So it seems when many of us move to blogging type sites, it’s sometimes hard to mentally leap the barrier of “static” to dynamic (dynamic meaning content that changes). Blogs are something that engages your readers, they (blogs) facilitate two way communication between you and your readers (who, for business operators, are potential clients). All to often I notice new blog owners place some content on the blog and then sit and wait for traffic. Invariably I often get a message or phone call asking what can be done as nothing’s happening. The conversation usually sounds something like this (below being an actual transcript):

BloggerSavvy: “Have you added in-demand, valuable content to your blog?”

New Blog Owner: “I did that a while back, but nobody visited the site.”

BloggerSavvy: “Have you added anything recently, content?”

New Blog Owner: “Well, no, not really, there’s not enough traffic and I don’t want to waste my time.”

BloggerSavvy:  “What things are you doing to draw traffic to your blog?”

New Blog Owner: “What do you mean? This is the Internet, won’t Google provide the traffic?”

BloggerSavvy: “Oh, I see, okay, what sites and online communities are you participating in, what activities are you doing to attract the attention of readers?”

New Blog Owner: “The blog is on the Internet, so shouldn’t I get some traffic because of that? There are millions of people all over the world on the Internet.”

BloggerSavvy: <Pausing…>

New Blog Owner: “I don’t really know what you mean or what I should do, can’t you do something? What now?”

As I’m sure we can appreciate, it seems that much of the issue is related not only to understanding the concept of a dynamic web site (blog), but also in appreciating that the off line, tangible world (where we make friends, connections, etc.) is mirrored in the online world! – The Internet. With this in mind, let’s think about that conversation…

In-demand, valuable content. That’s important, it provides original information that is demanded by readers. In other words, copying content from somewhere else (even with permission) is simply not going to garner any traffic or blog popularity. After all, if the blog uses duplicated content, what incentive is there to visit? Most readers would prefer (and will)  visit the source.

Post new content consistently. Business demands are very great on our time (myself included).  However, it’s important to always post regularly, the more often the better (as long as the content is of good quality – posting tons of low quality content will simply motivate readers to leave). When your blog is not busy, you should still post content! The thought process that it’s not worthwhile to post (since there are not many readers) is, in my opinion, a defeatist perspective. If I don’t post there are no readers – They will leave! If I’m low on readers, that’s when I must post regular content – It gives new readers some meat and potatoes… If the table is bare, it’s not very inviting – is it?

Be active in promoting your blog. You’ve got to get out there and participate, shake the trees, be active – Just like Baloo (Don’t know what that means? See the video below).

It’s a matter of gaining the experience of knowing were to participate, where to look for traffic, readers, connections – As Baloo puts it “the bare necessities”. Or… more to the point how to search. Just because your blog is accessible to Internet  subscribers, does not impart a degree of excessive traffic. This still begs the question, what now? What can new blog owners do to improve their visibility and increase readership.

To get noticed, you’ll have to make some noise. For all those new blog owners, here are some of the things I’ve done that have worked for me.

• Create a signature for your email and include and invitation to your URL. This will automatically be appended to every email you send out. eMail applications like Thunderbird, Evolution, Outlook Express, etc. all have the ability to do this.
• Join forums that appeal to your niche. When you answer questions (or ask them), most forums have the ability to include your tag line and/or signature. Again, include and invitation and a link to your URL. Do not spam forums (you’ll get banned). Instead, legitimately participate in them.
• Allow some of your content to be used on other sites only if the content links directly back to your blog.
• Participate in communities such as twitter, digg, etc. and those which appeal to your niche subject,  ensuring your profile in each of the communities you join all contain a URL to your blog.
• Comment on other blogs (do not spam – comment legitimately) with valuable content, insight, links, opinions, etc. – While making sure you include the URL of your blog in the appropriate area of the comment form you are completing.
• Always do your best to respond to readers who comment on your blog. Invite their opinions.
• Ensure your blog has the facility to allow commentors to be notified when someone responds to their comment – This invites return visits and further discussion.
• Offer to be a guest blogger on other blogs and invite your readers to be a guest on your blog.
• Make sure your blog has a “search” feature. Nothing could be more annoying than having to flip though page after page to try and find something. Make your blog user friendly.
• eMail readers and thank them for visiting.
• Get your best content seeded (included) in social bookmarking services like Stumbleupon and Delicious.

The above suggestions should help give new blog owners a good push in promoting their blog readership and traffic. Remember, don’t expect instant results, rather focus on community participation and providing quality content. If you do, your readership will grow all by itself.

What works for you that I’ve not mentioned? Have a success story you’d like to share? Feel free to add your comments below!

Before we get to the good stuff, it’s important to touch on some of the issues which negatively impact your SEO and resulting traffic. The following are issues I encounter almost all of the time (and mostly because the blog owner does not realize the following issues).

Negative SEO Issues:

• Make sure you retain the services of a professional web hosting provider. If the server hosting your account is often unavailable, that means Googlebot also cannot access it. The more often this occurs, the less traffic will be referred to you (because your blog will not be as prominent in search results, as it could be).

• Don’t participate in “keyword stuffing” when writing your content. Keyword stuffing is the action of adding keywords to your content, beyond what  in context, renders as reasonable. Excessive repetition of any particular word or phrasing via  content description, title tags, (any other) meta tags and the post content tends to raise a red flag with the search engines. Read what Google has to say about keyword stuffing and if you have suffered a negative as a result, you can resubmit your blog (after fixing the issues first) for consideration.

• Do not link to or exchange links with lower quality spam or splog sites. To be quite blunt, doing this associates (and places) your blog in a bad neighbourhood. Here is a direct quote from Google:

…Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links…

• Don’t duplicate your content or the content of another blog or web site. Distinctive and original, in demand content will serve you best. Copying content from another source, even with permission, is nothing more than a copy. The original site with the original copy will garner search engine traffic – Not the copied content.

Blogs Links and SEO:

In my opinion, an important aspect of improving your blog’s value (to Google as well as readers) is ensuring valuable (high ranking) inbound links point to your blog – and that you in turn link (outbound) to valuable, relevant content. Below are some of the aspects I’d commonly advise and blog (or site) owner.

• Allow your links to develop some age. The older a link is, generally, the more circulated it becomes. Old, well established links are ideal for your blog.

• The popularity of the inbound link also has a positive effect on your ranking. For example, a blog with a PR (Page Rank) of 6 provides more benefit that one that has a PR of 3. But don’t rule out the value of lower PR inbound links. I’d enjoy the value of one or two hundred inbound links from a PR3 blog anytime. So what I’m I suggesting? Consider the value of the inbound links by also examining their PR. One tool I use to accomplish this is a Firefox plugin called SEOQuake. It’s a simple tool that allows you to see the page rank of any site you wish. You get get the plugin directly from Mozilla’s SeoQuake SEO extension page.

• One thing (you may have less control over) is the anchor text of the inbound link. Anchor text is the text used for the link itself and… the text immediately surrounding it. That text should be relevant to the content it is linking too. Anchor text of “Baking” pointing to a page about painting is just not going to work well.

• Again, remember that outbound links are important. According to Google’s official blog “Linking out: Often it’s just applying common sense“.

Your Blog and Your Domain:

Many are not aware that your domain name registration now appears to have an effect on your SEO.  To backtrack, in 2005, Google’s patent application specifically addressed this issue by saying:

“…Domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith…”

• So it is probably a good idea to register your domain name for a longer period (than just 1 or 2 years). Incidentally, you can read United States Patent Application #20050071741. The gist of the pertinent sections of that patent application allude to the following additional issues for domain SEO:

“…the age, or other information, regarding a name server associated with a domain may be used to predict the legitimacy of the domain. A “good” name server may have a mix of different domains from different registrars and have a history of hosting those domains, while a “bad” name server might host mainly pornography or doorway domains, domains with commercial words (a common indicator of spam), or primarily bulk domains from a single registrar, or might be brand new. The newness of a name server might not automatically be a negative factor in determining the legitimacy of the associated domain, but in combination with other factors, such as ones described herein, it could be…”

• This essentially suggests that Name Servers (DNS) hosting your domain record is better contaning  a mix of different domains from different registrars. It appears Google considers this “Good”.

