ProBlogger: 262: How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog

Posted by work smart 0 comments

ProBlogger: 262: How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog

262: How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog

Posted: 24 Sep 2018 02:00 AM PDT

The post 262: How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

How One Blogger Created a Directory that Attracts Readers

We continue our Blogging Breakthroughs series with Carolyn Edlund, whose Artsy Shark blog focuses on the business of art.

Carolyn shares the story of how she created a directory to attract readers to her blog instead of having to chase after them. It revolutionized her blog, and helped her build a successful business around it.

Carolyn Edlund created a directory to attract readers to her blog.

Carolyn understands the importance of building strong business relationships and creating win-win situations through collaboration.

Her directory identifies places artists can sell their art online. It also provides solid business information and helps artists gain exposure.

To attract readers for your blog, ask yourself:

What do your readers want?
What problem can you solve for your readers?
What issue can you help your readers overcome?

Based on tips from Carolyn, what kind of magnet do you plan on creating to draw readers to your blog?

Links and Resources for PB 262 – How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog:

Courses

Join our Facebook group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: Hi there, friends! Welcome to episode 262 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name's Darren Rowse, and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog podcast, events, series of ebooks, and courses, all to help you start an amazing blog that's going to change the world in some way, make people's lives better, but also hopefully be profitable for you. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all that we do at problogger.com.

Now this week, I'm actually in Orlando. As this episode goes live, I will be at our Success Incubator Event, and I know some of you will be at that event, I'm looking forward to seeing some of you. And while I'm away, we're continuing our blogger breakthrough series of content, where we're featuring stories from listeners of this podcast, and we're talking about their breakthrough moments.

Now, today's listener is Carolyn Edlund, who has a great blog called Artsy Shark. You can find it at arstyshark.com. Her blog is about the business of art, and she's going to tell us a story today that I think will be interesting to many of you. It's a way of drawing readers into your blog that's going to stop you from having to chase your readers, but hopefully attract them to your blog, and this has revolutionized her blog and has helped her to build a really successful business around the blog that she has.

You can find show notes today at problogger.com/podcast/262, where you'll find links to Carolyn's blog, and also the directory that she's about to talk about as well, and a book that she mentions, too. At the end of her story, I'll come back and pull out a few of the golden nuggets that I heard her share, okay? Now, over to Carolyn.

Carolyn: My name is Carolyn Edlund, and I'm the founder of Artsy Shark, which is the blog about the business of art. Before I ever became a blogger, I was a self-employed artist for more than twenty years, with a successful production studio, and subsequently, I was a sales representative for an art publishing company. I had a lot of experience marketing and selling art, and I also led a business networking group where I learned a lot about the importance of building strong business relationships and creating win-win situations where both parties can benefit by collaborating with each other.

I got into blogging sheerly by accident back in 2009, after I took a free course held at a local community college. At that time, I had no idea what I was doing, and I wasn't quite sure what would happen. I got started by writing some business articles for my blog, based on my experience on marketing and selling. And then, I stumbled on a book called Inbound Marketing, that was written by HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. That book explained how online businesses could attract readers, and attract customers by offering really useful content that would act as a magnet for website traffic.

I also found ProBlogger at that time, where I could see Darren Rowse uses a lot of these strategies and that they really work. So I decided straight away, I needed a way to offer real value to my potential readers, and I also started publishing individual artist features. These are portfolio articles that allowed visual artists to tell their story in their own words and share their artwork with the world.

To this day, I publish artist features regularly on my blog. It's worked really well because the truth is that, although artists do want to learn how to market and sell their work, what they would really like is to have someone else do it for them. So my business model was built on providing solid business information, but also taking action to help artists gain exposure through my own site. As a blogger, I'm a member of the press, and people love press. I run a call for artists several times every year, attracting submissions from artists all over the world who'd like to be featured on my site, and this has allowed me to publish a blog that presents an amazing variety of art, as well as art business information, and of course, they go hand in hand.

Now, the breakthrough that really exploded my blog traffic happened in 2013. I realized that artists were looking for information on how to sell their art online, but they weren't sure how or where to do this. And that allowed me to create another magnet on my website to draw traffic. I spent several months researching and compiling a directory of my website of hundreds of places where artists can sell their work online with full descriptions and lengths and so forth, which is a super useful directory, and it's completely free to use. That directory is a magnet that draws tons of traffic through search, bringing artists who want to learn to market and sell right to my website, which helps them market and sell.

