Once you have your main concept in place, the next most important step is to determine for whom you’re writing your content.

Before you answer, know that your answer can’t be “everybody.”

This is when you have to put on your marketing hat and think like a professional.

“Everybody” doesn’t love the television show Everybody Loves Raymond. Everybody doesn’t like Matt Lauer or enjoy Lancome cosmetics.

So everybody won’t enjoy your blog.

You need to figure how who will.

Isn’t My Audience Going to Be Obvious?

Before you go trying to figure out whom your audience is, you have to first accept that your audience may not be whom you want them to be.

Confused? Don’t be.

Many celebrities and musicians have fan bases they didn’t necessarily cultivate on purpose.

If you visit online fan websites or watch red carpet affairs on entertainment television, you’ll notice that the online posters or screaming fans are not always who you might expect.

And those celebrities and movie stars might have been surprised in the beginning to find out which demographics appreciate their work, but they are happy to take the fans they get. You should be, too.

For example, you might start a cooking blog intended for women.

You might post lots of pictures of appetizing entries and colorful desserts, alongside you as you pose with your creations.

It’s conceivable that more men, who may have absolutely zero interest in cooking, visit your website than women.

They might just enjoy looking at the delicious-looking food, or the attractive woman who is creating the awesome blog.

It’s your job to determine who your readers are, and then to write for them.

How Do I Figure Out Who My Audience Is?

There are several ways to figure out who your audience is.

One example is to create an online forum on your site where members can talk to one another and share comments about your site.

Since most commenters choose usernames that don’t necessarily reveal their gender or age, enable avatars on your site.

This will let you determine at a glance if your readers are male or female, as well as their general age bracket.

Once you find out who your audience is, the next step is to write content directed to them. Following are five tips to get you started.

Really try to tailor fit your content to your audience

Tweet: Really try to tailor fit your content to your audience. via @smartmarketerz

1. Get into their heads

If you find, for example, that a new blogger really loves your blog and is tweeting about it, go back in time to when you were a new blogger.

Try to recall what issues were on your mind when you were starting a website, and how you saw the blogosphere.

You don’t have to dumb down your content or use words you wouldn’t normally; this will likely appear disingenuous and backfire.

Instead, simply address subjects new bloggers would be interested in. This could include guides, how to, and mentioning useful resources.

Go with the flow and keep your finger on the pulse of your audience by being empathetic.

2. Follow their lead

If your readers are blogging, tweeting, or posting comments on your Facebook wall, give it right back.

Do as they do: Tweet and use Instagram, and post comments on their walls, or blog posts.

This will make your audience feel like there’s a real connection between you and them.

They will see that you are “in their club,” so to speak.

This is called, power of reciprocity.

3. Practice a little give and take

If you can arrange some reciprocal guest blogging with another site your readers frequent, that will increase your own credibility in the eyes of your target audience.

In addition, it will improve your page ranking (if done well).

Lastly, you might just gain more readers from the other site where your content appears.

Don’t be shy about promoting your own site in your brief bio.

Include a link to your URL and an email address where readers can contact you.

Sharing common goals with others is a great way to make new friends, too!

4. Stay involved

Allowing your readers to post comments on your blog posts is great, but your job doesn’t end there.

You should reciprocate and comment on their posts too, to let them know you’re paying attention.

5. Keep your content fresh

Include a mix of media.

These days, it’s simple to embed short videos or podcasts into your blog.

Make it interesting so your readers want to keep coming back.

The best blogs are image-rich and are frequently updated.

But even if these two qualities are in place, if the blogger seems aloof or absent, readers will dwindle.

Stay focused on your blog and keep connected with your readers, whomever they may be.

What do you think?

Do you have something to add?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

In contrast, the posts that you may find around online or in poor quality blogs, are written by amateurs, and every time you read this low quality content you leave right away, thinking to suggest the authors to rewrite them again and again.

What do they have, in addition, the writing of those who seem so professional?

Perhaps, only a good care and attention about the content, which very often you tend to forget, for haste or lack of experience.

In order to look “professional”, you should always observe some simple rules.

Below you can read six tips on how to create professional content, to keep in mind when you are going to write for a blog or for any other online or offline platform.

1. Write an Effective Title

Nothing is more important and able to attract the attention of the reader as a good title.

The title should be, in fact, the extreme synthesis of the content : it must be sufficiently short but clear, and it should contain all the key elements which would be developed in detail within the article.

