What Type of Blog Theme Do You Need?

There is no such thing as the perfect car. Some people prefer smaller vehicles that are more fuel efficient and easier to maneuver. Other people need something that is capable of going off-road. Others still need the extra cargo space that a pickup truck or SUV is able to provide. At the end of the day, everyone’s needs are different and that’s why there are so many different types of cars. You just need to find the one that best suits your preferences and needs.

The exact same philosophy easily applies to the world of blogging as well. When it comes to themes for blogs, once again, there is no such thing as the one size fits all model. Some people desire certain features while other people desire a completely different set of features. As such, it’s important to think about what you want to get out of a WordPress theme and how you can go about getting the right theme for your blog.

Just as there are individual differences in car models, there are individual differences for blog themes too. At the same time, themes can generally be classified into a number of different categories, just like cars. Do you need the subcompact, the convertible, the luxury sedan or the cargo van of WordPress themes?

The Personal Blog

If you are thinking about starting a personal blog to explore your personal interests, there are certainly a large number of blog themes to consider. In general, personal blogs should aim to be as uncluttered as possible, allowing the content to speak for itself while still providing enough of a personal touch to differentiate the blog from the rest of the crowd.

In general, personal blogs take on the now-conventional reverse chronological configuration. This means that the most recent blog entry is shown at the top of the page, with older posts being displayed underneath. It is up to you whether you want the main page to show entire posts (as is the case with Beyond the Rhetoric) or if you want the main page to show only excerpts of the posts (as is the case with Blogging Tips). There are pros and cons to either approach and it can largely depend on the length and frequency of your posts.

Most personal blogs have one or two sidebars where additional information, like category listings and social media links, can be displayed. The header area usually contains a branded image or logo, clearly showing the name of the blog. A tagline can also be shown in that area.

News and Magazine Styles

Is your blog going to be reporting on a particular industry or niche in some way? Instead of the standard “reverse chronological” layout that you find on many blogs, it may be more appropriate to take on a magazine style WordPress theme instead.

Instead of showing your blog posts in a linear fashion, these blog themes make your site look more like an online magazine. You may have post thumbnail images, for example, that are arranged in a grid-like pattern. Frequent posts may be shown as being part of different categories with feature articles highlighted at the top of the page. Good examples of this include BranfordMagazine theme and the custom theme found at Mobile Magazine.

Focused on Video Blogging

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, what happens when you offer a high-definition video running at 30 frames (pictures) per second? There’s a reason why so many people online are starting to shift their focus toward video blogging (or “vlogging” if you prefer). It creates a more personal and media-rich connection with your readers (or viewers, as the case may be).

When it comes to blogs that are focused on videos, it is important to have strong integration with your video streaming service (like YouTube), as well as enough “width” in the content area to show the video in a fairly large resolution. You could be as simple as Dot Com Pho, but for the greatest opportunity for success, you may need to step up to another level.

A fantastic example is iJustine. In addition to the videos she has within her blog posts, she also highlights videos in thumbnail form in her sidebar. She also does a good job of linking back to her blog from her YouTube channel. This is critical for the success of any video blog. Another much more advanced and media rich site to check out is GameTrailers.com. It is very video focused.

The Right Blog Theme for You

Just because you really like the theme you find on one particular site does not mean that it is necessarily appropriate for your own blog. Consider what would provide the best user experience, what would highlight your type of content in the best way, and what would give you the greatest chance at success with your blog, however you choose to define it.

What Are You Going to Blog?

Blogging is a very worthwhile endeavor, but even before you dive into a conversation of finding the right web hosts or how you will go about monetizing your site, there is one very important question that needs to be addressed: Why are you going to blog and what are you going to blog about? You need answers to these before you can even start blogging in the first place.

Sure, asking what you’re going to blog about seems like simple enough of a question, but depending on your answer, the goals for your blog can swing heavily. Your blog can become a very different kind of website and your strategies can be vastly different too.

Blogging for Fun

If you are going to blog simply for the fun of blogging, you really can choose any topic that you’d like for your blog. The majority of people who start their first blog are creating personal blogs. With these kinds of sites, the blogger usually discusses personal interests or offers an online diary of sorts.

These kinds of blogs are great for learning how to blog, making new friends online that might share the same interests. For example, you might be a big fan of the Vancouver Canucks and you start a hockey blog. The goal is to have a good time, just because you want to have a proper venue for voicing your opinions. You might then get in contact with other Canucks fans around the city.

When you’re blogging for fun, just about any topic will do. This is because you are likely less concerned with profitability and other metrics. It’s more about making friends, having a proper venue to have your voice heard, and learning about the different technologies and innovations that are available to bloggers today.

Blogging for Business

If you are going to blog as a branding exercise for your company, your goals can be very different from a personal blog. Corporate blogs and official company blogs are an entirely different animal from the blog of a regular individual.

With business blogs, two main trends seem to emerge. On the one hand, some companies will only blog about company business. They may offer customers and partners an “insider’s look” into the company, showing them what happens behind the scenes. This is the case with the Disney Parks blog, for instance. They can also use the blog to highlight new products and other company announcements.

Alternatively, some companies use their blogs as a way to establish themselves as experts in their field. While some posts relate directly back to the company itself, many blog posts are simply about that particular industry. A financial services firm, for example, may offer posts that discuss the current economy, setting up your accounting books, and so forth.

Blogging for Money

More and more people are getting into blogging with the sole purpose of making money from them. They see larger sites like Engadget and TMZ making substantial amounts of money and they want to get in on the action. This is perfectly understandable.

If you are thinking about starting a blog with the goal of turning it into a viable business on its own, then you will have to take a completely different approach than you would with a personal blog or a corporate blog.

