Everyone is on at lease one social network these days, and if you aren’t you are missing out big. In addition to keeping yourself involved in social media, you should also have a page setup for your blog as well.

In this post I’m going to show you how I am currently branding my own blog at ZacJohnson.com 24 hours a day through the use of social networks.

It’s not brain surgery, but you will have to get a little creative and spend some time on your social networking pages.

Twitter

There a good chance that you are already on Twitter and using a background of your own, but if you currently have a blog of your own, you might not be branding as much as you can. First off, Twitter is great for building followers for your blog, so make sure you setup a separate account for your blog, then setup a RSS to Twitter feed. This will update your Twitter blog account automatically with all of your latest posts. Next you should design a Twitter background that is built specifically to promote your brand or blog.

This is something I covered in my Twitter is a Branding Machine post. You can see what my current Twitter background looks like in the screenshot below.

Facebook

Another branding machine of it’s own is Facebook. With almost a billion users and the ability to create Fan Page, it’s the perfect choice for anyone who wants to build a following for their blogs, groups and fan pages. In addition to setting up Fan Pages for your blog, you can also setup applications and Facebook plugins to automatically send your latest blog posts to your Fan Page feed. Now with the introduction of the Facebook Timeline and being able to add your own images as headers, famous bloggers are getting creative with how they can brand themselves and their blogs or web sites.

Staree

One of the newest social networks hub pages to be introduced into the game, is Staree. Though it just came out of beta release the other day, it’s quickly spreading around as one of the newest places to create a social setting for yourself. I really like how you can create a custom design and look for your page, while also listing your Facebook and Twitter page for other people to find. You can see a screenshot of how I was able to create and brand my own profile page with the look and feel of my blog. Instead of telling your users your Facebook, Twitter and Email… you can now give them your Staree url where they can access all three.

As you can see, there are plenty of free and creative ways to start branding yourself and your blog through all of the major social networks. People are going to be visiting your social pages every day, so you might as well get creative and leave a lasting impression in the process.

Growing Your Blog Through Social Network Branding is a post from: Blogpreneurs

Commenting is an experience. An experience that should be about providing value; giving something to others to think about.

From my commenting experiment, I learned a lot of things. And In this blog, I am going to share my commenting process itself: How I decided to comment, How I commented and my other decisions on linking back and replying to comments (I won’t reveal any data – regarding traffic or any other results I got – we will cover that for next week).

The Commenting Process

When it comes to commenting, I have had different situations. Ones in which I despised the so called process and others in which I cared a lot about the process.

To be honest, I don’t care much about a concrete process (a process can be helpful, but certain times, it is better not to be bounded by restrictions). Yet, it is very helpful to have a process in our mind: A simple but yet effective process.

So, here is how it works:

Deciding To Comment:

Once I picked my blogs, I had to go through another process: the decision to comment. It all comes down to three different factors:

• Niche and Topic Relation: How does this site relate to my niche? Am I commenting just because of my interest?

To be frank, I love to comment on blogs that interest me and are out of my niche. But, I realized that we need to spend our time in a smart way. If we are focusing on producing results for our business blog, then we should probably focus and spend more time on commenting on blogs that are related to our niche.

• Content to Comment: Is the content valuable to me? to others?

CommunityI usually focus on the “me” part. But, there have been situations in which I have commented because I felt the post helped others, even though I was already familiar with the content of the post.

Community is the most important factor here (in the process of deciding to comment). I look at the comments that are already left on the blog. Here are the questions that I ask myself:

Is the community strong (loyal commentators)? When it comes to measuring loyalty, I just look at the value provided in the comment itself, rather than on the number of comments (of course, there are situations in which we have to go by         number of comments: Like if the commentator is an active part of the community, he may leave a shorter much useful comment).

Does the blog owner reply to comments? Do he/she engage with the commentators?

Does he/she accept spam comments?

Lot of comments? I also have had situations in which I got intimidated by the number of comments. Sometimes, it is just a lot of comments with no actual value. Other times, it is just a heck load of comments.

You may think that this process takes time. Not at all. All this can be processed within our mind in less than 2-3 minutes. But, as time passes, we will get faster at the process itself.

