SmartBloggerz!

Memeography – A Powerful Viral Marketing Tool

Ben Farmer — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:05:43 +0000

This is a guest post by Ben Farmer from Ivory Design.

Memes are created, appreciated and adored by all kinds of people. Business owners and online marketers love them because they’re a great way of enticing traffic to your site: legions of geeks like me will waste hours (literally hours) giggling at and sharing these weird little pictures we find funny.

Graphic and web designers love them the way head chefs and food critics secretly love McDonald’s: after a lot of hard, carefully thought out work, goofing off with a picture of a crazy dog with the caption “ermahgerd” is junk food for the eyes. And the Internet using public loves them because most of them are brilliantly funny. Some border on Dadaists weirdness and some border on artistic genius, but they all give the same end result: me giggling in a very undignified way, before clicking “Like” or “Pin This”.

It’s not so easy as jumping on whatever bandwagon’s currently getting the most Pins or Re-tweets, however: there are a couple of guidelines you can follow to ensure that a geek like me will giggle at your meme rather than hate or, worse, ignore it.

Follow me, geekbaiters!

Guideline no. 1: Thou Shalt Be Original

Lolcats are great, but they’ve hit saturation point. If you’re looking to create memes to place near adverts which need a good CTR or with which you want to go viral, you’ve got to be fresh. Jumping on bandwagons isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you’ve got to be quick. Very quick. An indicator of how quick is best illustrated by the fact that, if I mentioned a new meme in this article, by the time you read it, it’ll already have hit saturation point.

One does not simply copy other memes if you’re after true viral impact: hire a geeky blogger or even a colleague’s son or daughter with a wacky sense of humour to create a little image or video for you. When reviewing it, try to put yourself in the mind of a computer geek (if you can imagine your meme on the front of a t-shirt worn by a character from The Big Bang Theory, you’re in with a chance). If that fails, email it to your younger family members or show it to your kids on Facebook (if they’ve allowed you to add them, that is). The “lol” is the currency of the meme: get a “lol” or two and you can comfortably run with it.

Guideline no. 2: Thou Shalt Not Overthink

Numa Numa guy didn’t have even the briefest brief when he made his incredibly popular video. If you find yourself in a board meeting over creating your meme, stand up and walk out of the meeting room a la John Cleese with a note on your back reading “Follow Me LOL”. Only get someone to film it first.

That’s actually quite a good idea. Just don’t blame me if you get fired.

Guideline no. 3: Thou Shalt Not Fake

Especially in the case of FAILS, people can tell if a supposedly spontaneous moment has been staged. Don’t try and stage a person’s slacks falling down during a presentation: it’ll look fake and only get derided. If you can capture this moment as it genuinely happens, however, you’ve hit gold.

Guideline no. 4: Thou Shalt Work with Animals and Children

Keep a camera on your pet or toddler long enough and they will eventually do something wonderfully funny. Just don’t let them get into dangerous situations.

Charlie Bit My Finger, one of the most famous memes of all time, happened randomly whilst two children were being filmed by their dad. He only put the video online to show their extended family: now they’re internationally famous. (Bear in mind that your kids may not thank you in their teen years for being made baby stars.)

Guideline no. 5: Thou Shalt Love the Meme

Research is just as relevant in this field as it is in all others. Spend a couple of hours an evening exploring the world of online memes to get a taste for them. If they don’t make any sense yet, just give it time.

Hopefully this has given you a good idea of what to do to make yourself some respectable meme content. Feel free to ignore any or all of the above guidelines: after all, most of the best memes weren’t made with going viral in mind, they were just made for fun.

Lol.

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How to Prevent Blog Headaches and Stoppages

David Sneen — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:47:11 +0000

This is a guest post by David Seen from EarnMoreSpendMoreGroup.com

A Question: Why Outsource?

Setting: a young, strong dentist, who just opened his private clinic, arrives the day of a major snowfall. Upon hearing the forecast the previous evening, he had groaned as he adjusted his alarm; he would have to wake up 15 minutes early. Before he begins his regular work day, he shovels the snow in front of his clinic, so his patients wouldn’t fall. Then, he enters his clinic, flips on the “OPEN” sign and waits for business.

