Blog Improvement Advice From Problogger Easton Ellsworth
Easton Ellsworth blogs at Know More Media, a blog network with a focus on business. He currently blogs for Business Blog Wire, an excellent blog, covering daily blogging tips and advice. He’s also a Know More Media editor, and in the past helped to to run the Know More Media Author Certification program, which was created to help bloggers improve their blogging skills.
Read the interview:
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Who Should You Link To?
Someone on one of Deb’s posts here asked, “I am working on identifying the important blogs in my various niches - how about a post on how exactly to do that? It’s easy if your niche is tech or web related. You can just look at Technorati’s Top 100. But what’s an efficient way to go about finding other niches? How do you know who’s big? AND how many of these communities is it reasonable to strive to be active in?”
Now, since it was Deb’s post I’m not going to answer the whole question - maybe she’d like to. But I wanted to comment on this, because I’ve always found the whole “who to link to” issue really interesting. I’ve seen people ask this question before on forums, and it’s fascinating to me, because I’m sort of the old school mentality of linking to who I like vs. linking strategically.
Not having performed any serious scientific studies on linking, I can only offer my opinion though. Maybe it would be more beneficial for me to only link to big names, maybe not. I know it’s sometimes beneficial when big names link to me, but the other way around, well, I’m not so sure.
Examples:
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One Last Post About Comments: Become Part of Another Blogger’s Community
This week on Twitter, someone mentioned how he was getting a little tired of seeing everyone blogging about how to comment and how no one is saying anything new. At the risk of getting his dander up, I’d like to offer up one more post about commenting. Thanks for indulging me…
I’ve been remiss. I’m always talking about the importance of commenting to build traffic and I haven’t been doing it enough myself. My problem is as I get busy with my own blogs, I don’t have as much time to visit other blogs and drop them a line. This is a big mistake. Every blogger should visit blogs within his niche and become part of the community. Here’s why:
Hey Look at Me!
Every time you comment you draw attention to yourself. People remember your name. Soon they’re going to want to click on the link to your blog. More and more people are going to visit and become part of your community as well. This is a good thing.
Yeah.. I Know a Little
By participating in the discussions you’re showing off your expertise. Granted, if you come off as a know it all you won’t be very well liked, but if you’re an upbeat, enlightening part of the discussion people will remember. Commenting at other blogs is a good way to show off your expertise.
So Did Anyone Watch Lost Last Night?
Many bloggers work at home alone during the day. Commenting at other blogs is sort of like chit-chatting with your co-workers at the office. Even the shyest people need to socialize a little bit. Visiting other blogs and interacting with the regulars can be very therapeutic.
Here’s the thing…
When you visit other blogs, you learn:
- Who are the movers and shakers in your niche. Trust me on this, you want to have friends in this business.
- You get your name out there.
- You spread the word about your blog.
- You gather ideas based on others’ blog posts and comments.
- You meet lots of new like-minded people.
- You learn about new blogs in your niche.
When I began Freelance Writing Jobs three years ago, I spread the word by visiting other blogs and commenting. Though I did a few other things as well, this is the one single thing that made the biggest difference. People don’t just up and visit blogs. They have to know they exist. If you want that to happen you have to get out and toot your horn…often.
Where To Get Blog Contest Prizes
Since Deb did the previous post on the benefits of contests I thought I’d follow that theme with where to find prizes for said contests.
Sit around and wait: People will come to you if you’ve been blogging long enough. Companies and PR folks will email you and just offer stuff up. Loads of stuff. It can depend on your blog topic though. I never get any decent free prize offers at my blog about weird homes because frankly no one give houses away 
or other stuff related to weird homes. At my other blogs I get many offers a week though. To make sure folks can contact you, a solid contact page and email is an essential blog component.
ProfNet: Deb and I have both mentioned them before but they’re seriously a great place to get prizes. The downside, you’ll also get plenty of offers that don’t match your blog at all. I got an offer for free bleach-based products - at my green blog! Sorting all the emails can be a major pain. Other PR contacts ans sites can work as well.
Amazon.com: Or any bookstore site really. Keep up on which books are soon to be released. Often book authors are looking for people willing to do a book review and will send you a copy or two if you ask. Book contests in my experience do well.
New companies: Brand new companies and online stores are way more willing to give you prizes in trade for some promotion than say Hallmark - believe me, on one particularly brave night I asked Hallmark for some stuff. They were nice but um no. That said, don’t be afraid to ask big companies either - some will give you items.
Use your reader comments to your advantage: If you found a product you liked, wrote a review about it, and got great reader response, email the company and tell them. Companies love good responses and will often send you a prize thank you.