I've been able to build a really thriving business using this model by offering e-courses on the business of art, personalized business consulting for artists, and speaking at in-person professional development training events, in collaboration with the Clark Hulings' Fund for Visual Artists, which is a business partnership that I developed through my network. One of the things that I love best about this method, is that it attracts readers rather than chasing them. From my experience working as a salesperson, I know how challenging it can be to prospect for customers, seeking their attention, trying to get their interest, continuously following up. And by turning that around, and creating magnets for customers, you can pull them in without all of that chase. I've been really inspired by seeing how ProBlogger uses this model successfully, and I'm really honored that I've been invited to share my story with you here.

Darren: Thanks so much, Carolyn, for sharing your story. You can check out Carolyn's blog at artsyshark.com, and I have, in today's show notes, links to the directory that she talks about, and also the inbound marketing book, which I have heard from many of you as ProBlogger listeners have enjoyed that book as well. Couple of things that I love about this story, firstly, that Carolyn is practicing something that I've preached many times over about giving your readers exposure on your site, and making your readers famous, actually helping your readers to get profile.

This is something that we've done on ProBlogger many times. In fact, this whole series really is about showcasing the listeners of this podcast. I love doing this because it helps your listener, your reader to achieve their goals. And many of your readers will be wanting to showcase what they do in some way, but also enables you, particularly if you do it smartly, to achieve your goals, as well. My goal at ProBlogger is to teach people how to blog better, and so my hope is that by sharing these stories, you're getting ideas, as well as us serving the person who is actually creating the content as well.

And so, featuring your readers in these creative ways can be really useful. On digital photography school, we allow our readers to post their pictures in comments, and we actually use their comments and pictures from time to time in content, as well. So all of these things can be really great ways of helping your readers to get their profile, but creating really useful content as well.

I also loved the idea of creating magnets on your site, things that will draw and attract readers to your site, rather than you having to go out there and chase readers down. It's a great concept, and I guess some questions around that, you know, what are your readers wanting? What are they trying to achieve? What problems do they have? How can you help them in some way, by overcoming a need that they have, you know. Creating a directory that is going to solve those problems is one way of doing that. And I've seen a number of bloggers create directories for their readers that have done really well.

Now, I don't know if Carolyn actually charges people to be in her directory, but I have seen bloggers do that, as well. Like, put this directory up, their readers cannot access at all, but I might sell, you know, featured listings, or just charge people to being their directory as well. That might be a creative way of monetizing your blog as well, but even if it's free, for those to be in it, and those to be reading it, it's creating a way of drawing people into your site.

In some ways, on ProBlogger, having a job board has been a similar kind of magnet. We know that when people are searching for writing jobs or blogger jobs, that we come up in the search results as a result of having a job board. And some of those people come back across into the rest of ProBlogger. For some of our readers, that's their first ever experience of ProBlogger, and they get on our list, and they become buyers of our courses, and attending our events, and those types of things as well. How to start a blog course is a magnet, it's something that we know people are searching the internet "How do I start a blog?" and sometimes we're on the end of their search results as well. What are people searching for that you can help them with, that is going to attract them into your blog, that is going to solve a problem for them but also get their attention, and hopefully, get them into a process of a relationship with you as well.

Great tips there from Carolyn. Again, check out her blog at artsyshark,com, you can check out some of the artist features that she does, and also you'll find a link on our show notes today directly into her online directory. So you can check that out and see what it's like. It's actually not that hard to create, it's essentially just a page on her site where she's created a list of places that people can sell their art. Not that hard, it's not something that you would need to put a massive amount of investment into, apart from the time to get those resources. Hopefully that provides you with some inspiration today, I'm expecting lots of you to have directories by the end of next week, of those types of things, and if you do, leave us a comment in our Facebook group or in the comments of these show notes as well, today, and I'd love to check out what you do as a result of hearing this story.

Thanks for listening, and check out the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/262 and I'll chat with you next week when I'll be, I think, almost back from Orlando. I'll be back on the day after this podcast goes live, but we'll have another story for you next week from another one of our listeners that I'm really looking forward to sharing with you.

How did you go with today's episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 262: How Carolyn Started a Directory to Attract Readers to Her Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: 8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New Blog

Posted by work smart 0 comments

ProBlogger: 8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New Blog

8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New Blog

Posted: 18 Sep 2018 07:00 AM PDT

The post 8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

Admin tasks to do when launching a new blog

When you launch a new blog (especially if it's your first), there's so much to do it can feel overwhelming.

Having spent so much time and effort selecting your theme, pre-writing posts, and maybe even setting up your email list, you probably just want to make it live as soon as possible so you can tell everyone you know about it.