In the specific case of the internet and writing for blogs, post titles should also be search-engine friendly.

Many of your potential readers in fact reach your pages from the search engines, by looking for certain keywords. Needless to say, therefore, that these keywords must be mentioned in the content, as well in your titles (and of course in your tags, description, etc).

2. Add a Relevant Picture

A picture  is worth thousand words.

The splashes of color are the first thing that the human eye will notice when looking at something.

It is therefore obvious, that an image associated with your article will be crucial to attract the reader’s attention on your content.

Image should be “beautiful”, but also relevant!

On the other hand, a “bad” or irrelevant image to the topics of your blog is likely to have an opposite mirror effect, damaging the quality of the article.

You should choose media carefully, then.

3. Write a Synopsis

A synopsis is nothing more than a hat, an introduction to the piece being able to explain in a few lines what will include the content of your article.

Give readers a clear idea of the issues that will be addressed, redirecting them to reading your content.

Normally in your blog post you would like to add that in the meta description.

4. Add Quotes and Links Where Necessary

Writing phrases and statements of prominent people (or popular bloggers in your niche) will surely give a more professional look at your content.

Also, be sure to link to their sites if it’s relevant to your content.

Not only you may look more professional, suggesting to the reader the idea that you have documented extensively before drafting the article, but you will give also a more reliable and true look at your writing.

5. Properly Format the Content

All bloggers should have a keen eye to the text formatting.

Unlike newspapers, for example, you cannot rely on graphics and proofreaders that reinterpret your pieces and make them “presentable”.

Furthermore, you need to keep in mind that, unlike the printed paper, reading from a video screen can be very tiring for some people, and it must be facilitated as much as possible, if you do not want your audience stop after only reading the first few lines of your article.

You should then properly format your content!

You can put in bold the words and phrases you want to give particular importance, and you may want to use italics with foreign words and not very common in your language, with quotes and an emphasis on specific terms or definitions.

Be sure to not overdo it, because otherwise you will end up with the opposite effect, undoing the effect of marking just these styles and worsening the readability of the entire article.

Another basic rule is to break the content into more logical sections.

A single compact block of text would challenge even the most devoted and patient reader : it is better to divide it into sections, perhaps by assigning each of them a secondary qualification, remembering to enter relevant images.

6. Proofread Before Publishing

Carefully review what you have written before the publication is very important: this should be a very basic rule of any good blogger or journalist.

But it is almost never done. The reason is simply explained.

When you put the word “Finish” to your article, you are tired and eager to see it published.

You do not want to read the text because, after all, you wrote it and you know exactly what you said. And, even if you force yourselves to read it again and again, most of the time you do it casually and quickly, proceeding “to jump” over for publication.

You can simply make a pause for some minutes. Take a break. Then you can proofread the text, in order to find a number of errors or the best ways to express a concept that at first you had not realized.

Once again, a refined and clean work will increase the general professional tone of your writing.

What do you think?

Do you have any additional tips to make your writing more professional?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

With its great features and wonderful plugins to use for optimizing your site, you can say that you already have the best CMS platform to use for building a website.

While WordPress has become the most popular content management platform among bloggers and website owners, there are still many people who want to know more alternatives for website building.

If you are looking for something different and unique and want to take a different direction in the kind of CMS platforms to use for making your website, here are 20 alternatives to WordPress that you can use instead.

1. Joomla

Joomla offers its users thousands of websites and themes to download and to use for building their website.

This content management system has some powerful features to use instantly out of the box, among which include a good user management system, language and media manager, banner manager, web link management as among many others.

You can easily syndicate the contents of your site.

This makes it easier for your readers to subscribe from your website feeds.

2. Text Pattern

Text Pattern is a flexible CMS platform that you can use as an alternative to WordPress that is best for blogging although it has features that are optimized for building full sites as well.

The user has more freedom to control the basic elements with a browser based template and CSS editing feature.

Just like WordPress, the platform is also supported with many plugins.

It uses a simple syntax that will give your content a nudge from designing a plain text for more stylish effects.

It comes with cascading style sheets (CSS) rich features that make customization of fonts, color and sizes easier to manage.

3. Drupal

This open source content management platform provides tools for building websites for simple blogging to more corporate and enterprise websites.

It has many applications that one can use in order to create any kind of website imaginable to its users.

