This is my second attempt at writing this post this evening. The first was rudely interrupted by a power cut. I think it’s time to thinking about a UPS and a more robust backup solution…
So it’s time for blogs of the week again! Your weekly fix of what’s hot in the Internet Marketing world and who we should be keeping an eye on. To be honest, I’ve found it harder than normal this week to pick good quality posts out of the many that I’ve read, although I think you’ll enjoy the five that I’ve found.
Where Will You Be In 100 Days? – This is an interesting and very timely post from Connie Ragen Green where she’s challenging people to drive their businesses forward over the next 100 days. It’s interesting to me both because it coincides with a push to deliver better content on my blogs, and also as she mentions mentoring. I’ve been asked in the past to mentor several people and have always said yes. In each case I’ve requested that they perform a few simple tasks so that I can be certain that they’re serious and I usually never hear from them again. That changed this week when I was overwhelmed by the sincerity and commitment shown to me by somebody looking for a mentor. I won’t mention him by name here, but I know that he’ll be making a name for himself in the very near future!
Ebooks And Affiliate Marketing Go Hand In Hand – I’m a big believer that we can all have whatever we want in life as long as we’re willing to put in the work. It doesn’t have to be hard though, as Connie Ragen Green explains in this great post.
How To Write A Killer Blog Post – This is a great guest post on SearchEngineJournal.com. We all like to think that we write great posts, but if we’re honest with ourselves we often could do better. This post breaks everything down into the component parts that are important and I believe we can all learn from this. Check it out!
Remember These 5 Copywriting Formulas – Michel Fortin is an incredible copywriter so when he gives copywriting tips, I listen, and I would recommend that you do too! In this post, he pulls together 5 top techniques for writing great copy, all of which link onto more comprehensive content. I’ve printed it all out and added it to my copywriting file before he realizes what he’s giving us and starts charging for this great content.
SEO being trademarked, AGAIN!?! – Finally, this post caught my eye yesterday. Apparently, someone’s actually trying to trademark the term “SEO”, even though he seems vague about what SEO really means. Have a read – it’s actually quite funny!
Do you find these weekly posts valuable? Please let me know in the comments below.
As bloggers, we’re constantly looking for inspiration and new ideas to write about. Sometimes we’ll find things present themselves to us naturally and other times we have to go searching. To be honest, writing to a calendar is great as the regularity and organization associated with it make it easier to come up with ideas. In fact, I have some great ideas for several series that I want to write, but I’m struggling to fit them in now over the next few months as I’ve got so many other posts planned!
For my own writing, like I said, a calendar is probably my most valuable tool as it helps me to see what’s going on and what’s planned. These events often lead to great inspiration for what to write about when applicable, but often we’re still left staring at a blank screen.
Another idea that I got from Copyblogger is to look to quotations and see how we can work our posts around them (see the full article here).
However, my favorite approach is to be more scientific. I start by thinking about keywords that I want to write about. I have a list of keywords and themes that I’m working on getting my blog known for and these can often inspire posts all by themselves. Other times, I’ll go into EzineArticles and search using my keywords. This invariably leads me to more content that I’ll ever need – all with great titles that I can use for inspiration.
Just to be clear, I don’t use the articles from EzineArticles (although I may read a few if I’m having a really bad case of writer’s lock) I simply use them for ideas. That way, my articles should always be fresh and in my own voice.
Other ways that you could apply this idea would be to use other sites such as YouTube or even something more obscure like Twitter. The trick is to get creative about how you find your inspiration, and your writing will reflect that creativity.
I’d love to read about how you come up with ideas for your own blog. Please share in the comments and let’s see how many other creative techniques we can come up with!
There were a lot of great blog posts out there this week on the subject of Internet Marketing so rather than share a whole list, I’ve been selective and brought you just my top five.
Is Your Blog Really Sick? 8 Health Check Points – I’ve mentioned Patsi’s blog in the past and it says something about the quality (and abundance) of her writing that I’m continually including her posts in my blogs of the week. In this post, she’s taking a quirky look at how we can measure the ‘health’ of our blogs. I can certainly relate to some of the sicknesses that she’s alluding to with my own blog and I’m sure that you’ll relate to it too!
One Foolproof Trick to Blast Writer’s Block – As bloggers, we all know what it’s like to sit in front of the computer screen and have nothing to write about. I’ve partly overcome this by scheduling my blog posts in advance (see ‘Organize Your Blogging‘) but even this strategy leaves us vulnerable to the dreaded writer’s block.
Another of my strategies is to regularly read blogs related to copywriting such as the excellent Copyblogger. In this guest post, James Chartrand (who’s actually a woman) shares a great strategy for beating writer’s block that I’ll be putting to good use in future posts.
Create A Blogging Strategy & Avoid Burnout – It’s taken me some time (about 3 years to be precise) to realize that a blogging strategy is key to successfully growing your blog. Don’t you love it when you think you’ve got something figured out then you read something that blows your preconceptions out of the water? Well, that’s what Lynn Terry’s blog post did for me!
I consider myself well read in terms of what makes up a successful blog. I know that consistent, regular quality content is all that you need.
Wrong!