Finally, further advice is to ensure that you keep your domain on focus. For example, if your domain name contains keywords such as trees, weddings, real estate, law, or some other topic; ensure that your content is specific to the subject matter that your domain name suggests. If for example, you plan on launching content that is not directly related to the subject of the domain, then it may be advisable to launch it under a domain name that is more suited to the subject matter.

Keywords:

One aspect I think most of us are aware of is the issue of keywords. Specifically that we should place appropriate keywords in our document Meta Tags. (What is a keyword meta tag? – You can find out by reading Phil Bradley’s  “Meta tags – what, where, when, why?“). However did you know that the Meta tags for keyword, description and so forth do not have the effect they once did? Quite frankly, in my opinion they are a waste of time, and only useful for smaller search engines or directories, etc. that still use them – Which is why I still use meta tags.

In my opinion the only valuable use of keywords is to place the within your content! The post from Search Engine Watch, “How To Use HTML Meta Tags” says it best with their quote “Meta tags are not a magic solution”.

If you produce valuable content, Google and other search engines will be able to gather all they keyword information without any coded directions (such as meta tags).

SEO Tools for Your Blog:

In order to facilitate better SEO, there are some blog tools (WordPress plugins) that I use (and which you may want to put to good use as well). Two of the best free ones (in my opinion are:

• All in One SEO Pack provides automated (SEO) out of the box. Specifically, it takes care of titles, descriptions, keywords and duplicate content.
• Google XML Sitemaps generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap for your blog. This helps googlebot better crawl your blog. It reduces the crawl time and improves speed.

In conclusion, I’d like to remind everyone who is new to SEO (and blogging). The focus should be to provide quality and in demand content. Having said this, don’t misunderstand me. Quality content is critical (that what readers are looking for) – But quality content isn’t the “key” to blog success. However, this is another topic for another day; which I have touched on in an earlier post Quality Content is Not “The” Key to a Blog Success.

Before I forget, there is one tool I really should mention, it’s the Canonical URL’s plugin. What this does is help resolve the issue of someone visiting your blog using a different URL. This is also common fro individuals who have registered more that one domain, but have them all pointing to one hosting account. Because they are different domains, this could suggest “Duplicate Content” – Not good. To learn a bit more, check out the Google video below:

What issues have you encountered with regards to Blog SEO? What do you do that I didn’t include here? Have a thought? A comment? Let us know below! – Cheers!

I’ve posted about this subject before in “How to Deter Scrapers and Hotlinkers“, which discusses a bit more of the hands-on and some web based tools you can use to help protect your content.

Many of us have may have read all sorts of articles and other blog posts that delve into the legalities, copyright laws, rights and so forth. That’s not something I’m going to discuss as I think there’s too much discussion (and not enough action). If not, just take a look on Google and you’ll find a plethora of posts on the subject. The fact of the matter remains that we can file as many DMCA notices, cease and desist letters, etc. as we want. Often the content thief (called a “scraper” or “splogger”) does not care. After all they already have your content and you can cry and stamp your feet as much as you want – Many of them will simply not budge, especially if they are out of your geographical area or jurisdiction.

A case in point, on one of my other (self hosted) wordpress blogs, several pages were regularly being lifted by a web site in China. The only recourse was that Google removed the stolen content from search results (the hosting provider, etc. did nothing) – Even though Google was removing their search results, that didn’t stop them from adding more (from my stolen content)! Locally (North/South America and Europe) however, that blog has had a 100% success record in take downs of stolen content found on blog sties such as wordpress.com (Automattic), blogspot.com (Google), etc. Providing I followed their DMCA procedures, all issues were resolved.

In my opinion, this approach is ineffective, costly (with long distance faxing) and quite frankly a waste of time (at one point I was filing about 15 DMCA’s a day for that blog). Why? We need to be proactive not reactive! A client of mine uses the tagline “Predictable is preventable” for his blog and security business. And he’s right! We need to deter, curtail and control such theft attacks against our blog content.

It’s difficult to stop such activity, until you can see it occurring, as such, I hope the following tools will help you:

Grab yourself a copy of Antileech. It’s a plugin that does not stop sploggers, rather (in the developers words) “…produces a fake set of content especially for them that includes links back to your site and sends it only to them. When they steal this content, it appears online just like normal, except now you’ve turned the tables on them and have provided them with useless content…” The benefits here are that sploggers seldom read all the content. They have an automatied system grabbing thousands of pages – And now they will have backlinks to your original content, inviting the reader of the splog (containing fake content) to visit your blog instead. That’s link love!

Another effective tool in your arsenal is ©Feed, which allows you to place a digital fingerprint and copyright notice in your content feed (RSS). For those not familiar, in most cases, your RSS is used to facilitate content theft. What’s RSS? Common Craft’s video below easily explains it:

In the words of the ©feed developers “…You can use html. You can add the IP of a feed reader and digital fingerprint for an explicit key. There can also be a domain name for a whitelist and this domains became not the message [sic]. The plugin search for this key at content theft [sic]. It is furthermore possible to add comments and related posts to the feed. For the related post feature it uses a database-search for the content. You can use the plugin “Simple Tagging” for related posts in a feed. The copyright notice can be added even when using entry excerpts…”

Needless to say, the above two tools are very robust and take a proactive approach.  There are some other resources I’ve bumped into over time, that provide good reading and further insight:

• Jamming the scraper signals
• How You Can Stop Dirty Feed Scrapers In 3 Easy Steps
• Benefiting from Blog Scrapers
• Google – Duplicate content due to scrapers

Hopefully the above helps you (especially those who emailed me asking)!

Do you have any good solutions? What tools do you use? Feel free to comment your thoughts below.

The #1 strategy to garnering more traffic to your blog is:

“Write good quality, in-demand content“. (Remember you are writing too people, not at them).

And of course some of the activities I successfully use are:

• Use social networking tools such as: StumbleUpon. Run an advertising campaign via StumbleUpon. Use twitter. Ensure you provide tweets of value and customize your twitter page to match the branding of your blog. Never complain needlessly on twitter (do you want to spend your day with a whining sour-puss?) Invite people to follow you on twitter.  You may find my earlier post “Common Blog Traffic Sources?” to be of interest – Hint… Google is NOT my biggest traffic source .
• Include information about your blog in the signature of every email you send (including the URL).
• Use subscription systems on your blog. Plugins such as Comment Approved Notifier and Subscribe2 can help you accomplish this. More useful plugins can be found in the post “25 Most Beneficial WordPress Plugins“.
• Enhance your update services. When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the site update services you configured. Here is a robust list of 145 Update Services for Blogs.
• Use your blog information and URL in forum signatures.
• Comment on other blogs. However, don’t comment just for the sake of obtaining a link, doing so is often very obvious, instead, provide valuable feedback, thoughts and ideas.
• eMail readers and thank them for visiting.
• Post new, quality content regularly. Doing so keeps readers interested and momentum going. Additionally, ensure you provide valuable links to external resources as well as those within your blog.
• Trust your readers. Often it is very annoying (and a bit of a turn off) to wait for comment approval every single time, when they participate (comment) on your blog. Instead, it may be better to “lift the embargo” for those who have provided valuable comments before. If a comment from those individuals is inappropriate, you can always edit or remove it later.
• Use lists on your blog. Lists are attractive as they are scannable,  easy to use and link to; and easy to add to later.

I’ve been following a fair bit of the happenings in the blogsphere (and for me some of them are new). Of note is the changing landscape where word of mouth seems to be successful whereas viral marketing appears to be waning.

Most importantly, we’d like to know what some of the new strategies are, that you use or recommend. How do you approach them? What do you do or recommend? What’s your perspective in new blog promotion strategies? Comment below. Also, for a bit of link love, comments added to this post will have the no-follow tag removed as I move them into the post with your credit. So… don’t be shy.

1. It’s cheaper than many other “large” traffic advertising services. (5¢ USD per click as of the writing of this post).
2. There’s better long term traffic growth as those who are genuinely interested in your content can save your links (thumbs up), which their friends can also see, add to their links, visit your blog, and so on… (Commonly referred to as “organic“).
3. Your clicks will not be in a pop-up/under, banner, etc. Visitors are taken directly to your site!
4. You do not need to create an advertisement, all you need is a published blog post (or web page).

Realistically, you can probably launch with a cheaper budget ($5.00 USD  per day for 100 visitors per day). If you ran that for a week, it would cost about $35 USD and garner you 700 visitors. Prior to setting up your advertising campaign, there are some key points we need to keep in mind.

