here). These webinars have not only received a lot of positive feedback, they’ve also been among the most energising things I’ve done on this site. Here’s a few quick thoughts on why I love doing webinars: 1. Real time Interactions When I first discovered blogging, one of the things I loved was that it opened up the potential to have almost immediate reactions and feedback from readers. You can have a post up and then 10-25 minutes later there might be a comment or two there. A webinar speeds up this interaction to the point where it is virtually instantaneous. I can ask webinar attendees a question and within seconds, see a stream of responses. Someone can submit a question and I can ask for clarification and get it immediately. I can share what I’m thinking on a topic and get a gauge on whether it is resonating with those listening very quickly. I find this live interaction is very energising. It keeps me on my feet and thinking fast too! On the other side of this interaction is that after a webinar I notice that those who attended are more interactive with me. For example, I often see webinar attendees leaving more comments on blog posts, tweeting and even writing blog posts that link to mine on their blogs. I guess a webinar has the benefit of opening the flood gates of interaction with some people – a very valuable thing. 2. It is personal Quite often, the reactions I get after a webinar are readers telling me that they felt like they ‘know’ me more as a result of listening to my voice for an hour – as opposed to reading words on a page. While I try to write as I speak, something often gets lost in the written word. A webinar allows me  to more easily convey emotion, humour, tone – all of which has a big impact upon those listening. Webinars have the ability to humanise your brand and break down false perceptions of you. 3. Verbalising your ideas has benefits Verbalising your ideas in a webinar type situation also forces you to think about your topic in a different way. As a result, I quite often get moments of clarity on issues I’ve been struggling with in the preparation or running of a webinar. I’m not sure exactly what happens but something about ‘hearing’ myself rather than reading myself seems to crystallise my thinking. 4. ideas for content One of the biggest benefits for me about doing a webinar is that I ALWAYS come away from running them with ideas for things to write about here on the blog. Quite often, as you’re speaking, you get ideas but the ideas also come from questions and responses from your audience. One of the things I do every time we run a webinar is include an option on the signup form to submit a question for us to answer on the webinar. These questions are GOLD! I also like to run purely Q&A webinars at times which are great for this too. Earlier this week we ran one of these Q&A sessions and had 600 questions submitted! While we could only get through a fraction of them I read each question and many of the posts I write in the coming weeks will come directly from those questions. 5. They scale ‘you’ One of the challenges that bloggers face when their audience begins to grow is that there is a ceiling on how accessible you can be to all of your readers. While you start out responding to every question, email and tweet there comes a point where the incoming messages get beyond what you can respond to while still maintaining creating content and managing other aspects of your blog and business. I’ve grappled with this for years now and find that webinars go a long way making yourself more accessible to readers. 6. Webinars Lend Themselves to Different Types of Communication I’ve tried a variety of different styles of webinar over the last few years including: Interviews/Story Telling – where I interview a blogger about their story and what they’ve learned. This story telling approach has been very well received. A couple of popular ones include webinars with Tsh Oxenreider and Ana White. Teaching – in these webinars I almost ‘lecture’ on a topic. I use slides and take attendees on a journey through a topic from A-B. For example recent webinars on Finding Readers for a Blog and Monetizing Blogs Q&A – in these webinars I’ve either had open Q&A sessions on any topic or have named a topic and made attendees focus their questions on exploring more narrow areas. For example here’s last weeks open Q&A session in which we covered a heap of topics. Selling – I’ve not done much selling in webinars (I like to keep mine pitch free) but occasionally have run webinars with a pitch at the end (I warn attendees that there will be). I still make sure that these webinars are high in value/usefulness so that even if they don’t respond to the pitch that they come away satisfied. 7. Great Practice for Public Speaking Lastly, webinars are a great way to get practice and experience for public speaking. One of my favourite things to do is to speak at events. However, due to my location in Australia and the fact that the majority of speaking invitations I get come from overseas, I’m not able to accept the vast majority of them. Webinars are a great way for me to get a ‘fix’ of speaking but I’ve also noticed that they’re a great place to hone my presenting skills. They’re also a good place to showcase what you can do and land you presenting gigs too! What is Your Experience with Webinars? I’d love to hear your experience with webinars. Have you run them? How did they go? Do you attend them? If so – what makes a good webinar in your experience? Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 7 Reasons I LOVE Running Webinars for My Blog Readers

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ProBlogger: When You Have Nothing Unique to Say…

