ProBlogger: How Inspiring Your Readers Drives them to Search for Information (and Interact)

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ProBlogger: How Inspiring Your Readers Drives them to Search for Information (and Interact)

How Inspiring Your Readers Drives them to Search for Information (and Interact)

Posted: 25 Aug 2021 07:08 AM PDT

The post How Inspiring Your Readers Drives them to Search for Information (and Interact) appeared first on ProBlogger.

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

One of my mantras that I’ve shared many times when speaking, and here in posts on ProBlogger, is to build blogs that:

Inspire
Inform
Interact

My experience is that a blog can really come alive when you not only provide readers with information, but also give them inspiration and a place to interact with one another.

One of the first times I discovered the secret of inspirational content was on Digital Photography School (my main blog) when I started posting image collections of great images that I’d found on Flickr.

Up until this time, most of the posts on dPS would have fitted into the “informational” category of posts—they were largely tutorials and how-to type content.

These new inspirational image collection posts were simply collections of images on a theme, with little written content.

For example, here’s one of the early ones—7 Clone Shots. At the time, thise was widely linked to around the web and rose to the front pages of social bookmarking sites like Digg.

These inspirational image posts really resonated with readers, and were the kind of content people wanted to share. They drove large amounts of traffic, so I built them into dPS’s regular posting schedule.

Inspiration leads people to search for information

After a while, I discovered that besides the traffic that they drove to the site these inspiration posts had another impact: they drove people to our “information” posts.

I noticed this one day after posting an image collection of 15 Long Exposure Images. Not only did the post attract a lot of traffic, but I noticed another post on our site was also getting quite a bit of traffic that day—a post I’d written a year earlier called How to Shoot Light Trails.

This second post was not linked to from the image collection post. What I discovered was that people arriving on that post were so inspired by the images in the image collection that they were using our search tool t find information on shooting long exposures—that’s how they were finding the earlier post.

What was happening here was something I’ve seen repeated many times since—people’s inspiration was driving them to seek information.

I also realised that there were other relevant tutorials in our archives that readers inspired by that image collection might find useful, so I updated the image collection post with further relevant reading (as you can see in the screen shot below).

I tracked the flow on to these information posts over the coming days and saw a significant clickthrough rate to these articles.

I also noticed quite a few extra subscribers to the site that week—I guess the combination of inspiration and information hit the mark.

These days I still use this same technique (in fact we’ve done these image collections many times (here are just a few more examples). Just last week I published 27 Great Panning Images [and How to Take Them].

You’ll notice in the screen shot above that I started the post with an image and then introduced the topic and included links to two previous panning tutorials. I then have a section at the bottom of the post which mentions the further reading tutorials again.

Once again, this week I can see a heightened level of activity on those older tutorials as a result of those links.

Here’s a chart showing the traffic to the Mastering Panning article mentioned in the image collection:

That post (which was published back in 2009) usually gets 150-200 visitors a day, but this week, after I linked to it from our image collection, more than 7000 visitors viewed it in one day. The other post mentioned in the image collection saw a similar spike in traffic.

Inspiration and information leads people to interaction

The last part of this journey of discovery has been to complete the “inspire, inform, and interact” mantra. In the past few months I’d started to follow up each of these inspiration image collections with a post a few days later that invites readers to interact around that topic by doing some homework.

We run these “challenge” posts every weekend to get our readers interacting with us, but I hadn’t not previously made the collections tie in with these interactive posts.

Here’s an example of how I recently tied them together.

First I led off with an image collection—25 Dreamy Images Shot Wide Open (featuring some beautiful images shot with wide open apertures).
This image collection linked to information posts on the topic of Aperture, as well as other relevant tutorials.
A few days later, I ran a ‘Wide Open’ Photography Challenge. This challenge linked back to the image collection as well as the tutorials (and also included a few more inspirational images as examples).

The take-up of our photography challenge that weekend was up on normal figures and it drove a heap of traffic backwards and forth around the site to the image collection and tutorials.