But hold up just a minute. You may have missed a few small but crucial administrative tasks that may seem nitpicky but can make a big difference to how your blog is perceived by first-time readers.

For instance, if you still have a default “About” page up there your blog won’t look completely finished. And a lot of established blogs still have the “meta” widget in the sidebar, despite it offering no value to readers whatsoever.

While there's nothing wrong with being a new blogger (we all were at some point), you probably don't want to look like a complete beginner. Readers who've experienced other newly launched blogs might be wary of investing time and energy in yours if it looks half complete. They might think you won't stick with it for long.

So here are the eight steps you should take when launching a blog (or soon afterwards). And while these are focused on WordPress blogs, many will apply to other platforms too.

(Don't worry if you launched a while ago and haven't done some of these yet. It's great that you got your blog out there and online. Just tackle them as soon as you can.)

#1: Remove the “Hello World” Post

You've probably already done this. But just in case you haven't, make sure you remove the default "Hello World" post from your blog.

You can do this by either:

editing the existing post to give it a different title, permalink and text
deleting the entire post from your blog under Posts > All Posts in your dashboard.

If you decide to keep and edit the original post, make sure you delete the associated comment, which you can find under Comments in your dashboard.

Even if you've published several of your own posts and the “Hello World” post doesn't appear on your front page any more, it's still a good idea to completely delete it. Otherwise it'll show up in archives and could be found when searching your blog.

#2: Delete the Default “Sample” Page

WordPress comes with a default "Sample Page" that looks something like this:

Sample page example

You don't want to leave that sample page in place. Even if there's no link to it in your navigation, it can still be found by searching your blog. And it doesn't create a good impression.

You can either delete it or, if you prefer, edit it and create an "About" page or similar as WordPress recommends. (Just make sure you change the permalink to something other than sample-page.)

#3: Remove the "Meta" Widget from Your Sidebar

By default, WordPress places certain widgets in your sidebar. Don't think you need to keep these. You can easily remove them under Appearance > Widgets (just drag and drop).

While you may want some of the default widgets, you can definitely dispense with the "Meta" widget, which looks like this:

Note: If you're logged into your site, you'll see the links "Site Admin" and "Log out" instead of "Log in".

You don't need the "Log in" link. You can access your WordPress dashboard by going to www.yourblogname.com/wp-admin and logging in (if necessary).

And chances are your readers won't need the "Entries RSS" link. These days most readers t subscribe by email instead, and readers who do want to use RSS can just enter your blog's name/URL in their feed reader. (I doubt they'll want to subscribe to an RSS feed of all the comments, either.)

Leaving the meta widget in your sidebar adds unnecessary clutter, and marks you as a new blogger.

#4: Check (and Maybe Change) Your Permalinks

When you install WordPress, your permalinks will default to 'Day and name', which looks like this:

problogger.com/2018/09/12/sample-post

You might be perfectly happy with this. But it's not the only option you have. For instance, you may want to have shorter permalinks that don't include the date, like this:

problogger.com/sample-post

Ideally you should change your permalink structure early in the life of your blog so your post URLs are consistent. You'll also avoid the risk of broken links on both own your blog and other blogs linking to yours. (Selecting a new structure updates the permalinks across your entire blog, not just on posts you publish in the future.)

You can change your permalinks under Settings > Permalinks.

#5: Fill Out Your Social Media Links

Many blog themes come with icons for your social media accounts, often in the footer or header.

A surprising number of blogs (even long-established ones)don't have these set correctly, so the icon either isn't clickable or leads to the homepage of Facebook, Twitter, etc. – not the blogger's own profile or page.

Normally there's a setting somewhere in your theme where you can include the actual URL of your Facebook page, Twitter profile, and so on. If you can't find it, Google for the name of your theme plus "Facebook icon" or similar.

While it takes only a few minutes to set them up, they can make a huge difference to the number of followers you gain on social media. But if someone clicks a button that doesn't work, you may miss out on a connection that becomes a long-term reader or even a paying customer.

#6: Make Sure Your Contact Form Works

One issue even well-established bloggers sometimes come across is contact forms that don't always work correctly. While it may be frustrating for your readers (they'll never hear back from you), it could also raise serious problems for you.

What if you miss a message from a customer asking for a refund on your ebook (as per your guarantee), and they end up raising a PayPal dispute? Or what if you never see the message from someone who wants to give you a free product or pay for advertising on your blog?

Even if your form appears to work and tells you a message was sent, it may not be reaching your inbox. It could be a delivery problem (they don't reach you at all). They might reach you, but then end up in your spam folder. Or something may have gone awry with the plugin.