The next step in the commenting process, is commenting itself (Writing the comment).

Writing the Comment:

• Starting the Comment

I have experimented with four different approaches of starting a comment:

Normal salutation (Hey Jeevan!)

Direct content (Commenting is indeed the best way to..)

Starting with name and writing the content next line (Jeevan, commenting is the best way…)

Starting with compliment (I loved how you explained commenting in this post)

From my results, I don’t really have a good conclusion (this is an extremely hard thing to measure, depends a lot upon

the owner of the blog in which we are commenting). But, from my experience, I think combining these is the best way to go (Start with direct content and include the name of the blogger in the first few sentences). The introduction of a comment matters just as the introduction of the content. The better it is, the more/better results (=Attention=traffic) you get.

•  The Meat

After intro, comes the meat portion of the comment. The meat should consist of your thoughts and insights based on your personal experiences (If the subject is about something you haven’t tried, use your comment to state why you didn’t try it and whether you are going to try it in the future).

Remember, when it comes to meat portion, there are two types: Ones derived from personal experiences and ones derived from thought.

To the most part, comments written from personal experiences are a lot better than comments from thought (especially, in blogging niche).

• Closing

There is nothing like an awesome closing. I haven’t experimented much with this part. But, it is still important. For the majority of the comments I left, I closed the comment with a compliment and my own name (Like “thanks for sharing the post, Jeevan”).

I don’t think we should worry much about a awesome closing: A closing is like a tool. You don’t need it. But, using it can help.

Now, if there is anything more important to commenting (apart from replying to comments), then it is linking back.

Linking Back, the smart way - Relate-ability vs Impression

When it comes to linking back, there are two types: Linking through website field (As far as I know, all the blogs I have visited so far as this field in the commenting area) and linking through comment luv (we are going to focus on comment luv).

Let’s just imagine that you are commenting on this post. So, you already have both options with linking back. Now, for SEO purposes, you can either link back to a specific article or just the main page of your website.

Tip: You have two blogs: Blog A and Blog B. Now, if you want to link to both sites, you can easily do that (let’s imagine you want to link Blog A article in the URL field and Blog B article in comment luv). The first thing to do is fill all the fields (Blog B in the URL field) including the comment, check the comment luv box (let it choose an article for you), then change the URL field to correspond to Blog A. Remember: This trick won’t work if you click back on the comment field to change your comment.

Now, back to the topic.

As far as linking goes, you can choose links two ways:

• Based on Impression

• Based on Relate-ability

If you are concerned more about SEO, you could go for this option. This option is about choosing an article that is related to the topic in the blog post.

Of course, there is always the option of doing both at the same time, but that doesn’t work all the time (unless you put the article link in the URL field and choose the same link in comment luv).

The next thing to talk about is replying to comments. I don’t want to waste any more of your time, so I am just going to be brief.

Replying to comments

Replying to your comments left on other blogs – It all comes down to the comment replies you get, whether you can add something of value to the conversation. Replying more is always good, can help you to be more engaged and get more results – if used effectively.

The Wrap

Oh, yes. I am glad to wrap this post up (it took be some time to put all this together and to make them useful for you, so that you can get the best results). Anyways, I have shared my observations from the experiment, I would love if you would tell me your thoughts.

Do you believe in a commenting process? Do you have one? Why or why not?

How do you craft your comments? The Intro? Meat? Closing?

Relate-ability vs Impression – What do you choose for comment luv links?

Any other thoughts?

Image Credit: Original Author

Commenting Experiment: Commenting Process, Comment Luv and Replies is a post from: Blogpreneurs

Last week, Jacob wrote a post Building Loyalty: Comments, Social Media and Guest Posts. The post did very well and got 70+ Facebook shares and around 50 comments.

This wasn’t because the post got featured on a big blog or has been tweeted by an authority blogger. The reason why it did so well because I followed up with many of the 8 blog post marketing steps that I want to tell you about today.

Let’s face it, there’s no sense in writing a blog post that only you are going to read. You need traffic, which in turn will turn into commentators, subscribers, which in turn will make your blog more successful.