It also seemed to create momentum as the topic built over the week. I had a number of readers indicate that by seeing the inspirational images, reading the tutorials, and then being given an assignment to go away and do, they found themselves really driven to take what they were learning and implement it.

How could something like this work on your blog? Do you inspire, inform, and interact with your readers? I’m intrigued to hear if you use a similar strategy.

The post How Inspiring Your Readers Drives them to Search for Information (and Interact) appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: Create a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income

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ProBlogger: Create a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income

Create a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income

Posted: 19 Aug 2021 05:00 AM PDT

The post Create a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income appeared first on ProBlogger.

Create a resources page to grow your traffic and income

How many useful resources have you talked about in your blog posts over the years? Chances are you've mentioned dozens of them – tools, books, articles, websites, and so on.

So wouldn't it be nice if your readers could find links to them all on one page instead of having to trawl through your archives to find them?

Well, that's what I'll be talking about this week – creating a resources page for your blog.

The anatomy of a resources page

I first created the resources page on ProBlogger back in 2008 to serve my readers and answer questions they often asked, such as:

"What hosting should I use?"
"What domain service is the best?"
"What blogging platform is best?"
"What tools should I be using on my blog?"
"What are the best services to start monetizing my blog?"

It was pretty easy to set up. It's just a standard WordPress page with links to all the tools and services I recommend. Since then I've broken them up into different categories, and included a bit of a spiel about each one.

I've also added links to articles that are related to certain sections such as Choosing a Blog Platform, How to Start a Blog and How I Make Money Blogging.

Why I created it

As I said earlier, I created the resources page to serve my readers and answer their questions. Adding a link to it in my navigation area reduced the number of emails I was getting significantly. And when I did get an email about something I'd included on the resource page, I could just send them a "You might find this page useful" message as a reply.

But that wasn't all it did for me.

Some of the links are affiliate links, and over the years I've earned a nice income from that page. Some bloggers have even told me their resources page is the main source of income on their blog. Just keep in mind that if you have too many affiliate links then your readers might think you've created it for yourself rather than for them. (I'll talk more about this soon.)

It also ranks quite well for 'blogging resources' in search engines, and so brings in quite a bit of traffic. It's also something that does really well on social media when I share it.

An embarrassing story

My resources page has served me well over the years. But there was a time when it was probably doing me more harm than good.

After creating the page and adding all the links, I didn't touch it again for six years. And so when I finally decided to update it, I found a lot of the links were broken. In some cases the tools and services didn't exist anymore, while in others they'd been taken over by dubious operators.

I also had links to sites I no longer recommend.

So when you create your own resources page, make sure you check it regularly to make sure you're linking to the right content.

How to create your own resources page

Ideally your resources page should be quite comprehensive so it's as useful as possible to your readers. But you don't have to wait until you have pages of links before you create it. When I finally got around to updating mine, I added new resources every week or so for a year.

And before you say, "I can't create a resources page because I don't use any tools," there are plenty of other resources you can list, such as:

services you recommend
learning resources you've used
books and ebooks you like
training courses you've taken
other blogs you find useful
forums you visit frequently.

And if you've created any opt-in incentives, you could add links to those as well.

About those affiliate links

While it's nice to earn a bit of cash from your resources page through affiliate links, I suggest using them sparingly. Your recommendations should be genuine, useful, and comprehensive – not just those linked to an affiliate program of some sort.

And as I said earlier, your readers will also appreciate the fact you've created it to help them rather than just to earn some money.

If you do have affiliate links in your resources page, you should make that clear. For example, here's what I have on my own resources page:

Note: Many of the links on this page are affiliate links, and will earn ProBlogger a small commission if you sign up to the services. This adds no cost to you but helps keep ProBlogger sustainable. It's also worth noting that almost all resources mentioned on this page are resources that I'm a signed up, paid up and regular user of.

Most of my readers are okay with that, especially when I mention that I pay for and use many of the products I recommend.