Before you launch, triple-check your contact form to make sure it actually works. Try it out yourself and, if possible, ask a couple of friends to test it as well. Make sure the emails all reach your inbox successfully.

(It's also worth re-checking your contact form every so often. WordPress updates or plugin updates may mean it suddenly stops working, even if it's been working fine for months.)

#7: Set Up Google Analytics and Google Search Console

I can understand why many bloggers launch without these in place. By the time you've set up a domain name and hosting, and installed a WordPress theme, the idea of doing anything else techy might seem just too much.

However, it really helps to have Google Analytics in place from the day you launch. That way, you can see exactly which posts and pages are popular, how people navigate through your site, whether they arrived through search, social media, or a backlink, and much more.

Google Search Console is slightly different. You can use it to set up your sitemap, find out what links Google had difficulty crawling, check whether your website has any security issues, see what search terms people are using to find your blog, and much more.

The good news is that both Google Analytics and Google Search Console are actually quite straightforward to set up. You'll need to create a Google account (if you don't already have one) and for both you'll need to link them to your blog.

We cover how to do that with Google Analytics in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course. And here's where you can find out more about Google Search Console.

#8: Install (or Activate) the Akismet Plugin

Akismet is a WordPress plugin that detects and removes spam comments before they ever appear on your blog. It will significantly reduce the amount of spam you have to deal with, which means you won't have spam comments hanging around on your blog waiting to be deleted.

All blogs get hit with spam comments. But if a lot of them are getting through, it doesn't give readers a great impression. A comments section riddled with spam makes your blog look unattended and uninviting. And it may well be promoting or linking to things you don't want associated with you and your blog.

Depending on your host, your WordPress installation may come with the Akismet plugin already in place. If not, you can install it from your WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins > Add New and typing "Akismet" in the search box.

You'll need to click the "Activate" button to get Akismet working, and you'll then be taken to the Akismet site where you can sign up.

Akismet's site implies that you need to pay, but you can use it for free. Just click the "Personal" plan and slide the payment slider all the way to the left.

Akismet slider

Note: This license is only intended for non-commercial sites (i.e. sites without advertising, business information, products for sale, etc.)

I realise there's quite a bit to take in here, especially if you've already spent a lot of time writing posts and choosing a theme for your blog. But if you tackle these one at a time, you'll soon get them all done.

If you get stuck, take a look at our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course (which covers a lot of these areas) or search Google for instructions.

Good luck with your blog launch.

Image credit: Jazmin Quaynor

The post 8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: 261: Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years

Posted by work smart 0 comments

ProBlogger: 261: Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years

261: Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years

Posted: 17 Sep 2018 02:00 AM PDT

The post 261: Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years appeared first on ProBlogger.

Three Breakthrough Tips That Helped a Blogger Become Profitable

Here's another episode from our Blogging Breakthroughs series, which features bloggers' stories about breakthroughs in traffic, income, and other aspects of blogging.

About two years ago, after a career in Air Traffic Control and dealing with health issues, Michele Robson decided to start a blog about luxury travel on a budget called Turning Left for Less.

michele robson breakthrough

Michele had some writing experience, but didn’t really understand blogging. Her blog started out slowly, but has now reached a point where she earns a liveable income.

Michele shares three breakthrough tips that helped her grow her luxury travel blog from just a few readers a day to where it's at today.

Post every day
Befriend a blogger you admire and have them become your mentor
Be first to market and review products and services

Michele has built credibility, and industry leaders are now coming to her. She no longer needs to chase them for information.

As bloggers, we all start with very few readers and doubts about whether to continue. Just think of Michele's story, follow her three tips, and don't give up.

Links and Resources for Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years:

Further Listening

Courses

Join our Facebook group

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 261 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I'm the blogger behind ProBlogger. A blog, podcast, events, courses, ebooks, and lots more that helps bloggers to start blogs, to grow their blogs, and to build profit around their blogs. You can find more about what we do over at problogger.com.

Now, today, we continue our series of blogger breakthrough episodes, where we're hearing from listeners of the podcast about how they've grown their blogs, particularly focusing upon their breakthrough moments, the things that have helped them to do what I've just said, grow their blogs, start their blogs and to build profit around their blogs.

Today's story is one that I love. It's from Michele Robson, who has a blog called Turning Left for Less, and the tagline of her blog is Champagne Travel on Prosecco Budget, which will give you the indication of what it's about. It's about luxury travel on a budget. It's something that I think is a great topic, but also the story that Michele tells is really worth listening to as well. I'm sure a lot of people will relate to her story, as well.

