B L O G G E R - S - P O T

Maybe YOU are the next superhero

2012-09-21T00:06:00.019-07:00

The new superhero of the 21st century

I remember a time when almost exclusively it was the movie & music celebs that got all the major attention. Those were
the shining stars (no pun intended) that many looked up to - the ones who seemed to enjoy almost superhero fame status.

But with the heavy influence of the internet, this admiration has shifted.

When I'm going to events and meet people from all over the world, there seems to be a new superhero type on the horizon -
the self-starter, the person who DOES things, also known as the entrepreneur.
When someone like Steve Jobs gets treated like an A-list celebrity, you know the era has changed.
Politicians have failed our trust by constantly breaking promises, celebrities lost respect through hedonistic obsessions and overblown payments - it's now the entrepreneur that seems to be the new hero type with endless role model potential.
After all - it's them who change things through their businesses, whether it's revolutionizing how we use technology
or how we as a race connect with each other.

Baaam.

We live in super-x-citing times. Becoming an entrepreneur has never been easier - creating a compelling idea, having internet access
and working one's soul off is "all you need" to become the next superhero yourself.
Let's do it..

Don't break your eggs. But do "break"

2012-09-21T00:06:00.018-07:00

Don't break your eggs. But do "break"

It many parts of the world, it's Easter time, and that usually means :
Eat lots of candy and hang out with the family.

More or less.

But it means something more - it's also the time to:

quieting it down, leveraging your lazyness, chilling it coolio style.

Especially if you're an entrepreneur & maker.

Yeah yeah, I know. I always talking about doing something everyday, and keeping up with the creative momentum. It's true that constant work is the way
to impacting the world and creating awesome stuff.

But being on maker mode 24/7 will actually diminish this super-important creation ability - it's the notorious workaholic syndrome. You think you're creative & productive, because you're working your soul off.
But you end up being busy all the time, without creating any real, valuable work.

So, this weekend, even if you're not into Easter at all, take a 180 degree break. Do something that's COMPLETELY different from your working schedule -
something that stimulates wayyyyy different parts of your brain. This refreshment will not only feel like heaven, but also stimulate
your creativity.

So that you appear rejuvenated on your working day, powered up to create epic shit.

The 3 step formula to a kick-ass creative life

2012-09-21T00:06:00.017-07:00

I hate it when people over-complicate things. Life is complex, it's not that simple, it's messy - so they say.

Really ?

Honestly, deep inside, I believe that the most powerful principles are those that are based on simple mottos :

No pain no gain ( you have to push beyond your comfort zone if you want to "grow" )
Just Do It ( don't think too much - act !)
No risk no reward ( results come through moving into the uncertainty )

Those principles feel simplistic, but they are not. Simple "simply" means it's crystal clear and obvious. It doesn't mean it's easy.
In fact, to live by these principles is hard as hell. You know you have to push myself. You know you have just to act. You know
you have to risk things if you want to see results. But you also know - it takes endless courage to do 'em.

But they worth aiming for, because they enrich your & their life (your peeps & audience), and that's the value an entrepreneur/maker
brings to the world.

So, whenever the confusion of life holds you in a deadlock, when complexity strangles you and you're grasping for air, take a deep breath and remember the basics, the simple lines that a creative life is all about:

1) Get up.
2) Be amazing.
3) Go back to bed.

Smoke VS. Fire

2012-09-21T00:06:00.014-07:00

NO ANIMALS WERE BURNED IN THIS CARTOON MAIL.
Too many people believe that energy JUST comes from healthy food and stimulants, be it through coffee or Red Bull.
In fact, I have even met people that claimed that smoking will help them concentrate and be more productive.

Ehhhh.

They think that they only get the energy for their work from outside substances.

Bull S-H-I-T with a capital SHIT.

Good, clean energy like PASSION feeds itself - the more fire you have for your work, the easier you will become inflammable AGAIN.
It's like your personal generator that can be conditioned like a muscle - it consistently refuels itself by applying it, and it doesn't come with any NASTY side effects.

No stimulant will ever replace the energy you create for yourself by being passionate.

In fact, being on fire is more than just being passionate -
being on FIRE means you are completely OBSESSED WITH YOUR WORK. You pour your soul into your products & services,
and that energy almost wants to melt them like chocolate cream butter.

Your clients...or better - your raving fans will FEEEEL that energy - your work
will have an aura that seems to come from another planet.

Energy that comes from within YOU and not OUTSIDE substances.

Never smoke. But always be on fire.

What made a Japanese girl crash into the wall ?

2012-09-21T00:06:00.010-07:00

A 404 error. Let me explain >
I recently watched a tiny TED talk that changed the way I look at my website (and maybe changes yours as well).
The speaker talked about 404 pages, you know, the error pages you see when you want to access a page on a website
that doesn't exist.

On most websites, you see a generic error page that goes like this "please go back / return / go back to homepage blah blah".
It's annoying to get to 404 pages - so why don't you turn this unpleasant experience into a enjoyable one ?

If people accidently hit your 404, will they see a regular "404" page or something unique - something funny or memorable that will
turn a mistake (a false page) into something that makes your visitor giggle and bond closer to your brand ?

After watching that talk, I changed my 404 page immediately. It now shows a battered Japanese girl (see above) and talks about how accessing
this error page caused a disturbance in the space-time continuum and caused the J-girl to hit a brick wall.

Yeah, it's nonsense, but isn't that more fun than reading your standard "ooops 404 error page" ?

I think so.

So what the hell is your takeaway here ?

Simply this - little things on your website matter a lot. It's important to have a slick site design and a nicey banner, but THAT'S what people expect from
a pro like you. If you really want to woo them, you should worry about the unexpected things - like creating a fun contact page, a heartwarming
welcome message or in this case - a unique 404 page that makes your visitor SMILE.

C-C-C-Changes ?...No > C-C-C-Crisis

2012-09-21T00:06:00.009-07:00

Do you like the size of this thing ?
I made it extra-large for ya.
Back to topic:

In Chinese, the two signs for crisis mean "danger" and "opportunity" - and I think that's a sweet-a-licious idea.

It reminds me of the past:

I used to be the righty doom & gloom crisis cry baby (and sometimes I still am).
Whenever I faced a crisis in the past, like when I got fired (maaaany years ago) or
when I lost all of money, I often FAILED to look at the opportunity - in those cases STARTING ANEW.
And even tiny things like my eguide launch in the next two weeks make cringe inside - is a crisis comin' up ?
But hey, it's all paaaart of the game. I have learned.
Learned that crying over a crisis won't do you any good. It already happened, whether it was your fault or not.
You might as well SEE THE OPPORTUNITY in it.

And that's when I embraced the C.

Whenever you're facing a crisis in your life & biz, think about the Chinese meaning:
"danger" and "opportunity".
Be like the yellow guy in the cartoon. Focus on the opportunity.
Crave Crisis.

Why you need to kill PP if you want to succeed

2012-09-21T00:06:00.008-07:00

Passive Paul lives within you, and he's the worst lodger...ever.
You know this culprit - he makes you postpone your projects, consume more than produce, procrastinate
every action you need to TAKE NOW.

But you know what ? If you're passive in life, you'll lose out, no matter what you want to accomplish:

if you don't pay taxes (in time), you can screw your financial life & biz

if you wait for others to pick you, you'll never create a career

if you wait for the right idea/moment instead of shipping your work NOW

Believe me, I experienced enough problems with all of the above because I was listening to Passive Paul.

But once you're stuck in reactive mode, you're only coping with negative consequences (which are caused from NOT acting).
And you don't want to spend your life coping with things. And you know what ? When YOU are taking initiative, life has to cope with YOU.
And that's a fun and rewarding game to play.

Look at your (biz) life right now: what's your passive/active ratio ? Are you reacting more than taking action ?
Then kill your inner Passive Paul, too ;)

What's next ??

2012-09-21T00:06:00.006-07:00

What's next ??

Two words that every maker & entrepreneur should inhale like mint-flavored air :

As you may or may not know, I launched my visual cartoonish branding guide in the last weeks,
and it did make thousands of dollars although it didn't break the score I set for myself (maybe too megalomaniac ?)

I pretty much "passionately discussed the guide's launch" with my friends, (read: annoyed the shit out of them), because I was sooo excited about the launch of the guide.
When I talked to my mom about it, she was elated - for like a nanosecond.
She just smiled and added --

"Now what's next ?"

Baam.

What a smack. I was so obsessed with the guide's launch that I didn't put any attention on the next project.

Tunnel view deluxe. Thank the stars that it only lasted a day. Okay, two.

Three ?

Well, I'm over it now.

I'll continue to promote it via visual guest posts on several digital outlets, but more importantly, I'm already working on the NEXT thing.
Creating something better and even more awesome - because as a maker, this is what you do. Like the punk in the pic above, you swing
your heavy hammer and continue to do the work, while asking yourself this vital question:

What's next ?

The Most Important P Word

2012-09-21T00:06:00.004-07:00

Nooo, not the dirty P word you thought about... Judging from my normal writing style, you might think that the P word actually meant "Penis" or "Piss", but you've missed by loooong-shot.

What I'm actually referring to is the valuable P word, the one every BIZ owner should worry about online:

PERCEPTION.

which, especially ONLINE, is so fucking important !

Take me for example - my biz has dramatically taken off since the launch of my last product, and it has gotten me lots of clients
and work collaborations.

I should have known this earlier - in fact, I deserve to get punched in the face for doing it so LATE. But once you ship a flagship product about a topic
YOU WANT TO GET known for, you get an expertise aura that doesn't seem to come from this world. It's magical, and it's moolah-able.

Why ? Because people almost don't know anything about you and your background online (or they're too lazy to look for it)
If you have a site and don't offer any products, they think you're just a free-styling schmohawk that's in for the blogging fun.

It's not professional. And it makes you look like Kermit the Frog after a hangover with Miss Piggy.

That's why you have to worry about your flagship product ASAP if you want to be a known expert in ya field.

If you want to know more about it - I have a written a more detailed post about it. Sniff it out here in the link below:

This door begs to be opened

2012-09-21T00:06:00.003-07:00

Some doors should be left alone,
and some need to be opened...everyday.
A friend of mine, who hasn't seen my work for at least a year, visited me recently and semi-exploded.

He slammed me to the ground. Well, verbally. This is what he said:

"What the hell, Mars. Your style still looks the same. Where's your progress, man ? Stop fucking around !!!"

First, I was pissed. Who-the-fuck-are-you-kind-of-pissed. But then I was dealing with a go-getter, one that was even
bigger than myself, and I pondered.

The truth was - I was doing a lot of similar things that I was doing already a year ago, and resulting from that, my style didn't change that much.
Without knowing it, I sank into my cushy comfort zone, doing similar work and NOT taking it to the next level. I was unciously afraid of doing something new -
thinking that the known was all I need to progress. Ehhhh.

Wrroooooong.

It remined me of that quote that Jonathan Fields unleashed in last year's World Domination Summit:
(I'm paraphrasing here):
"If you want to create new work, you'll have not complete knowledge over it"
His book, aptly titled "Uncertainty", is all about that principle.

I don't know about you, but I'm changing things and incorporate things in my creative biz that I haven't done before.

It's scary like a Poltergeist on acid to open the door that leads to uncertainty. But if you want to create outstanding work, you have to open it.
Every single time.

Why You Need To Create and Sell A Product Now (And How To Do It)

2012-09-20T06:09:00.019-07:00

This guest post is by Brandon Turner of RealEstateInYourTwenties.com.

Last night I made $9.

I know that isn’t a lot of money. I know I’m not taking that dream vacation to Italy or buying that new MacBook Air I lust after. So why mention it?