Rather than having just a bunch of recommendations, I suggest telling your readers why you recommend each one. It doesn't need to be an essay. All you need is a short sentence about why you recommend it, who it might be relevant for, and how you found it useful.

You may even want to approach some of the companies you're linking to and ask if they can put a deal together for your readers. That way your readers can get not just the product you recommend but also a discount or some sort of a bonus.

Time to spread the word

Once you've created your resources page and added some useful content, it's time to tell everyone it's there.

Start by linking to it from as many areas on your blog as you can. Add it to your navigation area, your menu, your sidebar, and anywhere else that's prominent.

You might also want to add it as a call to action at the bottom of your blog posts (e.g. just above your comments section).

Think about what you should call it. Do you think anyone looking for your content would type 'resources page' into Google? Perhaps 'Tools and services' might be a better title, especially if they're mostly what you're linking to.

While your resources page will be mostly text, that doesn't mean it needs to be boring. Try to think of what images you could add to make it more appealing. Perhaps you could add smalls screenshot of the tools, or covers of the books you recommend.

And finally, make sure you keep it up to date. Believe me, you don't want it to become outdated. Set up an alert to check it every month or so. You could even add it to your editorial calendar so you don't forget.

Over to you

I hope I've convinced you that creating a resources page for your blog is a good idea. And if you've got one already, I hope I've convinced you that waiting six years to update it is a very bad idea.

Let us know about your resources page – what it's called, what's on it, and how it's doing in terms of visitors and traffic.

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash

The post Create a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: Optimize Your Social Media For More Traffic and Engagement

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ProBlogger: Optimize Your Social Media For More Traffic and Engagement

Optimize Your Social Media For More Traffic and Engagement

Posted: 12 Aug 2021 05:00 AM PDT

The post Optimize Your Social Media For More Traffic and Engagement appeared first on ProBlogger.

This post is based on episode 73 of the ProBlogger podcast.

For the past month or so I've been talking a lot about email lists – how to grow them, incentives you can use to grow them, and even how to take advantage of them through autoresponders.

But this week I want to talk about social media, and how you can use it to get even more traffic and engagement on your blog.

The power of social media

As I keep saying, email is still the best way to connect with your readers. But if you've set up your email list and are sending out newsletters regularly, it's worth turning your attention to social media. It's a great secondary point of connection, and can help you drive traffic to your blog and connect with your readers even more. (It also helps you connect with those readers who aren't interested in email.)

But the social media space is constantly changing – not just in the platforms available but also in the way they work. I'm sure Facebook changes its algorithms whenever the wind changes direction. And unless you're getting results, taking the time to create and publish social media can feel like a complete waste of time.

So it's worth taking a look at how you're using social and what you might need to change. Even if your results don't change, you might find a way to create and publish your posts more quickly. And as we all know, time is one of most precious resources.

A change in direction

Back in 2014 I looked at how I was using social media and realized I needed to make some changes, particularly with my ProBlogger accounts.

For a start, they were quite boring to look at. Back then the bulk of my tweets were about new jobs on our job board and the latest posts on the site. And I didn't include visuals with any of them.

Another other problem was that I really wasn't offering much to my followers. Most of my posts were focused on selling. There were no links to evergreen content. I wasn't promoting my new content very well either, and I was posting quite sporadically.

A big reason for all of this is that I was spending a lot of time managing the social media accounts for Digital Photography School (my main blog). I didn't have any systems or routines in place to feed any of my accounts, and so it came down to how much time I had and where I spent it.

And even if I could spend 10 or 15 minutes creating a visual to go with my post, it seemed like a waste of time. In a matter of minutes my post would disappear, never to be seen again.

But by the following year I'd completely changed my approach to social media. And based on the feedback I started getting from my readers and followers, I was getting the results I was hoping for. People would come up to me at conferences and say, "Hey, I've noticed something's different about ProBlogger. It seems more professional. It seems like you're doing more stuff."

So what changed? Well, a lot. But rather than list everything I did in that 12 months, I'm going to give you four questions that I want you answer.