After a long career in one particular industry, air traffic control, and a tough time with health, Michele decided to start a blog. She only started less than two years ago, I think it was November 2016, so not long at it, but in that time she's, despite not really having any experience in blogging, she's been able to build her blog where she's now earned enough to survive on the income from her blog, which is a great story. She's gone from literally having a very few readers to having a significant readership as well, and really doing some amazing things. In her story today, she shares three breakthrough moments that helped her to grow from just a few readers a day to the point that she's at today.

I'm going to let Michele share her story, but I will come back at the end of her story, and just share a few of the things that I appreciated from what she shared, and give you a little bit more further listening on a couple of things she talks about as well. You can find a link to Michele's to blog turningleftforless.com at our show notes which are at problogger.com/podcast/261 as well as a full transcription of today's show. I'll talk to you in a moment after Michele shares her story.

Michele: Hi, my name's Michele Robson and I'm from the UK. I run the blog Turning Left for Less. You can find the blog at www.turningleftforless.com. I started the blog in November 2016 after having had a kidney transplant. I had been working for 23 years in air traffic control and decided that the transplant was a way to do something different and actually write about what I really love. The blog is all about luxury travel for less, which is something I've always been passionate about. I like to travel in style, but I like to spend as little as possible, as everybody does, so I share my tips with my readers on how to travel for less.

When I first started the blog, I literally knew nothing about blogging at all. I didn't know how to use WordPress. I think pretty much all I knew was how to write an article. I'd written articles before in my previous job as part of newsletters, so I was quite confident with the writing side of it. But in terms of actually building a blog, it was very difficult. I remember setting it up and it took me something like two weeks just to work out how to center my logo, because there was virtually nothing online that seemed to work. I spent hours and hours, eventually I did it, and it was worthwhile, but it was very steep learning curve to start off with.

I'm not particularly technically-minded, and to have to learn all the background WordPress stuff, and things like SEO, and obviously making readable articles, and social media, it was very difficult. I remember the first time I started to think, "Oh, am I actually going to carry on with this?" I'd only been going just over a month, but it was over the Christmas period, so of course it's very quiet for blogs. I was getting something like 20 views a day, some days I used to think, "God, I've got more friends than that." It was really difficult to keep going when you see such low viewing figures.

What I decided to do, which was my kind of breakthrough moment, was to post every day. My competition does that. I had always wanted to ideally not do that because of the amount of work it takes, but I decided in the end, if you can't beat them, join them. It was definitely worthwhile, me giving it a go and I could always stop, if I wanted to. I guess that was one of three things that really helped me have a breakthrough.

One of the things I really recommend that worked for me, is if you have somebody whose blog you admire, try and befriend them. Try and get them to be your mentor, and that's what I did. There's a blogger called God Save the Points, Gilbert Ott is his name, and I've always been fan of his blog. Though we blog slightly differently, we're in the same sort of genre, and I really liked the look of his blog and I could see he was doing well. He was really successful. I mean, nowadays, he has about a million views a month, which is pretty good after three and a half years.

I was part of the same group as him on Facebook, so I messaged him. He knew who I was from the group, and I said how much I admired him, and I would really be grateful if he would be able to give me some tips. I offered to buy him lunch, which obviously did the trick in terms of him then wanting to meet up. I took him somewhere very nice and plied him with drink and a very nice meal, and he basically told me everything he knew about how he had got to where he was. Since then we've become good friends, and he has always been very supportive, and helped me every step of the way.

I also have another friend who blogs in a different sphere, but had a lot of experience in the same sort of area I'm in. Again, I basically took him out, pumped him for information, and again, he's always been very supportive, and he's introduced me to other bloggers that are very well known. I think, for me, get yourself a support network and people who are mentors, because you can't do it all by yourself. It can be quite lonely sometimes blogging, so having that support around you is really important.

The other things that I did that I think are still useful was about making sure that I was first to market, as it was, with certain things. In there, I blog about business class travel, first class travel, and if I notice a new product coming out, say for example, I talk about British Airways a lot because that's what most of my readers are interested in. As soon British Airways announced they're going to launch something, whether it's a new meal service, a new seat, anything like that, I make sure I'm the first one that actually reviews it. I will drop everything and buy a flight and get on it as quickly as I can. That was one of my other major breakthroughs because I wrote a very complimentary review, which was deserved, by British Airways, when they introduced their new food, and the company actually picked it up.