Because I made $9 last night.

While sleeping.

While completely unconscious.

I woke up and discovered that I was $9 richer than when I went to bed. The feeling not only energized me beyond what words can adequately describe, it also took me one step closer to my ultimate goal—complete financial freedom.

Perhaps this goal is familiar?

Perhaps you share the same goal?

If so, I hope I can shed some light on why now is the best time for you to begin selling products on your blog. The truth is you don’t need to wait until you are a “pro blogger” to begin making money by selling products that you create. You don’t need fifty thousand RSS subscribers to earn online income. You don’t even need the classic “one thousand true fans.”

What you need is an idea and a kick in the pants.

Why start right now?

Like you, I spent the first several months of blogging simply writing.

My blog at RealEstateInYourTwenties.com is aimed at young people looking to replace their “job” and enter the world of real estate investing, so I focus most of my efforts on discussing how a young person can begin earning money through investing. I began writing without a clear picture of how I would someday monetize the blog, but aware that the end goal was to replace my investment income with my online income.

Last month, while writing a post discussing how I analyze deals using a spreadsheet I created in Excel, I thought, “I wish this spreadsheet was around when I started investing! I would have saved so much time and hassle!”

Boom.

I realized at that moment I had a product that could actually help people. I spent the afternoon researching how to go about actually selling a product (more details on that below), polished the blog post and spreadsheet, and by the late afternoon my post was live.

I’d love to say I made thousands of dollars that first day and am now living on a beach in Hawaii. However, that’s simply not the case for most people, and wasn’t the case for me. I think I made around $50 during the first week. Again, it’s not enough to dance around about—but then again, maybe it is. I had actually done it. I made money online. Since the day that post went live, I have been consistently making one or two sales a day.

“Big deal,” you say.

It is a big deal though. It’s a huge deal. It’s the difference between a successful blog and being another tire kicker.

I don’t care how many readers you have. You don’t need a million readers to begin selling your products online. You can, and should, start today. Even if it’s just your mom following along to your witty posts, get something for sale now.

I’m not suggesting you write a 400-page ebook or a $99-a-month membership site. Those things may come later. I’m talking about offering something small or introductory. I’ll explain in more detail later some examples, but for now let me explain why you need to sell something on your blog ASAP.

Motivation

When I woke up this morning and discovered I was $9 richer, something triggered inside of me. I got up excited to start the day and began working on making my blog even better. I was motivated to reach out and connect with more people. I even decided to write this very post for ProBlogger.net because of how motivated I was.

Don’t underestimate the “motivation” factor. Find what motivates you and capitalize on that. Chances are, you are motivated by the very thing I am: making money. (Don’t feel bad about that. It doesn’t have to be your primary motivation, but deep down every human is at least partially motivated by the need to make an income). Making a few dollars per day is not going to move you from a shack to a mansion—but it just might move you from a mediocre blog to a stellar one.

Learn what works

You may feel it’s best to wait until you have a huge following to begin marketing your goods. However, by waiting until that point you are missing out on a huge opportunity—learning what works and what doesn’t. What if I listed my spreadsheet for sale online and did not sell any? What if the feedback was largely negative? I would have learned a great deal about what didn’t work.

Instead, I found that everyone who downloaded my product seemed to love it. Think of this phase as the “research and development” phase of product creation. Additionally, by selling products early in your blog’s existence you will begin to learn what works in relation to your sales funnel. How are you getting from product creation to the beloved “payment received” email from Paypal? How is your conversion rate? What about split-testing? These are all questions that you can begin to answer before you launch a “major” product someday in the future.

Collect names and true fans

Have you purchased anything from a blog online? Probably not a whole lot. The fact is, most people do not actually buy things from bloggers online. While conversion rates differ dramatically, chances are less than 2% of your readers will probably buy whatever it is you are selling. However, those that do buy a product from you early on have probably one or both of these characteristics:

They like to spend money frivolously online.

They really like you.

Either way—those are the people you want as friends. Those customers who buy a small product from you will be significantly more likely to buy other products from you in the future. Make sure you separate these people into their own email list (using Aweber, Mail Chimp, or whatever email service you use) and value that list above all others.

Where do you want to be in two years?

Do you wish you had started blogging earlier? I know I do. I look at the growth my blog has shown over the past six months and realize how much larger it would be today if I had started two years ago. However, I can’t change the past—and neither can you.

Instead, change your future. Take a moment and think about where you want to be in two years. Pretty nice, eh? You will never get there if you don’t start down that path now. Don’t look back at your life in two years and say, “I wish I had started selling products earlier!” Do things today that will matter in two years, five years, and twenty years from now. This is the exact same advice I give newbie real estate investors because it’s the biggest regret most professionals have later in their life—“I wish I had started sooner.”

Are you a serious blogger or an amateur?

Finally, by selling a product on your website you are telling the world that you are a professional. You aren’t just posting photos of your grandma’s recent birthday party. You are offering a professional service to the world because you are an expert in whatever field you are in.

In the same way that I wouldn’t trust a consultant who charged $15 bucks an hour, I would also have a harder time trusting a “hobby blogger.” Selling a small product on your site will allow your readers to adjust to the idea that you are operating, at least in a small part, a business.

If you run a blog for two years and suddenly spring a $297 product on them, many will go running for the hills or pass you off as just another self proclaimed guru trying to take advantage of the small folk. Instead, by offering a small product for sale early in your blog development you will help your community adjust slowly to the idea of you making money and view you as an expert they could pay to get information from.

What do I sell?

“But Brandon,” you say “I don’t have anything to sell.”

False! Everyone has something to sell. I believed the same thing. Sure, I could make a video real estate training series, write a big ebook, or create a membership site. Those things, however, take lots of time to develop and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a whole lot of free time these days.

The solution came when I found something I already had that could help others. For me, it was an Excel spreadsheet that calculated the profitability of a house flip. I realized that one of my most popular posts on my blog had to do with how to analyze whether or not a house flip would be profitable. Additionally, I received emails every day from people asking me “is this a good deal?” in regards to an investment property they found. By putting together both a common question and a popular post, I realized what people wanted.

Take a look at your blog. What do people want? What questions are they asking you? What are your most popular posts?

For example, let’s say you run a newer blog on fashion design. You take a look at your popular posts and realize that your blog post about t-shirt design is a popular subject. You may also have been asked questions about how you come up with ideas for t-shirts. You could spend an hour writing a document titled, One Hundred Killer T-Shirt Design Ideas, turn it into a PDF, and offer it as an emagazine for $7.00.

Or perhaps you run a blog about web design. How difficult would it be to sell a pack of twenty Photoshop images of buttons or icons for $9.00?

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. While obviously I can’t go into detail of every product type there is, there are a few standards:

An ebook, ereport, or emagazine: Perhaps the most popular type of product, these informational products are nothing more than a word processing document converted to a PDF. I use OpenOffice (a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Word) because it’s both free and has the ability to convert your document to PDF in seconds.

An MP3: Perhaps you are going to sell a twenty-minute lecture on how to do something. You can record your lesson using software such as Garageband (Mac) or Audacity (PC) to turn your words into an MP3 quickly and easily.

Consulting or coaching: If you are involved in a niche where you could profit by sharing your knowledge on a one-on-one level with others, consulting might be an excellent option for you. I use “Ether.com” to manage my consulting, which allows the client to call in, enter my Ether extension number, pay for the session, and connect us together while monitoring the time spent on the phone and charging accordingly.

If you have a really young blog (the “my mom is my only reader” type), a good strategy is to find a more popular blog in the same (or very similar) niche and read the comments. Look for questions that are being asked, or common concerns that are being raised.

If you can answer those questions on your own blog and turn them into a sellable low-cost product, you can often even respond to those comments on the other blog with a link back to your own. Just don’t be spammy.

How do I sell?

Selling products online is significantly easier than you’d think. There are many good articles across the web (like this one) that will teach you, step by step, how to do this. I want to just give you a big-pictur” look at how the process looks and show you how easy it really is.

The easiest way to upload a product for resale is using a website known as e-Junkie.com. Yes, the name is a bit off-putting and the web designers for the site haven’t yet caught on to the clean, smooth, minimalistic trends blanketing the Internet. However, what they lack in being pretty they more than make up for in being … awesome.

Once you register for an account, you will simply add your product to their servers, connect your PayPal account to e-Junkie, and place a link on your own website. E-Junkie will handle the entire process for you and provide the product to the customer after they have purchased it. The best part: e-Junkie starts at just $5 per month.

A warning and a kick in the pants

I am not suggesting that you spam all your readers with sales products. You are trying to build a blog into a business, and nothing is going to turn off potential readers faster than gimmicky sales and greed. If you are following the advice you find on Problogger.net and other great sites, you already know that providing value and great content is the best way to grow your blog.

However, it is important to have the option available for readers who earnestly want more and are willing to pay for it. By offering low-cost but premium content for sale on your site, you establish yourself immediately as an expert in your field as well as a professional business aimed at helping others. You also begin building a solid foundation upon which great success can be built for your blog, your financial future, and the lives of your readers.

You don’t need a million readers to start making money through your blog. You have everything you need to begin selling a product by tonight on your blog. The tools are there, the motivation is there, and the idea is probably already formed in your head. So what are you waiting for?

Brandon Turner is an active real estate investor, entrepreneur, and blogger at RealEstateInYourTwenties.com where he teaches others how to “hack” the real estate game. He is also the author of “7 Years to 7 Figure Wealth,” a free e-book.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why You Need To Create and Sell A Product Now (And How To Do It)

Forget Willpower: Here’s What You Can Do to Dominate Bad Blogging Habits

2012-09-20T06:09:00.018-07:00

This guest post is by Bea Kylene Jumarang of Writing Off the Rails.

You tell yourself you need to exercise, but you don’t do it. You tell yourself you need to write, but then you go on Twitter. Or, my favorite situation, you tell yourself you need to save more, and then you blow out your cash on that shiny new bag.

It’s a vicious little cycle, and you know you need to end it, but you don’t. Of course, you tell yourself it’s your fault, and add in, “If only I had a little bit more willpower.”

Well guess what? Willpower’s no good.

It’s a limited resource and it’s generally a bad one to draw on when it comes to eliminating bad habits. Barring sudden epiphanies, you’re going to stay stuck in your cycle if all you do is tell yourself that you need more willpower.

What I’m going to show you in this post is a different approach, and how you can use it to remove and replace bad blogging habits.

1. Eliminate temptation

Okay, I realize that sounds trite and sort of stupid. Still, you would be surprised at how many things just need to be removed in order to remedy your bad habits. Like Robert Downey Jr. says in Due Date, “If you’re allergic to waffles, don’t go to a waffle house.”

Now, let’s apply that to you. Say you’re a blogger who’s a little too addicted to being online. You know that it damages your productivity, but you tell yourself you can limit your online time just by having more willpower. If that sounds like you, please do take a reality check. You already know it doesn’t really work that way.

Why? Again, willpower’s no good.

So what do you do? Once you open your laptop or tablet, or wherever it is that you write, get your writing done first. The moment your device boots up, go straight to your word processor. Don’t open a browser. Seriously, don’t even think about it. Just click the word processor icon and start getting words on a page. Remember, you’re not a writer until words are on the page, and you’re not a blogger until you have a blog post published.

Got that? Eliminate temptation. It’s the first step.

2. Now, just show up and do it

So here you are. Your word processor’s open, but you’re just itching to close it and come back later. You’re thinking of all the emails you might have, or how many tweets have piled up in your timeline. You’re in the danger zone.

Solution? Tell yourself out loud, “I will not open my browser. Instead, I will write 1000 words.”