Review the StumbleUpon Advertiser Resources. Pay special attention to the “Features” section of the advertiser resource as it may answer many of your questions.

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a StumbleUpon advertiser account via the “Create a Campaign Now” button. (This is a different password to your regular StumbleUpon account – If you have one).

After following the sign-up process, you’ll reach a screen similar to the one below:

Using the  above screen shot example, you can select the appropriate interest groups you want to target. The numbers in brackets show how many thousands of members have subscribed. So for example, “Music (716)” means 716,000 people have subscribed to the music interest group.

After making your selections, you will reach another screen similar to the one depicted below:

At this point you are able to select your daily budget (which could be more or less than $5 USD). Personally I’d suggest you spend only a little money. Doing so allows you to evaluate the performance and provide tweaks, prior to investing further money.

StumbleUpon Advertising Support approves campaigns, as such your campaign will not appear until it has been approved.

To make your first StumbleUpon ad more effective, it’s important to ensure the page is of interest to your chosen StumbleUpon interest group (while providing valuable content). Remember, the key trick in this exercise,  is to use the ad to garner initial StumbleUpon traffic voting (thumbs up), so as to build regular traffic from other StumbleUpon users when your ad campaign is not live.

Another aspect to consider is using a valuable, popular post as your campaigns landing page. Remember, like search engines, not everyone is going to visit your blog using the home page. Instead, look at your current traffic statistics, which will help you determine which of your posts are the most popular and most in demand from readers. Use that post as your landing page – Remember, it popular in the most part because readers have found value it it. As such, create the best impression by placing your best post “up front and centre”.

Keep in mind that you also want to encourage your new readers to return and enjoy new content. In an earlier post I discussed how to find readers for your blog, wherein I suggested some interactive tools you can use to engage your readers as well as the importance of “focus” and community involvement.

Now it’s your turn!

Determine your budget (keep it affordable), sign up and don’t forget to use your best post.

Comment below with your experiences. What did you do? How did it work out, successful? Not successful? What other services do you use?

Before I go into the details below, I’d just like to point out a caveat. Most new blogs struggle to gain exposure, they need to be found by readers. Subsequently the issue of long term, sustained growth versus sudden spurts of short term growth (as new reader communities discover a blog), becomes the fulcrum (so to speak). In my opinion, the best approach is long term growth. This means your earning a few new readers each day, each post, each comment, etc. This really is where your focus should be (and most blogs do seem to fall into this category). When communities do discover you, through Digg, Slashdot, etc. that’s the cherries, the desert. Enjoy it, but remember that not all of them return. Normally there’s a sharp, sudden increase in traffic and a sharp drop. But each time you should be able to retain a few more readers. Your long term growth, that’s the meat and potatoes! That’s one thing which will make you big and strong.

One of the mistakes I made (initially) was to try and garner traffic from everywhere. I had the thought that the whole Internet was my audience. That’s just not true. Someone interested in knitting had no interest whatsoever in my earlier blog. If they visited at all, it was a one-time only visit. To better prepare myself (for long term growth), I should have mapped out what type of reader I wanted my blog to interest. In essence, I should have written down a profile and then only marketed to that niche. You’ll get much better traffic and faster growth if your activities are geared to target and attract a specific readership. Think of it this way, do you want pre-qualified traffic or just traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) was another area I could have tweaked a bit more. Not so much in terms of page rank, Google indexing etc., but in terms of content accuracy. What I mean by this is to ensure that I did take the time to provide individualized keywords, descriptions, etc. for every single post! At that time I was a bit lazy and let WordPress do all the work. In hindsight, I’d suggest using a plugin called All in One SEO Pack. It allows you to customize the keywords, descriptions, etc. for every single post, as you write or you can go back later and edit those things. Make sure you use it. One thing though, in my opinion search engine page rank, et al are NOT the holy grail. They should NEVER be your focus or your primary strategy. I remember getting caught up in the hype only to find out that some of my posts were ranking highly, not because of any SEO, instead, as a result of quality content and other blogs linking to it (among other factors).
As I alluded to earlier, there can be sudden bursts of traffic from sites (such as Digg). Frankly when this happened, I’d revel about it. I even remember phoning friends, telling them about the incredible traffic or how the post was on Diggs front page – It was party time! However, not once did I consider how to retain a larger share of those potential readers. I found out the traffic would have a sharp and steady decline over the next five days, but never consider looking at the long term incline. I was focusing on the wrong numbers! I should have been looking at maximizing the number of repeat visitors. For example, features to retain some of these new readers should have included:

• Cross linking to relevant posts within my content as well as a short list of the most relevant content (to the post being read). Incidentally, there is a plugin that will assist you in doing so, and it’s called Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, which helps visitors find related content of additional interest to them.
• Ensure I’m using a cache on the blog, so when a sudden surge of traffic appears, the site will remain available (not returning error messages).
• Allow for reader interaction (like comments), and make sure you respond. Provide a poll, you can even email them direct and thank them for visiting (I kid you not, common courtesy is always nice and professional), use your imagination, there are lots of interactive features you could use.
• Invite them to follow you on twitter, subscribe to your blog RSS, new post notifications, newsletters, and so on

Side note: For those looking for some useful and productive plugins, you can find more via 25 Most Beneficial WordPress Plugins an of course a shameless plug to contact me on twitter @BloggerSavvy

Finally, one important aspect I wish I used in the early stages of that blog was to go out and shake the trees. I spent almost all my time tweaking WordPress code, tweaking plugins, creating posts, researching blog technologies and content, responding to visitors, etc. Not once did it occur to me that one of the strongest factors to increasing my traffic was to involve myself in the very community I was writing quality content for! Visit their blogs, ask questions, provide comments and input, extend invitations and so forth. Think about it this way, if I want to get people to visit for a barbeque I have to phone them right? Well… it’s the same on the Internet. Don’t be afraid to ask, get involved, be happy and enjoy what you’re doing. Remember you are writing for people, not at them!

To come back to the original question, “About how long does it take for traffic to start picking up?”, it’s really up to you and your niche (community). The more involved you get the faster the growth may be. If you are very serious about blogging, are not afraid of the work and are committed. You’ll find that your traffic will reach your targeted level – Don’t worry about that, don’t focus on that. Just make sure you focus on your blog’s goals and ensuring your community is given the content and tools they need and want from you. If you focus on these things, the traffic will take care of itself.

As an afterthought, before I go, I’d like to highlight three traffic related activities you should never do:

1. Never spam users. If in launching a new service, you’ve added some of the people in your contacts, and they ask to be removed from your list. Do so immediately and with a smile!
2. I’ve received a lot of links lately where I’m promised all sorts of traffic to my blog if I buy their software or services. DON’T DO IT! Why? Your URL is entered into software by you or them. Then it connects to a huge list of proxy servers. The program is run by them (or you) for a several hours. Upon review of your web traffic statistics, it appears that lots of people visit your site (because those logs show visitors from thousands of different IP addresses). What’s really happening is that your blog is only being pinged by the proxy or pages are being requested, no one really actually reads your blog. Don’t waste your money on this.
3. Don’t use other blog/web site generators and similar Internet tricks. Such “Black Hat” methods work temporarily at best. Your blog is best grown by setting up and planning for the long term.

Quite frankly, some solutions might be a better fit for your organization or personnel; such as Video streaming sites, wikis, forums, “traditional” static (hard coded) sites, etc. And (as a side note) all of these can be integrated into a blog. Irrespective, you may have your heart set on blogging, and have decided that a blog is the best tool for your needs.

What are the best traits of successful bloggers? What qualities do you need, or need to ensure your blog writer has? One of the most common issues I’ve heard from my clients and the public at large is the discouraged feelings some of them develop after launching a blog and it shows in their low traffic. They seem to focus on garnering traffic, when they should focus on the blog, it’s contents and how to make the blog stand out in the crowd. It reminds me a bit of the wise business budgeting adage “Look after the top line and the bottom line will take care of itself”. I think all to often that some bloggers are focusing on the bottom line instead.

But what traits will serve blog writers best? What skills, experiences, etc.? Below are fifteen of my opinions that I always consider when someone asks for advice. I’m certainly not suggesting that you or whoever writes your content should be strong in all 15 traits, rather I’m suggesting that these are the best facets to consider in yourself or your blog writer.

