ProBlogger: Tips to Help You Manage Your Email

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Tips to Help You Manage Your Email Posted: 25 Mar 2021 04:00 AM PDT The post Tips to Help You Manage Your Email appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 147 of the ProBlogger podcast. Is email starting to suck up all your time? Dealing with emails can be a challenge at the best of times. But when you have a blog, and your traffic is starting to grow, it can quickly get out of hand. (I get thousands of emails every week.) So this week I'd like to share some tips that have helped me deal with email quickly and efficiently. Note: I use Gmail, and so I'll be talking about it throughout this post. But most (if not all) of these tips can be applied to other email systems. 1. Canned responses If you keep getting asked the same questions, then you should think about setting up canned responses. These are templates you can create beforehand and have on standby so you can quickly post a reply. I have canned responses set up for things such as: PR pitches guest post pitches SEO pitches (people wanting us to link to their site). Gmail makes it pretty easy to set up these templates. But most email systems will let you create similar templates. And if yours doesn't, just create a Word document with all your responses, and then copy and paste the relevant response into your reply. 2. FAQ page Another way to deal with these questions is to create a specific page that provides all the answers – the frequently asked questions (FAQ) page. I have an FAQ on ProBlogger that answers the questions I get asked most often. We then link to it on our contact form, and encourage everyone to check it first before sending us their question. Of course, not everyone uses our contact form to send emails. And those who do don't always read the FAQ. But it has reduced the number of emails we get. And our readers get the answer they want quickly without having to wait for my reply. 3. Contact form Speaking of contact forms, they can be another great to reduce the amount of email you have to deal with. As well as having fields for the person's name, email address and message, contact forms can contain other fields you can use to help you direct your emails to the right person (or at the very least the right folder in your email system). For example, the contact form on Digital Photography School has a Select a subject field with four options: I have a question about a product I have a bug or problem to report I'd like to advertise on dPS Something else. Depending on which option they choose, the email will automatically be routed to: our customer support team (options 1 and 4) our tech support person (option 2) our partnership team (option 3). You can also suggest that the reader ask their question on one of your social media channels, and provide links to them all. In any case, you should let them know whether you're likely to respond, and how long it will take if you do. It's important to manage their expectations so they won't be disappointed. 4. Extra help As you may have noticed, I have a team of people to help me with all my emails. And after looking after them all myself for eight or so years, it's one of the smartest decisions I've ever made. The number of emails I received really ramped up when we started selling ebooks on Digital Photography School. Whenever we launched a new ebook we'd get emails from people who wanted to know: what an ebook was how to download and open them whether the product was for them how to make a payment through PayPal with their credit card how to get a refund. As you can imagine, answering these questions took my focus away from marketing the products and developing new ones. So we hired people who could deal with all those questions. Another smart move was to start using a tool called Zendesk. It means everyone who asks a question gets a ticket, and our customer support team can quickly bring up all the emails relating to a particular problem to see if it has been solved. 5. Email filters One of the reasons I switched to Gmail in the first place was because it allowed me to set up filters. Back then my index was being swamped with social media messages. Unlike today, there was no way to limit how many of them you received or how frequently. And so one of the first things I did was to set up filters so they were automatically moved from my inbox into specific folders. These days I also have a lot of filters set up for product sales. I like to keep a record of every email I get when I sell an ebook to serve my customers. I love it when I get an email or a message from someone saying, "Hey, I bought this ebook way back when. I've lost it. Can I get it again?" I like being able to quickly check whether they bought it so I can send it to them again. I also get a lot of receipts that I need to keep for tax purposes but don't really need to see until then. So I have another filter set up that moves them to a folder and marks them as being read. And of course, by combining the options you offer in your contact form and filters in your email system, you can potentially deal with a lot of issues automatically. 6. Unroll.Me As a blogger, you've probably subscribed to a lot of different newsletters to help you keep up with what's going on in your niche. But while subscribing to them is usually pretty straightforward, unsubscribing can be a lot more difficult. And so rather than go through the drama of unsubscribing we just keep putting up with them landing in our inbox. Which is why I now use a toll called Unroll.Me. It scans my inbox and shows me all the newsletter I'm currently subscribed to. It then lets me unsubscribe to those I no longer need. And rather than having to unsubscribe to each one individually, it lets me unsubscribe in bulk. I can also roll up the ones I do want to receive into a daily digest, which is great if a particular subscription list is really active. 