Why? Because answering these questions will give you a framework for auditing your social media – no matter what platform you're using.

1. Where are my readers?

Do any of your readers hang out on social media? If so, where do they hang out?

There's no point in hanging out on Twitter if all your readers prefer using Facebook. Yes, you might be able to attract new readers there. But you won't be able to provide your current readers with any real value, because none of them will see your posts.

So find out what social media platforms they use, and whether they prefer one over the others.

How? By asking.

Whenever you chat with a reader, ask what social media platforms they use. Add the question to your newsletter. Include a question like "What social networks are you using?" in your next survey. You could even ask other bloggers in your niche what social media platforms they tend to focus on.

For platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, you might want to go a little deeper. Are there any particular groups they like hanging out in? And how do they feel about live streaming? Some of your readers might prefer to sit back and listen rather than having to read.

Which brings me to my next question…

2. What type of content do my readers respond to?

Take a look at the posts that got lots or shares, retweets, comments, etc. Do they have anything in common – images, video, quotes, links – that your readers seem to prefer?

When I analyzed my ProBlogger, I found my readers responded very positively to visual content. On our Twitter account, any tweet with a nice graphic or image got retweeted and shared five times as much as text-only content. And it was the same on our Facebook page.

Live content also seemed to have a big impact on our readers. While those Twitter chats, Facebook Lives and webinars weren't shared a lot, the readers who joined me in those interactions became incredibly engaged. So much so that they became advocates for the blog.

On Twitter, I found that any posts where I shared the slides from a talk I was giving did really well. These scored on two fronts – they were visual, and included good information.

So take a look at the kind of content you (and others in your niche) get good responses from, and use it to help you decide what to post in future.

3. How often (and at what times) do I want to post?

To answer this question you'll need to take a few things into account:

The platforms you use
how many social media accounts you have on each one
how much time you can spend engaging on them
how much content your readers want.

With these in mind, create a calendar and start mapping out when you want to share content on each platform. Do you want to tweet five times a day? Ten? Fifty? It's totally up to you. And while you may not need (or even want) to post on Facebook 50 times a day, you should come up with a number that you're happy with.

Once you've decided how many times you'll post each week, and slotted the times into your calendar, it's time to think about what you'll be posting. And this is where your answers to the second question will come in handy, because you can start slotting the types of content that readers like. You might decide to post a quote each morning to get people thinking, and perhaps something funny on Friday afternoons to get them ready for the weekend. On Sundays you might share links to longer content so they read it while sipping a cup of coffee.

Of course, the more content you want to post, the more work it's going to take. Which is why you need to ask yourself one more question.

4. What's the most efficient way to post my content?

If you're just starting out on social media, you might be able to get by with creating all your posts manually. But as your blog becomes more popular, and your readership grows, you may find it more and more difficult to find the time.

So what can you do?

One option is to outsource the work to someone else. Tell them what you want to post, and the content you want to link to, and have them create and publish the posts. This can be a great option if you know what visuals you want, but don't have the skills to create them yourself.

However, you may need to do a trial run before handing your social media posts over to someone else. If your is heavily tied to you (as ProBlogger is to me), then you need someone who can write posts in the same voice you use for everything else.

Another option is to take advantage of some of the tools that are available. We use CoSchedule – an editorial calendar that has some amazing tools for scheduling social media posts. Whenever we publish a new post on ProBlogger we also schedule five Twitter posts and four Facebook posts to go out at various times over four weeks.

Final thoughts

Before I wrap up this week's post, I need to remind you that the changes I've talked about in this post took me a year to make. Auditing your social media platforms and making the changes isn't something you can achieve overnight.

And it's not something you can do once and then forget about either. As I said, these platforms are constantly changing, and what worked a year ago might not be working as well now. You need to keep doing it, though how often is something you'll need to work out for yourself.

So are you ready to optimize your social media? Let us know in the comments.

Photo by Carlos Alberto Gómez Iñiguez on Unsplash

The post Optimize Your Social Media For More Traffic and Engagement appeared first on ProBlogger.