In the next chapter, we will discuss in detail how you can go about finding the right and profitable niche for you to start blogging about. Choosing the right subject matter can mean the difference between making thousands of dollars a month or barely being able to afford the hosting costs.

Adding Images, Links and Categories to Your Blog

The most successful blogs in the world are the ones that provide the best information, link to outside sources and have great images throughout their respective sites. These can sound like daunting tasks for people new to blogging, but WordPress makes it extremely easy to add these types of features to your blog. In this article, we will show you exactly how to do it.

Adding Images to Blog Posts

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. A relevant image that adds something to the article can be worth much more than that. Whether you need to illustrate a point or you simply want a picture to draw attention to your post, having an image (or more) attached to your post can be very helpful.

So, how do you do it? First, go into the area in the WordPress administration panel when you can write a new blog post. This can be accessed by the button near the top-right corner or via the navigational links in the sidebar.

When you are in the “Write Post” area, you’ll notice that there are a series of icons located between the title text area and the body text areas. When you hover over the first of these, you’ll discover that it is used to upload and insert images. Click on this icon.

In doing so, you’ll see a new dialog box appear on the screen with three tabs at the top: from computer, from URL, and media library. The first of these allows you to upload an image file (JPGs and PNGs are usually best) from your computer. You can then go through some of the available options for sizes, alternate text, alignment, and so on.

The “From URL” tab allows you to embed an image that is already located somewhere else on the Internet and the “Media Library” tab lets you choose images that have already been uploaded and associated with the blog post.

Linking to Internal and External Sources

A blog post never really exists in isolation, so it is important for a myriad of reasons to link to both your own articles and to resources outside of your website. This helps to give context to your articles, as well as supporting materials and related reading.

There are several different ways for creating these links. If you are familiar with HTML, then you will likely want to deactivate the “visual editor” in WordPress (you can do that in the user profile options). You can then use basic HTML tags for creating your links.

If you are not as familiar with HTML, that’s okay too. WordPress has been designed to be as approachable and easy to use as possible. Going back to the area where you can write a new blog post, you’ll notice a “link” button above the main body text area.

Clicking on this will create a pop-up window asking for the URL that you’d like to link to. Copy the URL in there and click OK. Type in the “anchor text” (the actual text in the area that will be linked to the URL), then click in the “/link” button to “close” the tag. That’s one way to do it.

Another way to do it is to highlight the text in your article that you would like to be linked, then click on the same “link” button. You once again enter the target URL and click OK. This creates the same result as the method described above.

Organizing Content with Tags and Categories

Just as you have folders on your computer to help organize all your different files, you can create a similar type of organization in your blog to manage all your different blog posts.

There are two systems that are built into every WordPress installation: categories and tags. These work in a similar fashion, but you’ll likely want to use both for optimal performance. Categories act like folders on your computer, while post tags are like keywords related to your post.

Along the right side of the area where you can write (and edit) your blog posts, you’ll see fields for choosing your post categories and post tags. For most sites, you’ll want to keep the number of categories relatively low (less than 20), but you can usually use more tags, assigning several to every blog post.

In doing so, it is easier for readers of your blog to find related content. If you wrote on your experience with your new iPhone, for example, it might fall under your Technology category and it could be associated with tags like Apple, AT&T, and smartphone. Visitors can then look up other posts using the same tags or categories to find related content on your blog.

Providing the Best Information

This is perhaps the hardest part of blogging! With so many blogs on the Internet, it can sometimes be difficult to get noticed. That’s why it’s so important to provide the best possible content that you can, giving value to your readers that they won’t find anywhere else.

How can you help your content get noticed? We’ll go over some possibilities in the next few sections.

Selecting a Domian

A domain, as you may already know, is a set of characters that maps a website to a particular Internet address. The domain for Google is Google.com. The domain for the New York Times is NYTimes.com. Having a great domain name is very important for any website or blog, but it is not completely necessary for success.

There are several websites out there that are very successful, even with less than perfect domain names. On the flip side, there are countless websites with fantastic domains that are anything but successful. A domain name is only one part of the equation, but it can be a very important part.

Choosing the Domain Extension

You have a lot of different choices when it comes to creating a domain name for your blog. You can get varations of .com, .net and .org domains, as well as domain extensions (also known as TLDs or top-level domains) that are based on your country or specific type of business. Canadian sites, for example, can end in a .ca extension.

While it is perfectly possible to include dashes and numbers in your domain name, these are usually less desirable. You will also likely want to stick to the main .com, .net or .org models whenever possible, as other domain extensions can be less than optimal for a myriad of reasons. Unless your site is country-specific, you may not want a country-specific TLD.

A Simple and Descriptive Domain Name

A great domain name is something that describes your blog without having to go into much explanation. If you had dictionary.com as your domain name, for example, it would be pretty obvious that your blog was based on the concept of a dictionary. Keep this concept in mind when choosing your domain name.

This doesn’t mean that you need to necessarily stick with real words that someone could find in a dictionary, but it helps when the name is as descriptive as possible. Groupon, for instance, is a portmanteau of group and coupon. Engadget, as an another exmaple, has the word “gadget” in it. These relate to the core subject matter on both sites, even though both domains by themselves are not real words.

Registering YourName.com

If you are going to create a personal blog and just wated to write about your own interests and what is going on in your life, you may want to try and secure yourname.com.

I’m sure you are not going to be the only person in the world with exactly your name, so if it’s available, I would grab your name as a .com domain. If that is not available (or even if it is), it could be a good idea to try for the .net or .org version of your name. This helps to secure your online identity and it’s easy enough to set up links to other online profiles through this domain.