Want to know why this is just the tip of the iceberg? Read Lynn’s post…! 
18 Blog Tips to Help You Succeed in 2010 – In this guest post on DailyBlogTips, Tony Hue share with us the basics for having a successful blog. In my opinion, if you take everything in this post and combine it with the content in Lynn Terry’s post (above) you can’t fail to make it as a professional blogger!
Use it or lose it! 5 Tips on How to Keep Your Blogging Regular – Darren Rowse knows a thing or two about blogging. In fact, he was co-author on THE book on blogging professionally! One of the things that I really like about him is that he’s just s quick to share his failures and his successes. When he does this though, he always does it in a way where we learn the lesson with him and come to the end of his post with new knowledge to apply to our blogging. This post is a case in point – check it out to see what I mean.
That’s it for this week. As ever, I’d love to get your thoughts about the posts that I’ve shared as well as any that you think I’ve overlooked. If you have a blog of your own and you’d like me to consider including your posts in the future, please let me know. The best way to get in touch regarding this post is via the comments below. I personally read and reply to every comment.
Have a great week!
When you’re trying to maintain multiple blogs as well as a full time job, it pays to find ways to organize your blogging! As I mentioned in my blog strategy post last week, one important element is to use a blog calendar to plan ahead on the topics that you’re going to write about. Take this post for example – I planned to write this at some point between Christmas and New Year, just as I planned out the rest of this month and most of next!
I feel that by staying at least one month ahead in my planning, I can never use the excuse that “I’ve got nothing to write about” or that “it’s hard to come up with ideas”. My ideas are on paper already so now I just have to write.
On top of this, by working ahead in this way, whenever I’m feeling creative I can sit down and plan a little further. My goal is to always have the current month and next month fully planned so at the end of January, I’ll sit down and finish at least through to the end of March. Of course, at any time I can add ideas to future calendar points as the idea strikes me, or I can add additional posts if I want to get something timely out.
In terms of finding the time to write, the trick here is to use the tools at hand. I work with Wordpress which allows me to save posts before they’re finished and come back to them later. It also allows me to write a post and schedule it to be published at a specific time. For example, I’m writing this post on Saturday evening but have scheduled it to publish mid-morning on Monday. I’d actually like to get Wednesday’s post written before Monday so that I have time to work on other things during the week!
If you consider that I work full time, this means that I can use my time very effectively on a weekend to produce the majority of my content for the coming week, and have only minimal work to do on an evening to keep everything ticking by nicely. If you consider that this is for 2 blogs, you’ll see just how effective this strategy can be.
I would encourage you to look at your own blogging and consider how you can apply these ideas to become more organized. I’d also love to read any tips and tricks that you use to keep your blog growing consistently. Please use the comments to share these ideas – I’ll read every one and may even include some of the best ones in a future post!
“ProBlogger – Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income” by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett is a practical guide on what it takes to build a strong, profitable blog. The authors are both professional bloggers – Darren is best known for his ProBlogger blog, and Chris can be found on his New Media blog at ChrisG.com – and in writing this book, they’re making their combined experiences available to us mere mortals to enable us to learn from them and to take our blogging to new levels.
The content of the book takes you right through from the basics of setting up your blog to all the various ways you can earn an income from blogging. It looks at buying and selling blogs for a profit, as well as how to promote your blogs effectively. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve pretty much covered everything you’d need to know to get into blogging full-time.
This book is ideal for all level of bloggers – whether you’re just starting out or already have an established blog. However, in my opinion it’s most appropriate for people who are looking to lift their blogging to a new, more professional level.
One of the reasons that I follow Darren’s ProBlogger blog is that I really enjoy his relaxed style of writing, as well as the good use he makes of lists (”Top 10 this” or “Best 5 that”, for example). This style has been carried through very effectively into the book in a way that makes it a very light and easy read, whilst still putting across great information. I particularly liked their thoughts on focusing on a niche, which really helped me to understand where I was going wrong with my own blog!
I think that the only challenge with a book like this is that with the speed that blogging technology changes, it can never really be considered 100% up to date. To give you an idea what I mean, the Wordpress examples use screenshots from version 2.3 and the current version is 2.9.1 (although with the rate that Wordpress comes out with new versions, that feels like just a few months…!) This however, will always be a problem with books focused around Internet Marketing technologies and in my opinion, the content is in-depth enough that anyone who takes the necessary action will be able to apply what Chris and Darren are teaching and relate it to today.
From my own perspective, I bought this book at a time when I was considering shutting down my blog. I was feeling unfulfilled, was struggling to find content and definitely wasn’t making any money! After reading the book, I realised that my main issue was that my focus was way to broad and my concept was something that I was becoming less and less interested in (technology for technology’s sake) which is why I switched my focus to Internet Marketing. This is something that I’m interested in and that passion makes it easier to do the other thing that I learned – blog regularly! (See my previous post for more on this)
Why Should You Buy This Book?
If you have a blog or are thinking about starting one (which I would strongly encourage you to do) then this book should be considered essential reading! Whatever level you’re at and regardless of how experienced you are, I’m convinced that you’ll find something in ProBlogger to improve your blogging.