I was still very unknown at that point, I'd only been going under a year, been going about 10 months, and they actually put my blog article on their website, and they promoted it through Twitter, and with a lot of their social media, pilots that post on there and a lot of them have like tens of thousands of followers, and that made a huge difference for me. It definitely got me a lot of views to the website, and that was the first time it really started to pick up for me, and started getting some really good traffic. Nowadays, I'm getting about a hundred and fifty thousand views a month after, not quite two years, which I'm pretty happy with, really.

After my breakthrough, obviously I'm now getting very good views. I'm actually getting people approaching me, which is great companies approaching me to work with them, which is really good that I don't actually have to chase it. I know I feel that I can kind of set my terms because I have that credibility. I'm being approached by industry people, like Runway Girl, to do interviews with them, which is really good. Again, it's about credibility.

The other thing that is different now is I'm making a regular income. I'd always done the blog full-time from the very start, but I am now actually at the point where the income is livable. Just, it's still not a lot, but it's enough to be able to survive on. That has taken quite a while and an awful lot of work in terms of affiliate links and advertising.

I guess my tip would be for, to achieve a similar breakthrough is really just finding that person that's going to be your mentor, that will help you, because there I've found there's so much online, so much information it's really difficult to pick out which bits you need to know. For example, for me, keywords, a lot of people concentrate on keywords, but in the niche I operate actually I don't need to bother about it a lot of the time because there is very little competition for many things.

Actually, I don't bother with that a lot of the time, whereas I could have wasted hours and hours and paying for keyword tools. For me, actually I don't need it, I've done alright without it. I think that is quite important, to make sure you understand your niche, and what is going to work for you rather than just trying to follow the generic advice that you find. You need that extra tip from people that know, not just the basics, you need the really sort of fine detail of your area to get it to working, and get it to the point you want it to be quickly, which I think, for me, I've achieved my target for what I wanted for you, too, already now without even getting to that point. It's been very useful, for me, it's made a huge difference.

Darren: Thanks so much to Michele for sharing her story. I have really appreciated hearing the different accents, the different voices, the different experiences of those who are sharing in this particular series. I am really enjoying seeing the feedback from many of our listeners as well on this.

As I said at the top of this show, I love this story. I'm sure many of us can relate to that feeling of frustration in the early days of getting the blog up, without much experience in blogging, that frustration of realizing that you've got more friends than you've got readers, which can be a bit confounding because you wonder why your friends aren't reading your blog as well, sometimes. But those early days are tough.

I guess, one of the reasons why I'm loving this series is that it reminds us that we all do start in that same place. We all do start with very few readers, doubts about whether we should continue, and frustrations in the technicalities of setting up a blog, and so I appreciate Michele sharing her story of that. I love the breakthrough moments that she's picked out as well. As I look back over my own breakthrough moments, there are many things that we could talk about, and so, there's just so many things that I'm sure Michele could have shared, but the three that she shared today will be helpful.

The first one being: posting everyday helped her blog to grow. Now, I find this an interesting one because it's something that I have taught in the past, but something that I don't think is right for every blogger, but certainly seems to be the case that it was right for Michele. One of the good things about increasing your posting frequency is that you are increasing the amount of doorways into your blog. If you're only posting once a week, that's 52 doorways into your blog a year. If you're posting every day, that's 365 doorways into your blog. That's doorways in from search engines, from social media, from the potential of other bloggers linking to you, and people coming in from your RSS feed. The amount of posts that you do is one way that you can increase your traffic to your blog. But it needs to be only done if you have the capacity to really do that, and you need to really think about your resources, the time you have, and your topic as well, so there's a variety of things you want to consider in making that decision.

What I want to do today is share with you, in the show notes, a couple of things that you can read and listen to on this very topic of frequency of posting. There's a blog post that Ali Luke wrote on ProBlogger not too long ago, which I'll link to in this show notes, where she talks about the different options you've got for frequency. Also, there's a podcast, I think it was episode—it might have been episode 250, just going to check that for you, yup—which is about how to create more content for your blog in an easy way. Not every post you need to write needs to be a long, detailed post.

In episode 250, I talked about nine types of content that you can create for your blog that aren't too hard to create. Nine pieces of content that you can add to your existing content without too much work, of course, keeping in mind that you wanted to keep it high quality as well.

Posting every day, I think, is a great tip. I would probably advise that you don't have to be daily, you might actually choose to be more than daily. You might want to be two or three times a day. The actual frequency isn't the key, the key is thinking about how you can increase the frequency a little bit, particularly in the early days of your blog, when you may not have many posts in your archives.