For instance, ZacJohnson.com/Facebook redirects to Zac’s Facebook page and MichaelKwan.com/Flickr redirects to Michael’s Flickr photostream. This can be very useful for branding and ease of access purposes. If you don’t buy your name as a domain, someone else who shares the same name might snatch it out from under you.

Do You Want to Sell Your Site?

When you are first starting out with your blog, perhaps the furthest thought from your mind is the possibility of selling your blog. However, this is something that you will want to think about when selecting your domain name.

For this reason, having the domain name for your blog as your real name is that you should then never try and build your blog into a business that you might want to sell one day. If you have the slightest inclination that you will want to grow out your blog into a sellable business, stay away from using your personal name.

A Blog as a Business

If this is the case, it helps if you can have a relevant keyword as part of the domain instead. Let’s say that you are personally interested in science fiction movies. If you may want to sell the blog one day, you may not want to call it JoeAnybody.com. It may be more appropriate to get SciFiMovies.com if you can.

Finding the right domain name for your business-based blog is just as important, if not more important, than your personal blog. The way you select your domain name for your blog can have a dramatic effect on your search engine rankings. It should be related to your topic and it is better if it is shorter.

If you stick to domains that are no more than three words, ideally with no numbers or dashes, you lend yourself to the greatest possibility at success. For search engine optimization purposes, the more generic (but targeted) domain name is best. BloggingTips.com, for example, ranks first for the search term “blogging tips.”

Where Can I Buy Domain Names?

I current purchase most of my domain names through GoDaddy.com and NameCheap.com. You can register your domain name through either of these companies. Alternatively, web hosting providers, which we will discuss in the next article, mostly also offer domain registration as one of their services.

Power of Blogging

In the early days of Internet marketing, companies scoffed at the potential of the so-called world wide web. They cast the concept of bloggers even further into the shadows, thinking that they weren’t relevant to their customers. My, how times have changed! These days, blogs are not only mainstream, but they have become even bigger than their traditional media counterparts!

More and more people are turning to TMZ and Perez Hilton for their celebrity gossip. Tech enthusiasts point their browsers at Engadget and Gizmodo instead of waiting for a magazine to hit the racks. After all, that magazine will be reporting on news that is already a month old by the time it hits stores. Blogs, on the other hand, are quite literally on the pulse of the industry, quite literally being up to the minute with their relevance.

The major blogs have very much become massive communities on their own and they are no longer in the shadows of traditional outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Blogs are big business and are worth millions of dollars, getting thousands, even millions of visitors on a very regular basis. Even celebrities are recognizing the importance of blogging, keeping their names at the top of the public’s mind at all times. People want to know and they want to know right now.

Blogging is a very powerful tool and popular blogs are being sold for millions of dollars. What started out as independent ventures have quickly become parts of major media empires. Take a look at Gawker Media, for example, a conglomerate that runs such popular blogs as Kotaku, Lifehacker, and Jalopnik. These sites are huge with monumental followings. This is powerful for branding and powerful for audiences.

Moving forward, personal blogs will surely still exist, but professional blogs are very much not only the future, but they’re already the present. Blogs are big business. This cannot be re-iterated enough. With multiple updates each day and loyal fan followings, blogs represent huge opportunities for advertising revenue. And for the businesses who choose to launch their own corporate blogs, even if no advertising is involved at all, the blogs represent a very powerful marketing and branding tool.

Blogs may have once existed on the fringe of the Internet, only read and used by those “in the know,” but blogs today carry huge mainstream appeal. Better still, there is still so much more potential yet untapped. Going back to Gawker Media, for example, they’re recognizing the importance of multimedia and its prominent role in blogging in the future. The sites are almost becoming like TV channels that are completely on demand. Users can choose exactly the programming they’d like, interacting with the authors and building that community even further.

Gawker competitor Weblogs, Inc. runs such sites as The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Download Squad, Joystiq, and TV Squad. It is a subsidiary of AOL, a company that may have otherwise fallen into Internet obscurity in recent years if it were not for this blog network of about 90 blogs. The key to success on the Internet is staying up with the times and AOL recognized the opportunity when it came to professional blogs. These make money and they have increasingly large audiences.

And the same can be said about Blogging Tips. I can’t say for sure what blogs will look like ten years from now, but one thing is for sure: blogs are here to stay and they’ve still got a lot of room for even greater growth.

4 Dead Ways to Attract Readers to Your Blog

What’s the single most important factor involved in building a better blog?

Readers..?

Yes, you’re 100% correct!

For anyone who’re running online business need to attract more people to their sites. Undoubtedly finding more readers is the biggest challenge to succeed online.

Without having potential readers and customers, it’s almost impossible for anyone to make more money from their online businesses.

So how to find and attract more readers to your blog?

Is finding new readers really easy?

No, it’s not..

But when you’re working consistently using the following simple tips, it’ll be a breeze to find more readers to your blog.

Are you ready?

#1. Have a killer blog design

90% of the bloggers are either using

• Free themes or
• Mediocre design

That means if you seriously focus on having a killer website design, you’ll have more chances to stand out from the crowd, which ultimately means that you’re inviting more people to read your blog.

Who will not be interested to reading a blog which stands out??

So make sure to invest some money on buying premium themes or unique design for your blog. Remember, blogging is a business and business needs to proper investment to succeed.

#2. Always create award winning headlines

Most of the online readers prefer skimming the content. So what makes your content unique and to quickly grab others attention?

Obviously your headlines..

Be sure you’re spending more time on crafting killer headlines for your blog posts. If you’ve succeeded in creating mind blowing headlines, you’re actually grabbing more bloggers attention.