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When You Have Nothing Unique to Say… Posted: 25 Jul 2013 08:28 AM PDT I’ve got nothing unique to say. It has all been said before. There are so many people who are smarter than me. Why would anyone listen to me? Have you ever found yourself thinking like this? If so – you’re not alone. At one point or another most bloggers do, and many would be bloggers have been stopped in their tracks by them. Here’s the deal: Nobody has lived your life before. Nobody has your story. Nobody has faced and overcome what you’ve overcome. Nobody thinks in exactly the same way that you do. So write – but infuse what you write with your story. Your story is what makes it unique. Your story is what’s never been said before. Your story is something nobody else could ever know better than you. Your story is why anyone would listen to you. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger When You Have Nothing Unique to Say…

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ProBlogger: 13 Tools and Services I Use Every Day to Build a Profitable Blogging Business

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13 Tools and Services I Use Every Day to Build a Profitable Blogging Business Posted: 24 Jul 2013 08:39 AM PDT Yesterday, during our Q&A webinar, we received a lot of questions about the tools and services we recommend for different aspects of blogging. While we touched on a few, there are quite a few more that I wanted to touch on. Not all are strictly ‘blogging tools’ but all are things we regularly use as a team. Note: I am an affiliate for some of the following tools and services but am also a daily user of all of them and have been for a minimum of 12 months. Note 2: I’ve updated this list with 6 more tools that I use! Blogging Platform - WordPress.org Hosting Service – Synthesis Blog Design Framework – Genesis (note: the designs themselves are custom designed but built upon Genesis) eBook Shopping Cart – eJunkie (we sync it with PayPal to take payments at this stage) Customer Support Desk – Zendesk Project Management – Basecamp Internal Team Communications – Skype Forum Software – VBulletin synced with Premise for paid membership areas Email Newsletter Software – Aweber and Mailchimp File Sharing etc – Dropbox and Google Drive Social Media Management – Sprout Social Webinars – GotoWebinar Email – Gmail Blogging Editors – Ecto and MarsEdit (both are Mac tools but Ecto has sadly not been updated in years) Analytics – Google Analytics Of course there’s plenty more but they are the main things that come to mind! What tools and services would you add to the list that make up part of your core online business toolbox? Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 13 Tools and Services I Use Every Day to Build a Profitable Blogging Business

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ProBlogger: 10 Tools To Help Protect Your Blog From Content Theft