Here is the basic list of things, I do After publishing a blog post.

 1. Ping your Post

A ping is a notification that your blog sends to different services telling them that you just posted new content. You can do it manually by using sites like Pingomatic.com or Pingler.com OR set up automatic pining in WordPress.

Login to the WordPress Dashboard> Go to Settings > Writing and scroll down to Update Services.

In that box, copy and paste these URLs:

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.twingly.com/
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.bloglines.com/ping
• http://ping.feedburner.com/
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
• http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php

2. Tweet the Post

This can be easily achieved by using sites like dlvr or twitterfeed but I’m not a fan of auto-tweeting tools. I would recommend tweeting about the blog post manually. Tweeting about the blog post manually can also help you in optimizing your click through rates.

It’s your ad copy for your blog posts and the better copy you write, the more exposure you get.

3. Share the Post on Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups (or tribes, as some people like to call) are HOT these days. Take a minute to search for groups in your niche and you will find quite a few.

There are hundreds of thousands of groups and it’s not possible to post in every single group. So, it’s best to go for larger groups.

• Radu’s official Mastermind Group
• Attraction Marketing Training
• Tosin’s Official Mastermind Group
• Blog Commenting Tribe
• Giles Wells Tribe
• Mavrick Business Blog Tribe
• The Blogging Mastermind comment Tribe
• BlogPreneurs Mastermind Group

4. Submit to Social Bookmarking sites

No no.. I’m not talking about big sites – digg or reddit. Those are great but take ages to get traffic to your blog. How about submitting your blog posts to niche sites like Blokube, Bizsugar, MySEOCommunity, Inbound.org etc.

With the niche sites, you’d need to become a part of them rather than just promote yourself.

5. Submit to JustRetweet

This is a simple app that helps you to get more retweets & exposure on Twitter.

JustRetweet is a simple twitter app that helps you get more tweets and provide you an easy way to find stuff you want to share and retweet it with a click and at the same time allows you to earn credits.

6. Comment on Other Blogs

This one takes a lot of efforts and time. From last few weeks, I have been doing a lot of blog commenting to promote the blog posts.

Take the time to leave a useful comment often enough, don’t just write “great post” or “nice post”. Doing one liner comments will only going to hurt you brand.

7. Respond to the comments made on your post

Getting comments is hardest to get, unless you’re running a very popular blog.

One of the best things you can do to build trust with your readers is by responding to the comments that other they have left.

8. Send an email to your list

If you’ve been building an email list than you can email out your blog post to people who have signed up for your blog updates.

You can send out an email with a short introduction and link to the post to your email subscribers.

The Wrap

I have shared the Exact steps I take to bring traffic to my new posts. These marketing steps can work well for promoting a new blog post.

What things would you do after publishing a new blog post? I would love to hear them in the comments below.

8 Steps to Take Immediately After You’ve Published a Blog Post is a post from: Blogpreneurs

Who doesn’t like to comment? Who doesn’t like to have a voice?

No one, right?

We all like to comment. We all want to comment and get great results out of it. But, that’s not the problem. There isn’t enough time or energy to spend for commenting on all blogs we know.

So, what can we do?

Great, question.

That is why we have smart commenting.

Smart commenting is about picking out bloggers/blogs to interact with and interacting with them on a consistent basis.

There are two steps to smart commenting:

• Finding blogs and Picking out the best ones.
• And Interacting with them (Actual commenting).

Experiments can reveal a lot of things, small details that we forgot about otherwise. The commenting experiment that I have been doing gave me an upper hand on these small details; I saw several of them, simple but yet complex in its own nature.

Today, we will talk about the first step in smart commenting (we will also talk a bit about the experiment itself).

Finding blogs

Finding blogs was my first challenge. You see, to avoid any others factors kicking in, I had to find new blogs for this experiment. When I started the experiment, I thought that this would be an easy task (It is, but not as easy as you would think it is).

The difficulty of this task, for the most part, rests on our experience.

If you are an experienced blogger, you have a better idea on finding blogs. But, if you are just a new blogger, then it might be hard for you.

