Written on August 2nd, 2007 at 05:08 am by David Shawver
How to Find Fresh Expert Guest Posters for Your Blog
Here’s a quick tip that I’ve used a few times with success over the last couple of months on my photography blog.
Like most bloggers I find it difficult to sustain writing a new tip or tutorial for Digital Photography School everyday. I do want to provide readers with helpful tips on a daily basis but after a year of writing and in the busyness of life it can be difficult.
As a result, recently I’ve been approaching a few experts to contribute to the blog.
I’ve done this before on different blogs but what I’ve done differently this time is look offline for the experts to write guest posts for me.
Where have I found my guest bloggers?
Two places:
1. Magazines and Periodicals
I subscribe to a number of digital photography magazines to help me keep inspired and up to date on my niche. One of the things that struck me a couple of months ago was that all of these magazines regularly feature interviews and guest articles with Professional Photographers. Many of these photographers have their own websites (usually not blogs).
On a whim one day a recently I emailed two of the Pro Photographers featured in these magazines and introduced myself. I asked them if they’d be interested in writing a guest piece for DPS in return for a little publicity of their site.
2. Books
The other place I’ve found guest posters recently is in my local bookshop. No - they were not there browsing the digital photography section - they’d written the books there.
Again, just to see what would happen, I tracked down and emailed the author of one photography book asking if he’d be interested in a guest post in return for a little publicity for his book (with my own Amazon affiliate link).
Does it Work?
Before I tell you what happened as a result of my approaches - let me tell you why I suspected the technique might work….
- They’ve demonstrated their expertise and ability to communicate
- They’ve demonstrated their willingness to write for publicity already (in magazines)
- They have something to gain from participating (links to their sites/books)
What happened?
- One of the magazine authors emailed within an hour agreeing to write a post.
- One of the magazine authors didn’t reply for a month - but yesterday did and offered not only to write one guest post - but a series of 10 of them! He’s already written a few and we’ve agreed to release them 1 per week over the next few months.
- The book author agreed to a guest post and is interested in doing more (one per month) depending upon the results of the experiment.
I’m pretty happy with the results to this point. I’m yet to get any of the posts actually in my inbox so there jury is still out on it - but the initial response has been very positive and I’ve already approached a couple more people to participate.
I particularly like this strategy because it brings new faces to the blogosphere. Usually guest posts tend to come from other blogs in a niche. While this can be very effective - it can sometimes produce posts that are nothing too new. Bringing in authors from outside of the blogosphere can bring a new voice that your readers may not have heard before.
Time will tell how it works out - but it’s an experiment with promising results so far.
Written on August 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 am by David Shawver
Run a First Time Reader Audit on Your Blog
Today is Day 2 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge and today your task is to Do a First Time Reader Audit on your blog.
Get a friend or family member who has never read your blog before and sit them down at a computer.
Load your blog up and let your friend surf it.
Don’t talk to them as they do - but watch carefully how they use your blog.
- How do they navigate?
- Where do they click?
- What do they pause to read?
- What do they skip over?
Once they’ve surfed your blog ask them some questions about the experience.
- What were their first impressions?
- What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
- Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
- What did they ‘feel’ when they first arrived at your blog?
- What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
- What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
- What words would they use to describe the design?
- What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?
It’s amazing to see what you’ll learn by watching someone use your blog.
Once you’ve done your First Time Reader Audit come back to this post and let us know what you learned.
Written on August 1st, 2007 at 12:08 pm by David Shawver
Your Audience Doesn’t Know About You So Go and Find Them!
A quick quote from Chris Pirillo:
“Your audience is still trying to discover you, but you have to go to where THEY are and not expect them to come to you in any other way.”
Chris is talking here about video blogging and podcasting more than blogging but the same thing applies to blogging.
‘Build it and they will come’ doesn’t apply to blogging - you need to think about where your potential readers are already gathering and go interact with them there. Read more about this process of growing your blog’s readership by targeting readers.
Written on August 1st, 2007 at 03:08 am by David Shawver
Email a New Reader of Your Blog
Your task for this first day of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to email a new reader of your blog.
Create a great impression upon a brand new readers to your blog by choosing a commenter that is new and emailing them to thank them for their comment.
It might not sound like the most profound tip but I’ll let you in on a secret - this is one of the main strategies I used to build up enternetusers’s audience a couple of years ago.
What I found is that when you do it the chances of the readers that you email coming back to your blog again increases significantly. Get them to come back to your blog once and you increase the chances of them coming back again… and again….