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10 Tools To Help Protect Your Blog From Content Theft Posted: 23 Jul 2013 08:19 AM PDT This is a guest contribution from Adam Connell, blogger at Bloggingwizard.com. If you write or publish a blog, you’ll inevitably experience the gut-wrenching feeling of content theft at some point in the life of your blog. It’s not fair but it’s now just part of the world of online content. What can you do to protect the content you slaved over? There is no 100% fool-proof way to protect your content, but you can make it more difficult for content thieves to steal your work and to punish them when they do. I’m going to share some ways you can protect your content from theft and give you some resources to use to defend it against thieves and scrapers. How Do You Know If Your Content Has Been Stolen?  Posting a copyright notice on your blog is a deterrent, albeit a small one. A copyright notice lets would-be content thieves know that you understand your rights to the fruits of your labor and that you intend to protect them. Nevertheless, not everyone is going to be deterred by your copyright notice. The following online tools can be used to discover whether your content has been stolen or not. What you do after that is another story. Google Alerts Google Alerts are simple e-mail alerts you can establish by notifying Google that you want to keep tabs on certain keywords or phrases. Copy a unique phrase in your blog post or the title of your post and ask Google to send you an e-mail any time it is published elsewhere on the Web. Use a plagiarism checker There are several plagiarism checkers online. All of them have their benefits. Grammarly is a proofreading service and grammar checker, but it will also check your text against plagiarism. Plagium is another one. However, unlike Grammarly, you can check an entire URL to see if your content has been plagiarized. While Grammarly and Plagium both are good services, Copyscape is more recognized. Like Plagium, you can check an entire URL for plagiarism, and you can put a “Protected By Copyscape” notice on your blog, which should scare away a few content scrapers. All three services have a free service level and a premium paid service for high volume users. Small Steps To Protecting Your Content From Theft While Google Alerts and plagiarism checkers can tell you that someone has used your content without your permission, there are other things you can do to protect your content. These are small steps that help you maintain a little control over your content and ensure that you at least get attribution should someone use your content without your approval. WordPress SEO by Yoast This WordPress plugin is useful if you are using the standalone WordPress software. The plugin has a feature that allows you to add some code to your RSS feed so that if your post is republished elsewhere, then an automatic link will be inserted pointing back to your website. Some blogs use scraper software to automatically republish content from around the Web. No human is looking at these posts. If your blog is included among the URLs added to the scraper script, then you’ll at least get a link back. Don’t count on that link being very valuable, but it is there. Tynt Tynt is a service that provides code for you to insert into your web pages and will also tell you how many times your content has been copied and pasted. When someone copies and pastes your content, Tynt will add a link back to your website. Google Authorship Google Authorship is a content marketing strategy that associates your name or brand with your content in Google’s search index. By implementing Google Authorship you are increasing your chances of retaining control over your content by having your photo image appear next to your content in the search rankings. While that won’t stop content thieves from scraping your content, it will make it easier to prove the content is yours and it will be easier to have stolen content removed when you file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint. Learn more about Google Authorship here. What You Should Do If Your Content Has Been Stolen It is not always necessary to confront a content thief. You have to determine if there’s any real damage to your content being stolen. First, ask yourself if the person is profiting from your content. If they are, then that’s a red flag. Secondly, ask if your reputation may be damaged by someone claiming that content. And thirdly, ask if it’s worth your trouble to pursue the content thief. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. So let’s say that you determine you want to pursue the content thief and have them remove your content. Your first step should be to send them a friendly letter by e-mail, or by using their contact form, and asking them to remove your content. Alternatively, you can ask them to link back to your website. If that doesn’t work, then you’ll have to take other measures. You can start by finding out where their website is being hosted and contact the hosting company. Let the hosting company know that they are hosting a website that is stealing content. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the hosting company is obligated to prevent access to websites that have infringed on someone’s copyright. WhoIsHostingThis.com You need to find out who is hosting the website that stole your content. That’s where Who Is Hosting This comes in. Once you know who is hosting the website, you can then send a DMCA request to the hosting company to have the website taken down. Remove content from Google To have content removed from Google’s search index, you’ll have to file a DMCA request with Google. One Final Step To Combatting Plagiarism: Creative Commons As I noted earlier, copyright notices are small deterrents. The same goes for Creative Commons. However, Creative Commons licenses are becoming more acceptable and more popular. If people know that you don’t mind them using your content for benevolent purposes, they are more likely to respect your right to that content and its privileges. Creative Commons You can learn about the various Creative Common licenses on the Creative Commons website. It’s a wild Web out there Be diligent in protecting your content and you will reap the benefits of it for a long time to come. What sort of experiences have you had with content theft? Whether you have successfully stopped people from stealing your content or not, we'd love to hear about it. Adam Connell is an internet marketing and SEO nut from the UK. He can be found blogging over at Bloggingwizard.com, where he talks about marketing, social media, SEO and a few other topics. Follow him on Twitter @adamjayc. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 10 Tools To Help Protect Your Blog From Content Theft

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ProBlogger: 2 Thoughts on Opportunity and Success to Kickstart Your Week

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2 Thoughts on Opportunity and Success to Kickstart Your Week Posted: 22 Jul 2013 08:45 AM PDT Yesterday I tweeted a couple of thoughts on Twitter leading to an explosion of retweets but also questions, reactions and ideas. I thought I’d put them here on the blog too, in the hope they might help to kickstart your week! So many of us wait for opportunity to knock on our door. Most successful ppl are prolific door openers & don't wait for knocks [tweet this] Sometimes, I find myself giving myself permissions to be ‘passive’ in my blogging (and life) and ‘hope’ that good things might happen to me – that opportunity might come knocking. However, the reality is that almost every time a good thing has come my way, it was the result of me taking some kind of small action.  I’m a fairly reserved and shy person. I don’t like to push my way into situations or force things to happen. However, over the years I’ve learned that by taking action to push doors open (even if only a tiny creak) I often find the opportunity waiting for ME! Many times SUCCESS is more about DOING the things you know you should do, not learning the ‘secrets' that you don't know [tweet this] I’m a firm believer that bloggers who’ve been blogging for more than few months already know 90% (if not more) of what they need to know about blogging successfully. Of course, there are always new things to learn about writing, technology, techniques for finding readers etc but the fundamentals of blogging have not really changed over the last 10 years. The challenge is DOING those fundamental things, consistently and at a high quality, over the long haul. I like this response to my tweet yesterday by Jacqueline O’Donnell: “It’s a bit like healthy eating and exercise really… but the ‘shiny’ secrets & promise of shortcuts has a lot of pull power :-)” I think this is spot on. Most of us have enough knowledge of how to be fit and healthy. We understand that a modest, balanced and nutritious diet along with regular exercise will result in a healthy body. Yet so many of us struggle to actually apply the things we know. SO many of us are drawn to look for the latest silver bullet diet or program that will solve our issues. Knowledge isn’t bad – but gaining it is a waste of time if it doesn’t lead to action! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 2 Thoughts on Opportunity and Success to Kickstart Your Week

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