When you’re consistent in creating valuable content and titles for the readers, you’ll be attracting more readers to your blog. Having killer headlines can also boost your comment count on every single post!

Few quick tips to make your headlines go viral:

• Copy the most popular headlines from other blogs and tweak them until they become unique
• How-to guides will attract more readers.. because they’ll make them curious to read the content
• The headlines which contains numbers will grab everyone’s attention.. because they’re easy to skim

#3. Make sure your content is keyword rich

Though search engine optimization has became a big headache for the bloggers, it’s still the ONLY way to bring more readers to your blog even after years.

When your content is properly optimized with the potential keywords, you’ll have more chances to attract the new readers. But don’t keyword stuff your blog posts to get search engine traffic, it may considered as spam by Google and you may won’t even get search traffic to those posts.

Optimum keyword frequency for any blog post is: 2 to 5%

There are lot of tools to know how much keyword frequency you’ve in your content.

You can use premium tools like Easy WP SEO, SEOPressor etc

Or you can also use free tools like free keyword density analyzer, keyword density checker etc

#4. Try to be a go-giver than go-getter

Connect with every blogger in your niche. I know it’s really difficult to connect with every blogger in your niche.. but if you’re connecting with as many bloggers as you can, you’ll be definitely bringing more readers to your blog. Use social media networks like Facebook, twitter or G+ to get to know other bloggers and start doing conversations with them.

Make sure you’re connecting with them not to take their help, instead, focus on giving something useful.

Whatever it may be, try to add value to their blogs, either by blog commenting or doing guest posts on their blogs. This way you can grab more people attention to your blog in no time.

Connecting with others should be your top priority, you can never say who will be useful for your blog in the long run. So be kind to all of them.

Spend time on other blogs too. You can’t attract more readers to your blog when you work only on your blog. You also need to spend quality time on other blogs to find more readers. Show genuine interest to helping others.

Over to you

What are your thoughts about finding more readers to your blog? Do you’ve any extra tips? I’ll be glad to hear from you.

5 Ways to Write a killer Guest Post

Are you creating remarkable guest posts?

When I say remarkable, I don’t mean -

• getting more likes
• comments, tweets or shares

Are you getting enough email subscribers or sales from your guest posts?

If your answer is no, use the following top ways to write a killer guest post that converts more.

Writing killer guest posts is not a rocket science, but you should know few tips to write a guest post which attracts more people attention.

#1. Analyze the pattern of your targeted blog

First off, analyze the pattern of your targeted blog. Which posts are going viral, getting more likes and shares?

And what kind of topics are attracting more visitors?

By doing this type of research, you’ll better understand the potential readers of your targeted blog.

And that’s the ONLY thing you need to know to attract more readers using your guest pots.

It’s not about writing the similar type of content more awesome, it’s about creating killer copy for a topic which no one has talked before!

If you want to get more leads from your guest posts, in your author bio, don’t link to your home page. Even if you’re linking to homepage, make sure you’re either using a landing page or above the fold concept to convert visitors into subscribers.

Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers introduced the concept of ‘Above the fold’ and it’s converting really well for him, because it’ll be the most visible places on any site which the visitors can’t ignore viewing it.

#2. The headline of your copy is 90%

The best way to create a persuading copy is this: spend some time to create attention grabbing headlines.

Because headlines play a vital role in opening your posts.

If your headlines are really interesting, your job is almost done! That’s the importance of having great headlines.

Use the following 3 methods to write killer headlines to make your next guest post go viral.

1. Use these 10 tips to write a captivating headline for your next guest post.

2. Ask questions in your headlines [which really creates curiosity]

Examples:

• Why most of the blogs fail?
• Are you destroying your own blog using these 10 methods?
• Need more tweets and shares on your posts? Try these..

3. Use numbers in your headlines [list posts work because most online readers are lazy, hence they love to read these list posts to easily skim the content]

#3. Nurture the style of your guest post

Are you using long blocks of content in your guest posts?

Do you know there’s a lot of difference between online writing and offline writing?

For those who’re not interested in reading the above post, here’s the short summary:

Offline writing consist of long paragraphs where as online writing should be created according to the skimmers.

So make sure you’re not

• using long paragraphs in your guest posts and
• creating scannable content

#4. Trim your words

Remove the unwanted words ruthlessly.

There’s no thumb rule to write long or short articles on your guest posts to make them go viral. All you need is to create a tight copy!

Use short sentences. Cut the complex words. Don’t make your guest posts fluffy.

#5. Focus on ONE single topic

This is one of the effective strategies to write a guest post that sells – focus on one single topic!

If you’re talking about SEO tactics to rank high, there’s no need to cover landing page secrets..

Focus on one topic and go deep into it. This can make your guest post more authoritative and can bring you massive results for your blog.

10 Free Tools for Infogrphics

In today’s date, cut-throat competition is prevalent in the market. There are a large number of business organizations that are operating in more or less the same business lines.

Hence, it has become essential for these business firms to reach out to the audiences in the simplest manner. Moreover, making available information in a form that is easily comprehensible by the audiences has become a must. This is where data visualization comes into the picture.

Businesses can now present data related to their products, services as well as markets by making use of some exceptional and out of the box data visualization tools.

Infographics comes across as bang on ingenious data visualization tools. Moreover, every business organization’s desire to carry out spot on branding can be fulfilled with the help of Infographics.

Our further discussion will revolve around the ten best free Infographics tools, which are believed to play a central role in helping you to give the much wanted push to the marketing and sales efforts of your business unit at large.

The 10 Best Free Infographics Tools:

You can now have a taste of some extraordinary interactive visualizations only with the help of Stat Planet. Moreover, with the help of this tool you will be able to customize your visualizations by using the same within your browser or even by getting it downloaded free of cost for that matter.