So email a reader now, thank them for commenting and tell them that you’re looking forward to further interactions.
Make sure you include a link back to your blog so they know who you are and make the email relevant to their comment (ie answer a question they asked or add to their comment in some way). While there are some tools out there that do this automatically for you - the more personal you can make it the better.
This simple tip takes just a moment to do but can create a loyal long time reader. Do it at least once a day (or set yourself a higher target) and you’ll build your blog consistently over time.
Is this Tip Not SPECTACULAR Enough For You?
Last time I shared this tip with a fellow blogger they rolled their eyes at me and told me that they didn’t want to find just one more reader for their blog - they wanted hundreds or thousands.
This blogger failed to realize two things:
1. Loyal Readers Spread the Word - I’ve found that in many cases a single reader quickly becomes numerous loyal readers because they like to spread the word. They do this through their own blogs, word of mouth and social networking sites etc.
2. Loyal Readers Build Page Views - One loyal reader can potentially view your blog hundreds (if not thousands) of times. A daily visit from that reader for a year brings an extra 365 page views to your blog. Gain an extra loyal reader every day for a full year and the numbers start to add up.
While there’s nothing wrong with attracting thousands of new readers to your blog quickly - the majority of times they’ll come and go very quickly. Build loyal readers one by one on a daily basis and can be a lot more fruitful in the long run.
Written on August 1st, 2007 at 12:08 am by David Shawver
31 Days to Building a Better Blog - 2007
Do You want to Improve Your Blog with Some Daily blogging Tips? Read on to Find Out How
Two years ago today I launched a month long project here at enternetusers that I still get feedback about today. For the month of August in 2005 I ran something called - 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.
When I started out on this project I wasn’t quite sure how it would end up - but it ended up being largely two things:
1. A month long series of my own blog tips covering a wide array of topics
2. A month long Group Writing Project - where readers were encouraged to write and submit their own blog tips (written on their own blog but linked to from enternetusers)
You can see the results of the project at the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Summary Page where I list both my posts and those written by readers.
August is here again and after many requests to run something similar I’ve been planning another 31 day project and have decided to declare August 2007 another Build a Better Blog Month.
This time there will be a few changes - but the basics will remain the same (ie that I’ll be writing a tip per day for the whole month and that I’ll be linking to tips written by readers over the month).
The details:
My Posts
This year my posts will have a slightly different focus than last time we ran this project. Over this time I want to post 31 simple and practical tips - each with a task associated with them (homework). The tips will not be massive posts that will take you hours to reader and apply - rather they’ll be short, sharp tips that hopefully you’ll be able to spend a few minutes reading and then 10 or so minutes doing something about.
The Tips will not be about writing content (If you want a similar thing but with a writing content focus check out my very recent 7 Days to Rediscovering Your Blogging Groove project).
While writing content is absolutely central in creating a successful blog - I want to focus this next month more upon some tips around:
- finding readers
- building community/keeping readers
- monetizing a blog
My hope is that each day you’ll have something to read but then have an achievable task to do that over time will help improve your blog. Some of these tasks will be one off things and others will hopefully be skills and practices that you can revisit over the weeks and months that follow.
The tips that will come over the coming month will be basic enough for beginners to follow but also solid tips that should help any blog to grow.
To keep up to date with these posts you’ll need to either subscribe to enternetusers using our RSS feed or subscribe via Email for daily updates.
Your Posts
I want to put a call out for readers to write their own blog tips and to post them on their own blogs. Once you’ve written your post (note - I’m only accepting new posts, not previously written ones) please let me know via this submission form where you’ll be asked for your blog tip’s title/post name, the URL of the tip on your own blog as well as your own name (all of this will be published). You’ll also be asked for your email (not to be published) so that we can contact you if there’s a problem with the submission.
At least twice per week over the next month I’ll post a list of the blog tips that you have submitted so that everyone can learn from your experience and expertise. Do you have to link back to enternetusers with your post? No - but you’re more than welcome to if you would like your readers to find out what you’re participating in.
I will endeavor to find a prize for one lucky participant between now and the end of August - although the point of this isn’t really about competition or prizes - but is about us learning about blogging together.
Your posts can be on any topic that is relevant to helping other bloggers improve any aspect of their blogging (but please keep them to the theme of improving a blog). It could be on writing content, finding readers, SEO, blog design, monetizing a blog, blog marketing etc - as long as it’s a genuine tip I’ll include it. My hope is that you’ll particularly feel inspired to write practical tips that readers can apply to their blogging - to help them actually improve their blogs.