7. Boomerang The other tool I use within Gmail is Boomerang. It’s a Chrome extension that lets me do a couple of things that I find really useful. (It can also do a lot more, so it’s worth checking out.) The first thing it lets me do is resend emails I’ve received at a time that’s more convenient. For example, I can ask it to resend emails I receive late at night at 9am the next morning so they’ll be sitting at the top of my inbox rather than buried under 50 other emails. It also lets me send my emails at a specific time. If you answer some emails while working late, people might look at when you replied and think that’s when you usually work. And that can set a very bad precedent. But with Boomerang I can tell it to wait until 9am the next day before actually sending the email. And so even though I answered it late at night it looks as if I replied in the morning during normal working hours.   I hope these tips can help you keep your email under control. Do you have any other tips you’d like to share? Please let us know about them in the comments.   Photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash The post Tips to Help You Manage Your Email appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: Why You Should Look after Your Archives

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Why You Should Look after Your Archives Posted: 18 Mar 2021 04:00 AM PDT The post Why You Should Look after Your Archives appeared first on ProBlogger. Every post you publish is another potential source of traffic. And so obviously the more posts you write, the more traffic you'll get. But while creating new content is always a good thing, there's another way to bring extra traffic to your site that will take far less effort. Updating your archives. Your personal traffic gold mine If you've been blogging for a while, you may have hundreds or even thousands of posts sitting in your archive. And each one can potentially bring traffic to your site. But if you haven't looked at those posts since you first wrote them, they may be doing more harm than good. How do you think your readers will feel if they come across a post with broken links and out-of-date information? The good news is that with a little bit of work you can update those posts and bring more traffic to your blog. And it will be a lot quicker than writing a new post from scratch. Eating the elephant As the saying goes, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. And the same goes with updating your archive. You should be aiming towards updating all your posts. But that's going to take a while, especially if have hundreds or even thousands of posts in your archive. So pick one and update it, and then keep repeating the process until you've tackled them all. So where's a good place to start? 1. Posts that are popular Check your analytics and look for posts that are getting plenty of traffic. It may be coming from Google, social media, or even another blog. Wherever it's coming from, improving that particular post will certainly pay off. 2. Posts that aren't popular Have you ever written a post you worked really hard on, only to find it didn't do anywhere near as well as you thought it would? Now's the time to see what you can do to give it a new lease on life – a new headline, better visuals, etc. 3. Posts you wrote when you first started out Chances are you've come a long way since you started blogging. And so you should probably take a look at your early posts and see if they need updating. Yes, you might cringe at some of them. But now's your chance to make them better (and see how far you've come). Now what? Now that you've chosen a post to update, what should you do with it? Your immediate thought might me to scrap it completely and start again, especially if it's a really old post. But chances are the changes don't need to be quite that drastic. Here are some things you can try. 1. Fix the obvious mistakes Start by fixing the obvious problems – factual errors, spelling mistakes, and links that are either broken or outdated. 2. Update your content While nostalgia buffs might enjoy reading about how things were five years ago, most people want information that's current. So if you have any statistics or other time-sensitive information, update it. But don't discard the old information completely. You can use it to make comparisons and show how things have changed over the years. "In the past five years, Facebook has grown by x%, while Twitter has grown by y%." 3. Add more depth This is a great opportunity to add more depth to your post, especially if you know a lot more about the topic than you did when you first wrote it. You could add more examples, quotes from experts, extra points, or even an alternative view you didn't consider back then. 4. Improve the visual elements How does you post look? It might be time to replace the image (or add one if it's purely text), add subheadings, and turn those long lists of comma-separated items into bullet points. 5. Add some ‘Further reading’ links If you've written other posts about the topic, create a 'Further reading' section and add links to those other posts. (And while you're at it, do the same for those other posts and add the one you're updating now.) You could also add links to posts on other blogs that cover the same topic. Who knows? The other blogger might do the same for you. 6. Optimise it for SEO The 'rules' of SEO have changed a lot of the years. And so what you did to improve your post's ranking back then (e.g. keyword stuffing) may no longer work. Depending on what you did back then, you may need to tweak the content a little. You may even decide to focus on better keywords to improve its ranking. 