So… here are the top 15 qualities I consider:

1. Be a Good Reader. That’s right! Reading! Why? In my opinion a good listener is able to provide superior content. He or she reads what others write, becomes informed, increases awareness and is able to ascertain which content may be in demand in your online communities. Personally, I find myself reading more than I expected – I actually read way more than I could ever hope to write!
2. Enjoy Writing Articles. I’m sure you’d agree that’s a gimme. I think it goes without saying that you should enjoy writing – OFTEN. That you could best capitalize on developing your own righting character and style. (Side Note: While blogging for the most part is primarily text driven, I’ve seen an increasing trend toward video blogging, and have worked on several video streaming sites to facilitate such solutions – So… if you’re a better speaker, consider video blogging or podcasting).
3. Be Disciplined. Let’s face it, blogging is an ongoing activity you participate in to help reach your goals. You have to be able to remain motivated to regularly post new content to your blog – Doing so consistently.
4. Communicate Well. Have the ability to get your understanding across. Remember that communication is NOT the exchange of information, instead it IS the exchange of understanding. At the very least, you should have the communicative skills to impart valuable, in-demand information, in a logical and understandable manner.
5. Remain Genuine. Being honest in your blogging endeavours. Remember, blogging is a public, community driven environment. Lots of people are looking at you, therefore you should conduct yourself in a professional manner and treat those around you with respect.
6. Remain Organized. I can personally attest to this from the experiences in launching my Ubuntu Linux Help blog. When my first post went viral, I was not prepared for the responses. I received lot’s of comments and email messages. I followed up on sites that were linking to me as well as monitoring RSS feeds. And most importantly writing follow up posts. There were also technical issues, such as automated blog and database backup management and code tweaking, etc.
7. Make Time. I’ve been just as guilty when I catch myself saying “When I have time”. That’s the wrong way to think! I should make the time I need – Use a schedule and follow it. Remember, you’ll have to ensure that you respond to post comments, read post on other blogs, do research, communicate with the people around you, etc. Most of the advice I’ve read seems to indicate new blogs should post content every day. While I do agree with that, I’ve had to consider my schedule and make room to post on a consistent basis.
8. Be Focused. From time to time I have followed blogs that successfully maintain a consistent writing style and topic focus, only to suddenly change. Doing so can come across as a bit “dizzy” and slapstick. Remember, you’re communicating with your readers, losing focus or changing reader expectations can in the long run, reduce readership. If you have a great “thread” that really needs exploring, has unlimited potential and is not within the intended focus of your current blog; consider the possibility of launching it as another separate blog.
9. Maintain Technical Skills. While I’d not say this is a must, it does rank high. If you don’t have the technical (server) skills, work with someone who does. For example, how do you automate backups? What do you do if your browser starts displaying “Error 500″ type messages when visiting your blog? What about redesigning your blog theme? How to move your database or re-import a database backup? What about server security? Updates and patches? And so on…
10. Relaxed. Don’t be overly sensitive when you read something you may not agree with. Visitors will provide criticism, both constructive and negative. Other blogs may also create blog posts about you or your blog. Take both the positive and negative in stride. If you get too caught up emotionally, then blogging might not be the best venue for you and your piece of mind.
11. Enjoy Hard Work. That’s right! Hard work can be enjoyable. It’s just like playing sports or pursuing a serious hobby. You’ve got to enjoy the work. I know from experience that many sites I work with do not instantly garner the owners the results they want. Some of them have to work very hard indeed to reach their goals. A blog is an investment not a display object.
12. Encourages a Learning Atmosphere. You’ll be happier (and more successful) if you enjoy learning new things. While you may be an expert in your blog’s subject, In my opinion, bloggers can learn even more by communicating with visitors and other blog owners. The operative word is “sharing”, and in doing so, you can learn a bit more about your own subject (doing a bit of networking along the way).
13. A Creative Thinker. Some of the most successful bloggers are able to think creatively (out of the box). Regardless if your blog is a technical blog or an abstract blog, the ability to think in an innovative manner will serve you well. Think about it this way… There may be thousands of blogs that discuss similar subjects; as your blog. What do you do to stand out from the crowd. What spark can you provide that makes your readers feel the “Wow” effect?
14. Enjoy a Gregarious Nature. Blogging put’s you in view of the general public; you’re under the spotlight and everyone is watching the performance. As such, people will form opinions and may even discuss them online. Every thing you present or write in your blog, becomes public record. If you goof, it’s next to impossible to remove that. If you’re somewhat more outgoing and enjoy people, you’ll probably be better able to capitalize on the inherent benefits (and drawbacks) of constant observation and analysis.
15. Entrepreneurial Spirit. Are you a go-getter? Is your time management good? Are you a self-starter? Maintaining the motivation and initiative to keep plugging away to launch and continue the growth of your blog, is arguably one of the best traits to this end. It’s one thing to ensure you have all the tools and automation solutions in place and in use, it’s another matter entirely to motivate yourself and consistently provide new content and community connections – even when you don’t feel like it.

While I’m sure many may agree that there are several more that could be added to the list, these are just some, that are in my opinion, the most beneficial. So much so, that when reviewing my list, I felt compelled to add a bonus 16th point:

You’re a Messenger. The whole point of blogging is not to aimlessly provide unrelated, disjointed content. Rather it’s to communicate specific, targeted, focused information. I’ve often talked to people who were excited to launch a blog as it was trendy and “the fun thing to do”, but invariably failed to provide any worthwhile communication, and message. If you or your blog writer are not “messengers”, perhaps some of the other traits above may help.

For those of you who personally know me, in addition to my technical (Network Engineering) background, I’ve also a strong background in training and curriculum development. That’s where I draw upon much of my thoughts when placing pen to paper (so to speak).

Do you think I missed something important? Do you have something to add? Thought, Comments? Say so below. Thanks.

Given the lure of increasing traffic to your web site and the inherent increase in revenue that traffic can bring, it’s no wonder how this seems the priority focus when attempting to increase traffic (and revenue leads). SEO is but one aspect that can benefit any business, there are incredible tools to this effect, one of the most beneficial is to use a blog.

Side note: Don’t know what a blog is? Then, you might be interested in my earlier post “What is Blogging? What’s a Blog“. That post also has a short video showing how a blog performs.

In another earlier post on this blog (Quality Content is Not “the” Key to a Blog Success), I suggested focusing on the intangible elements to help further increase traffic. It may logically follow therefore, that one of the biggest benefits blogging can provide business owners is the opportunity to develop a personal rapport with blog visitors. Like any business relationship, purchasers like to get to know their suppliers or providers a bit before investing in products and services. People are more likely to spend if the garner an inside peek – it’s a personal exchange. It builds confidence and trust among other things. Think about it for a moment… A web site, in essence is like a multi-page brochure. While that’s good to describe services or products, it does relatively little in terms of interaction, rapport building, social networking, and so forth. There’s really no Call to Action as each visit shows the same old content. Blogs on the other hand, encourage interactivity, communication and repeat visits as content is added on a regular basis.

A web site is one way communication. A blog is two way (actually it’s multiway communication). The blog owner (that’s the business) can talk to the visitor, who can respond AND visitors can communicate with each other as well.

For business owners, that content can include product or service updates, notifications, announcements, videos, personal introductions, podcasting, contests, guest writers, and the list goes on. Think of the scenario this way:

A potential client enters your business, you give them a brochure, they say nothing and leave. They may or may not return. That’s a web site.

No let’s look at the same scenario, from a blogging framework:

A potential client enters your business, you provide them the specific content they require. If they need content you don’t have, it’s a snap to add. The client communicates with you, and you respond. Both of you respond to another client, who replies. That sounds much more like the way things are supposed to be. Dynamic, interactive.

Over the years, I’ve seen time and again how blogs are able to better garner the traffic business owners are looking for. Why? That’s what they were designed for over the years – to be a social platform that allows people or businesses to communicate and build their connections. It’s one thing to read a book (or web site), but much more beneficial to communicate with the authors and visa versa.

To use an example, about a year ago one of my clients launched a web site and a blog a few weeks apart. To this day the blog is obtaining almost double the traffic of the web site. Statistically that seems to be supported in my opinion, when observing all of my clients sites and blogs. All of the blogs are at the top of the list traffic wise, with the sites trailing behind.