You can now get into some online chart making with the help of the Hohli tool. This particular tool is considered to be highly intuitive and simple to use. Moreover, the charts that happen to be the outcome of this particular tool are known to carry fabulous designs.

If you desire to add a touch of uniqueness to your visualizations, then in that case it is high time that you settle down for the Tableau tool. Tableau happens to be a Windows only software that is known to deliver stunning graphs that are highly colorful and vibrant.

If you desire to import visualizations and then merge them along with the other visuals in order to create a brand new visualization at the end, then in that case it would be wise of you to opt for the Inkscape tool. This particular tool is considered to be absolutely effortless as far as its use is concerned.

You can now get your hands onto visualizations that carry a largely professional look by getting hold of the Many Eyes tool. With this tool you get the opportunity of either using your individual data or opting for the data that is already stored on the website

You can now come up with flow charts as well as random diagrams without having to put in much effort with the help of the tool Creately. Moreover, you also get the chance of choosing between a number of diagrams and finally going ahead with your visualizations by simply adding your data to the same.

In case of the free version of the Piktochart tool you get to choose from a small number of template alternatives. Moreover, the end product that comes out as a result of the Piktochart tool use is known to come complete with a Piktochart watermark.

If you desire to make use of icons on your infographics or even your website for that matter, then in that case it would be sensible of you to opt for the Icon Archive. These icons are known to be developed by commercial artists and thus it is essential for you to go through the licensing terms and conditions before shortlisting the icons.

If you are a developer who is looking forward to get hold of a desktop tool, then in that case D3 comes across as a perfect pick for you. D3 can help you to come up with just the right imagery if you have somewhat decent programming skills in you.

GIMP comes across as a bang on substitute for Photoshop. With the help of this particular tool you can carry out a number of functions, the end result of which is utmost creative visualizations monetize.

Feeling Overhelmed by Blogging?

Blogging is neither fun, nor business.

When you take blogging for fun, you really can’t learn how to properly monetize it. Similarly when you consider it as a business, you’ll feel overwhelmed soon.

I know most of the bloggers are consider blogging as a business these days. There’s nothing wrong in that though. But what will you do if you feel overwhelmed by blogging?

Quit?

Really bad option.

Then what else can you do?

Here are FIVE tips to get rid of ‘feeling overwhelmed by blogging’ syndrome

Take a vacation:

This is what many bloggers need. Because we spend most of the time working online, sitting all day in front of computers, and we actually forgetting the importance of taking a break from the routine. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by blogging, consider taking a vacation with your friends or family.

Go and hangout on your favorite places, just enjoy the time! You can come back with great efforts when you’ve a break from the rituals.

Guest post on other blogs:

No doubt, guest blogging is one of the great ways to build online reputation. When others see your guest posts all over the blogosphere, you’ll be get noticed very soon and they’ll more likely to visit your blog to listen what you’re saying.

But make sure you’re delivering high quality guest posts every time you land on other blogs. This way you can bring more credibility to your blog. Nevertheless to say guest blogging can also increase your online visibility, what else a blogger want except branding?

Tweak your blog design:

When you feel overwhelmed by blogging, making some changes in your blog design is the best way to overcome it. Most of the bloggers will enjoy tweaking their blog design elements in their free time.

You don’t need to be a designing maestro to tweak your blog design to create great conversions, but you need to learn few CSS topics and bit HTML tags to make great changes on your web design. Soon you’ll love doing this.

Remove all the clutter from your blog design like removing unwanted widgets, plugins in the sidebar or footer can make your blog loading time faster. It’s also help to get more conversion rates and gives a user-friendly design.

Learn something important to you:

Be it email marketing tactics or SEO copywriting skills, you need to have the basic ideas about everything. That’s how you can quickly build a brand around anything in your space. Most people will be scared of learning SEO things, because of it’s complexity.

But SEO is the main factor that can bring long lasting traffic to your blog for FREE. So you must not ignore it, you should be learning how to properly optimize your contents for the search engines.

Learning email marketing skills is also as important as SEO. But 90% of the bloggers don’t consider building an email list for their blogs. Major reason behind this is: they don’t know the importance of email list. Email list can bring your more traffic, you can directly sell your products to your readers, you can turn normal readers into customers by having a great email list.

So start building your email list NOW. And try to learn the email marketing skills like generating more leads, converting leads into sales etc. This way you can turn your blog into a business and that’s what you need to make more money from blogging. Are you getting me?

Connect with the influencers:

Have you done this before?? If not, try this time. Connect with the top bloggers in your niche via twitter, emails or Facebook (or even through their blog comments). You NEED to have great connections with others to build a better blog. Connections are EVERTYTHING in blogging.

You must focus on building great network with others, especially the influencers. They may don’t respond to you in the beginning, but don’t get upset, keep on trying, expect nothing, try to add value to your conversion.

Sooner or later they’ll start recognizing you. This is how you can get over the problem of ‘feeling overwhelmed by blogging’.

5 Proven Ways to Find Targeted Traffic to Your Blog

Finding new readers & getting traffic to your blog isn’t hard.

But most of the bloggers (especially the new bloggers) don’t know how to grab someone’s attention.

Most of the bloggers think that creating more articles can produce more search traffic.

But it’s totally WRONG.

More articles don’t produce more traffic. NEVER!

Then how can bring more readers for your blog?

Here are the top ways to bring quality readers for your blogs.

Video marketing:

Did you know that the videos will more likely to get 50% more chances to rank high on search results than the normal text contents?

Yes, videos have the tendency to rank high in the search engines.