In a few weeks his business picks up. He is booked solid. A major snowstorm is on its way. Will he do the shoveling now?

The dentist realizes that he must either wake up early again—to do the extra shoveling work, or hire someone to remove the snow. So, he hires a man who can clear it in 30 minutes. Was this a good use of everyone’s time?

Absolutely. The man who shoveled the walk in 30 minutes obviously wanted the job. The dentist needed it done, but he wasn’t particularly anxious to get up earlier than necessary on a busy day. Although the dentist could do it quicker, he had enough work to do already—he did not want to work extra shoveling the walk. Everyone wins!!!

When you outsource, you are hiring someone to do a portion of your work. Humans have outsourced in one form or another since cave man days.

“But, I am a do-it-myself type person & blogging is free.”

I originally started my blogging journey on a minimal budget. I could get started for free with wordpress. But, there are no dummies at word press. They know that if you create a profitable blog, there are ways that they can help you get traffic, make sales, and process those sales more efficiently. (Could I add more items to that list? Absolutely, Word Press has tons of aids for the blogger–too many to list here.) WordPress makes its income from these extras. And Word Press does OK!

Most people have watched a sitcom (or multiple sitcoms) where the hero of the show decides that he can fix a minor plumbing problem. (This topic is so spectacular, yet so common, that practically every sitcom uses it.) Of course, our hero fails miserably, and sewer water gushes everywhere. The lesson—there are things that you should not try to fix. There may be problems that can undo your work. Yes, creating backups will limit the damage. But, as bloggers, we do not want to stop blogging or redo anything—we can’t afford to waste our valuable time.

Outsourcing for Bloggers

Blog Designer

There are do-it-yourselfer who can teach themselves how to blog. When they reach a difficult point in the road—they know exactly where to find help. How do I know? I hired one. I knew I was not a do-it-yourselfer. I knew that if I hired a do-it-yourselfer, I could keep blogging. I would not have to worry about designing and fret about not being able to continue because I had to install a plug-in before I could do anything else. Katrina is prompt and knows the blogging design details that used to keep me from proceeding to the next step.

Let me share my blogging near-disaster story. This would be my sitcom plumbing disaster equivalent, in the blogging world. (two paragraphs up) Let me tell you—I was not laughing!

I was to install some code in the heading of my blog, so my blog could be placed in a directory. I did my research and mapped out exactly where I needed to place the code. I put it in the right spot, the exact spot they told me to place it: I swear! Then, I proudly prepared to test my results.

Here is where I wish I could be dramatic. A bit of a pause…lights off. That would be accurate. There was nothing on my blog site. I was terrified. There is no way to describe the panic that one feels at the thought that he might have destroyed two years, thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours of work in one misstep. But, I knew enough to call 911. K-A-T-R-I-N-A! (my blog designer) She was right on it. In half an hour my blog was up and running. I could breathe again!

Illustrator/Graphic Designer

Virtually every blog post has at least one picture. A picture livens up the post. It gives a personality to the words. People expect it. If anyone writes a post without a picture, readers usually leave immediately.

You can take pictures on your webcam for your blog. Graphics (pictures) could be created on the web. Or pictures can be taken directly from the internet. Danger: You do not want to use copyright protected pictures on your blog. That could get you into legal trouble.

A good picture can keep visitors on your blog. So, if you have the resources to hire someone with imagination and talent to help you with your pictures, it is a smart move.

Blog Post Writer

Some people have the talent to write well. There are many people who want to have a blog but don’t have that talent. If you want to create a blog, but are not particularly good at writing, you can outsource that, also.

Companies are finding that they need to communicate with their customers. One of the best, most efficient ways of communicating is through a corporate blog. Not every company has an employee with the ability and extra time to create top notch blog posts.

Time for my confession; the reason that I wrote this post is that this is what I do! I offer the outsourcing option to the person or company who does not want to create blog posts. For more info, visit my blog: Hire This Blogger.