Obviously, due to privacy, I cannot divulge specific statistics of clients, I did take a look for some stats, to see if some of these observations are mirrored elsewhere. I found some pretty interesting results. Expansion+ (an Internet Marketing PR site) reported on a Business Blogging Survey. Did you know that “…Almost 89 percent of U.S. respondents and nearly 83 percent of U.K. respondents believe blogs are an important digital communication…”?

Also from their site:

“Ultimately, what this survey revealed was a need for communication professionals in both countries to step up to the plate and start integrating blogging practices into their strategic approach,” said Jacki Vause, managing director of Peppercom’s London office”.

While the survey they were discussing was specifically about “Business Blogging Survey Reveals Corporate Attitude to Social Media” and was intended to “…compare and contrast blogging communication practices in the U.S. and the U.K. and identify best practices…”, I couldn’t help but note some of the prevalent points.

I also looked at another site, which was more targeted to the subject of this blog post. Neville Hobson’s post “Blogs drive business opportunities: UK survey” where some of the key findings he noted included:

• 50% of companies undertake some form of blogging, either having a blog, or encouraging employees to comment on blogs.
• 80% of blog users visit blogs within work hours. Most blog users visit blogs at lunchtime (31%), or first thing in the morning (29%).
• 66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source.

Visit the link to his post (above) to see all his other noted findings (as they’re a good indicator of how business owners seem to deal with blogging).

Statistics aside, blogging is a great way for any business to increase traffic. It’s an interesting point to note, that when I conduct training seminars, a fair number of people seemed to have visited both my blogs, already garnering some feel for my business and my professional background – And it makes communication much more effective when I meet with them!

For business owners (actually for anyone) considering launching a blog, I’ve mentioned in other posts, but it’s apt here – Make sure you focus your blog towards a specific niche and target audience (within that niche). Obviously conent from my other blog (a Linux blog) would not work in this blog as it’s not of interest. Therefore, by using a blog, you’re able to provide an added benefit by targeting very specific audiences and therefore garnereing traffic that in many mays could be considered as “qualified leads“, since they may already be looking for what you’ve got.

What do these blog visitors want? I also found (via Google) the results of a German study about corporate blogging. For those who do not speak German, some of the key findings were:

• 95 % of respondents found it important that the blog they read be updated regularly.
• 91% of blog readers expect a fast, relevant/appropriate reply to their questions and comments.
• 90% of readers thought it was important to indicate a difference between commercial and private content.
• 58% of readers, read them to find news and information they can’t find elsewhere.
• 57% of respondents were interested in the personal opinions of the authors.
• 54% of blog visitors formulate their opinions about products and companies from blogs.
• 51% of readers visit product and/or corporate sites as a results of reading blogs.
• 43% of visitors were interested in the blog discussions.

Those are some eye opening numbers, that show how important blogs are to business owners. For example, would you like visitors to find out more about your business, it’s products and services elsewhere or from your blog directly? – A blog that can help them formulate an opinion about your business and it’s offerings.

I should note that one point not addressed in the site I reviewed was ROI. All business owners should be aware that the cost of operating a blog is drastically less that a traditional web site. You don’t have to spend the time to learn web coding or invest in designers and developers to update your site content. Using WordPress, it quite easy after the engine is installed. It’s very much like typing your content in an online editor and then clicking publish – Easy!

In conclusion, given the above, it appears that blogging provides the following key benefits to business owners.

• Targeted audience.
• improved PR (public relations).
• Enhanced pre-sales.
• Increased traffic due to social interaction.
• Community building.
• Cost effective ROI.
• Improved brand awareness.

In my opinion, businesses that want to compete for attention and traffic in today’s online arena could best leverage the value of their investment by using a blog.

After all, do you want to be communicating with interested people and building your business or would you rather be standing on the corner handing brochures out. In my opinion, the choice is a no-brainer. ;)

• Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications.
• Why I Quit Windows and Switched to Linux.
• Why is Linux Faster than Windows?

I enjoyed the traffic those posts provided (and still provide to this day) as they helped my blog grow. I think they were popular because they provided a valuable resource as well as elicited fair bit of discussion, as some of the posts and resulting comments were very outspoken and opinionated. One of the above posts (Why I Quit Windows and Switched to Linux) was a very personal story describing some of my career experiences and how they effected my professional life and thoughts.

Imagine my surprise when I found another blog with the identical content on it. So much so, that the author who scraped my content claimed it as his own! At that time I had more than enough technical knowledge to initiate actions that would catch-out scrapers, but I’d not yet fully experienced some of the nitty-gritty administrative aspects such as contacting the hosting providers, filing DMCA notices et al.

For that matter, why would this be an important issue? Why should bloggers (or any web site owner for that matter) take actions to mitigate such issues? Well a few good reasons immediately come to mind:

1. It’s annoying. A blogger puts a fair bit of work into his or her post, only to find it copied elsewhere and used to earn revenue (usually via advertising) for the content thief.



2. It can impact your web hosting cost if you have a busy site. Remember, most hosting accounts have a monthly bandwidth allowance. Exceed the monthly bandwidth and the blog owner incurs extra cost. But wait!… How did scrapers cause my cost to increase? Simply put, they copied the text content onto their blogs and linked the images (in that content) from my blog. This resulted in the text being duplicated on their site and the images being stored on my hosting account. When a web browser viewed the content on their page, it was pulling the images (for that content) from my hosting account, for which I had to pay the bandwidth.



3. It can reduce your Google (SEO) ranking. How does that happen? When Google finds content, it tries to determine if the content is original (not copied from another site) and proceeds to provide it with page ranking data. It is conceivable that content can be copied and receive a page rank (and inclusion in Google search results), without the original blog article being yet found by Google. If it get’s found by Google later, how can you ensure that your original becomes noted as the original post? Don’t misunderstand me, search engines like Google do try to remove duplicate content, but it becomes difficult when your original content becomes listed as the duplicate.

One important issue I realized is that you cannot be overly emotional about such actions. When trying to fix such issues, you need to work with various parties such as Google DMCA, Hosting Providers, etc. Sending them flippant or angry letters is not going to get you the help you need. Remember, large organizations and businesses deal with such issues daily and they are not impressed with theatrics. You need to have these people on your side. Remaining calm, assertive and professional goes a long way to getting support (as does courtesy).

Let’s define a couple things before we move on…

• A scraper is someone who copies your content and places it on another site, without your permission. In essence this is theft of your intellectual property.
• A hotlinker is someone who displays your images on another site, and uses the coding on their page is such a way so as to pull the image that is stored on your server (hosting account), for display on another page. As I mentioned earlier, this is tantamount to bandwidth theft.

I’m often asked how I discover that my content has been scraped or hotlinked. There are several tools that when used on a regular basis, can help you reduce the amount of content thieves.

Review your web statistics.

All good hosting accounts have built in web statistics. In my opinion AWStats ranks highly. AWStats has a feature that displays “Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines)”

The display will show you the URL of the page linking to you as well as the number of hits to your page. It will also tell you how many page loads (of your pages) that URL initiates. For example if another site URL causes 10 hits on my site, then there should also be 10 page loads. If not something’s up. Take a look at the image below (clicking on the image will show you the large version).

AWStats hotlinker example

What you’re seeing in the edited image above, is that another site has displayed something (from my site) 1645 times but never actually sent a visitor to my site. In other words my content (an image in this case) was shown on another site, but no page visits (referals) were ever recorded coming from that site. I visited the URL in question, and sure enough, the site was hotlinking to one of my images.

Use online services.

One service I’ve experimented with is Copyscape. They are a site that provides a service which scans other web sites, providing you with the URL of copied content. In my case I found scraped content (stolen from my other blog) during the writing of this very post. That is… one of my original blog posts, was found via Copyscape to be duplicated verbatum on another web site in another country. They were using it to sell their advertising space and also had hot linked to all my images. While they did include a link to my original post and did list my URL as the “Original link”, they did so without permission and were using my complete work for their own profit.

A Google search will provide you with a plethora of other sites that provide such services, I’m only mentioning Copyscape as one good example. To further take advantage of such tools, its most advantageous to include a very unique sentence in any given post and search for it in Google (that’s often a very quick method to catch sites that copy your valuable content).

Once you’ve been able to isolate a specific URL that has hotlinked and/or scraped content, what can you do about it?

Here’s how the process should work:

1. Find and isolate a specific URL that is using your content.
2. Evaluate the need to take action. Are they still sending you traffic or referrals in some fashion? The bottom line question you could ask yourself is “Does their copied content really do my blog enough harm that I have no option but to follow through?” If you’ve answered yes, action is the next step.
3. Take action.