You’d be shocked at how a verbal affirmation can do wonders for your behavior. By speaking the words out loud, your thoughts get redirected to the affirmation you just said. And did you notice the 1000 words bit? That wasn’t random. That amount is a manageable daily goal. It’s not that hard to reach, and it’s a specific, measurable number. Remember, getting specific with your goals is always a good idea.

Now you might say, “But I need willpower to reach the goal!”

I get that, which brings me to the words, “Just show up and do it.”

If you’re a writer, just start writing. Turn off your internal editor and just get words on a page. Just write. Free yourself up to write really badly, because at the end, you’ll have something. Far better to have a poor chapter or a flat blog post to edit, than to have nothing at all.

Each time you’re tempted to stop, whip out the verbal affirmation again. “I will not open my browser. Opening it will make me unproductive. I will finish my writing.”

If you just keep on going, you’ll find that you’ve gone over the 1000 word goal, or you’ll have finished the blog post you needed to write.

Here, I’m giving you the template—you can apply this advice to whatever blogging task it is that you want to get done. That said, it’s a good thing to know what your personal limits are. That way, you can customize your affirmations depending on how many words you can normally write.

It’s now time for the feel-good step in this process.

3. Reward yourself

Let’s say you’ve finished your writing goals, or you’ve done your blog post. Congratulations! Two things can happen at this point.

The first possible outcome is that you might feel so good you’ll want to continue. If that’s what you feel, by all means do it. However, if you’re just starting out on the road to dominating your habits, the better thing to do is to stop and reward yourself.

This is pure conditioning, by the way. Studies show that we do what rewards us, and we actively avoid what punishes us. As much as you may want to claim being above such caveman simplicity, in the end it’s a matter of psychology and common sense.

So, what I want you to do is just stop. Go say a verbal congratulations to yourself, and then reward yourself with something that makes you happy. Now would be the time for you to open your browser, check your email or say hi to Twitter in all its 140-character glory.

To be clear, you can only reward yourself if you did what you set out to do. Don’t go cheating (hint, use the verbal affirmations and stop yourself), because cheating will defeat the entire purpose of rewards in the end.

4. Take it a step further: automate

The three steps above are a rinse-and-repeat process. You just do the whole thing over and over again to replace bad habits with good ones. Of course, ones the habits are in place, you won’t need rewards because the actions will be automatic.

However, you can still tweak this process to get even better results. If that’s what you want, my advice to you is to automate. To make it easy, here are some extremely actionable automation posts, courtesy of finance whiz Ramit Sethi.

How can you apply automation to your blog writing?

The answer is, you can’t. The only things you can automate are the things that get you even more writing time.

Let me give you an example. Social media is a huge distraction when you want to get writing done. Usually, that’s because you’re always on the hunt for things to tweet or link to. Now, I love Twitter, so this applies best to that service. If you want to get more time and not have to manually tweet, you can use a scheduler like HootSuite or Buffer. If you’re more of a Facebook person, HootSuite also has scheduling for that.

Throughout the day, you can list content in these apps, then just schedule the updates for the next day. With that method, you’ll have more time to write and get other errands done. Even so, you’ll still have the added comfort of knowing that you’re sharing great stuff.

These are my tips on dealing with the limitations of willpower. If you have some to share, I’d love to know in the comments!

Bea Kylene Jumarang is a fiction writer and the blogger behind Writing Off the Rails. When she’s not working on her books or her blog, she’s writing on tissues inside a Starbucks café, or socializing with people on Twitter.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Forget Willpower: Here’s What You Can Do to Dominate Bad Blogging Habits

How to Deal with False Third-party Matches on YouTube

2012-09-20T06:09:00.017-07:00

This guest post is by Jenny Dean of Floppycats.

Several months ago, I met Michael Strange through YouTube. I noticed immediately the success of Michael’s YouTube endeavors and asked him if he could please help me out.

He was game, thank goodness, and he walked me through the steps on how to fix my YouTube channel. One of these was to address false third-party matches on the service.

Third-party matching indicates that your video is understood to infringe some third party’s copyright. You can’t monetize videos on which these matches are outstanding, so if you’re trying to make money through YouTube, third-party matches can be a problem.

Finding third-party matches

First and foremost, you might not even know if you have third-party matches. I knew I had some, but I wasn’t aware that videos that were entirely mine were flagged for copyright issues!

To see if you have third party matches on YouTube, just log in to your account and go to your Video Manager. On the left side of the Video Manager you’ll see an entry for Copyright Notices. Select that, and you’ll see all your movies that have third-party matches.

In the list of movies you’ll see notes like “matched third-party content”. You have to address each one as a separate dispute, so hopefully you don’t have many.

To get started, click the blue hyperlink that states the reason for the copyright notice.

You’ll be taken to a screen that looks something like this:

Here you can see a general information statement about copyright matches, followed by a link that states, “I want to learn more about the dispute process.” When you select that, you’ll see some information about when you can and can’t dispute things.

Disputing the match

If, after you have read all the reasons to dispute or not to dispute the matches, you still feel that you should not have copyright issues, then you will want to dispute the claim. For example, a video that I’d created in my backyard had been flagged as a third-party match, but it was all my own content, so I decided to dispute it—and won.

To dispute a copyright notice, go to the bottom of the dispute information. You’ll see a link that says, “I believe this copyright claim is not valid.”

You will be taken to a screen that asks you to select the reason for your dispute. Carefully select your reason and click on Continue.

You will then be taken to a screen where you will be asked to confirm that you own all the rights to the content.

Please note: the example that I am using here is not a valid one to dispute—a song plays in the background of my video that is not my content, therefore technically I cannot dispute it. I am using these screenshots to show the steps only.

After you click Continue, you will be taken to the dispute form.

Fill in the form and submit it. Then, you’ll want to walk through the same steps with any other videos that have false third-party matches flagged for them.

The dispute process

YouTube has recently improved the dispute process and will send you an email when a dispute claim has been received.

At that time you should check the status of the relevant movie and add the monetization details if necessary. You may need to manually check your disputes to see if you’re still awaiting an outcome, or some other problem has arisen.

If the dispute is resolved in your favor, it just drops off the copyright match list. You’ll need to go hunting for the movie in your video manager to then monetize it.

Unexpected matches

Like me, you can sometimes have a problem if the TV or radio was playing in the background when you recorded your video, as legally you would then be using that music in your movie without a valid license, and recording industry companies such as Sony could have a legitimate dispute against you.

In those cases, there is nothing you can do if you wish to monetize the movie, other than to remove the movie from YouTube, replace the audio track, and then re-upload the corrected movie.

Have you had third-party matches on YouTube that you’ve disputed? How have they gone? Share your stories in the comments.

Jenny Dean is the Editor over at Business Blog Writers, online SEO content writers. She also has some of her own blogs, Floppycats, Antioxidant-fruits and Guide to Couponing. Business Blog Writers offers a YouTube enhancement service.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Deal with False Third-party Matches on YouTube

5 Big Hosting Mistakes Bloggers Don’t Know They’re Making

2012-09-20T06:09:00.016-07:00

This guest post is by the Blog Tyrant.

If you take your blogging seriously you’ll know that you have to wear a lot of different hats. We are content marketers, SEO students, social media savants, and sometimes web designers.

But what a lot of bloggers seem to forget is that our blog hosting setup is an extremely crucial piece in the puzzle. Yet it often gets overlooked because it is scary, boring or just too darn hard.

It is really complicated stuff. I certainly couldn’t cover everything in one post—some people spend their whole careers figuring it out!

What I am going to show you, however, is a few big mistakes that you need to make sure you avoid. If you know any others please leave a comment and let me know. It might really help someone.

1. Setting up on a free host instead of your own

I’ve talked about this a lot on my blog and so have writers here on ProBlogger but it is a mistake that many new bloggers continue to make.

Now don’t get me wrong, services like Tumblr are a really cool way to get your word out there and blog socially but if you want to take it to the next level and go pro, you need to get your own domain name, and install WordPress on your own host.

Here’s why I don’t like freely hosted blogs:

Lack of control: On a free blog, you don’t have total control over the theme, settings, back end, or hosting environment. You are essentially leasing a space from the owners.

You don’t own it: The big concern for me is that on a lot of free platforms you don’t own the blog! This is a really big problem if you are trying to go professional or if you ever want to sell the blog down the track.

Google doesn’t rank them as well: The last big clincher for me is that many SEOs will tell you that Google doesn’t rank these free domains as well in the search results. If you want to step up and compete in a very competitive niche, you’ll need your own domain name and a solid permalink structure.

And it’s important that you switch sooner rather than later if you are planning on doing it. You see, when you change from free to paid hosting, there’s a whole host of other issues to sort out, like a loss of current rankings if your link structure changes.

It’s very important that you weigh up the pros and cons of a migration like this as soon as possible.

2. Not choosing a host with live support

As I mentioned at the start, this stuff is really confusing. And things often go wrong. When they do, it is really important that you have live support staff that can help you out and get the problem fixed fast, without hassle.

Part of the reason I recommended Blue Host in my post on the best host for new WordPress bloggers was because they have live, 24/7 support staff that are incredibly helpful. I am no longer with Blue Host as I outgrew the service, but for the years that I was there, I had countless life-saving, middle-of-the-night, brilliant support sessions from staff who really know their stuff.

A screenshot of the live support wait time at Blue Host recently

I have noticed that it is really common to get stressed and panicked when you don’t understand something fully. And because hosting is so complicated, it is really easy to lose your cool when something goes wrong. It is a massive advantage to know there are people there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in case something goes wrong.

3. Thinking that “unlimited domains” actually means unlimited domains

Something that I learned only recently is that when most hosts say that you get unlimited domains, unlimited hosting, and unlimited databases, they don’t actually mean it.

If you dig deeper into the terms of service you will find that most hosts (not all) have an excessive storage policy which basically says that if you abuse your “unlimited” space, your service will be affected.

Some of the things they might do include:

Throttling: This is where your site gets slowed down in order to help cope with the strain on the servers. This might happen if you have a bunch of sites that are taking up too much bandwidth for your hosting environment.

Stopped backups: Most good hosts perform a daily backup of your entire server to re-install if something goes wrong. But if you exceed the allowed file count by too much, you’ll find that those automatic daily backups stop pretty quickly.

Account suspension: If things get really bad and the host suspects that you are hosting files not related to any website activity, they will suspend your account. This is something that you really don’t want to happen.

My best tip here would be to know exactly what your host’s policies are on file storage, and to then make sure you know exactly what your server needs are.

If your blog is getting a lot of traffic and constantly growing it might be time to move to a more advanced environment like a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated host.

4. Mixing your experimental stuff with your money sites

If you have a website or blog that is starting to make money that you rely on, it is really important to make sure it is on its own hosting account.

You see, what often happens is that we purchase one hosting package and then start experimenting with new blogs and websites. Eventually the whole situation gets cluttered, crowded, and very unprofessional.

Blogs that are starting to get some good traffic and have good rankings and loyal subscribers need to be protected and looked after. Make sure you keep them on their own host for security and up-time reasons, and leave your experimental sites to a different hosting package and location.

5. Failing to delete old blogs, websites, and files

The last thing I want to talk about is the fact that many bloggers leave abandoned or dead files, blogs, and websites in their host not knowing that they represent a security threat.

Without going in to all the details (I don’t really know all the details!), hackers can use insecure and old files to access your account in some situations. This is especially risky if you have been using WordPress and not keeping your plugins and installations up to date. It’s a threat.

If you’re not going to use a blog any more, just delete it. It’s not the easiest process, but it’s something that is worthwhile learning. So how do you do it?

Well, in some hosting environments you can just go to Addon Domains and then remove the domain that you want to stop using. That often removes the installation and the remaning database.