Final Thoughts

There are other outsourcing options that savvy bloggers use. Online coach, search engine optimization experts, and social media advisor are a few.

One can quickly spend a large amount of money hiring all these people. Yet, even blogs that outsource may fail. Why? People did not know how to create or publicize their blog correctly. Well-spent outsourcing money can be the difference between failing or succeeding!

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Don’t Give Up When You’ve Finished Writing

John Burnside — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 20:33:06 +0000

This is a guest post by John Burnside from MoneyIn15Minutes.co.uk

There is no feeling like finishing a post, you’ve spat all your words out onto the page and are ready to send it off to the world-wide web waiting for it to be judged by the discerning reader.

The greatest temptation of all at that point is to just publish that post and go downstairs to make a cup of tea (or vodka, whatever is your poison) but this is the very way to put people off reading your posts because without all the trimmings; your post is nowhere near meeting its true potential.

Here is a list of things that I do after the post is written to make it a more attractive proposition to the audience:

Proof Read

Once the writing is complete the thought often creeps into my head that ‘I don’t think I’ve made a mistake and there’s no ugly reading lines under any of the words telling me I have made any spelling mistakes’ you cannot let this thought win.

Always read through your post once it’s complete and you will find an error or an area of the post you would like to change when reading it back. I know I am certainly put off by errors in posts and that means that a lot of other people are to.

Add Pictures

I’ve read several articles & have found that 65% of all humans are visual learners. This means that if you aren’t including pictures in your post you are missing an opportunity to connect in the most effective way with about two-thirds of your readership.

Also try to make the pictures relevant to the article topic. This will help skim readers to make the decision to stay on your website in a few seconds rather than leaving straight away and thinking ‘boring!’.

Add Tags

Tags are important for both your SEO as well as for readers who are navigating your site. You may have heard of a program called a ‘spider’ which is what search engines like Google use to find, index and decide how high your page should be ranked in the search engines and how relevant your site is for the search.

Tags are one of the things that the spiders crawl over when they are looking for this information so the more accurate you can make these and the more developed you can make your tag network the better.

Interlink your posts

This one may not be relevant for you brand new bloggers out there but for those of us who have a few posts under our belts it is an incredibly good idea to link your posts together. Putting links in the content to your other articles allows your readership to travel through your blog freely and without interruption hopefully keeping them entertained for hours.

One of the best examples of interlinking is on Wikipedia. Every article of theirs has some interlinking and it makes it so easy to stay on there, reading for hours.

Submit to Your Social Network

This is something that takes just a couple of minutes to do but gets everyone talking about your post. Put up your link on your Facebook page, tweet about it, comment about it on relevant YouTube videos and put it on every network you are on.

All of these will give people the opportunity to find out your blog in their own way, rather than having to leave their comfort zone they will find it where they want it. You can, and I know people who do, spend hours tweaking their social profile and if you like to do this another way, you can promote your post by putting the link into relevant Facebook groups.

Make Sure Your Article Is Keyword Rich

I spoke a little earlier about spiders and search engine optimization and this is another way you can increase your chances of getting noticed by the Google giant. While proof reading your article have a quick spot check for the specific keywords that you are targeting.

I find that a good amount is approximately 3-5% keywords in your article. This allows your article to be relevant to the search engines without offending readers. Some articles that I have read you can tell that the author has gone too far with it and it comes across as spammy. A useful step but be careful with this one.

Special Considerations for Special Posts

Sometimes when you’re laying back with your cup of tea laced with vodka you may feel like you have done a particularly special post, something the world needs to see and there are a few things you can do to give it an extra boost into the blogosphere.

Firstly consider emailing a few of your fellow bloggers about it and asking for their opinion or asking them to help you promote it. The blogging community can be quite giving and it never hurts to do a bit of favor trading. This is an especially good idea if you have mentioned another blogger in the post. People like to know they are being written about and so will be even more likely to give you a leg up.