Drupal features include a UI and API that integrates components of the different modules to make them exportable in order to become available in a single module.

There are about 22,175 modules available for your customization options.

4. Movable Type

This alternative CMS platform allows its users to create a professional looking website for publication on the web.

Movable Type comes with flexible themes and plugins to help its users enjoy more features to use on their website.

It has easy to use dashboard and several custom fields to use to suit the kind of website design you have in mind.

You can manage your page designs using the WYSIWYG editor and universal templates which are great for standalone sites.

It also has engaging tools to help you create interactive websites.

5. Get Simple CMS

The simple to use interface of this CMS platform is a great feature enjoyed by its users.

It comes with several theme design options and with simple CMS documentations to use for website building.

It is easy to setup your website with its website building tools.

Get Simple CMS is an XML based and standalone content management system in order to promote simplicity in managing your website content.

You can also easily undo the actions that you do in order to spare yourself against making costly mistakes.

6. ExpressionEngine

Flexibility is the best feature of this open source platform. Whatever kind of a website you want to build, ExpressionEngine has easy to use features to accomplish your goals.

It also has an analytic tool to track down your website performance with spam prevention features to prevent spam attack on your site.

This CMS offers flexible templates to address your customization needs and it has CodeIgniter which is a PHP framework that most PHP developers prefer when creating websites.

There are also add-ons that you can use in order to expand your website designs further.

7. Frog CMS

This platform has flexible templates to use for building your website with a simple user management system that saves the user against time consuming tasks of creating their website design.

Frog CMS is PHP based therefore one need not use other scripting for their templates.

There are customizable divisions that allow you to create a summary for your articles or use the extended text for your news content.

Each page also comes with customizable layout which you can reuse for other web pages.

8. FlatPress

FlatPress allows their users to save their content or posts as simple text files.

It has themes that you can easily customize according to your desired design.

It also has a plugin support with a backup system that is easy to use.

You need not have to use SQL because PHP can make everything simplified.

You can easily backup your website contents and design simply by copying a single directory.

It has a widget support and with several plugins too.

9. Habari

This is a well rounded solution for your content management system needs that supports multiple sites and users.

If you already have a WordPress site and wants to transfer your content to Habari, you can always use its WordPress importer feature.

You can create static pages, use plugins, and comes with a developer community to interact with.

The platform runs on the servers of Apachi and CGI and supports MySQL, SQLite and PosgreSQL that are written in PHP.

You can also re-write the URL with other features like chat, blog, content approval and page caching.

10. SquareSpace

The most appealing features of SquareSpace are the LayoutEngine application for editing your website.

You can easily edit or resize your image with a grid based layout that helps you to easily find a balance when aligning your images.

11. Blog.com

There are numerous themes that you can choose for your website design.

The site offers a free sub domain that you can use for your website and can upgrade to premium if you like.

Blog.com also supports multiple authors and you can easily monetize your blog site by posting ads to your content.

You can create your own domain name that will be appearing as yourname.blog.com.

Its other integration features include tools to connect with social media sites like Facebook to share your posts and to track down your website statistics.

12. Silver Stripe

This is an open source software for helping you to build great looking websites with easy to use CMS editor.

It is most commonly used for making government sites, business sites and websites for non-profit organizations.

Silver Stripe has numerous applications that help one to create stunning designs for websites with interactive social features.

The platform uses code instead of a graphical user interface (GUIs) which is a good feature for beginners.

There are also modules that you can in customizing your blog, web forms and forums.

It also gives you more control in approving contents that are posted on your site.

The CMS also observes open standards and not merely just an open source. It uses PHP, Java Script, CSS and HTML for installation.

13. Cushy CMS

To use this platform, programming is no longer required and it does not demand the installation of a software.

The user can easily edit their content and one can build their content even without a technical know-how.

Its website building tools are convenient and easy to use, allowing you to design the web page exactly the way you want with simplicity in mind.

You can build 5 free sites on its free package in 20 languages with unlimited site editors.

Cushy CMS has a WYSIWYG editor, a secure FTP support and receives Microsoft based FTP and Internet Information Servers support.

14. Tomato CMS

Tomato CMS offers a modern blogging platform and CMS open source for building websites. The platform is secured and SEO friendly.

Its simple drag and drop editor makes the management of your content easy and convenient to perform.