Other times, you will need to use PHPMyAdmin to locate the old site and delete the corresponding database. This can be a complicated process, so it’s best to ask your own host for advice on how to proceed. As mentioned, some environments and setups are different to others.

Are you making any mistakes?

I’d love to know if you are making any of these mistakes or whether you can think of any others that we can add to the list. Please leave a comment and let me know.

The Blog Tyrant is a 26 year old Australian guy who plays video games at lunch time and sells blogs for $20,000 a pop.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

5 Big Hosting Mistakes Bloggers Don’t Know They’re Making

Finding a Mentor-writer—and What to Do Once You Have

2012-09-20T06:09:00.015-07:00

This guest post is by Karol K of imcreator.com

Who is a mentor-writer? This question is probably on your mind right now. Even more importantly, why do you need one?

Let me take this from the top.

Is there a writer or an author you’ve always looked up to? Someone whose writing style is exceptionally interesting? One who can write a sentence in a way that makes you stop and think “darn, that’s good”?

I’m sure you’ll find someone who fits the description if you take a minute to think about it. Maybe it’s an author you’ve been reading forever. Or maybe it’s someone whose work you’ve found just recently. The timespan doesn’t really matter; what matters is that their style of writing is so addictive that you can’t stop reading.

But that’s just the definition of a good writer, so what does upgrading this person’s status to a “mentor” do for you?

What can a mentor do for you?

A couple of things.

First of all, they inspire you to grow as a writer. When you read their work, you simply pay closer attention to all the things they are doing. This is very motivating by itself. You start thinking, “wow, I need to write something just like that.”

Secondly, they show you a way of writing you wouldn’t have stumbled upon otherwise. Every writer who has somehow gained your recognition is likely to possess their own voice and style (the thing that makes them so recognizable). Being aware of this and noticing this style consciously can do a lot for your own style of writing.

You can use their work as a benchmark for your own writing. Whenever you finish an article or post, you can put it against a piece of your mentor’s work. Is your flow equally as good as your mentor’s? If not, there’s room for possible improvement right there.

How to choose your mentor

Now, I’m not going to tell you who you should choose, or why my mentor is better than yours. This is not the point. The point is to have a mentor who’s unique to your own style and the way you see quality writing.

So you’ll have to give it a little thought and select, on your own, just one writer who gives you the most inspiration.

The easiest way of doing this is to simply take a look at your bookshelf. One writer (or two) is likely to dominate it. You can also include the writers you find in the online world. A good place to start in that space are with the blogs you read the most.

My writing mentor is Jeremy Clarkson. Yes, the Top Gear guy. Why him, of all people?

As it turns out, I’ve been reading his books for a long time now. I’ve bought everything he’s ever released. Every single one of his books is extremely entertaining and interesting to me. His style is just exceptional.

At some point when reading one of his books I simply decided that I need to write more like him, and that was it. That was the moment. He became my mentor.

Again, this is only my perspective, you may (and should) have a different opinion. But that’s okay. That’s the whole point of a personal mentor-writer. Other people don’t have to agree with you, or tell you that there are other writers who are better. It’s no one else’s business who you choose.

What to do once you have a mentor

The first rule is to read everything they write. Every writer evolves, mentors included. Evolve along with your mentor. See what’s changing in their style, the topics they cover, the novels they write, etc. Just be up-to-date with what’s going on with them.

The second rule is to read their work consciously. What I mean by that is to read it in a twofold way, so to speak. First, you obviously like to read your mentor’s work, so enjoy it like you always do. But more than that, be aware of the technique and the style they’re using. Notice all the clever sentences, funny references, engaging paragraphs. To put it simply, be aware of what you’re reading.

The final step is to develop and improve your own style after being influenced by your mentor. A specific style is what distinguishes one writer from the other.

For example, every web design blogger can write a post on “How to design a proper about page.” But every one of them will create the post in a completely different way. The point is to find your own way of delivering a message. Your mentor can help you with that because they are likely to already have a distinct and noticeable style.

Finally, grow as a writer. Take all the inspiration and information you’ve gotten from your mentor and put it into your own work.

What not to do

This is basic, but it needs to be said: don’t be a copycat.

You’re supposed to get inspiration, not to copy your mentor’s style entirely. This advice sounds obvious, but you really need to be careful here. It’s quite easy to start copying your mentor subconsciously without even noticing it.

Keep in mind that you probably have a voice within you that’s just as good as your mentor’s. You only need to find it and bring it to the surface. And yes, I really mean it!

Now, there’s one more step. It’s not mandatory by any means, but it’s a nice addition to the whole approach I’m presenting here.

Contacting your mentor

Because why the heck not? You probably have a lot of questions to ask, a lot of things to say, and a lot of things to thank them for. Being able to speak (or email) your mentor directly might just be the motivator you need to get to the next level.

Contacting your mentor might not be easy, and might take some time to get through all the gate keepers and all kinds of other people. But when you finally manage to get in touch, it’s totally worth it.

Do you have your writing-mentor already? How did you find them? Let me know, I’m curious.

Karol K. is a freelance writer, and a blogger. If you want to check out what he’s up to, feel free to hit him up on Twitter (@carlosinho).

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Finding a Mentor-writer—and What to Do Once You Have

Behind the Scenes of the DPS Pinterest Strategy: Case Study

2012-09-20T06:09:00.014-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I wanted to set up and manage the Pinterest account for Digital Photography School. Within a week, we had launched, and Darren explained his take on the process in this case study.

So far, the account has nearly 5000 followers. We have been getting a lot of great feedback and have noticed a lot of people signing up just to follow us. We’ve tapped into something amazing in the DPS community and I believe that a lot of the success is to do with our approach.

In this case study, I’ll be talking about how we went against common advice for bloggers when it comes to setting up a Pinterest account. It may get a bit geeky when it comes to the marketing strategies, but trust me: your blog will be better for it.

Pinterest foundations

I’ve been interning for The Village Agency for some time now, with a strong focus on Pinterest. We noticed two behaviours that were being repeated across various brands:

People follow boards, not accounts.

People don’t just want pretty images. They want context.

This is because of a concept called the interest graph.

The interest graph

Many bloggers have a presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Most people do this because they want to know others on theses networks and socialize with them in some capacity. People follow information based on their interests, but their behaviour is mostly social.

The interest graph shows when people are connected by common interests. The social element takes a backseat at this point—people want to find information that is relevant to their interests.

This is where a lot of bloggers mess it up.

A lot of people hear about the traffic potential of Pinterest and start pinning their content. An example is the Problogging board by David Risley. This board is based around the interest of the blogger, not of the people in the Pinterest ecosystem. This means that David will get traffic from people that visit his account, but the conversation will end there. People are unlikely to repin that content—and the action of repinning is what makes your content go viral on this network.

Note: I have to commend David for actually having a Pinterest account. You can’t learn anything unless you experiment!

What does this mean for bloggers?

This means that people don’t want your Pinterest account to be an extension of your blog. As Darren pointed out with his case study, people are already pinning your content.

If you really want to develop a strong Pinterest presence, you need to curate pinboards based around the interests of your readers. This is especially relevant for those outside of the popular niches on Pinterest.

How we did this

We developed a series of boards based around the common topics on Digital Photography School, such as lighting, portraits, and composition. I went through the archives, and looked at the ebook topics on the resources page, and came up with a rough list of 25 boards. I then set about finding content for those boards.

I started noticing patterns and trends while I was creating the boards. I noticed that other users had created boards based on certain types of lighting or certain technical aspects of photography. I knew that I had to narrow down the focus of certain boards to really tap into the interest graphs for these users.

Sites such as DPS and Problogger are authority sites. They are known for containing a lot of content on a wide range of topics that are important to the fields they cover. This is part of the appeal of these sites.

Most bloggers—and photographers—however, are specialists. They are interested in general trends affecting their community, but are focused on very specific information that affects their niche. This means that people don’t just want information on taking photos of people. They want to know how to take photos of newborns, children, families, and seniors. They want ideas for specific types of lighting or poses. We created specific boards targeted towards these interests and have gained a lot of traction from that effort. We now have ~~twice~~ three times as many boards as we originally planned.

We took this idea one step further

Within hours of launching we had over 1000 followers, but I felt like we were missing something. We were collecting a lot of solid information about digital photography and had been grouping it into categories. This information was great for existing photographers, but … then I realized what we were missing.

Newbie photographers, such as myself, would have been overwhelmed by the myriad of boards. I still use my camera as a point-and-shoot tool. Imagine if my first exposure to the DPS brand was the Pinterest account! I may have been too overwhelmed to check out the site and see the fantastic resources in the Beginners section.

Tweaking the strategy

I might be brilliant at social media but, as I say, I use my DSLR as a glorified point-and-shoot snaps. I´ve had it for four years and only have a vague ideas about what the buttons do. I decided to set up a board covering the basics, but even then, I found the information to be overwhelming.

Photography has a steep learning curve for the newbie. That is where resources like Digital Photography School come in. So what if I structured some of the boards like they were lessons? I could use the description area to create additional context and tell people what board they should visit to get their next “lesson.”

We set up a board called DSLR basics. The next four boards focused on elements of a concept called the “exposure triangle.” The first board focused on why exposure was important. The following boards were dedicated to each part of the triangle. I linked to relevant blog posts in the description.

The first board in the “series” said:

Learning exposure is the first step you should take when it comes to understandind photography. Read our tutorial on the exposure triangle: http://bit.ly/1N3I In the following boards, we talk about the 3 parts of the triangle: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

The following boards contained a brief line about why that concept was important.

We have only just started experimenting with this technique, so we don’t have much data about whether or not people are responding to this. We are giving away space above the fold to boards that, visually, aren’t as interesting as some others we’ve created. But we’re hoping it pays off.

This is where bloggers can really stand out: give people a reason to visit your Pinterest account other than to check out images. Create a destination. It’s risky and requires a lot of work, but it has the potential to send a massive amount of targeted traffic to your blog.

How can you apply this to your blog?

The first step most people take is to set up their own Pinterest account and start pinning images. If your main goal is to get traffic, you should focus on creating prettier images on your own blog first.

There are a number of ways you can do this:

Increase the number of images in blog posts. This gives people multiple pictures to choose from when pinning a post.

Hunt for incredible images on Flickr. This post by Skellie gives details about how to do this.

Include a portrait-oriented image later in the post. Landscape-oriented images work better to grab attention on a blog post, but the portrait image suits the pinboards better.

I also recommend that bloggers create a Pinterest account for themselves to experiment with before creating one for their blog. You don’t have to do this, but it will give you the chance to understand Pinterest a bit more before making a big commitment.

Creating your own Pinterest account

Many pinterest newbies start by pinning pretty things. That´s what all the “experts” recommend you do. I’ve noticed, though, that having a nice image is just one part of Pinterest success. The second is telling people why they should click through to read the article connected to the pin.

This is incredibly easy and will make you stand out as an authority. Sometimes you will need to read the article to add context, but often the headline will suffice.

Importantly, once an image has been repinned, you lose control over the conversation. It will get shared and, often, the text will get edited. Adding information means that people will have an additional reason to categorize it according to their interests. It also helps people discover your pins via the network’s search tool.

What do I do with the account?

Having a Pinterest account isn’t enough—you also have to give people a reason to click through to check out your boards. Here are some suggestions to tie it your Pinterest account to your blog:

Link to relevant boards when discussing issues in your blog posts. This is a great way to give more information without sharing a bunch of links.

Create a Pinterest landing page on your blog. This is like a Twitter landing page—it’s where you talk about why your blog is relevant to those who have clicked over from Pinterest. You can see our example for DPS here. I’ve also created one for my marketing client at The Village Agency.