I solved this challenge using various methods:

Comments on other blogs

I checked out the comments section of others blogs that I already knew. I checked out the profiles and comment luv links of the comment authors (Gave me an idea on who they were, their niche and whether they were a good candidate for the experiment).

When you are looking for other blogs to comment on, I recommend you check a blog you know. Check the comments (See if the comments are well thought and written – this given a idea on the personality of the blogger them self). Also check the comment luv links and profile links (twitter, blog page etc if available) of the commentator. This will help you to understand who the commentator is and whether they are a good blogging partner to work with. Checking the actual blog, blog posts and the community there (really check the community – tells you whether the commentator is working hard to grow a loyal community within his blog) gives you a better understanding of the person himself/herself.

Top Commentators Widget

In a way, this is related to the previous section about other blogger. The top commentators widget of other blogs will give you an idea on who the most active person is (there is higher chance for a person on the widget to be active blogger and a suitable blogging partner to work with – especially with networking).

Social Media

Social media is a big helper, especially with commenting. In Twitter, the best way to find bloggers to interact with is by searching through the follow list (check the list of people your fellow bloggers are following, the people in the list will most likely be other active bloggers whom you can interact with). But, be careful, there are lot of bloggers out there who use automated methods (following people in bulk) just to get more followers – so you want to choose your candidates carefully. Same thing can be applied to G+ and Facebook (Check the circles and likes).

Your Own Blog

Last but not least, you own blog is a great source to find people to interact with. Go through your comments (Do you already visit the sites of your active commentators? If not, do it. Read their posts and reciprocate the comments). I have always been a bit lazy on visiting my commentator’s sites. But, lately I have been giving the activity more attention.

Other Means (Forums, Blogmarking sites)

There are also other means such as forums and blogmarking sites (Such as Blokube, Blogengage) to find bloggers to interact with. But, frankly I prefer other sources over these (I tried it, and found it a bit more hard to find new folks – new folks who really care and comment).

The next step in the process is picking out blogs.

Picking Out The Best Ones

As I mentioned earlier, you can’t comment on all the blogs you come upon – you have pick out a handful of them. How can we do that? Well, it depends upon the person itself. In this section, I will share the things I did to pick out bloggers.

The Comment/Profile

If I came upon the blogger through commenting section, I looked at their comment (See if it is worthwhile), their profile and the number of comments they left.

The comment gives me an idea on the personality of the person. If the comment is really into the subject, then I can assume that he/she would be a great addition to my own community (hence I can comment on their blogs and convince them to visit mine).

The profile comes in handy when I find the blogger/blog through Social media sites and other means such as Blogmarking sites. The profile gives me a deeper understanding of the person him/herself (whether they are an active networker, sharer, influencer or just a normal twitterer. The number of comments give me an idea on whether the person is active within the community (of the blog through which I came upon them).

The Blog

The first impression that I get from visiting blogs has helped me to sort out a lot of bloggers (First impression = clean design, awesome, usable and relateable content along with a good site speed). If any of these things are messed up, then the blog is out of the game (unless, they have exceptionally awesome content).

The comments in the blog has helped me understand whether the blog owner spends a lot of time on building an active community within their blog (this isn’t about the number of comments they get, it is more about the quality of the comments themselves).

So far in the commenting experiment, I have only had a few (10-15 blogs) who have “passed” my first challenge. Some bloggers didn’t have a clean design, while others lacked awesome content or a good community to support the blog.

The Wrap

Initially, I planned to stop the experiment and announce the results today. But, so far I have been doing great (But, I think a bit more data and experimentation can pull in more results and therefore more things that we can talk about and improve in our normal commenting style).

For the next post (next week), we will be talking about the commenting part – deciding to leave a comment, commenting style, choosing an appropriate comment luv link and all other stuff that is associated with commenting itself.

Meanwhile, you can help me out by leaving your feedback.

Do you have a way to finding new blog/bloggers to interact with? If so, what are they? If not, why?

Do you pick out bloggers? How do you do it?

Do you want us to address any specific topics in the upcoming post on actual commenting?

Image Credit: Original Author.