But wait! What actions are there? Can I really protect myself from a scraper or hotlinker in another country?

Before moving into they types of actions (tools) you can use to protect your content, it’s important to keep one salient point in mind:

If you have some content that is so important, private or valuable, etc. and you do not want other people to copy it, then DO NOT POST IT ON THE INTERNET. If you post something of excessive value on the Internet, no measure of copyright protection is going to prevent an individual from accessing it and copying it. But (there’s always a “but”), there are ways you can impede the profitability and earning power of copied content and in some cases injecting your own revenue generating systems into content copied from your site.

So what kinds of actions can we take?

Make sure you provide appropriate copyright notifications within every page of your blog. If you intend to permit your content to be shared, Creative Commons provides a great copyright tool wherein you can specify how your content is shared. You’ll find that tool at Creative Commons. You can select your jurisdiction in a drop down menu on the upper right side of the home page.

Is the copied content being served by Google Adsense? If so, you can issue an infringement notice at Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Google AdSense. I’ve found the best method is to fax the notice to the number they provide. In practice, I’ve found that it takes a few days for this to work through their system. However, they have always acted professionally, responsible and have indeed taken action.

As a side note: If you are looking for notification templates you can use, take a look at Copyright Law and SEO Part 3 (Sample DMCA Notifications, in HTML and MS Word Format), found on the McAnerin International web site.

Personally, I’ve experienced an excessive number of blogs copying content to Blogger.com based blogs. If you review their Blogger Content Policy, you’ll also find that notifications are to be sent to Google at Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Blogger. Again, I’ve found the response to be incredibly fast and Blogger.com is very quick (in my experience) to remove the violating content.

Many scrapers capture and repost your content by tapping into the RSS feed of your blog.

Side note: If you’re not very familiar with RSS feeds, Commoncraft has a great video, RSS in Plain English.

The fact that they are simply capturing and re-posting your RSS feeds may be indicative of an automated system (with little human intervention), where the scraper may not necessarily read your copied content. If that’s the case, you could try embedding a link back to your blog. There’s a great WordPress plugin that will automatically do just that: RSS Footer. (One helpful thing is the RSS Link Tagger for Google Analytics, which helps with the tracking of non-adwords advertising campaigns. If you log into Google Analytics and go to your created campaign and view the traffic sources information you’ll garner more information).

Try earning a bit of revenue from your stolen feed content. If you’re a Google Adsense publisher, try the “AdSense for Feeds” option within your “Adsense Setup”. Additionally, the RSS Footer plugin above, I think can also be used to embed advertising content from any other affiliates or advertisers you subscribe to.

For those who are a little stronger at coding issues, you may want to try out a great little WordPress plugin called “From RSS?“, where, as their site says: “…do something extra for your RSS subscribers, you might want to give them a little bit of extra content, or simply leave out some annoying footer about subscribing to the RSS feed. This plugin facilitates that…”

You can of course Report a Spam Result to Google which they use to help “…maintain the quality of Google search results.”

Finally another tactic that’s available is to report the site to the hosting company. There must be a ton of resources to help isolate who is the ultimate network provider (for the server that hosts the offending web site), of which I primarily use two:

• Whois lookup and Domain name search and
• Netcraft’s Search Web by Domain.

Using the domaintools.com site, I can see which DNS servers are managing the domain (ostensibly indicating who’s hosting it). And with Netcraft’s tools, I can determine who owns the IP address block that the website and server is one, thereby opening another venue of recourse.

In conclusion, I’d like to remind everyone of on salient issue. There may always be hotlinkers and scrapers of our content. I don’t think anyone can stop all of them, as doing so would in all likelihood prevent legitimate visitors from viewing your content, instead the primary objective of this post was simply to impart the concept of DETERENCE, so as to reduce such activities.

• Automated subscription management (subscribe/unsubscribe).
• Statistics/Click through rate.
• Ability to send in both text and html (at the same time).
• No installation of software on their PC.
• Automated server transmission of email.
• Automated server management of bounced email addresses.

And the list goes on…

Suffice to say, it did make me think about some of the aspects I’ve experienced in emailed newsletter subscriptions, good and bad. In many cases I’ve observed individuals launch a newsletter – full of excitement! Only, later to find that they did not garner their anticipated results. Inevitably, after review, it became evident that the root causes of an unsuccessful newsletter system was in poor planing.

In every public seminar I present, I almost always touch on the importance of solid planning (and sticking to the plan!). It does not matter how small or large the project is, it always needs a plan. Which brings to mind the old adage…

“If you want some exercise walk around, if you want to get somewhere, plan your route!“

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting this particular client has poor planning skills (quite the opposite in fact!), rather it led me to posting about my experiences and how I’d suggest people could build an effective, successful online newsletter system; one that best promotes their business, interest, web site, blog, etc. Hopefully some of the points will help you.

Note: While I am a Certified Network Engineer (MCSE, N+, MCP+I), I’ve endeavoured not to delve too much into the technical aspects. However I don’t mind fielding such questions as I do operate my own servers as well as providing web/blog development, online solutions and hosting services for other clients.

In my opinion one crux of a successful newsletter must be to ask yourself “Why do I want to launch a newsletter?” Remember that the potential subscriber of that newsletter is going to ask themselves “What’s in it for me?” – Make sure you provide enough benefits to answer their needs; and in doing so, remember the mantra:

“Benefits sell, features don’t“.

What makes your newsletter better than any other newsletter? – Do something that makes you stand out and get noticed.

When I first read their email and considered the newsletter angle, several questions jumped to the forefront:

• Why don’t they just promote their RSS feed? (They don’t have one – For those that don’t know, here is a great resource showing you what an RSS feed is: RSS Feeds in Plain English).
• Why don’t they just blog about it? (Their site is not a blog platform).
• Newsletters are not an “A <-> B” conversation, rather one-way. (Sure but newsletters remind readers to return).
• Newsletters are old-fashioned. (That may be, but they are familiar venues to many people).
• Newsletters are simply sending information already on the web site or blog, that’s not interesting is it? (It is interesting if you use the newsletter to build interest – such as announcements about what’s coming, etc. – or Information not currently on the site).
• The content may not be of interest to all the recipients, many will simply delete the email. (But that’s really a benefit! You can target specific “groups” of readers with specific “targeted” content – You’ve always got to try and look at the upside of things).

For a moment, let’s expand on some of those questions and comments.

One thing I learned from my other blog, is that I had (and still do) a lot of one-time visitors. These are visitors that find my blog via search engines (Google) or from links in other blogs, forums, etc. They visit my site and on average view 3.25 pages and then leave, never returning. On tool that could help turn them into repeat visitors is a newsletter. I’m not suggesting that every one of them will subscribe, rather a blog (or web site) containing quality content and a well written subscription “call to action“, may motivate some of them to subscribe. Much in the same way that product manufacturers work to improve brand loyalty, newsletters are one tool you can use to promote reader loyalty.

As I mentioned, newsletters have the ability to share information that is not yet on the site. They compliment the site. One way of facilitating this could be to induce interest by keeping your readers in the loop on new events, upcoming features, etc. This can be very powerful as it helps to build media buzz and interest. Just look at how the movie industry uses this… They announce an upcoming movie and let you see just a few of the really good bits as teasers, then you’re kept in suspense, interest captured until the new movie is finally available and your able to watch it.

Newsletters help you to build a community or business network, so much so, that a good newsletter should actively encourage feedback (and perhaps, pre-stage that membership for a future forum environment ). In my opinion, people like to be part of a community; and they arguably will be the most loyal visitors, who will encourage others to become regular visitors. (Nothing like a good debate or discussion elicited by your newsletter).

Obviously there are several reasons (or motivators) why we would want to launch a newsletter, once we’ve made the call however, there are several things to consider in order to bring our newsletter plans to fruition.

In my opinion, there are ten steps to successful and effective enewsletter marketing.

1) Plan your key objectives and stay within them.

What is the purpose of your newsletter? What tangible, measurable goal(s) are you building towards? As I’ve mentioned, there are several objectives your newsletter can be used to help reach, some examples being:

• Are you building a business network or community?
• Improve/Increase traffic statistics of your site or blog?
• Garnering greater public awareness?
• Elicit greater feedback and interactivity?
• Enhance media PR marketing?
• Appealing to a new niche of specific people?
• Capturing readers who do not use your feeds (RSS)?