It comes with a theme selections with support for tagging, multimedia, menu, category and comment management system.

It is supported with a plugin and hook architecture, a permission rule system based on CSL, clean HTML, visual layout editor and it is compatible with CSS 2 standards.

The CMS is supported by Zend Framework, 960 grid and jQuery.

Developers have more room more designing their websites because the platform follows the MVC design patterns as well as object oriented website design principles.

15. Concrete5

This free open source for content management system platform can easily be downloaded to your web host with pre-theme varieties to choose from.

Concrete5 supports eCommerce websites, image gallery, traffic and statistics management, chat feature and a Google map for your website.

It also supports Vimeo and YouTube for your website. The meta data are flexible and comes with a vanity URL for search engine optimization.

Other special features include automatic add on and theme installation, open marketplace for add on, creator editor groups and out of the box services like YouTube integration, Flash support, polls, RSS, Google maps and form generator.

16. PHP Melody

You can enjoy the design flexibility feature of this open source CMS platform. You can always try out PHP Melody with its free download to let you get a feel of its interface.

You can easily integrate video content which is perfect for those who aim to launch a video website with the right tools to use. You can easily upload, import and embed YouTube videos to show a video stream to your site.

Enjoy integrating videos, content and socials using this CMS platform to create a very appealing and interactive website. It supports PHP and MySQL hostings.

17.  Croogo

While this open open source could not match WordPress site’s numerous plugins available to its users, Croogo is a good alternative to WordPress because it has almost similar features to use by its users.

It is powered by Cake PHP MVC with a Twitter Boostrap to make a responsive user interface on your website.

It has a wider range of taxonomies for your categories with a WYSIWYG editor with an attachment for your images and file uploads. It has ACL permission in order to manage your website users.

18. Symphony

This is an open source that is aimed at simplicity and openness. The user has a complete control over their content management system with an XML centric data tool and a growing extension library to use by its users.

You can easily create elegant website designs with its website building tools.

Symphony uses PHP for programming languages and uses MySQL for database. The other add on features for Symphony include content approval and database support. You can also edit the URL and perform page caching.

19. Pods

Pods is more of a framework that you can use on your WordPress site where you can take control in adding pods to your contents and posts. Its functionality is supported with a UI that will make its management easier for its users.

The heavy code implementation is also available for advanced users and the application does all the behind the scene heavy work in managing your pods.

This is a great alternative to add some markup features on your WordPress site. Pods are GPLv2+ licensed PHP platform that gives you more options for extending your capabilities of creating, extending and managing content types from WordPress using PHP codebase.

20. Moto CMS

If you prefer to have a Flash content management system to use, this platform offers you the proper tool in creating functional and SEO optimized websites.

Moto CMS is SEO friendly and specializes in creating Flash websites easily with a drag and drop website builder tool. About 300 designs are available, extendable features and handy widgets for better customization.

Using its WYSIWYG editor is perfect for anyone at any level and skills. It offers tools to help index your website to the search engine with customizable features like auto generated maps, URL optimized for SEO, and Google Analytics.

Conclusion

You will realize now that WordPress is not the only source for your content management system needs.

There are many other blogging platforms that you can use with similar and even unique features than the WordPress platform to address your website building solution needs.

I am using mostly WordPress on my blogs, but I am running a Pligg CMS site, for example (klinkk.com).

Are you just using WordPress or have you ever tried another CMS?

Please let me know what you think in the comments below, thanks!

I guess most of the times.

In this post you are going to read the answers of 4 bloggers about two important questions on how to earn an income with the internet, with the mention of resources and practical tips.

Enjoy!

Q. What Are Your Top 3 Ways to Make Money Online?

Paul Manwaring (Paul @ IMH Blog)

For me it was developing personal skill that I could then sell as a service. This has been by far the most lucrative and effective way of earning money online for me.

Using websites such as Freelancer, Fiverr and oDesk I have been able to make $1000+ per month. This is consistent income and I’m also learning on the job so it’s the best of both worlds.

Developing these personal skills also greatly improves what I can now do when running my own blog. I have the skills to customize a theme, design graphics for my blog posts, create professional, edited videos for my youtube channel. The list goes on, and I would have to pay someone else to do all this for me, and it would likely cost me $1000+ per month to do it to the quality I create myself.

Andy Nathan (Start Up Gap)

My three favorite ways to make money online are as follows.