Commenting Experiment: Finding and Picking Blogs To Comment is a post from: Blogpreneurs

We all have heard of the overnight success which many internet entrepreneurs have achieved; and wonder how in the world did they do it? What makes them different then you or me which has allowed them to achieve fortune and fame?

This question is hard to answer due to the many views which people have when responding to this very question.

One thing is for sure there are many personality traits and personal characteristics which seem to be shared by many successful internet entrepreneurs. Let’s reflect on these personality traits and characteristics in order to see how they helped to contribute to their overall success as an internet entrepreneur.

Powerful Vision

One thing that almost all internet entrepreneurs possess is a powerful vision as to what they want to achieve. Many people do not take the time to polish their vision in order to have something to reach for. Simply saying, “I want to earn a lot of money” is not a good vision and leaves too many details open to interpretation.

If you want to be successful as an internet entrepreneur you need to take the time to determine what your vision in. By doing this you will then be able to outline the short term and long term goals that would need to be accomplished in order for you to make your vision a reality.

Ambition

Ambition is defined as a strong desire or eagerness to achieve a dream or goal; by definition you can see why this personality trait would be an essential characteristic of any internet entrepreneur. The road to success as an internet entrepreneur is not a smooth one typically; if you are not ambitious then you will lack what it takes to overcome the challenges, hurdles and obstacles that are standing in between you and achieving your vision.

As James Cook once said – Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go. This is the attitude that is possessed by many successful internet entrepreneurs. Below is a list of traits which coincide with an ambitious personality:

• Believe in Yourself
• Believe your Dream is Obtainable
• Be Prepared to Face Challenges
• Never Give Up

Focus

The ability to remain focused despite any setbacks of problems that they are faced with is another powerful characteristic that you will need to possess in order to become successful in the world of online business.

As Tony Robbins once said, – One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

While you can find a free piano chord chart which can help to teach you chords; although this is only the tip of the iceberg. You will also need to learn to read music as well as take some piano lessons if you expect to become a successful pianist.

The same holds true for an internet entrepreneur; you may be able to find the basic knowledge that you need for free; however you must remain focused on the task at hand as well as be willing and ready to invest time, energy and money into the success of your internet business.

Courage

Courage is a characteristic which you either have or you don’t; this is an essential trait for being a successful internet entrepreneur. Courage is defined as the quality which enables someone to face danger or difficulty without being overcome by fear.

While it is alright to be scared when presented with a risky decision; you must have the courage to push forward and see what becomes. You will never succeed as an internet entrepreneur without having the courage to face many challenges and obstacles along the way.

Patience

While it may seem like most of the successful internet entrepreneurs became an overnight success; just the opposite is typically true. You may not have heard of them until they achieved fame and fortune; however, that does not mean that they did not spend many years patently waiting for their opportunity.

You must be prepared to be patient and do not expect instant results. This is where ambition comes in and is often the driving force which allows you to be patient as you do all you can to help your vision come alive.

5 Traits Every Internet Entrepreneurs Should Poses is a post from: Blogpreneurs

Who doesn’t like to build influence?

Give a search to the definition of influence and you will get:

The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.

In a blogging sense, influence is the ability to change others’ behavior; to convince them to take a specific action.

In today’s world, marketers all around the world try to influence you to buy their products through ads. In the online world, ads mean different things: plain old ads, tweets, status updates, blog posts, landing pages and all sorts of things.

Everywhere you look around, you see some type of ad. As bloggers, we also use different ad media to promote our business.

Commenting is also a form of advertisement. Let me explain: You visit someone else’s blog post, leave a comment (along with back link to your blog). Now, through your comment, you are trying to establish a relationship with the blog owner (And perhaps the commentators of the blog). And if your comment is awesome enough, it will drive traffic to your blog.

The best example I can give you is Devesh.

Ever since, BlogPrenuers was launched last week, Devesh has been commenting on many blogs around the blogosphere.

I have also been doing some commenting by linking to BlogPrenuers.

And guess what?

We got great results (which was expected!) in the form of comments.

Now, I don’t want to bore you with general tips such as leave positive comments or reply back. That is not what I want to do.

I want you to achieve better results with commenting (results = more traffic/leads).

