Blogging Expertise

I’m reading the transcript of Jeff Walker’s “Social Proof Call” and have found a few excellent points that I want to remember for my own blogging use. I’m posting them here because I think you’ll probably find them handy, too.

• Write more “case study” posts. I don’t do this anywhere near often enough, but these posts can be gold for both you and your readers. That’s because a good case study not only answers the question, “Is this for real?” but more importantly, helps the reader answer for himself, “That’s great, but is this something I could do?” Case studies help your readers visualize themselves using your solution.
• Make your readers feel less alone. Ask someone (anyone) what their biggest fears are and chances are “being alone” ranks right up there. By writing about your experience, or writing about your customers’ experiences, or sharing a common fear or concern or joy or question, you help your readers find a connection that they are craving.
• Back up your claims with proof. What kind of proof will vary by what business you’re in; it could be screenshots, or statistics, or quotes, or photos. The ideas is simply to give people a reason to believe what you’re telling them, beyond “because I said so.”
• Be yourself and be honest. It’s more important to get people to care about what you’re saying than to get them to agree. You’re never going to get everyone to agree, anyway. And honesty? Seems like a “duh” suggestion, but there’s always the temptation there to stretch the truth (to look better, to make more money, whatever your motivation is). In the long run, though, your mother was right. Honesty really is the best policy.
• Give your readers a forum to brag. First you give them the information they need to be successful, and then you set up a place for them to talk about how they’re succeeding based on that information. You can use anything from comments to a full blown forum to a membership site to make this happen. Your readers look good because they’re succeeding, and you look good because you helped them get there. It’s a win-win.
• Use anticipation to create demand. People generally have boring lives (I’m sure you’d find my life pretty boring!). Think like a serial novelist or 24 writer and give your readers something to look forward to! Anticipation builds excitement and interest.
• Get your readers invested in your blog by featuring their questions. There’s nothing like being “a contributer” to make someone read and tell their friends.

I hope you find this little summary useful. There were many other thought-provoking ideas–I just focused on the ones that are specifically relevant to blogging–so if you have the time, I highly recommend you read the whole transcript.

I’m a little behind on my blog reading (perpetually), but I just read Brian Clark’s latest post, The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration. Brian makes some great points about getting inspiration from magazine headlines (and by the way, the more you are able to “cross-pollinate” with other media, disciplines, etc., the more successful you’ll be in general). He pulls his examples from Cosmopolitan Magazine.

The post is worth reading for its instructive value, but more than that, if you write a post using a variation of a headline he mentioned, he’ll link back to the post. Sounds like a winner of an idea: not only will he help inspire you, but you can get a little extra traffic out of the deal, too.

This is a guest post by Steven Snell. Mr. Snell designs websites and maintains a blog for Vandelay Website Design. You can read more of his writing and see his portfolio at www.vandelaydesign.com.

Social media websites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Stumble Upon send thousands of visitors to blogs and websites everyday. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of articles about becoming a top user of these sites to build your traffic. While they are all tremendous sources of traffic, getting a significant number of visitors from these sites can take a lot of effort—especially with Digg, Netscape, and Reddit.

If you’ve avoided social media marketing because you don’t have hours every day to spend submitting articles and voting on those submitted by other users, you are missing out on countless potential visitors.

For the average user the main problem with the most popular social media sites is that it can be difficult to generate any kind of traffic to your site. Most of us are completely overlooking the opportunity to benefit from 2nd tier social media sites that send decent levels of traffic and can make it easier for the time-starved blogger to succeed.

Literally hundreds of lesser-known social media sites exist that present far less competition for the top spots. Yes, they will send less traffic than Digg, but if you choose the right ones to use you can see substantial results. Read more…?