You could also add a link to that post directly on the homepage. A nice attractive way to do this is through a featured post widget but just a normal link will help your best posts get more traffic and help that individual page get higher in the search engine rankings.

If you have a little bit of money to spend on it you might also consider a bit of paid advertising. Sites like StumbleUpon have a pay per view advertising scheme which will send you a lot of visitors and don’t forget to customize the types of people who will see it because you want the most targeted traffic for your money.

All of this just shows that there is a lot more to writing a post than just the writing. You need to make sure that it looks nice and is seen by as many people as possible. Unless you are doing extra marketing because you think the post is one of the best you have written this whole list shouldn’t take you more than 15-20 minutes and believe me it is worth it in the long run.

Do you have any other methods that you use after you’ve finished writing a post?

Writing Headlines That Work Is A Blogging Skill

Jane Sheeba — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:39:02 +0000

This is a guest post by Jane of Problogging Success who has recently started a blog called Best Autoresponder Tips where she shares handy and useful tips to handle email autoresponders.

Your blogging success greatly depends on your writing skill. As you progress from the level of a novice to the experienced blogger, you can experience endless ways to improve your writing and thus you will be able to engage your audience and define your own success story.

OK, what about headlines? They are the crucial bits that get your blog posts read.

Let me get straight to the meat of this post.

Scintillating Headlines

You should understand that people will overlook the content if you fail to provide attractive headlines. It is not only new visitors but also the loyal audience who has subscribed to your emails or RSS feeds that will always focus on headlines. Hence, you should write headlines in such a way they should catch the visitors’ eyes.

If you fail to churn out an inquisitive caption, the visitor will not go through the rest of the content as well. If you think about it carefully, the reason for reading a particular paragraph in a newspaper is that you are influenced by the inventive headlines that will create interest to read the following lines as well.

Ways to get better your headlines

You can create a headline with a query. For example, you can ask a question: Can you exchange words for money? This question will provoke interest to figure out how money can be generated through words. It will make the reader to go through the piece of writing. If a person is desperately looking to vent his writing skills, he or she will not falter to read the entire story.

You can include headlines that have ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ parts. The following examples can help you creation of headlines in this direction:

How to prevail over stress?
What websites will assist you discover right resource on any topic?
What makes your web pages load very slow?
When should you upgrade the anti-virus software?
Why lifestyle will influence your health?

You can also explore numbered items, best and worst on various topics. For example, you can write: Top 5 ways to improve your fitness, 3 important factors that give you long life, best ways to reach visitors through social media, worst blog designs, and best ways to convert your audience.

The examples provided above are meant to give you an idea or to give an approach that will help improve your headline writing styles. In fact, as you go through your blogging horizon, you will keep on exploring and delivering headlines that attract the audience all the time. The end result should be the creation of headlines that add value to the audience.

You should inculcate the habit to scrutinize headlines that are published in various leading newspapers and magazines. It is desirable to prepare scintillating headlines first and the following lines should be prepared in tune with the headline (that is, deliver what you promise). As far as possible, the length of blog titles should be short. The font size of the headlines should be big and they should be in a readable format.

With a little patience and practice you can work out on headlines that can confine the audience and you will have fun in creating such headlines as well.

Classy techniques

As you plan for headlines, you should think out of the box. Sometimes, you might want to create headlines that are controversial. You can include ‘call for action’ headlines.

Usage of most appealing and killer buzz words will encourage readers to go through the passage. As and when you get an opportunity to cite the reference of a celebrity or the sharing of a joke will have the power to attract your readers.

Conclusion

By choosing headlines relevant to the context you will attract readers and make them to stay on your blog. You will make your readers realize that their stay on your blog is worth their time and effort.

original image credit

5 Ways to Leverage LinkedIn for Blog Traffic

Mustafa Syed — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 22:57:13 +0000

This is a guest post by Mustafa Syed from 100WebHosting.com

Traffic is the lifeblood of any blog. We all know it’s hard to survive without it in the blogosphere.