If you want to rank high for the specific keywords, try creating useful videos rather than the long and detailed articles. It not only saves your time, but also gives you great search traffic. Key point to consider here is: you’ll get search traffic from both great resources. One is Google and the other is YouTube. So video marketing is so powerful that you shouldn’t ignore if you want to find more readers for your blog.

Guest blogging:

Guys like Leo Babauta, Danny Iny, Onibalusi, Zac Zanson etc built their blogs from the scratch using one tactic: guest blogging. Undoubtedly, guest blogging is the way to go when you want to build a better blog from the scratch. When it’s done right, you’ll find more readers for your blog in no time.

Most of the bloggers who are getting into guest blogging are simply doing it for the sake of links. But in my opinion, guest blogging is a lot more powerful than building links. You can get more leads, sales and connections when you’re providing high quality contents even in your guest posts. Try to provide your best stuff to other sites to get quality traffic to your blog.

Podcasting:

There’s no doubt, podcasting is one of the best ways to find NEW readers for your blog. The blogging legends like Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome, Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers are doing REALLY great with the podcast marketing. They’re almost all over the blogosphere by using these tactics.

The major reason podcasting works better is: most online readers are lazy, they always love to spend less time on reading the articles. But when you provide them the content in iTunes, you’ll notice more response from them. If your podcasts are valuable, they also share with their networks thus increases your online visibility.

Social media:

You’ve to build a great profile on the social media sites like Facebook, twitter etc. I’m not at all suggesting YOU to focus on every traffic resource, choose the best social media network and try to build a network around your blog on it by promoting other bloggers articles, sharing your own thoughts or interacting with the influencers in your niche. This way you can quickly grab other bloggers attention. Who don’t love to visit your blog when you’re promoting their products, articles or videos without asking them anything? Make sure you’re creating genuine relationships which lasts longer.

Article roundup’s:

Have you ever done this on your blog? In simple terms, you’re linking to other blogs (articles) in your blog every week or month. This way you’ll be attracting other bloggers attention. I’ve visited so many blogs in the recent times who’re linked to my articles (few are top blogs, many are new blogs).

Why?

Why did I visit their blogs?

Every time when someone links to my site, I’ll become interested in knowing why they linked to my sites.

Most of the times (99 out 100 times) I’ll promote that posts, which linked to my sites and I’ll DO comment on that posts. This way they’ll be getting more online visibility through my twitter and Facebook accounts and also I’ll be getting quality links from them. Win/win approach, isn’t it?

Try this soon on your blog. Collect the best posts links from your niche and merge them in one post, if possible email that link to the original blog authors who wrote the posts. You can get more better results, and new readers for your blog.

How to Make Your Readers Stick to Your Blog?

Do you know one secret to succeeding in blogging?

It is.. making your readers stick to your blog and turning them into loyal audience.

Because one loyal reader can bring you more leads, visitors and sales.

So how can you make someone stick to your blog and make them bring more visitors?

Make your website navigation easy

Make the first time visitors to go through your blog easily. They should find out your best posts, first posts, and/or any page on your blog without having any difficulties.

Use archive page to show all your blog posts: Use smart archives reloaded plugin to show all your blog posts at one place. Just install the plugin, create a page for the archives and you’re done!

Use excerpts in the home page: Instead of showing the whole blog posts on your home page, you can display excerpts of the blog posts. This way you’re not only making others to click on your headlines, but also giving less burden on your site. The more less content you’ve on the home page – the more faster it loads.

Use pagination: Instead of showing ‘older entries’ – your visitors can better navigate your site if you use pagination (showing page numbers) on your home page. This way they’ll find out every blog page if they’ve to.

Go mobile

This is a must. Make your blog design mobile friendly. A research says that there’s a 50% increase in readers finding new sites via mobiles. When your site is not mobile friendly, it becomes very hard to navigate your site contents.

There are two easy ways to make your blog design mobile friendly.

1. Use premium themes (most premium themes are now mobile friendly)
2. Use WP touch plugin to make your mobile friendly

Suggested reading: 52 headline samples to write mind blowing headlines on your blog posts.

Make your font size bigger

This is a no brainer.

When I recently redesigned my blog, it’s driving in more readers (more page views).

Most online readers prefer skimming through your blog posts instead of reading each and every word.

When someone find it hard reading your content, they simply find an exit point to your blog. So don’t give a chance to let typography killing your site reputation. Always use better font sizes. As a rule of thumb, 14 to 16px is always a better font size.

Show related posts under every blog post

This can not only improve your page views, but also provide a platform for more readers to sticking to your blog.

Use related post plugin to get this done.

What do this plugin do?

This plugin displays a list of related entries on your site and feeds based on a unique algorithm, thus making more readers stick to your blog.

The best SEO is ‘engaging content’

I think I’ve used the best phrase for this article here – best SEO is engaging content.

You’ll gain NO readers when your sole purpose is to bring more search traffic, because you’ll end up optimizing blog posts with too many related keywords. When your content is heavily optimized for the search engines, it becomes hard for your readers to digest your content.

Give first priority to the readers, search engines come later.

Still if you want more search traffic, here are two best ways to get it done without hurting your readers.

1. Bring quality back links to your articles (either by guest posting, naturally getting links from other sites)
2. Focus on using “long tail keywords” in your articles.

What's Stopping You From Being a Great Blogger?

If you consider your blog as a business, then you might understand the point being made here in a better way. If you don’t, consider it to be a one and then think whether a business would really get a kick-start without any valuable investment in and for it or not? A simple answer to this question is NO. That’s because any tangible quality item in this world is not free, and so is any digital item that you purchase and use online.