Other bloggers: If you get a prize offer you can’t use send the email you got with the offer to another blogger, they may reciprocate one day.
Local specialty stores: In your area there are likely little specialty stores that would love some free promotion on your blog. Visit said stores, build relationships, and set up a contest. Note that the store is more likely to particiapte if they have an online shop too - not all shops do - so check.
Spend your own money: A gamble that could or could not pay off. I did this at my blog I mentioned above; my weird home blog. Since I never get product offers there, I never do contests. One day I randomly decided to have a contest though because I do appreciate my readers there. That contest I think brought in some 300 plus comments and pumped my traffic up considerably - the extra traffic was enough to cover the amount of the cost of prizes and then some. Plus the traffic never went back down, so I’m assuming it brought in quite a few new readers. That was a good gamble. But just be forewarned I’ve seen blog contests that have zero entries so… It is a risk.
Where else have you scored prizes for blog contests?
Draw Attention to Your Blogs With Contests and Giveaways
Everyone loves free stuff. Fortunately there’s no shortage of businesses looking for people to give stuff away on their blogs. Every day I receive another request to do a product review and giveaway. In the past two weeks, I’ve given away or posted giveaways for two blenders, some refreshing beverages, lingerie, an MP3 player, an external hard drive, and a party planning notepad. In the upcoming weeks I’ll be giving away a toaster oven, bottled water, energy efficient light bulbs, a much in demand book by a couple of well known probloggers (guess who?) , and more. Why am I doing this? For several reasons.
- Contests bring in traffic. Everyone likes free stuff. If you’re giving away a great product all the lurkers will come out of the woodwork to get something for nothing.
- It’s a good way to get backlinks. Nothing says SEO like a bunch of sturdy backlinks. Get other bloggers to talk about you by giving away a tasty prize.
- It’s a great way to reward your readers. Offering up some great prizes to the people who visit your each day is a nice way to say thank you.
- Businesses will remember you as someone who does great product reviews and giveaways. You want this so they can send you more stuff. Of course you may have issues when your family trips over all the boxes in your office, but give them some of that free chocolate you got the other day and they’re sure to be more understanding.
- It makes you feel good. I love giving stuff out to my readers. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
One thing I learned is a contest is a great way to foster community. For instance, when Freelance Writing Jobs was struggling due to lack of community, I ran a contest to reward the month’s most prolific commenter. Many of the commenters are still coming back and participating in the discussions. A contest is also a great way to jump start or bring attention to a brand new blog.
What are you waiting for…go give something away!
Pros & Cons of Being A Confident Blogger
To a point, confidence, even a bit of conceit is a useful tool for bloggers for hire. It can also sabotage your blog. There’s a balance when it comes to confidence and blogging. It can be beneficial for you to find that balance in yourself.
Pros of being a confident blogger:
It can help you land jobs. Clients want to hire bloggers who spout confidently about the blog topic at hand. You telling a potential client, “I might be able to do a decent job writing about auto mechanics,” is not good enough. In my former writing life I wrote a lot of work and college resumes for folks. I saw people play down skills often because they didn’t want to sound cocky. Super cocky and confident are different. If you’ve got the skills to write about a topic don’t hide behind modesty during the application and interview process.
It can help you set proper pay rates: Confident bloggers ask for, and expect to get paid what they’re worth, or at the very least the going blog salary rate. Modest, unsure bloggers sometimes take lower wages because that’s what they feel they’re worth.
It can help you get over rejection: Actually it can help you to avoid rejection woes altogether. For example, at the right job I know I can bring in traffic, I’m confident in my specialty topics, and I know I’m a nice person to work with, so I tend to think if a client picks someone else; that’s their bad. Being confident helps me to almost entirely avoid rejection issues. I’ve been down exactly twice about a gig. Once for a query I sent to my favorite magazine on the planet (rejected but nicely, which only made it worse) and another time for a blog gig with super questionable hiring practices so the process pissed me off. Being upset about rejection twice isn’t bad. However, if you get upset every time you apply for and don’t get a gig, you’re going to spend a lot of time upset. Confident bloggers know another gig is around the corner and get on with it.
It allows you to say no: Along with avoiding rejection, confidence can help you learn to reject when necessary. I used to have issues saying no to a writing or blogging gig. Even if I had no extra time for a new job, I made time. The market is unsteady, it could be my last chance! Not true. With time, confidence in the blogging world as a whole allows you to see that no job is the last job. My stress is lower now that I feel fine turning down jobs.