The main breakthrough that I loved in what Michele shared today is the idea of befriending other bloggers, finding mentors. One of the things I do notice many bloggers, when they start out, is that they see other bloggers in their niche sometimes as their competitors. I understand why that might be.

In business, we'd see other people doing what we're doing as competitors, and we don't tend to reach out to them and have relationships with them. But in the blogging space, there's plenty of good reasons to be interacting with, befriending, and working with, collaborating with other people who are in your niche.

Michele really tells the story beautifully there, of two bloggers that she reached out to, who have become friends, who've become collaborators, who have linked to her, who she supported as well, who've introduced her to other people in the industry. This is such a powerful thing. I've seen time and time again, where bloggers have moved past that idea of competitorship, or competing with others in their niche, and instead, working with them and befriending them, and that has helped so many bloggers, and it certainly helped me, particularly in the early days of ProBlogger. Twere other people who were blogging about blogging in those early days.

In the year or so that I started, there were other people who started, Copyblogger was a great example of this. We helped each other to grow. We ended up doing quite different things, but there was overlap in our audience, and that is such an important thing. If you're alright, I would befriend other bloggers in your niche, this is really important. If you were I, I would find a mentor, even if it's just a one-off mentoring session, like Michele described, over a meal. That can be a very powerful thing as well.

And then her last breakthrough was really, I thought, was great as well. Particularly if you are blogging about anything that's to do with news, or product, as Michele is. Being first to market, being early in writing about something newsworthy in your industry is a great thing, it signals to your readers that you are first, that you are up with the latest, but it also gets on the radar of other people in your industry. Whether that be other bloggers who might link to you, or as in the case with Michele, other people in the industry like the people you're reviewing the products of.

Being first, being early, being positive, being constructive about the things that are happening in your industry will get you on the radar of others, and that then opens up all kinds of opportunities. When people see you writing about those sorts of topics, you'll get invited to the press launches. You will sometimes have opportunity to work with brands in a paid capacity as well, to become an ambassador. So really important to do that, and Michele's obviously worked that very well. Networking, being open to collaboration is a very powerful thing. I do encourage you to take those things on board, particularly if you're in those sorts of industries where you can write about news, and what's going on in your industry. It can be a very powerful thing.

Thanks so much, Michele, again, for sharing. You can find Michele's blog at turningleftforless.com. You can find a link to her blog in our show notes today, but also a link to those episodes that I talked about earlier, particularly episode 250, where I talk about tons of content that you can create that doesn't take too much work. I think I called it Killer Filler Content, although it's not really filler content, because it can actually be really valuable for your readers as well.

Again today's show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/261 is a full transcription there. Also dig back over the last few episodes as well, where we've got, I think we're up to six other blogger breakthrough stories now. There are other variety of different topics as well, so it's well worth digging back into those. Thanks for listening, chat with you next week in episode 262.

How did you go with today's episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 261: Breakthroughs that Grew My Blog from 30 Readers a Day to Profitable in Less Than 2 Years appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: Using Templates and Checklists to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

Posted by work smart 0 comments

ProBlogger: Using Templates and Checklists to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

Using Templates and Checklists to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

Posted: 11 Sep 2018 07:00 AM PDT

The post Using Templates and Checklists to Make Your Blogging Life Easier appeared first on ProBlogger.

Templates and checklists

Tell me if any of these scenarios sound familiar:

You sit down in front of a blank page to write a new blog post. You make a start, but you're not sure where to go next.
You often find yourself completely rewriting your draft posts because they just don't seem to work.
After publishing a post, you rush around fixing all the little things you missed – the "read more" tag you left out, the featured image you forgot to resize, and the "further reading" suggestions you didn't turn into hyperlinks like you intended.
Writing and publishing posts always seems to take longer than you expected.
You can't imagine taking on an assistant because it would take so long to train them how to do everything you need them to do.

If you're like most bloggers, at least some of those things probably happen every week.

The good news is there are a couple of easy ways to solve all these problems: templates and checklists.

Templates and checklists are used by the biggest blogs out there. (At ProBlogger and Digital Photography School they're essential to the smooth running of the blogs).

We've published plenty of templates and checklists in the past – such as our template for evaluating your blog's first year (or any year) – and I'll be linking to some of them in this post.

If you're worried that using a template or checklist might stifle your creativity, look at it this way: maybe you could be more creative if you had enough structure in place so you can focus on writing your post instead of everything else.