7. Optimise it for social sharing If you've been blogging for a while, some of your early posts might ask your readers to share them on social media platforms that no longer exist. (Some of my early posts asked people to share them on MySpace.) And of course, there are lots of new platforms you can ask them to share your posts on as well. 8. Provide a call to action How did you end your early posts? Did you write a nice conclusion and leave it at that? You might want to tweak your endings to include a call to action, whether it's to subscribe, read other posts on the same topic, check out a product or service you're offering, or something else. Now, repeat the process As I said earlier, you should be aiming towards updating all your posts. And the only way to get through them all is to make updating them part of your routine. Have you created a weekly timetable for creating posts, editing and posting them, hanging out on social media, and so on? Then it's time to add another timeslot where you select a post from your archive and update it. Even if you only do it once a week, in a year you'll have 52 more posts driving traffic to your site. And rather than driving people away, they'll draw your readers in. Not only will you get more traffic, you may also get more subscribers. So go through your archives, pick a post, and give it a new lease on life. And let us know how it all went in the comments.   Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash The post Why You Should Look after Your Archives appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: The Secret to Writing Effective Sales Copy

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The Secret to Writing Effective Sales Copy Posted: 15 Oct 2020 04:45 AM PDT The post The Secret to Writing Effective Sales Copy appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 105 of the ProBlogger podcast. This week I want to talk about writing sales copy. Now chances are you'd much rather write a blog post than try and sell something. You may have even become a blogger so you can avoid writing sales copy. But it's an important skill to have, especially if you plan on monetizing your blog by selling products or services. And I'm going to talk through a little exercise that will get you in the right frame of mind for writing it. Selling without the sleaze If the idea of selling makes you feel sleazy, you're not alone. At one point I worked in sales at an office supplies store, and that job made me feel sleazy too. I felt uncomfortable about manipulating people into buying something they may not need, or even want. Selling is something I've always struggled with, even as a full-time blogger. Fortunately, as a blogger I got to hear Ed Dale talk at a SuperFastBusiness conference. And in his presentation Ed said something that really resonated with me. He said, "Selling shouldn't be about trying to manipulate people into buying something that they don't really need. Selling should be about pain relief and gain creation". Pains and gains Okay, let's get into the exercise. It should only take you about five minutes, and all you'll need is paper and pen (or keyboard and computer if you'd rather type than write). Now, here's the first part of the exercise: Think of your readers, and for the next two minutes write down as many of their pains, problems, fears, needs, etc. as you can think of that relate to your product or service. They might be deep pains. They might be little pains. They might be pains that are justified. They might be pains that are a little bit selfish. They could be tangible, or something more personal. It might be something like, "I don't know how to do something and that's painful". Or it might be something more personal like, "I feel lonely," or "I feel like a failure". It doesn't matter. Just write it down. Hopefully you now have a long list of your readers' pains. Now it's time to repeat the exercise, only this time you'll be writing down all the things your readers want to gain. What results do they want? What outcomes do they want? What dreams do they have? What do they want? What gains are they looking for that your product or service could provide? Again, just write them all down without censoring yourself. Now it's time to write your sales copy, using the pains and gains you've written down to 'sell' your product or service. Because instead of telling your readers what it can do, you'll now be able to tell them how it can ease their pain and give them what they want to gain. Chalk and cheese Two days after the conference I was back at my desk, finishing off a sales email for an ebook we were promoting on Digital Photography School. (The person who normally wrote our sales emails had finished up just before the conference.) I started writing the email before the conference, but I was getting bogged down with writing all about the products features and price. So left it until after I'd come back from the conference. And I'm so glad I did. I set the timer on my iPhone, and spent the next two minutes writing down as many of my readers' pains relating to the ebook that I could think of. Then I started the timer again, and wrote down all the gains I could think of. In the end I had about 25 pains and gains written down. I then highlighted the top pains and gains in each list, and circled a few I felt this particular ebook could help relieve or provide. And then I started