I have already mentioned some great tips in my previous post about building loyalty, but that’s just the beginning.

My Commenting Experiment

I like blog challenges , especially the ones that are hosted by me. Right now, I am doing a commenting blog challenge. The main goal of this challenge is to get better results with commenting. I started doing this challenge yesterday and here is what I have done so far (I will be doing this challenge for the next couple of days and will announce the results after that).

• Leaving more comments in each post

I have been doing something that I have never done – searching through the existing comments. I have been looking for comments to which I can leave a reply to.

Benefit: The main benefit of this approach is to build a relationship with the commentator to whom you are replying to (and build a better relationship with the blog owner himself).

My Prediction: Getting more traffic from these sites. To avoid any another factor conflicting in, I will just look at the change in traffic (I am already a regular commentator at many of the sites).

• Taking more time reading the post and leaving the comment

I am also allowing myself to take more time to read and understand the post (and then leave an awesome comment after that – I don’t know whether they are awesome, but I am leaving some good comments, I think ).

Benefit: Gain a better understanding of the different concepts that are taught in the post, and leave a better comment (which means better chance of getting traffic/leads).

My prediction: Better relationship (The blog owner/commentator checks out my posts and comments on it).

Questions to Ask When Commenting

Better comments means better chance for better results (We should always aim for better chances!). When I read and comment on an article, I usually ask a set of questions to myself (to write a comments that doesn’t suck!). Here are the questions:

How does the main concept help me? New bloggers?

Do I agree or disagree with the perspective that is presented in the post?

Does the article offer a solution to a problem?

Do I have an experience that is relate-able to the post?

Do I have anything specific to add to the post?

Answering these five questions will help you to leave better comments (and become a better commentator).

The Wrap

When it comes to comments, the content (quality) of the comment is what that attracts people (the quantity doesn’t matter much, but for starters it is better to leave lengthier and meatier comments. Once you have established yourself in the host blog, you can focus less on the quantity).

Everything comes down to experimentation. See what works and what doesn’t. Take action upon it.

Have you tried any experimentation with commenting? If so, what? What were your results?

As a blog owner, what gets your attention (what type of comment?)

Do you have any preference of comment length?

Building Influence: Comments and Commenting Challenge is a post from: Blogpreneurs

Starting a blog is one of the best decisions I made in my life. If I haven’t started a blog, I would have been spending my precious time on sites like Fiverr or DigitalForums to earn a few bucks.

The benefit of having a blog is limitless.

Last week, I launched BlogPreneurs and the site has already received tens of hundreds of visitors. This wasn’t any miracle. Instead I took the time to setup everything before the actual launch.

Here is a list of basic things that you need to do before launching a blog.

1. Goals & USP

There is a new blog starting in every 7 seconds, the competition is fierce for each and every blogger. This means you will be getting a very strong competition, no matter what niche you choose.

If you’re serious about blogging than make goals for your business and what you really want to achieve. One of my goals for this blog is have at least 10k subscribers by the end of this year and I will be doing that with the help of Guest Posting & blog commenting.

What’s your USP? What will you do differently than other blogs are doing in your niche.

With this blog, my main aim was to create a blog that I would love to read. A blog about everything related to social media & entrepreneurship that doesn’t sucks.

2. Platform

Many new bloggers like to go with free blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.com. Those free platforms are more of a personal solution.

If you’re a serious blogger than I’d definitely suggest you to go with self-hosted WordPress which will allow you to work on your own customization. With self hosted version you can add any functionality you want to have own your blog.

3. Design

There have been bloggers who has been successful with their basic design or themes that come by default with WordPress. People tend to use a free theme for the blog and once they’re successful they tend to go with Premium design. If you think design isn’t an important element, than you’re totally wrong. Having a professional design makes your content easy to read for your audience.

Having a premium design is as important as writing quality content on your blog. If content is king then design is queen.

Design the key and that’s the reason why I spent dollars on getting a premium theme for BlogPreneurs.

For those who don’t know, BlogPreneurs is running on Genesis Theme Framework.

4. Create an About us page

I don’t how many times I visited a blog and couldn’t able find a about page.

