“The Undead Guide to Killing Your Blog” plus 1 more

Posted: 21 Sep 2012 01:08 PM PDT

This guest post is by Clay Morgan of ClayWrites.com.

Are you unintentionally killing your blog?

When I started my first blog in early 2009, I knew absolutely nothing. I just thought a website might give me a place to write some stuff. And my complete lack of planning and strategy showed.

So a few months ago, I killed my old blog and started over.

It was a conscious decision and a good one at that. Lessons from past mistakes are so helpful. I’ve still got a ton to learn but I’m enjoying my new life as a blogger.

This post is about many of the mistakes we make that kill us in this medium. We can scare readers and potential subscribers off in a number of ways, most of which I am unfortunately familiar with.

Blogs with poor design and execution can turn ugly in a hurry—they’re more frightening than a horror movie, you could say. I actually like scary monsters, but I don’t want to come off as one on the internet.

I’ve been preoccupied with the undead for a while now because a) I’ve liked zombies ever since I saw Scooby-Doo and Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a kid and b) my new book called Undead just came out.

You may notice a bit of a theme in this list of six personalities to take on if you want to fail at blogging.

The vampire blogger

Vampire bloggers suck the life out of everyone they encounter. They take but rarely give, and offer little value—let alone anything free.

We all know self-promotion is part of the blogging game. As a new author I’m more painfully aware than ever of the struggle to balance the need for self-promotion with the importance of providing value for readers. But if you take a selfish, “me-first” attitude, then your online career will be in its twilight faster than Dracula can flap his cape.

The zombie blogger

The content of zombie bloggers is stale and rotting. In other words, nothing is ever updated or even really analyzed. Do you recognize your evergreen content and touch it up to maximize reader experience?

Some bloggers seem to crave 404 errors like the living dead crave brains. Don’t let your site fester! Get that thing checked out and always be tweaking and studying your results.

The ghost blogger

Ooh, those spooky ghost bloggers can hardly even be found anywhere on their own site. I’m not talking about ghost writers who write blogs under other names, but people who fail to maintain any real presence on their own sites.

New posts are residue that sometimes appears but traces of who made them are hard to find. Ghost bloggers don’t even seem to appear with substantive feedback of any kind in the comment sections. Not that a response to every comment is necessary, but communities eventually need a leader to rally around.

Visitors to your site shouldn’t feel like they’re walking around a haunted house calling out to see if anyone is there, but only hearing creaking sounds with every click. Stay on a consistent posting schedule, because if you vanish, so will your readers.

The mummy blogger

Mummy bloggers should not be confused with mom bloggers who are generally happier than the undead, and live much cleaner linens.

Ancient Egyptians removed most organs from the dead during the embalming process but they always left the heart, which they considered to be a person’s core, emotional seat, and mind.

Has the heart been ripped out of your blog? Does passion come through in what you do? The easiest way to be boring is to be bored. If you don’t care, then neither will readers.

The werewolf blogger

Aooowwwwoooo! Since we just mentioned passion and emotion, make sure that you don’t go to the other extreme, act like a werewolf, and surrender to a raw, unchecked appetite.

Werewolf bloggers hold nothing back, even when they really should. The web is filled with tales of meltdowns by bloggers, authors, customer service reps and more that buried their reputations this way. Baring your fangs and snapping at people is never good. If someone offends you or your beliefs it’s critical to react in the right way.

The Frankenstein blogger

Frankenstein bloggers just piece together content without any continuity. I was guilty of this for a long time myself.

These bloggers never think about branding. My current tagline of “pop culture, history, & the meaning of life” might still not seemed focused enough for some, but it’s exactly who I am, and describes what I will always write about whether in future blog posts or books.

Frankenstein bloggers are also responsible for those unsightly content-farm sites with keyword-bloated, rambling posts buried amidst a graveyard of useless and broken ads. In other words, it ain’t so pretty. Keep that up and readers will come after you with pitch forks and torches!