Many of us will try to include more than one objective. I learned the hard way, always have one primary objective that you work towards. It should take precedence over some of your secondary objectives. I’ll say it again… ALWAYS focus on the prime objective.

2) Create content that is scannable.

Most individuals (including myself) quickly scan the contents of messages first. Doing so helps us to evaluate when the message should be acted upon (the importance level) and if it’s interesting enough for us to read. Think about it a moment, when you pick up a newspaper don’t you quickly scan the article to see what it’s about – and then read it if it captures your interest?

Scannable content does not just refer to the text itself, it refers to the visual (esthetic) elements as well. Elements such as bolding, icons, highlighting on backgrounds, etc. Ever used a magic marker to highlight key text when studying? ;)

3) Tell people what you enewsletter focuses on, what it’s about.

I’m sure you’ll want to keep your subscribers. Tell them up front what the newsletter is about, what topic ranges it covers and how the newsletter will benefit the reader. And stick to that commitment! Time and time again, I’ve subscribed to newsletters that promised content, features and benefits that I was interested. And time again I’ve unsubscribed because they did not deliver. This brings to mind a very salient issue:

It’s better to have a smaller number of subscribers who receive the content they expected than those who unsubscribed because you didn’t follow through with your offerings (some of whom think they got – forgive the expression – suckered into signing up with empty promises). Be genuine… that small group may help your newsletter marketing more than you realize.

4) Be consistent and regular.

If your newsletter is monthly, make sure you always deliver.
If your newsletter is quarterly, make sure you always deliver and so on…

There’s nothing worse than haphazard delivery. For those of us who have printed newspaper subscriptions, I’m sure they can attest to the annoyance when the newspaper fails to be delivered or is often delivered late.

By consistent, I’m referring to the style and content. It’s a good idea to use the same style of writing as used in your web site or blog. Why? That’s probably what people expect. There’s nothing wrong with having a guest writer contribute (that’s often a good idea), but think for a moment, if people like your site content writing style, then they’ll also like that same style in your newsletter. In some ways, this also touches on branding issues (albeit that’s a whole discussion in itself) – branding does not refer just to graphics, rather your whole packaging – including the writing style.

5) Build interest with titles.

Newspapers are the masters of capturing interest with titles and describing the content with titles. They’ve had centuries to perfect. Your title is a critical component as it will be the primary deciding factor as to whether someone will read your newsletter or not.

Using RSS feeds as an example, I subscribe to about 12 feeds from various blogs that I am seriously interested in. Each morning I review the new articles and decide which I will return to read in the evening, and which I delete. The only thing I read is the title, that’s it! If the title captures me I save it for reading, if not, I delete it right away.

Note: In addition to titles, please keep in mind that content in the top of your newsletter (above the fold) will receive more immediate interest than below the fold. Similarly, links near the top will also be clicked more often. This is also a good SEO strategy, namely to pack your best punch in your first paragraph.

One caveat to watch out for with newsletter (as opposed to RSS feeds) is the title you give your newsletter blast. It’s important to be able to “brand” and identify your newsletter right away (because readers are expecting it and need to easily find it within their email), however there also needs to be some description of the content itself. Try experimenting to achieve a balance between the two. If BloggerSavvy had a newsletter, I’d initially try an enewsletter subject line that reads something like this example:

“BloggerSavvy Newsletter – 10 sizzling marketing tips, New blog contest, How to get featured on Digg, and more…”

The above example clearly indicates who the newsletter is from and highlights some of the top content that may most capture interest.

6) Use standard, reliable tools.

Evidently a component upon which you should place a fair bit of emphasis is the engine that runs your newsletter and subscriptions. While many people use a third party subscription service, I personally don’t think that is the best way to go. Why? In my opinion:

1. It’s a privacy issue. Third-parties do not need to control my database of subscribers.
2. In the past I have had large numbers of people unsubscribing because the domain sending newsletters was not the same domain as the one that creates the newsletter.
3. In my opinion (with regards to point #2) it also looks very unprofessional when my domain is xxx.com but the domain sending the newsletter is yyy.com – it just does not come across as professional (in my opinion).
4. It’s not the best choice to operate a newsletter under the behest of a third party. What happens if they change the rules, sell their business, go out of business. (Who owns the actual database?)
5. From personal experience, I have often encountered unreliable services from such providers.
6. Using third party services often increases your costs.

What would I suggest?

Use you own newsletter service. I often suggest PHPList as a viable, reliable alternative; in great part because you can install it under your own domain and it easily integrates with the premier blogging platform, WordPress. Some of my favourite phplist features are noted on the home page of their web site as:

• Double opt-in subscription mechanism
• Scheduling
• RSS
• User Specific Content
• Click-tracking
• Attachments
• Bounce management
• Domain Throttling
• Server Throttling

While a search on Google should provide you with dozens of systems, I’ve personally found that this package works both in terms of reliability and features. One benefit is that the system is virtually automated (including double opt-in – more about that below) and all you have to do is provide content – It will even archive your newsletters! More features of that package are here: phplist.com/details and for all the WordPress users the plugin to integrate the system (into WordPress) is called WP-PHPList. It’s also interesting to note that this open source package also integrates into many other platforms, including ecommerce, forums and CMS related engines.

Bottom line, while third party relayers, I’m sure do provide good service, in my opinion, I’d prefer to retain control of my own subscribers and manage them under my own domain and branding – for many of the reasons I listed above. In my opinion, this is a much more professional way to operate enewsletter transmissions.

7) Monitor and track your results.

Ensure that you use a combination of tools to monitor your activities; both from the newsletter system and the resulting server (your domain) that provides content such as images, video, audio, etc. I would suggest using the tracking tools that come with the newsletter mailing list (such as phplist) with Google Analytics and your own servers statistics. In my opinion, one of the better server based statistics package is called AWStats. Using a combination of tools (and not relaying on one tool) helps to provide a more realistic “picture” (as different tools gather and correlate data in different ways).

Paying attention to which links are clicked, will give you insight as to which pages provide the most in demand and valued content. They will also help when you’re “experimenting” with your content style and placement, etc.

As a quick practical example, knowing which content garners the greatest click through to a page will quickly tell you which pages and content could best be used to “announce” things to your readers. It will also tell you which content you may want to follow-up on or further capitalize upon (because of the heightened interest).

8) Ensure your newsletter provides double opt in subscription.

Double opt in is a subscription feature wherein the subscriber enters their subscription email address and then confirms that subscription via an email sent by the newsletter server. It’s primary purpose is to ensure that subscribers truly wish to subscribe. I think that here in Canada this (double opt in) is a requirement (but I’m not 100% sure about that).

You will want to do this as it prevents damage to your blog (or web site) occurring from users who are added to your subscribers list without permission.

I have often entered my contacts into only the subscription databases that I directly control, and always have the tools in place that allow them to unsubscribe. While technically this is a grey area, I’ve never had issues or complaints as my subscribers were always generally intelligent, forgiving individuals.

I have personally seen other newsletters fail because they purchased lists of email addresses and added them to the database, as such they ended up with a poisoned database that was overflowing with unqualified readers who did not care and were not interested in the content. In one case the domain name became blacklisted as a spam domain, which irreparably destroyed that blog’s brand and reputation.

9) Grow your benefits and quality.

There are several ways to help keep readership growing. Obviously, one way is to continue providing high quality, in demand content. Consistently give your readers something of value, something that benefits them.

You could provide them with new content in each newsletter or revisit existing content on your blog/web site (or both). Personally, I tend to use a bit of both.

Why?

1. Statistics show me which topics are hot and would benefit from a follow-up.
2. New content keeps things fresh and interesting and provides incentive to subscribe as the content does not have appear on the blog until after the subscribers have received it.

One key is to always remain consistent, don’t procrastinate. As I alluded above, it can be very annoying (and make your newsletter appear really “flaky”) if it’s operated in a haphazard manner and if the content is not targeted. Content should be targeted.

Quite often newsletter content is not so much a matter of “What would I like to include in the newsletter this time?” rather it’s (in my opinion) more of an issue of “What do my subscribers want to read about?” “What interests them?” In other words select targeted content for targeted readers, that’s effective.

This leads to the final point… #10

10) Talk to your subscribers and get feedback.