How do I drive traffic to the account?

Some of the comments on Darren’s earlier Pinterest experiment post suggested that we achieved a lot of success because of the strength of the brand name. This was part of it. But interestingly, there was a lot of traction before we publicly launched the account.

Something that, I believe, will really grow the account is the way Darren is involving the community in the growth of the account. Look at the questions Darren asked in the launch post:

If there’s a topic you’d like to see us develop a board for, please suggest it in the comments below.

If you have a photography board of your own, please let us know about it in the comments below—we’ll be following as many as we can and repinning the best of the best from our community.

Here’s why this step was important.

The fan cycle

I’m a huge fan of word of mouth and how it can help bloggers spread their message.

I discovered this concept called Cycle of a Fan which shows how a person can go from introduction to ownership. This can also apply to Pinterest accounts.

People naturally want to share something that they feel that they are a part of or have contributed to. This step allows us to engage with the DPS readers and, even better, gives us valuable information about how we can improve.

have created several new boards based on reader feedback

are following many of the boards of people following us

are planning new boards once we’ve gotten through this launch period

We can then use the information from these boards to influence the content at the blog.

Over to you

We’ve had an incredibly busy couple of weeks since we launched the DPS Pinterest account. It has been a constant process of refining and tweaking the strategy.

I’d love to hear any feedback you may have—or any questions! What are you biggest problems related to creating a Pinterest presence for your blog?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Behind the Scenes of the DPS Pinterest Strategy: Case Study

Measuring and Monitoring Online Reputation: What, Why, and How

2012-09-20T06:09:00.013-07:00

This guest post is by Rich Gorman of Reputationchanger.com.

In this day and age, there’s really nobody who is exempt from the supreme importance of online reputation. Business owners need a sterling online reputation to ensure that they keep attracting new clients. Job seekers need a good reputation to put their best face forward, in the likely event that a potential employer checks them out on Google.

Bloggers need a good online reputation for any number of reasons; whether you’re seeking to build an audience or sell products, having people know that you’re reputable and authoritative is key.

The problem is, the chances for an online reputation to be utterly derailed are abundant. Things aren’t the way they used to be in the days when protecting your image was basically just a matter of keeping DUI arrests and mug shots out of the local paper! Now, a business rival can post something defamatory about you to the Web, or an old, embarrassing photo from your college days can surface, and the damage can be immense.

What’s your reputation like?

There are ways to monitor and protect your online reputation, which is good news, but there is also much misinformation about the ways in which online reputation is accurately monitored.

There is an increasingly large population of people, particularly bloggers, who are using tools like Klout and FollowerWonk to help them evaluate where they stand, reputation-wise. While these tools are useful in many ways, it’s not quite accurate to say that they offer an assessment of your online reputation.

Take Klout, for example. Klout will tell you many things about your online persona and your “Google footprint.” It will tell you how many people you directly influence, what kind of sway you hold over others within your industry, and more. What it does is effectively measure online influence through the prism of social network import and reach.

This is hardly without value, but it’s not quite the same thing as reputation monitoring. What these tools tell you is how influential you are, but they don’t tell you whether your overall online image is good or bad, or whether there are potentially embarrassing listings out there that could cost you, personally or professionally.

Let’s say, for instance, that the old DUI report or frat party photo surfaces on the Web. A good way to stay alert about these negative listings is to simply search for yourself, on Google and Yahoo and Bing, as often as you can.

A couple of professional reputation monitoring tips are in order here: First, log out of Google before you search for yourself, lest you get “personalized” results that fail to show you the big picture. Second, search for spelling variations on your name, particularly if your name has alternate spellings; if you go by Cammie, for example, there’s a decent chance someone might post about you under the name “Cammy.”

Setting up Google and Yahoo alerts is another important step. This might all seem a little less sophisticated than using something like Klout or FollowerWonk, but for bloggers and professionals seeking up-to-the-minute knowledge about their online listings, this is really the most effective way to go.

Proactively managing your reputation

Of course, merely monitoring your reputation is not always going to be enough. You may wish to proactively shape it, ensuring that when someone searches for you on the Web, the first listings to appear on the page are positive ones. Crafting a positive online reputation is essentially a matter of populating the search engines with flattering content about yourself—but how?

The first thing to think about is your online real estate portfolio. Make sure you are the owner of all the domain names associated with your name; if you go by Jon Lener, try to secure access to jonlener.com, jon-lener.org, jonlener.net, and all the exact-match variations you can get. Do the same with social media accounts: a Twitter account is not going to provide you with Google rankings if it isn’t directly attached to your name.

Remember that your goal in reputation defense is to fill the first page or two of Google with positive listings—that is, listings that you control. Make sure to get a LinkedIn page, then, because LinkedIn ranks better on Google than any other social network! Other social networking suggestions include a WordPress blog, which ranks better than Blogger or Tumblr; a Vimeo account, which, surprisingly, ranks better than a YouTube account; and limited time spent on photo-sharing services, like Flickr, which simply aren’t as useful for obtaining search engine rankings.

Measuring your online influence is ultimately useful, but when it comes to ensuring that your online image is a positive one, there is no substitute for basic reputation monitoring. There is also no replacement for the tried-and-true methods of using exact-match domains and social media accounts to foster an online reputation you can be proud of.

Do you monitor your online reputation? Tell us how in the comments.

Rich Gorman is a recognized thought leader when it comes to online reputation management techniques and a designer of direct response marketing programs for companies large and small. He leads the team at www.reputationchanger.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Measuring and Monitoring Online Reputation: What, Why, and How

9 Elements of the Perfect Post

2012-09-20T06:09:00.012-07:00

This guest post is by Ginny Soskey of Shareaholic.

A perfect blog post is hard to come by. Sometimes the mistakes are small, like a grammatical error, and other times the mistakes are so glaring that you just can’t look away.

You spend so much time coming up with post ideas, optimizing, editing, and promoting that you should make sure your posts are near perfect so your efforts don’t go to waste.

To help you make sure you’ve covered all your blogging bases before you hit “post,” I’ve created a handy infographic outlining the perfect post with some key learnings below:

1. Headline

It’s essential to start your post off with a great headline.

In Shareaholic’s publisher network, the most shared websites tend to optimize for keywords in their headlines, include headlines less than ten words, and stick to “list” and “how to” kinds of posts.

Think of your headline as a tweet—would you click through to the link if it showed up on your feed? Crafting a headline in the form of a tweet also ensures that your headline is short enough to be shared via Twitter.

2. Sub-header

People like to scan, and large blocks of text scare them off. Try to break up your copy with several sub-headers as it will make it easy for readers to digest your content. Having sub-headers will also help them to comprehend your post as the main points are brought immediately to their attention.

Numbers, bolded text or larger font size are all ways you can create sub-headings for your blog. If you have several authors for your blog, be sure to tell them how you want your sub-headers to be styled in your editorial guidelines.

3. Optimized copy

SEOmoz’s infographic of the perfectly optimized blog post will guide you to see where you should place your keywords throughout your post.

To identify your keywords in the first place, make sure to check your content analytics tool to see what organic keywords and topics are popular with your readers.

4. Multimedia

Having visual and interactive elements to your blog post is essential to engaging visitors on your blog. Find stock photos or Creative Commons Licensed material using Compfight or even create one of your own.

The best part about using visuals in your posts is that it’s easy to reuse them to promote your blog on Pinterest, which Shareaholic found to be the fifth largest traffic source in the world. Among our publisher network, we notice that websites with branded visuals get the most shares on Pinterest while along benefitting from the brand exposure of including their name in those shares.

5. Embedded CTAs

Ultimately, you want your readers to take some form of action from your blog. That could mean subscribing to your blog so they come back again, or maybe downloading an ebook or other offer from you.

Make it easy for them to do so by embedding a call to action (CTA) in your post. From what we see in our publisher network and on our own blog, CTAs above the fold do the best, as your readers don’t have to scroll to take action.

6. Sidebar

This is prime real estate on your blog, as it is displayed no matter which article your readers are viewing. Use this area to show off links to your social networks, subscriptions to your RSS feed and email list, and free downloads of white papers, infographics or badges.

One of my favorite plugins for the sidebar is Social Media Widget—it’s easy to customize and use for bloggers of any level. Having these buttons will help keep your readers connected with you long after they leave your article.

7. Social sharing tools

After you create content that people enjoy, you need to make sure it’s easy for them to share it through their social networks.

Make sure your social sharing tools are prominently displayed on each post. Also, you should choose social sharing buttons that your readers are likely to use—you can use content analytics to determine where people are sharing your content and then include those social networks in your sharing buttons.

8. Related content

It’s not always love at first “site”: it may take a few posts to convince your reader to share your content or subscribe to your blog.

A related content tool speeds up this process by engaging your current readers with suggested posts at the bottom of each article you publish. This is sure to increase your pageviews and improve your overall time on site.

9. Comments

As social media has gained popularity, commenting on a blog post has expanded from the real estate directly below the post to other networks like Facebook and Twitter. Commenting systems have evolved to accommodate to this change and one of my favorites is Livefyre—it works in realtime and integrates seamlessly with Facebook or Twitter.

Knowing how to optimize your layout for maximum pageviews and social shares is incredibly important to growing your blog. What are some of your favorite tools to help create a perfect blog post? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Ginny Soskey is a marketing manager at Shareaholic. Shareaholic creates social sharing, related content and content analytics tools for more than 200,000 websites, reaching 300 million people each month. You can keep up with Shareaholic on the Shareaholic blog to get more tips on blogging.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

9 Elements of the Perfect Post

Why Google Loves My Blogs (and How to Get it to Love Yours)

2012-09-20T06:09:00.011-07:00

This guest post is by Melody McKinnon of Canadians Internet Business.

The latest algorithm updates from Google have broken the hearts of many blog owners. The search engine appears to have lost interest in many of them.

Yet on every website and blog I own, my attention from Google has increased—even on blogs less than a year old.

Naturally, I want to stay in Google’s good books so I’ve given this a lot of thought. I’ve concluded that Google is simply looking for blogs with a personality worthy of its love. It’s no longer a matter of superficial gestures and pretty words. This somewhat fickle search engine uses several factors to determine if you are ‘the one’, and I happen to meet that criteria by nature.

I prefer to write (and read) posts that are packed with information that may not be easy to find online.

I write for people and what they’re searching for. I answer the question, “What would I be happy to find if I was searching for this topic?” When that task is complete, I go back and lightly optimize for organic search.

I’m consistently active on social media.

I’ve built quality relationships with other bloggers.

I’ve been marketing online since the 90′s. I’ve seen every manipulative trick and they all had one thing in common: they came back to bite people on the butt every single time.

Desperately seeking

Google is trying harder to find what people are looking for these days, so it helps to view the search engine as a person rather than an entity. If Google placed a personal ad, here’s what it would be seeking:

Good looks and a great smile: custom design, limited advertising, and shareable images.

Charm: social media and blog interaction. Give them something to talk about.

Friendly and open: user-friendly blogs with easy commenting.

Intelligence: deep, meaningful content that is truly useful.

Unique: dare to be different and create unique content.

Good listener: cater to the searcher, not the search engine. Are you really giving them what they’re looking for?

Integrity: are you a cheater? Manipulation has no place in a good relationship with Google. Neither does copyright infringement, illegal activities, or hate content.

Long walks on a Vancouver beach: geographically-specific content when applicable.

Sincerity: thinly disguised advertising, superficial posts built around keywords, and buying links will not be tolerated.

Highly respected: Google respects those who are respected by websites it respects. You may have to repeat that a few times to get it!

Great attitude: upbeat stories, suitable for a family audience.