First, I am a freelance writer. Most of my business comes from blogging, email marketing, copywriting, social media posts, and ebooks content for clients. I generally get business from writing for top blogs, referrals, and even get some business from the job boards.

Second, I am the author of the new book, Start Up Gap. It is my 2nd book on Amazon, and 4th book on Kindle. The book makes some money, and promotes my freelance writing abilities.

Third, I also do some business and marketing coaching. As a former teacher, I know best practices for guiding entrepreneurs. I have a few coaching clients that I work with to develop their own business.

Anna Fox (Blogger)

I don’t have 3 ways as I’ve only been successful with one.

I make money online by providing writing services. I wish I could find more sources of income but I am still getting there!

I am a paid contributor and a ghost-writer working in multiple industries. Selling copy writing services hasn’t bee hard. Lots of people are looking for original content! I started at Digital Point several years ago, simply replying to “Looking for copywriter” help.

After 7-8 months of doing that diligently and providing good content, I accumulated a few recurring clients and a few agencies that outsourced content writing to me. Since then I haven’t had to even look for order as I still rely on those relationships. I can’t take more as I am writing everything myself and I don’t want to hire anyone to help as this will make things more complicated!

Pramod Sharma (Best way to make money Online)

I personally don’t trust in selling advertisments but for a begginer it would be a best way to get a strat with their online career. But if you want to get enough to make living out of it here are three ways which you should consider as final goals:

1: Selling products or Service: If you are an expert enogh in your field, there is always an opprotunity to sell your expertise knowledge into an ebook, consulting or coaching, DVD, software etc. Once you do that, with perfect marketing and promotions you would be able to earn much more than any other method online.

2: Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is one of the way that many bloggers are already succesful with and making  quite a handsome money online. The secret to be succesful in it is hiddin in the content, prduct and your audeince.

3:Product review: This is method that I personally use on my blog to generate income.To get good sponsers and product you should not wait them to get to you, instead go and give them the offer to get feature on your blog.

Q. Please Share 5 sites to Help You Earn With the Internet

Paul Manwaring (Paul @ IMH Blog)

Fiverr – Great for small, quick jobs, the marketplace is a little crowded now so it’s hard to get your foot in the door compared to when I started but if you can offer something of quality you should make sales.

Freelancer – My biggest earner for me, this month alone I’ve landed a $500 job as well as a few $200 jobs. If you can create a decent profile and communicate effectively you should be able to make a decent income. You need to have a skill to sell though!

Other that I don’t use anymore myself but helped me make my first few dollars.

Microworkers – easy jobs that require little thought. Pay is low but I have a friend just starting out and is making approx $50-100 per month

Surveybods – One of the few survey sites that are legitimate and actually pay.

Digital Point Forums – Head over the the job offers section and try to pick up some low-skilled jobs.

Andy Nathan (Start Up Gap)

Here are my favorite 5 sites to help you earn money on the internet. This is in no particular order. These are all sites that earn me money through the three ways that I earn money through internet marketing.

http://problogger.com

http://kdp.amazon.com

http://paypal.com

http://createspace.com

http://startupgap.com (OK! Maybe a little biased here)

Anna Fox (Blogger)

I am sharing 15 sites I am using to contribute paid articles from time to time here.

I’d also highly recommend this article by Ana Hoffman “Why Traffic Generation Café Is Not Making as Much Money as It Should” discussing how running a popular high-traffic blog doesn’t translate into the huge income. I think she is making a great point there:

the only thing that stands between you and online income is YOU.

Pramod Sharma (Best way to make money Online)

In online world the best part which I love is that you don’t need to spend your money in order to learn something because there are number of people around to help you out for free.

Here are 5 sites that help me and teach me to earn online.

www.smatpassiveincome.com

www.dailyblogtips.com

www.problogger.net

www.johnchow.com

www.bloggingtips.com

Conclusion

Thanks to the bloggers who shared their knowledge in this post and thank you for taking the time to read.

I hope you found something interesting to help you make money online.

I would like to hear your experience too.

Can you answer to the first or the second question mentioned in this post, leaving a comment below?

I am excited to learn from you too!

Thanks!

But the experience teaches us that just thinking of a winning strategy is not enough : translate it into results is the complex part.

Even if we can say that the same strategy does not work for everyone, you may want to check the suggestions below, that you should follow in order to obtain a highly effective online marketing action.