Communicating with your readers may be an eye opening experience. While we can garner a fair bit of intelligence from review statistics, we can obtain some insight through reader input.

Don’t be afraid to contact your most loyal readers, ask them how you can improve the newsletter. Ask them what they would do. I’ve often been surprised at some of the beneficial things I’ve learned.

Equally, talk to those who have unsubscribed ask them if they wouldn’t mind telling you why. Sometimes you may not like what you hear, but if you listen, really listen, you’ll often discover other areas of improvement.

Obtaining feedback helps to ensure the effectiveness of your newsletter marketing as you’ll remain in touch with your readers. You will be talking to them, not at them.

You’ll be empowering them as a community and building brand loyalty and pride in ownership, which is probably one of the most powerful aspects of effective online newsletter marketing!

I’m taking a couple months reprieve from the seminar track as I’ve a fair bit of work to catch up on. Doing so also presents me with the time to develop my seminar track for the next year “Blogging to Grow Your Business”. While developing the content (and bouncing ideas off some of my seminar regulars) on of them challenged a chapter I working on. In particular was the issue that the success of a blog (for that matter a web site too), was NOT incumbent solely on quality, in-demand content. Several others also voiced similar issues, and it occurred to me that we’re comparing apples and oranges.

Most would agree that in the most basic terms we can appreciate that search engines find quality content attractive, thereby directing more traffic to the page containing such content. That may have been a more realistic perception for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but certainly not in today’s Social Web! Your online presence very much follows the general rules within the tangible world. Think about it… When I meet a prospective client in a brick & mortar environment, I need to be just as personable and professional as I am in my online blogging and web development environment.

The value and importance of networking does not end when we include online solutions (such as blogs) to grow our businesses. It’s the networking we do that in part that helps to ensure our blogs success. You could have all the content in the world, but are you really going to grow traffic if nobody knows about it?

Is it realistic to expect your sole source of traffic to be search engines? Of course not! The days of “Build it and they will come”, are long gone.

Needless to say, there were a flurry of email messages, so much so that I thought I’d post some answers.

First, lets break the issues down to the “features” and “benefits” issue. One of my mantras has always been:

“Benefits Sell, Features Don’t“

Think about it for a moment, all blogs have content -That’s a feature!

A blog that shows you how to save money or save time (for example), and thereby reach more people – Those are Benefits!

Which brings to mind the salient question (I think) all business owners should be asking themselves:

“What benefits can a blog provide my business?”

or

“If content is simply a feature and not the primary element of blog success, what’s in it for me?”

Subsequently this leads to some of the immediate questions that arose in our discussions, questions that I strongly feel are of the most basic surface benefits and do not really grasp the deeper concepts (which I’ll raise towards the end of this post).

• Where do I get traffic (readers)?
• Where do I get inbound links?
• How do I become visible? and so on…

It’s important for any business owner contemplating a blog to remember some of the basic aspects of business (and blogging) promotion:

• Design/Branding.
• Titles/Content.
• Interaction/Personality.
• SEO/Structure.
• Promotion/Marketing.

An aesthetically pleasing blog environment is one “surface” cornerstone. You could call it your packaging or “branding”. Your branding broadcasts a lot about you and your business. Blog branding directly reflects your business. If it looks horrible, that’s the message your sending to readers.

Titles are critical. Newspapers are masters at this. Think about it, when you look at a book, magazine or newspaper, the title is probably one of the first things you read. If the title captures interest, then readers will dig deeper into your content. Titles should try to include a call to action.

Interaction has always been a successful strategy. Using a blog to educate, inform, guide, demonstrate and so forth… is much the way successful business owners promote their operations. The same holds true in the virtual environment. Interaction shows that somebody is there to serve your clients.

SEO, if search engines know where your content is, what your most important content is and how to access it, this (among other SEO facets) goes a long way to helping search engine users (remember the focus should be on the people) find your most valuable content. The easier your blog is to navigate, the more likely readers can find the content they are looking for.

Promotion and marketing have always been important. Every business that has a blog is able to join the crowd. But, how do you get noticed in a crowd? You don’t. It’s important to bring to fruition the most important aspects that make your blog stand out and get noticed. Nobody is going to give you leadership, you have to earn it.

As I suggested, these are (in my opinion) some of the most common questions, the answers of which don’t really address the deeper aspects. Aspects that show us that it’s no longer content that’s the key to success, but rather a related web of elements.

In my experience, there are four intangible elements that contribute enormously to a blogs success. And arguably may be considered some of the most important elements!

1. Luck/Karma.
2. Charisma/Leadership.
3. Confidence/Trust.
4. Professionalism/Genuine.

Luck/Karma.

I kid you not! My other blog had several posts go viral. In one case (shortly after I launched the blog) it was sheer luck that a reader posted the link on Digg and that the Digg community moved the post to the front page. That truly was luck. (Update: I’ll blog about this later, but another aspect of good luck was during the launch of this blog, I lost all my content – But Google cache and Live cache returned copies to me).

But can we control luck? Can we make it work to our advantage? I think we can. While this could easily be a separate discussion altogether, I’d still suggest that one way to illicit good luck is to communicate effectively. Tell everyone what you need, plan your goals towards your desires, be optimistic and relax, doing so will allow you to approach any setbacks with a positive attitude. In turn this will help you to turn lemons into lemonade (as your mentality will already be in a positive zone).

Charisma/Leadership.

Participate in your community. Be the mover and shaker. Earn leadership through your insight and wisdom. Don’t micro-manage, rather stand back and look at the whole picture. Connect the people around you into a community and empower their participation. Your blog can be among the best tools to this end.

Confidence/Trust.

When you blog about a topic, mean what you say and follow through. Be genuine in your relations with readers. Always be professional. If you’re writing a controversial post, do so in a positive fashion, comments written with negative or combative language, do not build confidence in you or trust in your blog. Invite guests to contribute content to your blog, doing so goes a long way to building trust and ensuring confidence.

Professionalism/Genuine.

Impart your knowledge in a positive manner. It’s not what you know, but how you express it that helps build your blog success. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert in online business promotion, network engineering, web development/coding or even Linux blogging. But I’ve had years of training and/or experience in these areas. In particular, my linux blog has taught me that some of the most valuable content on occasion comes from my readers!

Finally, I’d like to clarify again, I’m not suggesting that the value of content has fallen by the way side. Rather that more blogs are savvy to the issue of quality content. Therefore an area that can further a blog’s success is to focus on empowering the four intangeable elements to your fullest potential. Doing so, in my opinion, is one step towards becomming bloggersavvy!

I received a few email messages from friends this morning, after I told them about a new blog launch. To answer such a question, I could dive into the technical aspects (I’m a certified Network Engineer MCSE among others), as much as the practical aspects (that would perhaps, make more sense to the business owner).

While googling does provide a lot of definitions, I’m not really sure that they grasp the meat and potatoes of blogging. To define a blog in its simplest terms:

A blog empowers a business to reach a wider audience and continue a conversation with them, by providing readers with in demand, quality, syndicated content. Blogs are beneficial in that they allow business owners to add content to their blogs as needed, without requiring the services of a web site developer or designer (to update the content). Therefore two evident benefits, are that blogs save business owners money and help market products or services.

Blogs are a way to continue a conversation with the audience. This is accomplished by the use of features, just some such of which include:

• Readers providing comments and feedback.
• Surveys and Polls.
• Content written by and submitted for posting by guest writers from the audience.

In terms of features, many of them are beneficial. For example, blogs provide RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. What’s an RSS feed and why is it beneficial? Wikipedia has a great blurb.

From wikipedia:

…Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based or desktop-based…

In other words, when we update the content in our blog, subscribers (of our RSS feed) are instantly notified!

One (initially) less visible benefit of blogging comes into play as the volume of quality content grows. The greater the amount of quality content available, the greater the amount of traffic (visitors) to the blog. Therefore, over time, a blog can become an increasingly powerful tool for the business owner!

To further clarify, I visited YouTube and searched for “What is a blog”. The first and best result returned was a great video from “CommonCraft”, titled “Blogs in Plain English”:

I should add that they also have a great video explaining RSS in Plain English.

Another video describing different types of blogs may also further explain some of the diversity in blogging:

In conclusion, it’s not a far stretch to realize that maintaining a conversation with your audience is the best way not only to grow traffic to your quality, in demand content, but also an incredibly effective way to promote products, services, charities, hobbies… in fact an endless list!