Hang with a good crowd: avoid linking to, or being linked to by, the “slums” of the Internet.

No hookers please: there’s nothing wrong with making money with your blog. The key is to give more than you get.

Love yourself: you can’t expect anyone else to love you if you don’t love yourself. Produce a blog that you would love to read.

Love them back: sign up for Google+ and take the time to learn how to use it. Add both a follow and share button to your blog.

Oh Google, your love means so much to me. I’m inspired by your efforts to control your wandering eye and focus on those who are truly worthy of your attention. You make me feel like the most special website in the world wide web!

Melody McKinnon holds 52 certifications in business, marketing, writing, nutrition, biochemistry & general sciences. She blogs for the newly relaunched Canadians Internet Business, All Natural Pet Care, and Petfood Industry Magazine.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why Google Loves My Blogs (and How to Get it to Love Yours)

Five Newsworthy Stories for Your Next Press Release

2012-09-20T06:09:00.010-07:00

This guest post is by Frank Strong of Vocus.

Most bloggers understand that online press releases can drive traffic. Press releases are powerful ways to reach people through search. As Lee Odden wrote in his book Optimize, “search is an explicit expression of need or want” and online press releases provide the means to reach people at the precise time they are expressing that need. This of course can result in one thing many bloggers desire the most: traffic.

ProBlogger has offered reasons to use press releases to promote a blog, and very sound editorial guidance on how to turn a press release into a blog post. However, there’s one piece of insight that’s missing: idea.

In other words, what are we going to write a press release about?

This is especially important for the better press release distribution services. They must enforce editorial guidelines or risk having their content rejected by distribution partners.

The biggest catch? We’ve got to have a news angle—that is, there’s got to be something new in our announcements. I’ve seen bloggers struggle with this concept the most, and so here’s a few ideas that I’ve found make great press releases that are effective and simple to produce.

1. More reads for the most read

As bloggers, we know that to build a community, we’ve got to blog consistently. The same is true for online releases: we need to develop a regular cadence for our announcements.

One very easy way is to announce our most read blog posts every quarter.

Take a look at your analytics and determine which posts earned the most unique visitors and then write a press release about it. Is the media going to call us? Probably not, but we’ll definitely earn some traffic and hopefully repeat visitors. This works best if we can find a trending angle—as you can see my company follows our own advice and earned 1,000 new visitors with this release.

2. Themes emerge in blogs

Sometimes bloggers like to experiment with an idea—we get a hunch and the float the idea on our blog to gauge the reaction. One idea leads to another and the next thing we know, we’ve got a whole series of blog posts.

As they say in the news business, three is a trend, so look for a trend that emerges from all time we’ve invested in blogging and find those emergent themes. Then, write a press release that illustrates the trend just like a hard news story you might read on a major news site. In this case, your press release is the story.

3. Research is newsworthy

Matt Landau is like any other entrepreneur trying to make a living. To promote his business, he does what good marketers all do well: he’s active on social media, publishes a blog, and contributes content elsewhere. He’s got a niche in vacation rental marketing and over the years has accrued wisdom that he’s turned into products, like reports, guidebooks and research he sells on his blog.

For one of his latest products he spent $199 on a press release and earned $3,850 in bookings. However, he is cautionary against suggesting such success can come overnight. During a phone conversation, Matt noted that content marketing is a “slow, long hard process that requires a commitment, but if you are confident and persistent, that persistence pays off.” The lesson? Consistency matters.

4. The news before the news

Starting a review site? Want products to review on a blog? We’ve got to tell someone about it if want them to come—building it isn’t enough.

Marie Howard was tired of lousy beauty products and started a blog, Howard House Reviews, to review beauty products for women. And she announced it to the world. Ah, but that’s only a one-time announcement, right? No. The consumer industry has sales seasons and so too should review blogs.

Journalist Beeb Ashcroft announced her Holiday Gift Guide for 2012 which will help drive traffic, but also attract new products to review, and in turn, drive more traffic. There’s an announcement for every season.

5. Announce what’s new

Satyam Kumar is a yoga teacher that knows how to promote his business. He blogs, he has a newsletter, and he creates audio podcasts and video tracks for practicing the various yoga techniques he teaches and he hosts them on his blog.

When he uploads a newest yoga podcast, he puts out an announcement about it and is careful to point out to readers they can subscribe on iTunes, so he gains not just visitors, but subscribers.

This tactic can work well for any sort of new content we produce on our social outposts and embed on our blogs: the latest YouTube video you embedded on demonstrating your software, or the latest speaking presentation just posted to SlideShare. If this works well, double down and post the five most views SlideShare presentations to the blog and announce that too.

Get tactical—and practical—with your next release

These ideas are not strategic—they are tactical and intended to be practical ways to promote a blog with press releases. There’s a quotation often attributed to Hinduism that might well apply: “An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”

Frank Strong is the director for Vocus, which also owns PRWeb, Help a Reporter out (HARO), iContact and North Social. Follow @PRWeb on Twitter for more tips on press releases.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Five Newsworthy Stories for Your Next Press Release

Kickstart Your Stalled Blog Content, Part 1: Six Steps to a Fresh Post

2012-09-20T06:09:00.009-07:00

Just starting a blog? Longing to revive an old, forgotten blog? Or just feeling guilty because you’ve let your blog languish without a post for a little too long?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user tikideputy

If your blog’s fallen behind your ideal post frequency, you’re in luck. Today, I’m going to give you a six-step plan for kickstarting stalled blog content. The work we’ll do today takes just 40 minutes in total, but you can split it up in to five- and ten-minute blocks if that’s all you can fit in.

Then, over the coming week, I’ll check back in with you periodically to see how you’re going—and provide some more tips for staying on track along the way. Are you ready to kickstart your content? Let’s go!

1. Take stock: readers, niche and blog: 10 minutes

First up, let’s take stock of what’s going on on your blog, in your niche, and with your readers. A good way to do this is to start by looking at the leading sites in your niche—not just blogs, but all sites and other media (press, for example) that your target audience might use.

Look closely at:

current news, events and trends

what readers are linking and sharing

what readers are worried or concerned by

where your niche seems to be headed in the short- to medium-term.

Do this now, and in ten or fifteen minutes’ time, you should have a pretty clear picture of what’s happening in your niche—an essential step if you’re reviving a blog you’ve left to languish for a while.

Next, visit your own blog. What topics have you covered most recently (even if that was a while ago)? Where does your blog sit relative to the competition, and to readers’ interests?

Hopefully, this review will give you a clear idea of some gaps in niche coverage that you can fill on your blog. It might also spark your ideas or opinions on topics that are important to your niche and audience right now. We’re off to a good start!

2. Think of three questions readers are asking: 5 minutes

After step 1, you’ll probably be fairly clear about the kinds of things readers are trying to learn or get information on.

Take a minute to write down three questions they’re asking. You might like to write them as if they’re questions you’re tying into Google or some other search tool, or you might just narrow down to fairly specific topics.

These questions don’t have to be actual questions you’re seeing readers ask in blog comments. They might be suggested through the interactions your audience is having on social media, or questions other leaders in your niche seem to be asking, and which are getting some attention from readers.

What you’re really looking for here are audience needs that aren’t being fully met by the content that’s available in your niche right now.

3. Write answers to those questions: 5 minutes

You’ve got a list of three questions; now answer each one in a sentence or two.

In those answers, make sure you’re 100% clear on the meaning of what you’ve written (it’s all too easy to jot down a one-sentence answer and find out later that it was full of holes!), and that you know why you answered the way you did.

Being able to rationalise your points of view will be essential when it comes to writing your next post!

4. Choose one Q&A to expand on: 10 minutes

Hopefully, you’ll find at least one of the questions you’ve identified really interesting. Pick that one, and note down a bit more about it.

You might get into the reader question in a bit more detail, or jot down the logical components of your answer—perhaps just in bullet points or using keywords.

The object here is just to get clear about the nature of the question, and the key elements of your answer. You might also have a think about some of the content you’ve seen on the topic online (if you have seen any) and identify what’s missing from that content. Should you cover those points in your post? Where would they fit?

You might notice now that you’ve got a brief outline for a post. You have a topic, a question for the post, and an answer split into a number of elements. Not bad for a half-hour’s work!

5. Write down what’s different about this advice: 5 minutes

You might be tempted to skip this step. Don’t.

Here’s where you clarify for yourself what your post will provide that no other content on the topic does.

This isn’t just an informational question—though of course knowing what advice or detail your post will offer uniquely is important. But let’s not overlook what you bring to the equation as well.

Perhaps your post will hinge on your own personal experience of the topic, and will provide unique insight from that experience.

Perhaps the approach will be different—maybe all the coverage so far has come from one side of the industry, or of a debate. Perhaps you’re going to provide another perspective from a completely different viewpoint.

Or maybe you’ll use a different format from the rest—one that makes the issues more approachable and digestible, and helps readers understand the topic more easily.

6. Schedule writing time, editing time, and a publication date: 5 minutes

This is the last step for today! You’ve just created a plan for a unique piece of content that responds directly, and uniquely to readers’ needs.

All you need now is the time to write it.

Check your schedule and set aside three blocks of time:

40 minutes for writing

30 minutes for editing, on a different day

a publication date.

Commit to these dates and times—make them non-negotiable. Tell us when they fall in the comments, if you like. What I’d love is if you could fit them into the next week, because I’m planning to check back in with you on Tuesday and Friday to see how you’re going.

On those days I’ll be providing tips to help you keep your content kickstart on track, so it’ll be great if you can work along with us. If not, that’s fine—I’d still love to hear when you’re planning your writing, editing and publication in the comments.

Don’t forget to check back on Tuesday, when I’ll reveal some of the tricks I use to blog when I have no time in my schedule. Hopefully, they’ll put you in good stead for keeping the content rolling on your blog long after you’ve kickstarted it back into action. See you then!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Kickstart Your Stalled Blog Content, Part 1: Six Steps to a Fresh Post

Curb Your Blogging Frustration in 8 Steps

2012-09-20T06:09:00.008-07:00

This guest post is by Marc Ensign of MarcEnsign.com and NotAnotherSEOBlog.com.

That last blog post was really good. It was supposed to be the one. The post that launched you into blogging stardom. Right into the spotlight. Making you an overnight success.

That post was supposed to change everything.

But it didn’t. Instead, it received the usual handful of tweets, smattering of likes and a gaggle of comments. Barely enough traffic needed for a respectable flash mob. And a majority of the traffic you did get either came from you or from people that share your bloodline.

It’s frustrating, isn’t it?

Frustrating enough to make you question what you are doing. Or if you are any good. Frustrating enough to make you wonder if blogging is even worth it. Or if anybody even cares about what you have to say.

Frustrating enough to make you want to give up. Stop writing. Quit.

Now, before you fold your arms and stomp off into the sunset never to blog again, there is something you should know. This is normal. Every blogger that has had an ounce of success has been here. At this very same fork in the road. Staring down the same choice of whether or not to give up. Lucky for us, they chose to keep going.

And you should too.

So, before you throw in the towel, let’s talk about how to curb some of that frustration a bit so you can get back to striving for blogging fame and fortune.

Step 1: Stop whining

You are not working in a coal mine. You are not living in a third world country. And you have not been sentenced to life in prison for a crime you did not commit. You are writing. Put it in perspective. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and making things out to be worse than they really are.

I get it. You have something to say. A message to share with the world. And nobody is listening. Or at least that’s how it feels sometimes. But whining about it is not going to make it any better. In fact, it’s only going to make it worse. Stop getting caught up in creating a meaning behind the numbers. Dig deep and rediscover the reason that you started your blog in the first place. Find your purpose.