to write. Only this time I didn't write about why the product was good. I didn't write about its features or its price. I didn't even write about the offer. Instead I wrote about the pain I knew they felt, and the dreams I knew they had. And then I introduced them to the product I knew would help fill the gap between those pains and gains. I looked at what I'd written, and compared it to my previous attempt. It was like chalk and cheese. My first draft was about the product, while the second was all about my reader. In my first draft I was trying to convince people to buy something. But in the second I was offering a solution to something I knew my readers were already looking for. Those five minutes I spent brainstorming my readers' pains and gains changed not only the email itself, but also the energy I wrote it with. Later that week we did a two-email campaign about the same product. This time I wrote about a couple of different pains that I knew this product would solve. The email converted really well. But I also got emails from my readers thanking me for selling them the ebook. And having people thanking you for convincing them to buy your product is a dream come true. Beyond the sales pitch This exercise has really helped me write better sales copy. And I'm sure it will do the same for you. But it can be useful in other ways as well. It can help you decide what product or service to offer in the first place. Think of the pain your readers would like relief from, and the things they'd like to have or achieve. Could you come up with a product or service that could give them what they want? If you're thinking of starting a new blog, or refining your niche, think about what you could write about that would ease their pain or fulfil their desires. You could even use this exercise to come up with new topics or categories for your current blog. And if you're thinking of creating an opt-in to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter, this could be the perfect way to decide what you should offer as an incentive. Set your timers Whether you’re selling a product or service, coming up with ideas for one, or just figuring out what might interest your readers, I encourage you to give this exercise a try. It could be the best way you’ve ever spent five minutes of your time.   Photo by Justin Lim on Unsplash The post The Secret to Writing Effective Sales Copy appeared first on ProBlogger.

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“11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts” plus 1 more

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11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts Posted: 11 Mar 2021 03:00 AM PST The post 11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 078 of the ProBlogger podcast. Today, I am going to give you 11 quick tips for writing compelling blog posts. To make sure your blog posts are really interesting you need to get attention and maintain interest. To maintain your interest, I've kept this article short and sharp while also including links to further reading. These are tips you can keep coming back to in future to keep improving your writing.     Number 1. Be useful. If your blog post isn't informing, inspiring, entertaining, or making someone's life better in some way, do not publish it until it is. Usefulness – Principles of Successful Blogging #3   Number 2. Share your opinion.  Opinions are often what sets your blog post apart from what everyone else is writing about, so share them. Write an Opinion Post on Your Blog [Day 19 31DBBB]   Number 3. Cut out the fluff.  Before you hit publish, revise your post and remove anything that does not add value. Editing for People Who Love to Write… Too Much   Number 4. Visualize your reader as you are writing.  Writing with a reader in mind personalizes your writing in ways that you cannot even imagine. How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging   Number 5. Make your posts scannable.  Only 16% of people read every word that you write. Format your post in a way where your main points stand out using bullet posts or headlines. Writing Blog Content – Make it Scannable   Number 6. Work and rework your headlines.  A good headline can be the difference between a blog being read or ignored completely. How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog   Number 7. Write with passion.  When you share that you care what you are writing about your readers will most likely care, too. How Passion Can Transform Your Blog   Number 8. Give your readers something to do next.  Ask your readers to do something once they are finished reading. It could be reading something else, commenting, sharing, or applying the lesson that you have taught. Calls to Action – 12 Tips To SNAP Readers Out of Passivity   Number 9. Tell stories.  Stories are incredibly powerful at connecting with your readers in inspiring and teaching them. They will also create memories in your readers. Tell a Story – Rediscovering Your Blogging Groove Day 7   Number 10. Give your posts visual appeal.  The inclusion of a great image or a well-designed diagram can take your post to the next level and help it to be shared so much more. Using Visual Content to Increase Blog Engagement   Number 11. Practice The best way to improve your writing. To write content that changes people's life is to practice, practice, practice. 10 Ways to Improve Your Blogging through Practice   I hope you found this interesting and useful. What are your tips for writing interesting posts? Let us know in the comments.     Photo by Ben White on Unsplash   The post 11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts appeared first on ProBlogger.

