How To Blog For Newbies Day 21

Blogging is tough!

During my pursuit, I loved spending time in reading on other bloggers’ writing. By reading through their archives, I have managed to find strength and inspiration when the going gets tough. My tribute goes to great bloggers like Problogger, John Chow, Steve Pavlina and Chris Brogan for making me in believing in what I’m doing. They inspire me to persevere. I shall share with you the 18 blogging tips that I’ve picked up from observing and reading their blogs.

1. Don’t Resign From Your Full Time Job Yet

When you are all fired up, thats where the danger lurks. The first blogging secret applies to all of us who blog part time. We need the stable income from our job to probably to tide us through the first and second year of our new blogging business.

Imagine the stress you would have to go through if you resigned from your job spontaneously. How long could you last through the drought? Inspiration and stress do not correlate. The sad fact is, if you resigned from your job prematurely, you would be forced to look for a new job again.

2. Only Focus On One Blog At Any One Time

They all do it. Problogger, DoshDosh, John Chow and Chris Brogan don’t stray from one blog to another!

They all share a common trait called ‘focus’. Focus would give you the strength to strife on because your mind won’t need to strain on different genre of blogs or websites. Another thing about focus. When our mind focus on a particular object, we give life to it.

I used to tell you to try working on  two blogs instead of one. The reason? So that you could continue to work once you run out of subjects for any one blog. After working on two blogs simultaneously for 3 months, I realized that I might actually be wrong. If you happened to blog part time, it’s best that you concentrate just on one blog.

There is so much to do even when you are working on one blog. Do you know what else am I doing apart from writing on my post? My Tweetdeck is on, and I’ve logged in to my Facebook to engage my friends and building rapport, all for the sake of my How To Blog.org.

3. Be Active In At Least One Social Media Network

At the moment of this writing, John Chow has 3,998 friends in Facebook and oops, surprise surprise, only 398 followers in Twitter. Problogger (also known as Darren Rowse) has 3 Fan Pages in Facebook and 88,038 followers in Twitter. I could not find DoshDosh in Facebook (maybe you can help me out on this!) and Maki has 14,874 followers in Twitter. Top blogger like Chris Brogan is a superstar in Twitter, boasting a whopping 120,273 followers!

When you tweet about your latest blog updates, your followers may link to your post. Some may even retweet and help in spreading the word around. Such action will create inbound links from Twitter to your blog. Building links is one of the most important part of creating traffics to your website.

4. Comments On Other Bloggers’ Post

Problogger  said this many times. During the initial years of his blog business, he had spent an equal amount of time creating contents and commenting on other people’s blogs. The reason; to get backlinks.

The best link building effort comes from getting a prominent blogger to put your url into his blogroll. Tons of backlinks will be created via such effort. I was fortunate enough to get a PR6 blog called Dr Shock to add my site in this way very early in my blogging effort. As a result, my ‘How to Blog.org’ just leaped from a PR0 to a PR2 website within 2 months!

However, your request for a link exchange from the big brothers are usually futile. By this, you just have to do the next best thing. You put comments on their post. Remember only to put smart comments and not just any spammy phrase like ‘Great post. Thanks!’

5. Use Pictures And Videos

Google and many search engines favor the using of videos and pictures in your blog content. The best videos come from your own recording effort whereby you put in your own keywords for optimization. However, you are still able to use other people’s work provided that you give due credit to that person.

6. Build Genuine Relationship

Your readers are intelligent human beings. They know how much effort you have contributed just by reading your content.  Once you assumed your role as a blogger, you focus on your effort in adding value to your readers’ knowledge.

Ask yourself, how could your content change your reader’s outlook. Would your work open up a new perspective or would it just invoke a ‘what’s new’ response? Think about how you would advise a dear friend when he or she hit a snag?

7. Love What You Are Doing

Only make blogging your business if you really love writing valuable contents for your readers. Although building a blog business consumes very little monetary cost, you invest your time in the building process. To me, time is priceless and no amount of money can really replace the time that you have spent. So, only spend this limited resource in something that you love.

8. Your Blog Is Serious Business

Look at these prominent bloggers’ site and tell me what you observe? It’s not just paying lip service when I said you have to treat your blog as a business.