1. Organic Positioning

A company that wants to be competitive must have a web site located at the top of Google organic results, as well as Yahoo and Bing,  for their targeted keywords.

This is the starting point for an effective web marketing strategy, of course because organic positioning of your website can convey a great deal of qualified web traffic (which is called “Organic Traffic”).

So the BIG question is “How may I get good organic search?”

The answer is that there are many ways, depending on the characteristics of your online business.

In a few words, having lot of quality backlinks may increase your organic traffic.

2. E-Mail Marketing

The e-mail marketing is a particular type of direct marketing which uses e-mails as a way to communicate commercial messages.

The target can be composed of both potential customers or existing customers.

In the company’s online marketing strategy, the e-mail marketing must have a leading role : because it has low costs, it is fully traceable and, if do it in the right way, it is very effective.

Be careful not to confuse e-mail marketing with spam, the quality of the contact must be your primary objective : your customers are real people and you must cultivate a loyal and true relationship!

3. Pay per Click Advertising

When you think about online marketing and a fast and easy way to reach your audience, it is likely that one of the first things that comes to your mind is the pay per click advertising ( PPC ).

First of all there is Google AdWords and programs related to it.

The pay per click is an effective tool to promote products or services : in relation than building organic traffic, PPC campaign is much faster and easier to implement.

But it has obvious disadvantages : the percentage of clicks obtained from pay per click is much lower than the one obtained with the organic positioning.

AND it has a specific cost!

4. Landing page

E-mail marketing and PPC advertising are two very effective online marketing tools.

But when a potential customer clicks on the call to action for your e-mail advertising or on the links on your AdWords campaign, you want them to end on a successful landing page.

Some tips to create a profitable landing page may include :

1. Keep it simple
2. Drive the people to Decision
3. Offer Multiple Calls to Options (a link to your product at top, middle and bottom of the page)
4. Experiment with more Landing Pages which one works better

5. Social Media Marketing

Nowadays, it is essential that an online marketing campaign also includes the most important social networks.

Social marketing is really important.

Think for example about Facebook, with more than 1.23 billion monthly active users!

Facebook offers unique tools that can help you build traffic to your site and promoting your company : for example buying ads to advertise your service, linking your business in your profile or creating a page or group especially for your product.

Another BIG ONE is Twitter.

Not also it will help you build your social media presence, but it will bring you massive amount of traffic.

The key of Twitter marketing success is to have a lot of engaged followers.

The more recent creation, but not least is Google+, the answer from Google to the hegemony of social networks.

Some other powerful social media networks are StumbleUpon and Reddit.

6. HIGH Quality Content

An effective online marketing also passes through a business website updated with fresh and high quality content.

The quality content inspire trust and confidence in your audience.

Google “Panda” new algorithm gives so much weight and importance to the quality of the sites that they crawl.

You surely understand why high quality content is important : so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword.

And above all : do not copy other site’s content, even if it is very good content.

7. SEO

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the set of practices to increase the volume of web traffic a site receives from search engines.

The more frequently your site appears on search engines the more visitors it will receive.

From a SEO point of view, there are two primary areas you need to consider : on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

Basically, there are things you can do on your site to help your rankings, and things you can do off of your site to improve rankings.

The most important aspect of search engine optimization is getting links to your site.

Increase the link popularity of your website is obviously increasing your online visibility.

What do you think?

Are you working hard to increase your online visibility?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

There are a variety of branding and marketing options nowadays, such as direct mail marketing, display ads , mobile marketing – social media marketing is currently on the rise and the more you learn the better.

Mistakes are always just around the corner and here below you can read some of the most common ones.

1. Create Thousands of Profiles

The first thing you do is create a Facebook Fan Page, then a Twitter profile and a LinkedIn account.

And then … It’s easy to get carried away with Social Media: there are many social networks, and each one is presented as the solution to all your problems, but the truth is that you do not need every every social media account available.

Unless you are not suffering from presenteeism mania, you should avoid to subscribe to everything you find online.

Just try to figure out what you really need and what really works for you!

2. Do Not Take Care of Your Accounts

Often who has thousand social media accounts around the web, do not take care of them.

A slightly edited account (not completely filled in the fields, not updated or slightly) is not a pretty sight.

And do not think it’s just one person tought, but I think everyone who see your profile will think the same.

It is better not to have it, than make a bad work in a social media account!