ProBlogger: How to Make Money on Your Blog by Becoming an Affiliate

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ProBlogger: How to Make Money on Your Blog by Becoming an Affiliate

How to Make Money on Your Blog by Becoming an Affiliate

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 05:30 AM PDT

The post How to Make Money on Your Blog by Becoming an Affiliate appeared first on ProBlogger.

How to make money on your blog by becoming an affiliate

This post is based on episode 72 of the ProBlogger podcast.

We often talk about making money by creating products and selling them on your blog. But you can also make good money helping other people sell their products by coming an affiliate.

How good? Well, over the years I've earned more than half a million dollars from affiliate marketing through Amazon's affiliate program.

And the best thing? I didn't need to spend hours deciding what products to sell. Someone had already done that for me.

Cashing in on bestsellers

A while back I found myself sitting in a bookshop waiting for my partner to finish her shopping. And I watched the customers walking and out I noticed something interesting.

Nearly everyone who walked in went straight to the wall of 'Top 20' books, grabbed one, paid for it, and walked out.

I'm not sure why it was happening. Maybe these people were getting in the latest trend. Maybe they didn't want to miss out. Or maybe they just wanted something to read, and figured a best-selling book would be a safe bet.

And it got me wondering.

Could I do something similar on my blog?

From bookshop to blog

At this point I was already using Amazon affiliate links on Digital Photography School. But after seeing so many people buy one of these Top 20 books, I decided to create a bestseller list of my own.

I created a post that ranked the photography books my readers had bought through my Amazon affiliate links in the previous year. (I didn't have a lot of commissions back then, and so needed a year's worth of data to create my list.)

It was a pretty simple post – a short introduction (where I made it clear I was an Amazon affiliate), followed be the ten bestselling photography books people had bought through the site.

And how did it go?

Well, not surprisingly my affiliate income went up. It doubled in the first week, and doubled again the next. And it wasn't just the books that people were buying. They were also buying other things while they were on the Amazon site.

What did surprise me was the level of discussion the post generated. People began debating why particular books were on my list, and suggesting other books worth buying.

More bestsellers

Of course, photographers don't just buy books. They buy cameras, lenses, tripods, lights, and dozens of other products.

And I've probably created a bestseller list for every one of them.

I usually run them two or three times a year, often as a series of posts. I'll start with a post that says something like, "This week we'll be looking at some of the most popular products according to our readers". And then during the week I'll include a few 'bestseller' posts, along with other other posts for those who aren't interested in buying anything.

These posts always do well. People click through from our newsletter and our social media posts, particularly on Facebook.

No data? No problem.

Even if you're not an Amazon affiliate, or haven't been one long enough to have the data you need, you can still earn money through affiliate links.

Amazon isn't the only online store that has an affiliate program. I'm also an affiliate for B&H Photo Video, and so I could just as easily create a bestseller list based on the data I get from them. There are also providers such as Ultimate Bundles that let you earn money by selling bundles of ebooks and ecourses.

And if you're an Amazon affiliate but don't have many sales, you can still create a bestseller list. Amazon creates its own bestseller lists based on sales, and there's nothing stopping you from using their list to create your own.

If you’re selling your own products on your site (such as ebooks), you could create a bestseller list for them. Your readers will probably appreciate it, as it will help them decide what to buy on your site. You could even offer a coupon code for the biggest bestseller for a limited time.

Over to you

As I said, I’ve earned more than half a million dollars from being an affiliate. And while I can’t guarantee you’ll make that kind of money, I hope the tips I’ve given you will help you earn money on your own blog.

Want to know more about affiliate marketing and other ways to earn money from blogging? Then check out our Four Pillars of Blogging: Make Money Course.

But in the meantime, see how much money you can make by creating a bestseller list of your own.

And let us know how you go.

Photo by Brittany Bendabout on Unsplash

The post How to Make Money on Your Blog by Becoming an Affiliate appeared first on ProBlogger.

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