Do you know about page is one of the most visited and converting pages on every blog? Don’t ignore the power of About page and what it can do to improve your business.

This is your chance to let the readers know about your business and yourself.

5. Arrange for a Giveaway

Who doesn’t love a giveaway, I do and I know many people do too.

The best way to launch a new blog with a bang is by creating a contest or giveaway. Sean did it the right way, by giving away a PRWeb acc. ($199) to one of the lucky readers of ‘The Digital Writer’ blog.

You know the bigger the contest, the bigger the exposure you’ll get.

Here at BlogPreneurs, we’re working on launching a guest blogging contest where we would giveaway hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash prizes.

6. Install the Essential Plugins

WordPress is one of the most used blogging platform in the world and as a result there are tons of free WordPress plugins available online to make tweaks and customize the site.

Check out my list of essential plugins that you need to install on your blog.

7. Build a email list

Email list is something that no blogger should miss.

Back in 2010, when I was running a popular multi-authors blog, I was getting like 500-1000 visitors every day but I made a mistake of not converting them into email subscribers.

If I would have converted those into real subscribers, I’d have been making more money.

It’s your chance to stand up and start building relationship with your subscribers. Email list are the powerful weapon which can be used for creating a long term Income.

Here are few important reason why you should build a email list:

• This gives you a chance to build a good relationship with your subscribers / audience and to show them that you will only provide them with quality products that can really help them.
• Make it easy for you to sale the affiliate products & ebooks.
• List building helps in making passive income.

8. Set up your Social Media profiles

When I started building BlogPreneurs blog, I secured the @BlogPreneurs Twitter handle (now, banned but that’s another post). Though, I was still using @devesh for everything related to this blog.

The lesson here is to secure the social media profiles as soon as you purchase the domain name.

9. Comment on various blogs in your niche

Make it to the top of your to-do-list to make five comments every day. Back in 2010 when I had to promote my blogging tips blog, I only focused on one method to promote the site and that was blog commenting.

Take the time to leave a useful comment often enough, don’t just write “great post” or “you rock”.

Don’t self-promote or spam when leaving blog comments.

10. Write few guest posts

Those guest posts should be as unbelievably awesome as you know you can write. I didn’t write many guest posts on the launch, but did 2 guest posts on semi-popular blogs in my niche.

The results were good enough to motive me to write more guest posts. I will be doing more guest posts in the coming weeks.

Wrap Up

Back in 2009, when I launched my first blog I made more mistakes than you can even think of. I didn’t followed any of the above strategies and wasted first few months to learn how these things work.

Today after 3 years when I had to launch this blog – BlogPreneurs, I took the time and spent a month working on building a email list, creating a perfect design and setting up the social media profiles.

What things would you do before launching a blog? I would love to hear them in the comments below…!

10 Things To Do Before Launching A Blog is a post from: Blogpreneurs

In business, building customer loyalty is one of the most important things, because it will earn you more money and more customers in the long term.

Same principle applies to business blogging. You should directly start working with building customer loyalty, once you start a blog (don’t wait for establishing yourself as an experienced guy in your niche). Let me tell you why.

In business (And in blogging), the strength is really in small numbers, not in big ones. Let me give you a sample scenario: You start an online business. You manage to build customer loyalty within 5 of your new subscribers. Now, let’s imagine that these 5 subscribers recommend your list to 5 other people (most likely they will recommend to more, if you really did build customer loyalty). So 5 X 5 = 25 new subscribers.

Note: As human beings, we tend to buy/check out products that are recommend by someone we know. So, there is a big chance that those 5 people will check your blog and may even subscribe to your list. And if you manage to build loyalty within those subscribers, then you got yourself more new subscribers.

Now, in economics this principle is called Multiplier effect. The idea sounds simple and easy to execute, and it is, except for the part that includes customer loyalty and satisfaction. And today, we are going to take a look at building customer loyalty within our guest posting audience, social media audience and commenting audience. We won’t be looking building loyalty within our audience, because that has been talked about many times (building loyalty within our own audience includes convincing them to stay and return, which can be done by providing valuable content and having a good design).