Templates vs Checklists

Templates are great tools for helping you produce a particular piece of content. For instance, you might have:

A template for your typical blog posts: You might have a feature image, a short introduction, three to five main points, and a call to action at the end.
A template for creating branded images on your blog: You can set this up in your image editing program of choice and use it again and again, dropping in a new image and adding new text as appropriate.
A template for replying to certain types of email enquiry. If you need to respond to would-be guest posters, potential advertisers, or even readers asking common questions, it can really help to use a template rather than having to type out a fresh reply from scratch.
A template for your email newsletter. Your email service provider probably has plenty of built-in templates you can choose from, so this might be something you already have in place. But if you find it difficult to fill out particular sections, you may want to make some additional notes on their structure.

Checklists give you a series of things to check you've completed when undertaking a particular task. For instance, you might have:

A checklist for publishing a blog post: This could include things such as giving the post a category, scheduling it at the right time (e.g. "10am Wednesday") and quickly previewing it to make sure everything looks correct. You can see an example of the CoSchedule checklist we use in this post.
A checklist for sending out your email newsletter: This may include things such as sending it to yourself first, making sure the links all work, and double-checking you're sending it to the right list.
A checklist for launching a new product: This might be quite a long checklist, and one you don't use very frequently. But don't let that put you off creating it. Product launches involve a lot of moving pieces, and you don't want to miss something important (or end up stressing out more than necessary).
A checklist for editing and uploading your podcast episodes. This is the sort of task you could easily hand off to an assistant. So creating a checklist now might make handing it over much easier in the future.

I'm going to walk you through two very useful resources you can create for yourself: a template for writing your blog posts and a checklist for publishing them.

Creating a Blog Post Template

A very simple blog post template might look like this:

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion

To make your template useful, though, you'll probably want to make it a bit more detailed than that.

For instance, your template might look like this:

Introduction

Feature image
Pose a question to the reader (e.g. "How often do you find yourself going to bed later than you meant to?")
Write a few short paragraphs that lead into the post

Main body:

Three to five main points, each with a subheading
Each point has a "Further reading" or "tip" suggestion at the end, immediately before the subheading for the next point

Conclusion:

Sum up the post in two or three sentences
Prompt the reader to take action (e.g. "leave a comment to tell us…" or "for more help with this, check out my book on…")

Your ideal template might look quite different from this. For instance, perhaps you want to have part or all of your introduction before the feature image, or maybe you want to write short posts that have just one or two key points and a very short conclusion.

Have a go at coming up with your own template for your posts. Don't worry about making it "perfect". Templates and checklists are living documents that can be tweaked and perfected over time.

You might want to have several varieties of template for different types of post. You could also choose another blogger's post and break it down into an outline, then use that as the basis for a template.

Creating a Blog Post Publishing Checklist

Once you start using checklists, you'll find they make your life so much easier. It doesn't take any longer to glance over a checklist than to call up your mental "checklist" in your head. In fact, you'll probably find it's quicker to use the checklist as you won't be struggling to remember everything.

Many blogs use checklists for common, repeated administrative tasks. And one great task to pick for your first checklist is publishing a blog post.

Here's how your checklist might look:

Copy the edited post into the WordPress editor
Add a featured image
Include a "read more" tag at an appropriate point (if appropriate for your blog's theme)
Set an appropriate category for the post
Set the post's permalink
Preview the post and check that it looks as expected
Check all links are working correctly
Schedule the post for 10am Wednesday

Of course, you may have different tasks you want to include on your checklist. Perhaps you'll publish the post straight away and then schedule a tweet about it.

Your checklist may well change over time. Perhaps there's a task you want to add that you hadn't originally thought of, or maybe you find a new way of doing something.

Having this type of checklist makes it much easier to work with an assistant, if that's something you choose to do in the future. You can simply give them the checklist and ask them to work through it for each post, rather than trusting them to remember a long list of instructions you gave them over the phone.

Templates and Checklists for You to Try Out Today

As well as creating your own templates and checklists, you can use ready-made ones. Don't feel you have to use them exactly as they were created. You can always tweak or modify them to suit your blog.

Here are some great ones to start off with.

Template and checklists (among many more resources) available in our (FREE) Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog Course. Sign up or log in to directly access the checklists below.

Template and checklists (among many more resources) available in our (paid) 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course. Sign up or login to directly access the checklists below.

Templates and checklists take a bit of up-front time to create, or to modify to your exact needs. But once you have them, you can use them again and again to save time (and stress).

I'd love to hear how you use templates and/or checklists. Do you use any on your blog? How have they helped you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters

The post Using Templates and Checklists to Make Your Blogging Life Easier appeared first on ProBlogger.

Google Adsense

Point of Authorithy