It can make your blog better: When you’re confident about a topic your posts will sound confident. You’ll be more likely to make bold statements that draw comments, and have the ability to interact well with readers. Wishy washy blogs are dull to read and leave no reason for anyone to comment. If you’re confident in your blog topic say so, don’t do a lot of “Maybe this is the way it is” posts. Say how it is. If you signed on for a topic you’re not confident about, I’d say you should get some research going so you can learn confidence in your topic.
Cons of being a too confident blogger:
What To Do If Your Parachute Fails To Pop Open
You know what I think you shouldn’t be doing if your parachute fails to open; trying to figure out who the heck will take care of your blogs. Although, as bizarre as it sounds, without a solid emergency plan in place, that’s likely one thing I’d be thinking about. NOT the only thing; but I’m sure at one point, I’d think, “Damn, who is going to finish that series on recycling terms?”
Of course the above is extreme, I mainly used it because I’d really like to go skydiving one day, but if you blog full time you do need a plan for what will happen if something happens to you; if you get sick, laid over in a city and your laptop breaks, or worse.
My current plan is flawed.
The first part of my plan is good. Someone very close to me in my real world life (i.e. offline life) has an email saved that contains all my editor and client contacts and my schedule. If something were to happen to me, this person would be one of the first to know, and could contact all my clients. I trust her and she knows how to email people - don’t laugh, my best friend can barely use the computer (we’re not alike - she’s also really shy). That said, make sure you choose someone you trust, but also someone tech savvy enough to manage the task.
The part of my plan that’s flawed is that if something did happen to me this individual might be too upset to email lots of clients. The second part of your emergency plan is to choose someone who is actually an online pal that you trust, who knows where you work, who has that contact info, and who is also neutral enough to get the job done. You can give your online pal’s name to your real life friend and you’ll be all set. All your real life pal has to do is send one email to your online pal. Double covered.
I don’t think it’s wise to depend on just an online friend. If I vanished from the internet for a few days I’m sure people would worry and email me, but they’d have no clue what was going on because they’re not in my real world. If you work online full-time you do owe it to your clients to keep them up to speed. Now, do you have an emergency contact person?Or better yet two.
12 Ways To Find Blog Post Ideas
Last week my son was sick, so I was MIA around the web - which is one downside to blogging full-time. It’s hard to plan for surprise sick days if you’re on a week-to-week schedule. In any case, I started writing a post about where to find post ideas, came back and Miss Deb had written a post on the same topic. We even ended up with almost the exact same number of tips. Sometimes I think our brains are semi-linked.
Oddly our posts are still fairly different so I’m going to go ahead and post mine too.
- Your head: This goes along with loving what you write about. Pull thoughts from your own brain. Example if you’re an experimental cook you’ll likely be a better cooking blogger than someone like me who yes, enjoys cooking but never has time to think up anything truly creative.
- Subscribe to other like-minded blogs: See what said blogs are talking about. Write about topics with your own spin or opinion.
- Subscribe to news feeds: Read the news often and make sure you tag key words in your feed, so that anytime your topic pops up in the news you know about it.
- Subscribe to government websites by email: There are tons of government sites that provide updated news on health, money, housing, and more. The only downside is that not all have caught on to RSS which means you may have to subscribe by email – but for a wealth of topic ideas, I’ll sort some email.
- Read trade magazines: There are seriously trade magazines for just about every topic out there. Most are available online – even if they make their content private, scan the headlines for ideas. Trade news is usually more unique than national magazine news, which tends to focus on evergreen topics, but read those too if you like.
- Get hooked up with PR contacts: I use ProfNet among other PR places. I just sent off my spring query for topics not too long ago, and so many PR folks contacted me that I’m not going to run out of topic and product ideas until winter. Not to mention I scored a ton of prizes for blog contests.
- Go on a stumble fest: Sometimes Stumble Upon can really help inspire you. Not always necessarily give you topics, but lots of the stumbled posts are clever, and make you want to try to write something cool.
- Attend topic related shows in your city: You can find good interview subjects and nab topic ideas this way. Not to mention, you can see some pretty cool products before they hit completely mainstream. There are always shows and conferences coming to my areas related to green living, home, parenting, tech, gardening, wedding, art, business, office furniture, and more.
- Browse forums related to your topic: For example, if you blog about green living, get on a green living forum and find out what people want to know more about.
- Visit YouTube: Or any video site really. Some of the videos can give you some great ideas for blog posts or even make up the bulk of a blog post if you’re having a blank-head sort of day.
- Read books: Gasp. I know - books? Books are obviously not frequently updated. However, if you have a certain types of blogs, books can actually provide you better obscure info than what you’ll find online. Housing is one good example. Top architects are constantly in the news, yet many other cool architects are not so obvious, you can learn about them from good old books.