3. Use the Same Strategy for Each Channel

Every social media network and every communication channel you’re using to interact with your audience has very specific rules.

And you must know that to be truly decisive in any environment you have to know its rules, the dynamics of interaction and strategies that will lead you to become a reference point for the audience.

All this translates into two words: time and effort.

4. Walking with a Snotty Nose

Do you want to accept all the friendships that you receive, even the sad account created only for sending spam?

You can do it, it’s your right, but remember to create a healthy interaction with the contacts closest to your field of interest.

Just remember not to walk with a snotty nose: social media are so called precisely because it’s social!

5. Confusing Spam for Promotion

You have created your Twitter account, Facebook and everything else to share your business or simply to spread the contents of your blog.

Obviously, this seems right!

But remember, not to turn youself into a spammer, becoming one of those people who send a thousand times the same content.

Try to behave naturally and to share valuable resources.

Also mention other useful content and it is your duty to quote the author, of course!

6. Ignore the Monitoring

So you have good relationships with all your contacts, you can get retweeted your content 1,000 times a day and you are in the circles of many people online.

But have you ever thought that you need to measure your social media progress?

I know that the measurement of social media is still difficult to realize, but the network offers a range of tools precise enough to monitor your online presence.

So why not use these tools?

7. Jump the Gun

Haste is the mother of all evils, it has always been so.

And one of the biggest mistakes you can do is pretend to reach superstar numbers after a few weeks on Social Media Marketing.

In the online world nothing is taken for granted and, unless you are a VIP in real world, you will need time to create big numbers in your social media accounts.

Just be patient, share good content and build relationships!

And soon the results will come.

What do you think?

Which Social Media do you prefer and which one works the best for you?

Please let me hear your thoughts in the comments below, thanks!

Image courtesy of bplanet at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Rather than focusing on building links in a manual and artificial manner, natural link building focuses on producing the type of content that other websites will want to link, without actually asking directly.

Natural Link Building In Action

As an illustration of natural link building consider these two articles for a moment and ask yourself which one you’d be more likely to click through and read.

The first is an article entitled “How To Make Money With Adsense”, whilst the second is entitled “How A New York Marketer Makes $15,000 A Month From Home With Google Adsense”.

Even if the content itself was exactly the same, I think you’d agree that you’d be far more likely to click on the second article.

Furthermore I think you’d agree that, assuming the content of this article was good, far more people would share it on social media sites or mention it on their blogs.

It’s a perfect example of natural link building in action.

But why does it work?

The answer is “uniqueness”.

We all know that you can make money from Adsense and in your time online most of you have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of “me too” articles about Adsense. Then a basic article will no longer excites you.

What excites you, and indirectly leads to natural link building, is the unique viewpoint of an article like the second example.

Natural link building is all about producing such amazing content that other websites will want to spontaneously link to it, simply because they feel it offers their readers such great value.

As a result, it’s clear that if you’re serious about growing your organic traffic through natural link building, then you need to create less “me too” content for your site and instead focus more on content that offers something totally new and unique whilst still remaining on-topic.

Easy Content Creation Ideas For Natural Link Building

Producing top-quality, unique content for natural link building doesn’t need to be as hard as you might first imagine.

Certainly there are experts at natural link building that write incredible blog posts and attract vast numbers of links as a result, but articles are only one type of content you can produce.

1. Infographics

Infographics help us to visualize data in a new way – whether that is for clarity, for intrigue or for educational purposes.

Try hiring an infographic designer on the various outsourcing websites and even for a simple infographic you’ll often end up spending several hundred dollars.

Real “top level” infographics can cost into the thousands, but if you’re seriously considering the benefits of natural link building right now there is some good news for you.

Thanks to the power of infographics for acquiring links naturally, there are now a growing number of services that will let you create basic infographics yourself for free with no graphic design experience.

These tools online are all free, or offer free versions:

– Vizualize;

– Google Developers;

– Easel.ly;

– Piktochart;

– Visual.ly;

– InFoto Free;

– Venngage;

– Dipity;

– Get About.

2. Resource Lists

Unless you’re in a very small niche, there are probably all sorts of other websites around producing equally great content for your market.

One great way to create a unique and highly-linkable piece of content for natural link building is to produce a resource list that can act as a central “hub” of information on a subject.