Please feel free to submit multiple tips - however please don’t go overboard (one per day as an absolute maximum). Please also keep them to being NEW POSTS.
Other Ways to Participate
If you don’t want to submit a post (or it’s not appropriate to write one on your blog) you can still participate in a few ways:
- ask a question that you’d like someone to write about in comments below this post
- submit a quick blog tip in the comments of this post (I’ll put together a compilation post of them later in the month)
- follow along with my tips and do the homework - let us know how you apply it in the comments of the posts that I write
- comment on the posts written (both here at enternetusers and those who submit posts) - leave your own suggestions and tips on the topics covered and share with us what you’re learning
- link up to the posts that you enjoy that are submitted by others
My hope with this project is that readers will not only come away from it having read some good blogging tips - but that they’ll come away with it with better blogs. If you’re anything like me you probably read a lot of great tips and theory about how to blog better - but only apply a small amount of it. This project is actually about building better blogs. The more you commit to apply what you read the better.
Remember that to keep up to date with these posts you’ll need to either subscribe to enternetusers using our RSS feed or subscribe via Email for daily updates.
The Project So Far
If you are looking for all of the posts so far then check out this page which has a good summary of it all.
Written on July 31st, 2007 at 08:07 pm by David Shawver
Targeting Your Reader’s Emotions
Rand has a great post over at SEOmoz on The Emotions that Make Us Link.
It’s one of those ‘why didn’t I think to write it’ posts.
I guess I’m linking up to it out of ‘envy’, mixed with a little ’sharing’.
PS: Actually Rand’s post reminds me a lot of a great book that I’ve been meaning to write about - Hot Button Marketing: Push the Emotional Buttons That Get People to Buy (aff).
In ‘Hot Buttons’ the author Barry Feig shares a variety of buttons that marketers use to make customers buy. What struck me in reading the book was how similar many of the ‘buttons’ were to engaging readers (whether to get a link as Rand writes about) or to get them to do other things (make a comment, buy a product, subscribe to your blog etc).
It’s an insightful book that might be worth the read if you want to explore the theme more.
Written on July 31st, 2007 at 06:07 am by David Shawver
Building Your Personal Brand - One ‘Straw’ at a Time
“Customers build an image of a brand as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon.” - Jeremy Bullmore
I heard the above quote from Bullmore a couple of months ago and since then have continued to mull it over as I think it applies to bloggers pretty well.
I received the following email from a reader last week (slightly modified for anonymity):
Hi Darren, I’ve just subscribed to your enternetusers blog after a strange line of coincidences that I thought you might like to know about.
I first heard of you via a family member who lives in Melbourne (I live in Sydney). They suggested I check out your church blog as we’re thinking about similar issues to you.
Three weeks later I saw an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that was a profile of your photography site.
A few days later I was searching Google as I was researching the purchase of a new camera and your site came up as the number 1 result.
About a month ago I stumbled upon your facebook profile as you are one of my friends friends. I added you as a friend.
Two weeks ago I saw one of your photography articles on the front page of Digg. I decided to subscribe to that blog that day as I thought it was a bit of a coincidence.
Last week I was chatting to a friend about my blog and he was telling me about some Aussie guy who was making a full time living from blogging. He gave me the URL of the site to check out. Imagine my surprise when I saw your photo on the site. Up until this I didn’t realize that you wrote about blogging.
After finding you in six different ways already I decided I should probably subscribe to your blog.
PS: Is there anywhere else that I’m likely to bump into you? You seem to be everywhere! For example I just discovered your Flickr account and Myspace page. Where else are you?
It strikes me that Jeremy Bullmore’s quote has a lot of truth to it and in this case it’s pretty well illustrated.
Every online interaction you have, every social networking or bookmarking site that you participate in, every comment that you leave on other blogs, every interview that you do, every decision you make about your own blog, every comment that you leave on a forum, every guest post that you write on another blog - all of these things (and more) add to your own personal brand.
Combined these ’straws’ build an overall brand that people assemble in their own time, order and way.
Written on July 31st, 2007 at 12:07 am by David Shawver
The Power of Getting Readers in the Door at Amazon
Two weeks ago I started an experiment over at Digital Photography School which I think highlights the power of getting people in the door at Amazon using their affiliate program.
The experiment centered around a review that I wrote of a book - Complete Digital Photography.