Step 2: Find your purpose

There was a time early on when you woke up in a cold sweat. You had an idea. A way to help others. Sure, you thought you might also be able to make some money at it along the way, but it wasn’t originally about that. There was a greater purpose behind it. Something you were passionate about. Something so strong that you were willing to put the work in early on even though you didn’t have a single visitor or make a single penny.

And now it sounds like you have lost sight of it. Not on purpose. It just took a backseat as you started to value other stuff more like the number of visitors or how many people are sharing your posts. You need to rediscover your purpose. It’s easy to do. To start, just change your focus.

Step 3: Change your focus

If you are frustrated over your blog’s performance, take a look at where you are focusing your attention. Chances are that it is on the numbers—how many hits, Tweets, Likes and Pins. When you are too focused on the numbers you tend to make bad decisions. You begin to focus on what you can gain from the relationship versus what you can give. It affects the quality of your writing. It affects what you write about. It affects how often you write. It affects the tone you take in your writing. And your audience will notice.

If you have to focus on numbers, start focusing on different numbers. Numbers that you have more control over. How often you publish. How many words you are writing each day. How many other blogs you are reading and commenting on. It doesn’t mean you should turn a blind eye to the number of visitors you are getting, just stop checking your stats so often.

Step 4: Stop checking your stats so often

We’re all guilty of it. You publish a post, Tweet it, count to ten and then log into Google Analytics to see how many people have read it so far. Stop it. Seriously. You are going to drive yourself mad. Keeping the window open all of the time so you can hit refresh after every Tweet is going to get you more and more frustrated.

Try checking your stats only once a week. Maybe once at the end of each day if you are really neurotic about it. Staring at your stats ten times a day isn’t going to make it better. If your writing is good and your message is powerful, the visitors will come. You just need to have faith.

Step 5: Have faith

If you don’t believe that you have something of value to share. Something the world needs to hear. Than we as your readers aren’t going to either. It comes across in your writing and how you share your posts. Do you do enough or do you go above and beyond? Do you care about your subject matter or are you passionate about it?

You need to feel strongly about what you are doing and where you are going and have faith that you will get there. Having faith will help you get through the times when no one is reading. When you are up at 2am working on a new post. When you know it can be better. With a little bit of faith, you can accomplish just about anything. As long as you set realistic goals.

Step 6: Set realistic goals

Frustration often comes from having unrealistic goals. Goals that are too far out of reach for you to get excited about. Goals like having 100,000 subscribers by the end of your first month. Or making $1,000,000 in advertising without any traffic. Your goals need to be attainable. Just a hair out of reach. Enough to make you stretch but not too far that it seems unreasonable to keep going when it gets tough.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to squash your dreams. I am just suggesting that you not set yourself up for failure. I once met a guy who whose goal was to be the first trillionaire in the world. He’s going to fail. It’s too far out of reach. He is not going to surpass the valuation of Apple from his Moms basement with no ideas and no prospects. Set goals that are reasonable. Win a few along the way. Get excited about them. And stay committed.

Step 7: Stay committed

You have come this far. You have developed a blog. You have been posting regularly. You have a bunch of readers. You have a purpose and reasonable goals. See it through. Stay committed to it. Don’t lose sight of your dream. Make sure that you write your absolute best stuff every time. Post consistently on the same day(s) every week. Wake up every morning at the same time and write for an hour or two. Create a religion out of it.

If you are asking your readers to commit to you by reading your blog each day than you need to commit to them and yourself. Being committed means giving your best. Not missing a post. Even when you don’t know what to say. Even when it gets tough. And when it does get tough (which it will), look to others for inspiration.

Step 8: Look to others for inspiration

You aren’t the only one that has been here. Struggling to find an audience. Wishing a post would catch on. Disappointed by the numbers. Every blogger goes through this and the best ones are the ones that make it out alive. Stronger than how they went in. Read their stories. Find solace in their struggles. You are not alone.

Chris Brogan wrote a post not too long ago about how it took him eight years to get his first 100 subscribers. If you were to ask him, I’m sure he felt like giving up a bunch of times throughout those years, but he didn’t. And that seemed to have worked out pretty good for him. It’s inspiring. And there are plenty of stories out there just like his. Make sure that yours is one of them some day.

Still frustrated?

After all that, if you are still frustrated, there is only one thing left to do about it. No, not quit. Write. Write about how frustrated you are. Maybe it’s a post. Maybe a private journal entry. Maybe a comment below on this post. Whatever it is. Leverage your ability to write about it. Get it out of your system. You will feel better and then you can get back to doing what you do best.

Marc Ensign is not a Guru, Jedi, Rock Star or a Ninja. He’s just a guy that knows an awful lot about a bunch of stuff and likes to write about it on his blogs MarcEnsign.com and NotAnotherSEOBlog.com. His stuff is good. It’s different. It’ll make you think (in a good way). You should check it out. You never know, you might learn something. If not, it’s a great way to kill a couple of minutes.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Curb Your Blogging Frustration in 8 Steps

Google Penalizes Copyright Infringers: Are You At Risk?

2012-09-20T06:09:00.007-07:00

This guest post is by Shahzad Saeed of TechAndProject.com.

Recently Google announced on its official blog that it will start penalizing sites that are accused of copyright infringement.

The announcement may reduce the content theft around the web, since now it is clear that if a site continuously violates copyright laws, it will lose search rankings and possibly even be removed from Google’s index. On the other hand, today’s technology makes it easier than ever to copy, modify, and share any information from the web. But the problem is that the vast majority of people do not care about copyright. This may now result in legal actions and loss of Google traffic.

How can you avoid Google penalties related to copyright? Here are a few tips.

A quick disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this does not intend to constitute legal advice. It is only the results of my own research.

Reusing content? Get the author’s permission every time

I’ve found many of my articles published on other websites without my permission. Some people assume that there is no copyright infringement if they steal the content, but credit the author’s website. This is incorrect.

Some others assume that the worst thing can happen as a result of copyright infringement is that they will receive take down notice from the author, and then, if they remove the copyrighted material, they will be out of trouble.

Let me talk about my experience. I published an article titled Top 10 deadliest air crashes in the last 10 years on my own blog. At the time, Google brought a nice amount of traffic to that post. But recently, when I Googled the keywords related to that post, I’ve found that it’s no longer listed even in the first ten result. Instead, a ripped post was there. It was republished in an article gallery where users are paid for the content! I’ve found the same article reproduced without my permission on other blogs as well.

Sometimes, it is nice to see that your work has been used by many people around the web, even if they are not crediting you. I don’t care if someone gets paid a small fee for my article; what I worry about is suffering a Google penalty if someone steals my content.

If you plan to copy more than a few words or phrases from someone’s post, ask the original author for permission to republish it. If you copy copyrighted material without getting permission from the author, and crediting the author, your actions will infringe their copyright. If you cannot get the author’s permission, restate the ideas in your own words.

Determine if permission is needed

In some cases, using work without permission is allowed. For criticizing, commenting, and news reporting, short quotations are considered fair use. You can also use material that’s available in the public domain.

Finally, you are allowed to use a brand name on your site under nominative fair use laws. In this case, your usage of the name would not be considered trademark infringement because the use is unlikely to confuse consumers, as you’re merely using it to identify the brand without suggesting affiliation or sponsorship with the brand owner.

An example is Windows7sins.org—a site where free-software enthusiasts criticize the use of proprietary software especially Microsoft Windows.

It is really important to identify what works come under public domain and which don’t. Public domain materials include federal government documents and materials produced before 1923. If material was produced between 1923 and 1978 without a copyright notice it is also considered to be in the public domain.

For a blogger this does not matter much, unless they’re copying material from printed sources, because the web didn’t take off until the late ’90s.

On the flip-side of all this legislation, if you want others to have free use of your work, you can explicitly make it clear that you do not assert any copyright ownership. You can learn more about the public domain here.

Use materials licensed under Creative Commons

As you might know, Creative Commons (cc) enables you to license your own writing, photos, videos, or anything you’ve created for reuse by others, and it’s free. The CC license tells people that your content is available for mixing, copying, and modifying with their own content and creations. It automatically grants third parties permission to use your work.

Creative Commons is not a license that allows the reuse of any work, but it is less restrictive than standard copyright. In order to identify what you can do and can’t do with Creative Commons-licensed material, you should check what type of license the material is available under. Here are the different types of Creative Commons licenses.

Attributions: authors specify that the work can be copied if a credit is given to the author like linking to the original article.

Derivation: authors specify if the work can be altered or only verbatim copies of the work are allowed to be reused and shared.

Commercial or non- commercial licenses: authors specify if the work is allowed to be used for any purpose, or only for non-commercial purposes.

Share-alike: authors specify that if the work is reproduced, then the derived work has to use same license (or they may specify that it doesn’t).

Using Creative Commons-licensed content is a good choice, but attributing it properly can be difficult and a bit confusing.

The first rule of thumb of using licensed content is to attribute the creator properly. Open Attribute is a simple tool I suggest for anyone to copy and paste the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work.

Most bloggers and webmasters use Flickr to find images for their own blogs. Not every picture on Flickr is free to use, though. Some of the Flickr images are “All rights reserved”, so you can’t just copy and use them unless you have got permission explicitly from the owner.

For finding a Creative Commons-licensed images, you can use Google Advanced Image Search. If you are a Flickr fan when it comes to using images for your blog, use the advanced search and limit your results to Flickr or any other specific domain that you are interested in.

WordPress users can use the Flickr pick a picture plugin to find suitable pictures from Flickr.com. Another useful plugin is Free Stock Photos Foter, where users can find free—and freely available—stock photos.

Another important thing to keep in mind is not to hotlink the images that you use. Many people are lazy, and when they upload the picture they just bulk upload it—they might not have given name, title, and tag to each and every picture on their site. If you then hotlink those pictures and do some basic image optimization techniques on your blog, chances are high that you will outrank the source picture—not good if you want to stay on good terms with the image’s owner. So the best practice is to host the image yourself instead of hotlinking it.

Add licensing information on your site

You can see, most of the mainstream websites have some kind of copyright messages on the site. Displaying a copyright message is not necessarily needed to claim your rights over your blog and its content—as soon as you publish an article on your blog, it is automatically copyrighted.

However, a copyright notice can be useful if you need to defend your rights to your blog in court. The following is the common format for displaying copyright.

[Source]

No matter what size a blog is, no blog is secure from content theft. Some bloggers license their blog under creative commons license by arguing the issues of content theft and difficulty in discouraging copying under the (DMCA) Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Some bloggers, like Leo Babauta of Zenhabits.net, encourage readers to copy their content to their own blogs any way they need—even without attribution.

If you own a blog licensed under Creative Commons, it’s a good idea to use WordPress plugin called Creative Commons Configurator. This adds your CC license near the footer of your posts, and in the head of your blog. This will be visible only to robots, but ensures your approach to copyright is clear to all—including Google, which means you should avoid their penalties when others reuse your content.

My advice? License images and videos under CC, but not the text of your blog if you don’t want your blog get penalized by Google. But what about you? Do you protect your copyright, or license your content for others to use? Tell us how you do it in the comments.

Shahzad Saeed blogs on TechAndProject.com where he talks about Technology for students. If you want to learn web designing either to become a freelancer or to be an employee feel free to read his article series on web coding.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Google Penalizes Copyright Infringers: Are You At Risk?

How Playboy Can Help Your Blog

2012-09-20T06:09:00.006-07:00

This guest post is by Greg Narayan of http://www.dearblogger.org/.

My roommate always gets Playboy. He puts the new mag right by the silverware drawer in the kitchen, and it usually sits there wide open. We share a relatively small apartment in Manhattan’s financial district. I see the darn thing every day when I walk in the front door.