- Quit blogging: Not forever. I’m talking a day, or even a couple of hours. Get out of the house, walk around, get some fresh air, and clear your head. It helps.
Don’t forget to enter our “Make a list post” contest - you might win a super spiffy OneTouch 4 Mini 250 GB external hard drive.
It’s not too late for blog spring cleaning
At one of my blog networks my channel editor decided that all of the bloggers in the channel should complete some blog spring cleaning. It’s a good plan. I completely cleaned up one blog, and it looks (and feels) much better, and posting runs a little smoother now.
My editor’s suggestions included items like:
- Clearing out your spam cache.
- Checking said spam for any comments that passed though and vice vs. checking comments for spam.
- Being sure to have an “About” page in place.
- Picking up your blogroll - or maybe creating one if you don’t already have one.
- Adding a new poll (at this network we do use polls often - and some are fairly old).
All good stuff to do.
There’s more you can do to spiffy up your blog and post content. Such as…
Set a blog clean-up schedule. Once a year is not usually good enough, especially if you have an intense blogroll. I add basic blog clean-up tasks to my schedule at least once every four months. Personally, I alternate blogs so that I’m not cleaning eight plus blogs at once.
Clean up your categories. Push like topics together, such as combine eco books, coloring books, and green books into one category - books. I tend to gage my categories on how difficult it is for me to find the right slug, quickly, when I need it. If I can’t find what I need fast, there’s a good chance my readers can’t either. Some people think you should have no more than 10 blog categories. I think that’s pushing it. At some of my blogs it would make no sense to have just 10 categories, it would be too vague.
Make sure you have some other pages as well, besides the “About” page. A “Contact me” page is good, and it’s also nice to make pages that highlight popular posts.
Do some back reading. Then read your “About” page or what was written into your contract regarding topic. If your current posts seem to be swaying off track from the original intent of the blog, you may need to jump back on track. One good way to do this is to make a list of keywords and phrases for you topic. You don’t have to fill your posts with keywords, but I’ve found that keeping a short list by my desk can keep me focused and help me work faster.
Do an, “Ask the readers” post or poll. Over time your readers change; their minds change, you get new readers, and it’s hard to tell what everyone is interested in. You could pull some of this info from stats, but it’s not the whole story, especially if you have some posts that have hit it big on Stumble Upon or another social media site. The best thing to do is ask your readers what they’d like to see more of from now on. I’ve asked readers what they’re interested in reading in posts, but currently I’m running a poll about this at one blog, and getting way more responses. If you go with the poll option, I’d set it up so that the poll contains some basic topics relevant to your blog and also set it up so that readers can fill in an answer.
What other spring cleaning blog tasks do you do to keep your blog in top notch shape?
11 Tips to Find Ideas and Inspiration
It’s not always easy to talk about the same topic day in and day out. You don’t want to seem redundant and you don’t want to bore your readers. Still, there are days when the ideas don’t come easy. When this happens, there are a few things you can do to find inspiration.
- Read comments - Some of the best ideas come from comments. Your readers offer their own insight, ask question and provide interesting fodder for discussion. Don’t overlook this goldmine of ideas. I take another look at the comments once a week on my "administrative day" to help plan topics for the week.
- Visit forums in your niche - What are people talking about? What are the topics discussed most often? What subjects are most controversial? Niche-related forums are one of the best ways to stay on top of what those in your demographic most want to learn about.
- Visit other blogs - Other bloggers’ posts often trigger ideas of your own. If you are expanding on another bloggers’ idea - do give credit where it’s due.
- Plan your topics ahead using an editorial calendar - If you’re stuck for ideas, look at your calendar for the day’s topic. See what I use for an editorial calendar here.
- Go for a walk - Often a good head-clearing walk is just the thing for finding inspiration. I learned to keep a small pad and pen in my jacket pocket as I often come up with ideas during my morning dog walk. The problem is, I’d forget half of them by the time I got home!
- Give a Tweet - Ask a niche-related question on Twitter and plan posts around the responses. Don’t forget to give hat tips where they’re due.
- Brainstorm with others in your network - Most networks offer forums and channel-wide chats. Fellow bloggers are always so helpful, they’ll help you brainstorm.
- Make a list - You may not have enough ideas for a long post, but why not combine several ideas into a list?
- Let a guest blogger take over - Often times you just need to step away for a few hours or a day. Guest bloggers bring a fresh perspective and give you some time to regroup.
- Read back through your archives - Often times a post needs updating or a look back. Information becomes obsolete or you learn more about a certain topic. Offer a blog post upgrade.
- Look through your rejected posts - You know you have them. Go back in your files to all those ideas your rejected. After some time away, these may seem like good ideas again.
Image: MorgueFile