Darren Rowse of Problogger started of as a lone ranger like most of us newbies. Look at his website now. He hires feature writers for Problogger.net and I’m sure he has accountants to keep track of his ROI as well.

9. Build Original Content

Writing original content is difficult. Since most of us do not write for a living, the urge to just link to other people’s post is quite alluring.

Steve Pavlina always preaches about having our own original contents. You could just look at the comments readers make in his blog to gauge how much they love his contents. Creating your own original content would pull traffic to your blog. Linking would push your hard earned traffic to other people’s website. In other words, you became the middle-man that creates free inbound link to other bloggers.

10. You Don’t Have To Post Daily

Do you know when was the last time DoshDosh did his post? 14th December 2009! Now, who says you need to post every single day to bring supporters.

I can’t really quote myself as an example for this but let’s use our own common sense when we decide whether to blog daily or not. Is it wise to force ourself to routinely carry out something that we love, even if we are dry of ideas? I could just put out a post just to fulfill the quota of one post per day. But would that be fair to your readers?

Furthermore, if we force ourselves to write, we’ll force the passion out of blogging. Once the passion is gone, we are back to square one.

I got this from one of Problogger’s article :

“Here’s the thing – daily posting is not essential to grow a successful blog.”

11. Understand How Your Website’s Design Can Affect Traffic

There is more to your website’s color and layout that meets the eye. Apart from Steve Pavlina, observe how the rest of the top bloggers place their advertisement, make their color combinations and design layouts.

For example, John Chow, Problogger and Chris Brogan always have their advertisement affiliates on the extreme right column mostly to cater to the majority of netizens whom are right-handers. Steve Pavlina probably wanted to show us how his ‘superb’ contents can be relied on to overcome any SEO strategy.

12. Update Your Family On Your Blog

Ok, this a bonus blogging secret I added myself. Update your spouse on the progress of your blog religiously.

When you run your blog, there is more to only updating your blog contents. You have to do backlinking, commenting on blogs, article submissions, social bookmarking,  interacting in your social media portfolios like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin. These actions would at times hamper your communication with your family. Worse things might happen if your spouse started to suspect that you are hitting on one of your pretty friend in your Facebook.

Imagine this, would Darren Rowse start Problogger.net if V does not exist?

13. You Don’t Need A Generic Domain To Make Your Blog Big

Generic domains means domains that come with highly searchable keywords or keyphrase. For example, Blog.com. The keyword ‘blog’ is being searched 2.7 million times per month globally.

By giving superior contents to  us, Steve Pavlina has managed to create a huge following at 18,000 searches in one month. Therefore, who ever said that you need a killer name domain to be successful?

14. Don’t Ever Waste Your Time On Free Blogs

I have emphasized the evil of using free blogs before. There are cases where some professional website creators who use free blogs to showcase certain products, get them optimized and earn fast bucks from them. If you are in for the long haul, follow what my mentors do! Register or buy your own domain.

15. Make Up Your Mind To Improve

Determine to improve from post to post. Just goto any of the big boys’ website and look at their archives. Reread the earlier post when they first started and then, read the current ones. You can spot the improvements from the grammar, flow of sentences to their experience in presenting their points.

16. Forget About Being Anonymous

This should be obvious. Do you know of any anonymous bloggers who make it to the top of the blogging league? I am able to relate to Problogger, Chris Brogan and Steve Pavlina because I could relate to their feelings in person when I read their blog.

If you are afraid of backlash coming from your employer, just don’t drill into anything about your work place. If you follow this principle closely, you should be safe to expose your identity to the mass. Another thing about your blog, don’t give out your phone number!

17. Stick With Your Blog Through Thick And Thin

No matter how bad it goes, always stick with your blog  through thick and thin. There are times when you really feel like giving up and just find another job that pays higher.

With your blog, you are an entrepreneur. If you switch to another job, you remain just that; a miserable employee.

18. Read, Read, Read

Expand your horizon. Good quality contents only come from knowledgeable bloggers. One of Chris Brogan’s 50 ways to take your blog to another level is asking us to read as much as possible.

” Read. Read. Read. Get outside the blogosphere. Find sources of information that span far beyond what your competitors are covering.”

(How to blog and Blogging tips for newbies. How To Blog dot Org)