Any blog needs some good investment – in it and for it. Just like a business invests in its offices, transportation, employment, advertising etc., a blog also needs to invest money at various important events, for several different items.

Most webmasters believe that investing in buying the domain name and hosting was a lot. But in the current situations, it’s nothing more than buying a full family lunch. There are cases that read, “I have invested $100 in hosting! Yet I don’t get any engagement on my blog”. This is not a single case – there are thousands more like this who believe that investing in the beginning of the blogging journey was enough to have a completely well settled blog, but that is not at all true.

The Lack Of Investment

The lack of investment often results because the web-master or the blogger is not really passionate about the site. If something known as ‘passion’ existed in those bloggers’ cases, they would definitely invest some money in order to bring the success that they always wanted their blog to achieve.

In the previous two articles of this serious, the ‘uniqueness’ and ‘design’ was discussed. Both of them can actually be linked to investment. This is discussed in the solution below.

Possible Solutions & Ideas

A question frequently raised by many bloggers is that “Where can I invest if I want my blog to grow?” and as usual, there’s a simple answer to it – Your blog is capable of handling several tools which are developed for it to grow. It is meant to join several services that help it to grow, both organically and socially.

Here are some ideas where one can invest and make the best use of the same.

• Plugins (If WordPress is being used) – Investing in plugins that are worth it has always been a great advantage to the investors. This is because the plugins invested into are capable of carrying out function, which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible without the same.
• Themes/Templates – As mentioned in the second part of this series. Though it requires some predominant research work to be done, it’s always worth to pay for what you always wanted.
• Custom Designs By Hiring Developers – If you’re able to afford, then why not?
• Communities – Which normally charge a very small amount every month or year. Communities are indeed very helpful to build relationships with fellow bloggers inside and even outside your niche.

Your Blog Look Like a Newbie Blogger

Every blogger has had the first day of the blog. Even though an adequate knowledge of blogging might have been a challenge, the level of excitement during the early days of blogging is always at the peak for new bloggers. Though the traffic is very less in the beginning, each unique hit for the new site owner is a joy in itself.

But as time grows, so does the level of the blogger. After a certain point, one cannot just be referred to as a newbie blogger provided that the blog is doing well. Yet there are some bloggers who are well experienced and dedicated towards their blog, but are avoiding certain acts which, at the level (of an experienced blogger), don’t suit them.

Following are three things that can make an expert blogger look like a newbie to the readers and visitors.

Ad-Mashup

As said by almost every expert out there that quality is the key to everything in the world of blogging. At a good extent, the experienced bloggers do provide the best quality content. But when it comes to monetization, they’re so much behind the digits that they assimilate the ad banners at places within the articles that exceedingly upset the reader’s experience.

This act is compared with newbie bloggers because if you get a chance to pass by a newly launched blog, you might probably see ad banners surrounding the content, filling the sidebars, stuffing the headers and pushing the footer of the blog – something that is not at all recommended by anyone in this blogosphere.

Futile Email Broadcasts

Assuming that proficient bloggers are smart enough to make the use of email marketing services (such as Aweber, Mailchimp etc.), they do try and expand their lists and are often successful to fill up a good number of emails in the same. What happens thereafter is something to concentrate at.

Such veteran bloggers who have a good number of active email subscribers often send out useless, worthless, and sometimes completely irrelevant broadcast messages. These messages are often promotional emails either being sponsored by the product owner, or affiliate products through which the blogger can earn commissions upon sales.

The reason why this act if compared to that of the newbie bloggers is because when the latter start getting a few email subscribers, this is what they do. As many as 4 emails are sometimes sent out by a newbie blogger on whose list hardly reside a total of 20 subscribers!

Unceasing Social Sharing

Many expert bloggers yet practice the act of being a ‘social-sharing machine gun’. They tend to share almost about 10 articles of their blogs on all the social networks on a daily basis. Such acts not only annoy the fans/friends/followers, but also tend to reduce the current number of the same.

It is obvious that an excited newbie blogger would do that, because the joy of every published post will give that newbie blogger a boost in the excitement level. But it is not something that is suitable for a blogger that has a good fan-base and followership on different social networks.

Conclusion

The above acts, if by newbie bloggers, can be considered to be somewhat innocent because they are yet learning. But if they’re practiced by expert bloggers – there are things that need a change.

Make Sure Blogs are Ready

Is it Really Necessary to Design for Mobile Devices?

Mobile devices have an array of features that help to take a standard webpage and scale it to fit on their smaller screens. The iPhone does a great job at this, but many android powered devices provide flawed renderings when making the adjustment.

If you aren’t sure how your site looks on a mobile device you should check. Use your device and ask your friends if you can use theirs. Make sure to check on as many devices as possible to see just how everything looks.

Even if the scaling is being handled effectively, the design would probably benefit from having a mobile-only version.

Challenges to Consider When Designing for Mobile Devices

Here’s the thing: if a reader of your blog has any trouble reading your page they are likely to go back to their search results and try another site. You can’t afford to throw away readers like that unless you are only running your blog for fun.

The challenges are easy to understand when you take the mobile devices smaller dimensions into consideration. The typical screen resolution on a desktop or laptop is 1366 pixels by 768 pixels. The average smart phone dimensions are 320 pixels by 480 pixels. That isn’t only a drastic reduction in screen real estate, but it is a totally different aspect ratio.

Add in the fact that scaled pages often display text and images in hard-to-view formats and you will understand why this can be so difficult.

Techniques for Displaying Custom Mobile Layouts

This could be easy or it could be difficult depending on your CMS. If you are using WordPress or Tumblr it is remarkably simple. These platforms have tools built in that automatically detect a mobile user and render the page properly. Most of their themes come with standard and mobile flavors, too.