Yesterday, I decided to open it up. I mean, as I said, it’s usually open, and open to some ridiculous page. Slightly enticing. I don’t think I need to explain myself too much here, or make excuses for my decision to open the mag. I’m a guy after all. Sidenote: I don’t support Playboy or think it is a useful or productive way of spending time.

What I saw as I flipped through back to front (bad habit) was not what I had expected. The mag was filled with a series of articles that basically sold the lifestyle of an ambitious, successful man. A man who had wealth, style, worldly tastes, and yes, women on his arms. This man wasn’t one person. As my fingers flipped through the glossy pages I saw Justin Timberlake, Ray Liotta, Ryan Gosling, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Guys I envy.

Now, I’ve been researching blog marketing a lot lately, and trying to relate my content directly to my specific audience. It’s worthwhile research—you can write the best article ever on ache treatment but if your reader doesn’t suffer from ache then it’s all for naught. Marketing: basic stuff I had messed up in my first two years of blogging. But this magazine was telling me something.

When I read content, I sort of focus more on how the writer is doing things, what their mindset is, than on the actual content. Here’s what I learned in my 15 minutes with Playboy.

Give em’ what they want

You’ve definitely read posts on selling to your readers, posts on getting your readers to do things, and countless others on blog marketing. You’re reading ProBlogger after all, so you’re clearly ambitious and looking to improve your blog. But I don’t think you’re totally using what you learn. Not yet, at least.

My roommate’s mag contained the following things (aside from naked pictures): delicious food pics, 4th of July party pics, stories of Brazilian models, stories of English models, naughty comic strips, and ads on the following things: watches, red wine, vodka, sports cars, sex enhancing drugs, and beer.

What a goldmine of male-enticing junk.

I had always thought of Playboy as a joker’s mag, something put together in a sleazy way to appeal to people I viewed as mainly lazy and ugly. But this magazine was crafted by geniuses, who knew me and at least part of the subset of things I find interesting. Sorry if this is a “duh” for you—it wasn’t for me.

How this can help your blog

Can you see where I’m going? Okay good. Open up your blog, or click on one of the 12 tabs it’s already open on. I want you to be brutal and judgemental.

What features on your blog do you readers really want? Want is it that keeps them coming back? Maybe it’s your posts (should be) or a cool picture series, or videos. Whatever it is, double it. Find a way to make it twice as prominent.

Ways to blow up content:

Mention it a few times in other posts.

Reference it in your sidebar.

Talk about the actual action of you making that content. This builds up your authority on the topic.

Now strip down the nonsense on your blog. A pretty Facebook and Twitter section you think looks just peachy? Get that out of here! It’s not what people want. How about that ad section in your header? Do your users like looking at that? Get rid of it! Maybe a search bar you spent hours coding into your header? If it’s not helping your readers or actively keeping them coming back, toss it, bud.

This is a routine I go through once a month, and I’m amazed at how much stuff I can delete to make my good content, and my best features, more prominent. Sure, you have to delete. Pressing that Delete button is satisfying, though.

The images make a big difference

Playboy show images, and collages, that just work. They depict things you thought you knew about in new ways. You know when you open up a Playboy that you’re going to see some stunning images, that’s a given. And you do. It’s simple enough, really, but that’s easy reinforcement. Can you imagine how many subscribers Playboy would lose if it just cut images by say 50%?

They understand their users’ expectations and meet them. Then they take it the next step, by intriguing you. By showing you what lies out there and what you could be. How do they do this? Through bios of people like Brad Pitt. Through photos of Hugh Heffner when he was younger making lavish quotes and ridiculous money. They are selling a lifestyle, and you want it.

Seriously, the longer the Playboy mag stays open, the more sucked in you become. You start believing you could have that lifestyle, and thinking about parts of your life, maybe your fitness for example, that you need to improve on. When I finally closed the mag, I had to rip it away from myself as if there was magnetism at work.

How this can help you blog

I do not mean start posting pictures of girls in your blog posts. Brosome, BroBible, and all those other obnoxious sites that once had cool content already sold out and did this. They’ll get some quick traffic but never really go as far as they could have.

What I do mean is you have to start selecting blog post images that intrigue your readers. Use Photodropper and pick out beautiful pics to illustrate your point. You’d be amazing how much stunning images help retain your readers and slash bounce rates. People are lazy and like looking at pictures (you already know this).

Then, use some easy reinforcement techniques. Think up three things your readers probably want before they find your blog, and present those three things in interesting, but easy-to-find ways. You want a user to read through your blog and nod their head, mouthing “yes” and “come on!” Not “wtf?”

Compound previous success

Playboy constantly talks about itself and brags. “Check out the pics from our 4th of July bash.” “See the coolest features from the past 50 years of Playboy.” “Get a chance to ride the Playboy limousine when you subscribe.” It’s ridiculously self-indulgent and I wouldn’t expect a blog to do that.

Or would I?

After seeing just a couple pictures showing how awesome Playboy‘s 4th of July party was, just a little part of me wants to be Playboy. I want to attend that thing too, and I deserve it. This is that topic of lifestyle selling again. Playboy is dangling things in front of readers’ faces—things that they likely will never, ever touch. But the service Playboy is offering is to make those things seem tangible—making that limousine seem within reach.

That’s why you shell out $6.99 for an individual mag and even risk some dirty looks in the checkout line.

How this can help your blog

You’ve definitely had successes as a blogger and you’ve definitely had failures. But, are you talking about your success? Are you writing about it, or at least mentioning it so that your readers know about it? You should start doing so if you’re not.

A hidden aspect of blogging you’ll realize after doing it for a while is that it’s equally important to write about your prowess as it is to provide quality information. If you don’t write about yourself, how are readers supposed to know you’re a reliable source of info?

I don’t mean brag openly, people will smell that a mile away and you can really only pull that off if you’re someone like Tucker Max. I do mean highlight your acheivements. Do it like Glen Allsop does on his About me page.

If you don’t exactly know how to write about yourself in a way that readers will enjoy, here are a few tips:

Do it at the start of your post.

Be funny with it, and a bit self-deprecating.

Admit a mistake, then follow it up with a success story.

You need to write about yourself more. Don’t expect readers, or fans, or even the people you actually see on a daily basis, to understand or know about your blogging successes. They don’t. Tell them.

It’s okay to be naughty

Playboy does things we know aren’t allowed. That’s obviously what gets people. But the way they do it is so darn bold. There’s such a sense of entitlement around Hugh Heffner and Playboy, as if they’re enjoying freedoms that belong to them and are being taken away from us.

Whatever naughty and ridiculous things Playboy does, they do it like a boss. It’s like when my roommate steals my cheddar cheese then leaves the bag wide open, dead center of the fridge. He’s getting his filling and showing me too.

Now, Playboy is an example of excessiveness. That lifestyle can’t exactly be replicated. We simply don’t have the resources. We also have jobs we have to go to, and normal responsibilities. Life isn’t one huge party.

But again, we can imagine.

How this can help your blog

Think of ten things you would not think of doing on your blog. Write them down. Good. Now eliminate the five most dangerous things on there. I want you to think about doing the five things left on your list.

Here’s what my list contains:

Posting an inflated subscriber count to entice subscribers.

Writing a quote someone famous said about my blog to look more popular.

Exaggerating my blog’s income in a post.

Telling readers they’ll get a life-changing ebook for subscribing.

Saying I have post coming up on ProBlogger!

These things won’t kill readers, will they? I’m not going to do them, because they’re naughty. Or am I? You’d be amazed how many far, far along bloggers have done these things in efforts to get more subscribers. And they’ve done them successfully. It’s sorta like dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. You’re just taking any edge you can because you want to succeed.

There is nothing wrong with craving success. Do you think the first nude pictures Playboy posted were A-okay with everyone? Absolutely not: they got more criticism than George Bush. But doing things in a slightly more bossy, authoritative way, and claiming whats yours, are a few ways to replicate a bit of Playboy‘s success.

That’s all, mates and, err, females mates. I hope I’ve inspired you, and have sucked some positivity out of what really is a crummy magazine. Sorry, Playboy.

Greg Narayan is the founder of DearBlogger.org . He just finished an eBook on the importance of reducing Bounce Rate which you can check out. He resides in Manhattan’s Financial District.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How Playboy Can Help Your Blog

8 Non-writing Apps for Writers

2012-09-20T06:09:00.005-07:00

This guest post is by Ben Ellis of www.b3n3llis.com.

A lot of “app talk” in the world of writing revolves around the main applications used to compose your piece of writing, such as Scrivener, iA Writer, and my weapon of choice, MOApps’ Write, plus a whole load of others too.

I use a few additional apps to help me research and record things when I’m out and my notebook or laptop are at home. These assistant apps are ones you can fire up on your phone or tablet when a moment of inspiration hits you or you need to double-check something. Now you don’t need to worry about always remembering a pen and paper … just keep your battery charged.

Dictionary & Thesaurus

My poor spelling of words longer than five letters demands I use this app on a very regular basis. It’s easy to use, very well designed and the Thesaurus is great too. Although I only use it to find words that have slipped my memory—it’s no good filling your MS with a myriad of grandiloquent words you, your peers, or characters would never use in normal everyday life. This app’s free with ads and paid without.

Rhyme Source

The basic design means it’s not the most attractive app on your device, but it is one of the easiest to use. For someone who doesn’t write poetry I use this surprsingly often. It comes at a small cost.

Dropbox

Everyone should have a backup in the Cloud. This is the Big Daddy of the services available out there, but there are others. The main, fundamental point is: back up your stuff. Also, handy if you’re out and about and you want to review or add to a document of yours—you can access it and make an amendment to the live document from anywhere at anytime. Free for a basic account.

Nebulous

Now, you could use Mac’s native Notes app to record your story ideas, but that would be boring, right? So check out Nebulous. It’s especially built for writers, coders, and others to record ideas.

I only use it to note down ideas but it’s better than Notes, allowing a better filing system, plus it’s integrated with Dropbox so once you enter an idea, it automatically creates a backup in the cloud via your Dropbox account. Free and paid versions are available.

Discover

I’m glad I started writing during the Age of Wikipedia because I can’t imagine it any other way! This app gives you an intuitive way to navigate Wikipedia along with some added features such as a search history and related articles. It’s an effective and enjoyable research tool. Free but you’ll have to switch to the US store to get it (if you’re not already there).

MacFreedom and TV Guide

TV, along with the internet, is probably the worst enemy of a writer’s productivity. Vegging in front of a reality show or scrolling aimlessly through Twitter or an exe’s Facebook profile doesn’t get the next great novel of a generation written!

MacFreedom (for Mac and PC) blocks all internet activity on a laptop or desktop for a set amount of time, whilst the TV Guide app lets you see what’s on TV before you actually switch it on. MacFreedom is only $10 and the TV Guide is free. Your writing time is precious, protect it!

The National Geographic HD Atlas

Yes, you could use Google Maps or Google Earth, but for a small cost you could immerse yourself into a beautifully rendered HD atlas and let your imagination travel the seven seas!

Baby Names

Gives you ideas and inspiration for names and the meanings and origins behind them. Anyone seeing you use it may have some questions for you, especially your other half. Free.

You can probably achieve the same results with most of these apps by just using a web browser on your phone, but where’s the fun in that?! Also, if you really like an app then go ahead and pay for the full version to encourage the developer to spend time on updating and improving it for you.

Do you use any of these apps? Or others we should know about? Share them in the comments.

Ben Ellis has completed his second novel, ‘Broken Branches’ a dystopian tale of controlled procreation, and is currently looking for an agent or publisher. You can find him online at http://www.b3n3llis.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/b3n3llis.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

8 Non-writing Apps for Writers