The last thing we want to do is run off visitors who take the time to read our work. Learn from the mistakes of undead bloggers and inject new life into your blog.

Can you see yourself in any of these descriptions? Let your skeletons out of the closet in the comments!

Clay Morgan (@UndeadClay) is a writer, teacher, and speaker from Pittsburgh, PA who blogs about pop culture, history, and the meaning of life at ClayWrites.com. He is the author of Undead: Revived, Resuscitated, and Reborn about zombies, God, and what it means to be truly alive.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Undead Guide to Killing Your Blog

The Blogger’s Dilemma: When Is it Time to Start Paying for Exposure?

Posted: 21 Sep 2012 07:00 AM PDT

This guest post is by Amanda DiSilvestro of Highervisibility.

When you're a blogger, you want to gain as much visibility and authority as you can, and featuring your content on more established websites is one way to make this happen.

Guest posting is becoming more popular, and it works well for all parties involved: the editor gets a great piece of content and someone new promoting the site, and the writer gets to put his/her content in front of a well-established audience and reaps many SEO benefits.

So what's the issue?

More and more blogs are beginning to ask writers to pay to post content on their pages. This typically occurs for a few different reasons:

The site is usually very authoritative, meaning it has a high PR and a good readership. This means that any link the owners put on their website is providing the guest poster with significantly better SEO and visibility benefits than links from lesser-known sites.
Sites that ask a writer to pay to post an article likely have a large influx of articles every day. Everyone wants a piece of the exposure, so asking writers to pay will weed out those who aren’t serious.
Asking writers to pay means more income for the website.

Being that there are still many websites across the Internet that are thrilled to meet with a guest contributor, a blogger has to stop and ask whether or not paying to publish a guest post on a particular site is worthwhile.

How to make sure paying for the spotlight is worth it

In some instances, paying to put your content on a very authoritative site is going to be worth it in the long run. Sites that ask you to pay to feature your content typically will promote your content to thousands, which will help you establish a name for your brand.

There are a few things you should do to make sure that payment is worth it in these situations:

Ask the site owners what they can do for you: If a site is asking you to pay, make sure its owners are willing to help promote your article. Ask them if they will be sending your article to their subscribers, how and where they’ll share your article on social media, and if they are willing to continue to help you grow your brand in the future.
Analyze the site on your own: Even if a site tells you they are going to do all of these great things, check up on them yourself. Make sure the site has a great PR, check to see the average number of tweets and comments that an article on the site receives, and talk with others who have contributed there.
Decide whether or not you really need a quick fix: Getting your content on an authoritative site should, in theory, speed up your brand management process. However, it's important to consider whether or not you really need this quick fix. There are many websites that have grown successful without paying to contribute their content, although it may have taken them longer (and in some cases, taken more work).

It's also important to realize that, in Google’s eyes, paying to guest post isn't quite the taboo that paying for other backlinks is. Google looks down upon sites that pay for links because the search engine likes to see backlinks generated organically. In the case of a paid guest post placement, the links are organic and they work in the same way that links in any other guest post would.

When to just say “No” to paying for exposure

Naturally, you should decide against paying to place your guest content if you find negative responses to any of the points discussed above.

However, the biggest thing to keep in mind is whether or not you have the power and resources to really get the same traction without paying for placement.

It is entirely possible to post your content on very authoritative websites that don’t charge you to submit, but it will take a lot of time and effort. Several bigwig sites have declined my writing, but eventually I got it right and was able to get a link back to my blog from those sites.

In my opinion, you should never have to pay to place your content on a blog if you have the time to really work hard to find other alternatives.

Have you ever paid to place your content on a blog? Did you feel the benefits were worth the money? Let us know your story in the comments below.

Amanda DiSilvestro is a graduate of Illinois State University. Although she graduated with an English Education degree, she found herself working as a full-time blogger at Highervisibility, nationally recognized as one of the best seo firms in the country. Connect with HigherVisibility on Twitter to learn more!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Blogger's Dilemma: When Is it Time to Start Paying for Exposure?