If you are using any other CMS (or static HTML) you are going to have to do some coding to get things working. There are plenty of libraries out there that can help you skip the actual development, but you will still need to add it to your site’s code. Check out whatever code repository you normally use when looking for premade code snippets for your blog and you will be sure to find what you need.

If you are struggling to design your own mobile-ready theme you can check out tools like Onbile, which guarantee to easily create themes that are compatible with several popular blogs. You can also use the provided theme combined with your browser detection and redirection script to get the job done.

It isn’t going to be easy to put all of this together unless you’re using WordPress or some other CMS that has integrated mobile detection functionality, but you can’t really afford to lose all of those readers. Mobile usage is expected to overtake desktops and laptops in the near future, and if you aren’t prepared you will be left behind.

4 Free Images resources For Bloggers

At last, you’ve finished writing your epic blog post.

You feel pleased with your work, but right now it’s just a big page of text. So, you’d like to add an image or two to add some visual interest to the published post. Smart move!

The way you use images on your blog helps to show the type of person or brand you are, so it’s worth spending at least a few minutes thinking about how images fit into your content marketing strategy.

But where can you get a good quality image without paying for it? And what’s the cheapest, simplest way to edit the image before you use it?

Here are 4 excellent resources that bloggers can use to source, create, and edit images without spending any extra cash:

1. Flickr

OK, you’ve almost certainly heard of Flickr before. It’s a big photo-sharing site that makes it easy to search for images under a Creative Commons licence.

You can download and use any of these images in your blog, as long as you stick to the Creative Commons licensing agreement. That means you’ll need to credit the image creator, and link back to the original image licence. In some cases, it may also mean that you can’t edit the image before using it, or that you can’t use the image on a commercial product.

Flickr is pretty easy to use, and holds a huge number of cool images on almost any theme. So once you’ve chosen an image, what can you use to edit it for free?

2. Pixlr

You don’t need to buy a copy of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to edit images for your blog.

Pixlr is a free online image editing service that you can access from any internet connection – and if you’re familiar with Photoshop, you already know how to use Pixlr, because a lot of the controls look very similar. There are Pixlr apps available from Google Play or the App Store, so you can use it on your smartphone, too.

This service makes it easy to do the most common image editing tasks bloggers face: cropping, resizing, or flipping images. But that’s not all it can do!  Use it to remove blemishes from your photos, add text (handy if you’ll be sharing on Pinterest), or switch the colours in your image to suit your branding. It doesn’t take long, and it makes your blog look more professional.

If what you really want isn’t just an image, but more of an infographic, check out my next suggestion…

3. Easelly

This is a self-service infographic creator for those times when you really need an informative custom graphic to get your point across. It’s simple to use: you start off with a visual theme, then add your own text, numbers, images and so on until you’ve got a unique infographic to show off on your blog post.

Easelly is a great way to try your hand at infographics even if you’re not an expert graphic designer, and once you find out how your blog’s readers respond to your new graphics, you might decide to create more!

4. Awesome Screenshot

The Awesome Screenshot browser plugin is one of the easiest ways to capture and edit your own images of what’s in your web browser. All you have to do is select the area or page to capture,  and your screenshot is taken for you. Then you have a range of tools to perfect the image before you save it – you can crop, add text, and use arrows, lines or geometric shapes to draw the viewer’s attention to the right places.

There are a lot of different screen-capturing apps out there, but Awesome Screenshot is one of the simplest and fastest I’ve used. If you’d like to give it a try, it’s available as a plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.

So, now you can find, edit, create and capture images of all kinds. And it doesn’t have to cost you a penny!

Time to get creative:

Think of one page or post on your blog that could really use a compelling image to catch the reader’s eye and direct it to what you want them to see.

Got an idea? Great.

3… 2… 1… Make it!

Should You Add Contributors to Your Blog

Moreover, blogging is all about creating a community these days. Hence, I would say – Yes, you should add contributors on your blog.

Let’s see some reasons to add contributors:

(1) Where are the Posts?

As a single blog writer, you are bound to run out of blog post ideas. But, you cannot let the fatigue effect the blog. Having 2-3 regular contributors on the team will ensure you are never out of blog content.

(2) Amalgamation of Views

Everyone thinks differently so when you add contributors, you are not only ensuring timely inclusion of blog content but also incorporating the different viewpoints of the contributors. It will add more spice to the blog and catch more eyeballs.

(3) Proving Worth

Getting a chance to write for a blog is a prestigious achievement for the writer. The contributor sees this as a chance to prove his/her writing skills, knowledge and fulfill the passion for writing. You blog gives them a platform to share their thoughts.

(4) Building a Community

When you add contributors, you amplify social media sharing. If you have ten contributors, at least seven of them will share their content on social media sites. Doing so will bring in visitors to your blog. Repeated social sharing will attract more readers, add to your mailing list and create a community over a period of time.

(5) Working on Other Aspects

If you are a conscious blogger, you know that maintaining a blog requires more work other than generating quality content. If left on your own, you take about 4-5 hours to write one quality post and later, there is no time left for other blog management tasks.

You can work on other blog management aspects when you add contributors. You are basically outsourcing  and doing so, you will have more time to create newsletters, manage hosting issues, find monetization opportunities and a host of other technical and monetizing stuffs.

Should you Pay the Contributors?

You should.

I know that many bloggers may not be in a position to add contributors initially but if you want to get ahead in blogging, you need to consider this sooner or later.

The cost factor could be a deterrent but once you start earning from a blog, try to keep aside some budget for paying contributors. Start by hiring just one contributor and take it from there. See how it works out.

What is your opinion? Should blogs add contributors?