The book is a brand new release (an updated version of an old book) which I ordered the day it came out so that I could be one of the first reviews on the web going around of it. Having owned a previous edition of the book I knew it was likely to be a good one - and it was.
In the review I linked back to Amazon where readers could get their own copy. The link that I used was my affiliate link and it contained a ‘tracking ID’ which enables me to track what those clicking on the link end up purchasing at Amazon. After two weeks the sales are continuing to come in but I think the initial results give some insights into what people do when following such links.
Here’s a summary of what people bought after clicking the link in this review post:
We’ll start with the books mentioned in the review:
- Complete Digital Photography - (the book reviewed) - 47 copies (not bad considering that it’s not the cheapest book going around)
- The Digital Photography Book - 8 copies (another book that I mentioned in the review)
- Understanding Exposure - 7 copies (a third book mentioned in the review)
OK - so no surprises so far - but what interested me most was in what else people bought - items NOT mentioned in the review:
- Exposure and Lighting for Digital Photographers Only - 3 copies
- A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers
- Schoolgirl Cotton Poplin tie front shirt and Stretch Plaid pleated skirt
- Champion Men’s Double Dry Short Sleeve T-Shirt, White, Large
- Grosse Pointe Blank (DVD)
- Songs of Faith and Devotion (CD)
- Epson Perfection V100 Photo Scanner
- Canon Digital Rebel XTi 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera (commission of $53.92)
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras (commission of $63.16)
- Nintendo Wii Remote Control Skin - Pink
- Charbroil Chili Pepper Roaster (3 sold)
- Wheat Germ Daily Shampoo 250ml by Colorist Christophe Robin
- Fischer & Wieser Mango Ginger Habanero Sauce, 21 Ounce Bottles (Pack of 6)
- Popular Mechanics [2-year subscription]
- Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Mac] (commission - $50.03)
The list goes on with 160 individual items shipped so far - the commissions for which total around $500 USD.
The point is that of the 160 items shipped only 62 of were for the three books actually mentioned in the review (totaling around $130) - a further 98 items that were not mentioned in the review have been shipped (totaling around $370 in commission).
You can see that some of the other books purchased were photography related - but the majority of purchases made have nothing to do with photography and many are not books at all.
These purchases came when people clicked through on the links and then surfed on within Amazon to make other purchases. Some would have bought the book mentioned AND other items while others would have bought the book alone, and others still wouldn’t have bought the book but while at Amazon would have picked up something else.
The Lesson for Today
Get people in the door at Amazon with your affiliate link and while the product you’re linking to has a decent chance of earning you a commission, there’s every likelihood that the real earnings will come from other products. The key is to get people in the door and let Amazon’s system do it’s thing.
Read more about the Amazon Affiliate Program at 9 Reasons Why I AM an Amazon Affiliate.
Written on July 30th, 2007 at 11:07 am by David Shawver
Why is my Technorati Authority Falling?
Help - my Technorati Authority Ranking is decreasing - how can this be - I know I’m getting new links but the number is decreasing!?
This is a question that I’m asked quite frequently by readers and the answer is pretty simple.
No you’re not being penalized by Technorati and no the blogs that once linked to you are not being deleted….
The answer to this problem is that the incoming links to your blog are simply getting old.
Technorati calculates how many links are pointing at your blog from other blogs (your blog’s ‘authority’) based upon the last 6 months activity. This means that a blog that links to you today will be counted - but in 180 days it will not be counted any more.
This is how Technorati attempts to keep things fresh and not disadvantage new blogs entering he blogosphere. If they didn’t do it, old blogs would have an unfair advantage in terms of overall rankings. It means that all blogs need to keep Active in order to maintain their ‘authority’.
Written on July 30th, 2007 at 12:07 am by David Shawver
Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Your Blog
Aaron Brazell has put together a post Guerrilla Marketing Techniques that Anyone Can Do which have some less common tactics to get word out about your blog.
I doubt any of them will bring in a deluge of traffic - however sometimes it’s the small ways of building traffic that add up to make a blog popular.
What small and less common techniques do you use to build traffic to your blog?
An Example of a Guerrilla Marketing Tactic
I met a blogger recently who had a blog with a very local focus. His Guerrilla Marketing Tactic was to do a deal with three internet cafes in his area to make his blog the home page on all of the computers. In return for this he gave them some free advertising on his blog. The same blogger made a similar deal with the local library who also made his blog the home page of their public internet computers. This worked particularly well for him as his blog was on his local area.
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