11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts Posted: 11 Mar 2021 03:00 AM PST The post 11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 78 of the ProBlogger podcast. The dictionary defines "compelling" as "demanding attention or interest". Imagine if people thought your blog was compelling. Imagine if they read one of your posts and then immediately subscribed because they didn't want to risk missing any more of them? Well, there are things you can do to make both your posts and your blog more compelling to your readers. And here are 11 tips to get you started. 1. Be useful Never forget why you started a blog in the first place. Chances are you did it to change people's lives, whether to inform, inspire, educate or entertain them. So if your post isn't doing any of those things, don't publish it. 2. Share your opinion If you post a bunch of facts about something (especially if the information came from a press release) then your post won't be all that different from every other post it. But when you share your opinion, you instantly differentiate your post from every other post out there. So try to bring your thoughts and opinions into your posts as often as you can. 3. Cut out the fluff Before you hit publish, go through your post with a critical eye and remove anything that doesn't add value. A post should be only as long as it needs to be. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." 4. Visualize your reader When you sit down to write a post, forget that it could potentially be read by thousands of people. Instead, imagine it being read by someone you know well. And then write for that person. Writing with a particular reader in mind lets you personalise your content. And chances are most of your readers will think, "Wow. It's as if they wrote that especially for me". 5. Make your posts scannable As much as you'd like to think people will read your post from beginning to end, chances are only a small percentage will do that. Most people scan your content, stopping at the bits of interest to them and then moving on again. So make it easy for them. Use subheadings, bullet points and other formatting techniques to make your content easy to scan. They may not read every word you write, but chances are they'll make sure they read every post you write. 6. Work and rework your headlines How often have you decided to read a post based solely on the content. A great headline can make your post stand out from the crowd and draw readers in. On the other hand, a poorly written headline can have your post blend into the background and be ignored. Just make sure your headline is related to the content. This is no place for clickbait. 7. Write with passion If you want your readers to care about your topic and what you're saying about it then you need to care about it too. There's nothing worse than reading a post where the author seems more interested in getting it written than what they're actually talking about. So show your readers that you're passionate about the topic. And chances are some that passion will rub off on them. 8. Give your readers something to do next You've written a post full of passion on a particular topic, and now your readers are just as passionate about it. But unless you have a way for them to channel that energy and passion in some way, then it will quickly disappear. This is the perfect opportunity to ask them to take action and do something. It could be to read other posts you've written on the topic. It could be to share their thought in the comments section. It could be to share your posts on their social networks. Or could be to actually take action by buying a product, donating to a cause, or writing a letter to their local politician. 9. Tell stories Telling stories is an incredible way to connect with your readers. Not only can it make you more relatable (especially if you talk about things you did wrong, and what you learned from them), they will also help your readers remember the information you're sharing. 10. Give your posts some visual appeal Gone are the days when readers would put up with slabs of text on the screen. Including an image or two will immediately make your post seem more inviting. And a well-designed infographic will improve the chances of your post being shared. 11. Practice Writing is like any other activity. The more you practice, the better you'll become. So keep writing, and look back on posts you've written in the past to see how much you've improved. And make sure you read as well, as the two activities are closely linked. As Stephen King says, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot”. Did I miss anything? Is there anything you do to make your blog and your posts more compelling for your readers? Let us know in the comments.   Photo by Ben White on Unsplash The post 11 Quick Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Posts appeared first on ProBlogger.

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