But let’s face it – as a blogger you don’t just need traffic, you need laser targeted traffic. You need readers that are actually interested in reading your content. Visitors that you can turn into subscribers.

So how do you go about getting this traffic? What do you do get more interested readers?

There are many ways to get exposure to your blog, but one way that stands out from the rest is LinkedIn. As a blogger if you’re not tapping into this powerful social network, you’re leaving some serious traffic on the table.

LinkedIn is where the professional crowd hangs out. It’s THE place to network with other bloggers and reach out to your target audience.

Let’s look into 5 effective ways to leverage LinkedIn for blog traffic that converts:

#1: Funnel Your Profile Visitors to Your Blog

The moment you start networking on LinkedIn, people get curious about you. And given that you are adding real value to the community, they may want to check out your profile to find out who you are, and learn more about your business.

This is your opportunity to impress them and get them interested in what you do. So the more detailed and authentic your profile is, the better it is.

The idea here is to get your profile visitors to click through your blog URL. And that might not happen unless they have a crystal clear picture of your background. You have to appear legitimate and professional to them.

The next step is to customize your link description. You can try linking to specific blog posts or landing pages to get a better click through rate. Instead of having the default “My Blog” or “My Website”, test out different link descriptions and see what works for you the best.

#2: Build the Right Connections and Grow Your Network

The good thing about LinkedIn is that you can connect to just about anyone in your industry. It’s like an open ground for you to take your current network to the next level.

But it’s not just about connecting with others; it’s about connecting with the right people. It’s about being open to the idea of getting to know other professionals in your field, who you might not know personally.

Imagine you are at this big conference where you have the opportunity to connect to anybody. What would you do? Stand in a corner all by yourself? Or interact with as many people as possible?

If you’re smart, you’d do the latter. Similarly, LinkedIn is a place to meet interesting people. People who can help you grow your blog directly and indirectly.

When you connect with them, they join your network. They start seeing updates from you on their homepage. So having a higher number of connections obviously means that your updates get more exposure. Thus helping you drive more visitors to your blog.

#3: Actively Share Valuable Content

As your LinkedIn network grows, your responsibility towards it grows as well. In other words, getting the most out of your network depends on how you treat it.

When you actively contribute to the community, other members notice you. You’re seen as someone who knows how to share and give true value – which helps you develop a trusting relationship with your connections.

Try to go beyond posting status updates and joining group discussions when it comes to giving value. Engage with your connections. Help them out if needed. Answer their questions. Frequently make useful comments on their updates.

Being active on LinkedIn isn’t hard – you just need to take regular and consistent action with the sole aim of adding value.

#4: Create Your Own Niche Group

One of the most overlooked ways to get more attention on LinkedIn is: starting your own group.

That’s right. While others are busy participating in groups, you can become a group owner, which obviously gives you more control.

With a group of your own, you not only get traffic from new members who join in, but also from the current members who you engage with.

However, creating a group is only one half of the equation. Getting people to join your group is the other. And doing so is not rocket science as long as you’re taking the right steps.

Don’t make the mistake of creating a group that’s too broad or else you’ll get lost in the crowd. Choose a specific/narrow niche that will help you stand out and attract the right audience.

Once you’re done launching your group, notify all those connections who you think might be interested in joining in. LinkedIn allows you to send 50 invitations in a day, so make sure you’re sending them to only the relevant people in your network.

The good thing about LinkedIn groups is that once you get a couple of hundred members, your group most likely will start to grow on its own. But you still should do everything you can to actively promote it.

#5: Add the Blog Application to Your Profile

In order to get the maximum returns on your time spent on LinkedIn, you shouldn’t ignore any opportunity to gain more leverage. Adding the blog application allows you to post latest updates from your blog onto your profile.

Every time you publish a blog post, the application posts the title along with the first paragraph for others to see. It’s a simple yet effective way to convert more of your profile viewers into blog visitors.

If used right, LinkedIn can send consistent traffic to your blog with you investing nothing but your time. So go ahead and start building your presence on the largest professional social network in the world. Trust me, you won’t regret it.