Building loyalty within our commenting audience

When I say commenting audience, I mean audience (who engage/comment) of the blogs in which you comment on. The best (and the only) way to create an impression and built loyalty is by leaving engaging and thoughtful comments.

My advice: When you are commenting on a blog for the first time (or for the first time after a huge break), you certainly will be in a better position if you take time leaving thought provoking (and may be even lengthier) comment.

Here the quality is better than quantity.

Note: Longer comments don’t necessarily mean better comments, but for bloggers who are active and engaging like you and me, there is a better chance for a longer comment to be a better comment.

As you become more active within the host blog, you want to start leaving comments on others replies that you find interesting (this gives you a chance to interact with them and the blog owner).

Let’s just imagine that all the comments you leave are insightful. In that case, the more comments you leave, the better (this is where you have to think about quantity).

Building Loyalty Within Guest Posting Audience

This one is heavily dependent upon the prior paragraph. You will be able to build loyalty among your guest posting audience, if you are already familiar to them, through comments.

Yes, comment before you guest post.

Establish yourself as an engaging contributor the the host blog, before you choose to guest post. In that case, the audience of the host blog will support your post even if the post itself does not present something new (= even if the quality is low a bit).

When it comes to guest posting without commenting, it will take you more efforts and more quality with the content to convince an audience who doesn’t know  much about you (unless you are famous expert within your niche).

The second step in building loyalty through guest posts is to present useful content. And the third is to engage within your comments.

Lot of bloggers today don’t do much marketing with their guest posts (And I admit, I have done that mistake several times). But, you shouldn’t do that. No matter where you post, it is still your post, something you wrote with your skills, creativity, time and technology.  So, you need to promote them. Invite your blogging friends to join in the discussion (make an engaging discussion).

Trust me, you will only get more traffic (and more results) with your guest posts by purely marketing them as you do for your home blog posts (this statement does not apply to you if you suck at marketing. If you do suck at marketing, don’t worry. I used to be one of those guys who didn’t have any clue about marketing. I sucked at it. And then there came a time in which I got lot of results with marketing, but I couldn’t maintain those results in the long term, due to my laziness and inconsistency).

Building Loyalty within Social Media

In social media, you can classify your followers as two types:

• Real Followers – Followers who followed you because they liked your content (these guys tend to be more loyal)
• Buddies – People who followed you because you mentioned them, shared their content and/or recommended them.

As I mentioned in my first post, you can build loyalty among your real followers by providing useful content to them – quotes, tips and tricks related to your niche in the form of tweets and status updates.

When it comes to building loyalty within your buddies, it is much easier – you just have to share their content. But, beware automated sharing can only do more harm than good.

Let me explain:

The perceived value of your shared tweets decrease as you increase the frequency of sharing someone else’s content.

Simply put,

the more you share my content, the less the value of your action becomes (I perceive your actions as less useful).

This is because of my expectations (I expect you to do the same in the future; If things go as planned, why should I ever be worried about it?).

For your real followers, your shared tweets are just wasteful. It doesn’t benefit them much (unless they check out your recommendation and find it useful).

Now, among all this, you can still convert one type of follower to another.

You can always convert your followers into a buddy by sharing their content and engaging with them on a daily basis (which is indeed a good thing, because it builds the loyalty even more).

You can also convert your buddies into followers by astonishing them with awesome tweets or status updates (which is also a good thing).

My advice for you – Convert your followers into buddies and your buddies into real followers (this way, they belong to both groups and that means more loyalty to you).

The Wrap

Building loyalty is an art. It is an art that is complex, but yet so simple. It is about providing quality customer service (and keeping your customers happy). In this article, I have possibly told you the best strategies I have tried so far with building loyalty.

You see, I may not have been able to gain a LOT of subscribers.

But, I did manage to convince a few people to be really loyal to me.

And I think that is what that matters.

Quality triumphs quantity (Side note: Isn’t the way you lived more important than the years you lived?).

Anyways, build loyalty.

Be loyal. Act loyal

Building Loyalty: Comments, Social Media and Guest Posts is a post from: Blogpreneurs