Maybe you curate all the best YouTube videos on a subject, or link out to all those articles you have bookmarked and place all these links into a user-friendly piece of content that is both interesting and covers every element of the topic.

Not only are these incredibly useful for visitors and as a result will often get referenced by all manner into other websites, but additionally there is a chance of getting links back from the very sites you link out to in the first place meaning even more natural link building opportunities.

3. Personal Experiences

Let’s end this article where we started, back with our New York Adsense guy.

Your experiences are unique to you – after all that’s why we call them “personal experiences” – but they can be of great interest to other people and a great tool for natural link building.

Many websites today are too heavy on theory and too light on practice and people are far more interested to learn from actual results rather than theory.

So tell your audience about a product that you used. Or a test you did. Or an experiment you carried out.

Tell people what you did, what the results were and what you’d do differently.

And remember that personal experiences don’t necessarily have to be positive for natural link building – if you tried something and it didn’t work that can almost be as useful or interesting as the things that do work.

Conclusion

Natural link building doesn’t need to be complicated.

In fact, for people who enjoy creating content, it can actually be great fun and highly rewarding.

Finally you can focus more on producing amazing content and let the links come to you naturally without having to “force” the promotion of your latest blog post or article.

What do you think?

Have you ever produced this kind of content?

Have you ever experienced great natural backlinks?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, thanks!

Try out these different types of content to see what works with your audience and you’ll not only boost your visitor engagement, but also your traffic from Google thanks to the ongoing process of natural link building.

A properly optimized image on your site can draw in tons of traffic from search engines that you may not get from organic results alone.

Images by themselves are just as important as your headlines, meta tags, and URL structure.

Let’s look at some simple ways to optimize your website’s images.

Captivate Your Audience

Whether your audience is reading an article on your website or looking to buy a product, poor images can make a great website dull and boring.

Research has statistically shown that when users land on any webpage, the images are the first thing that draws their attention.

This reason is merely because images are much simpler for our brain to process compared to text.

When reading text, we force our brains to think.

When searching for images to use, make sure you have the rights to use them.

Plenty of images are available for purchase at various stock photo websites and if you want to go the free route, Google Images allows you to search for images that are strictly in the public domain.

Make Sure the Images Relate to the Content

Besides making sure that the image you are using matches the content on your webpage, it also needs to match the description of your alternate text, the URL, and the keywords.

If all of these don’t match, search engines may think you are trying to game the image search and remove your image.

For example, if you have a picture of strawberries, don’t put “bananas” in the alternate text and URL structure.

It looks bad.

Add your Descriptive Keywords to the Image’s Filename

Images can be used for keyword-rich SEO purposes the same way that URL structures can.

Make sure to rename your files to match what you are trying to rank for.

Google suggests when uploading your images to use common file types such as JPEG or BMP and to keep them all in one folder.

If they are spread out in multiple places on your site, it makes it harder for Google to crawl your site and find all of them.

Use Creative Alternate Text & Anchor Text

Besides file names and keywords, alternate text and anchor also help to tell search engines what your image is.

With alternate text, this can be added right in the HTML code and is shown when a user hovers their mouse over your image.

Anchor text can be another great SEO trick to rank your images for more traffic.

Anchor text can be used if you are linking to a picture within your text.

This way, you can use varying degrees of anchor text for a single picture.

Don’t Keyword Stuff Your Images

Keyword stuffing in general when it comes to SEO is a big red flag and should never be practiced.

When creating your alternate text, file names, and anchor texts, don’t try and add hundreds of different keyword variations, hoping that you will get ranked for all of them.

Google may rank them for a little while, but you eventually could be penalized, so it’s best to not even take the risk.

Create great content for the user and traffic will follow.

By utilizing all of these image tips with your website, you may be able to gain even more traffic that you would gain from organic listings alone!

Some Resources

Here’s some useful resources to use in order to create or get catchy images for your site:

– Freedigitalphotos.net;

– Stockvault.net;

– Flickr.com;

– ImgFlip.com.

Conclusion

Are you paying attention to images on your blog?

Where do you get all the media for your site?

Please share your experience in the comments below, thanks!

As any other blogger, you also want to receive waves of people willing to read your website.

But unfortunately, often you don’t have the adequate return in terms of visits.

Today, thanks to MyBlogU, I have 9 experts sharing their best ways to get web traffic.

Enjoy!

Question : Please share your best ways to get web traffic to your blog/site.

Ann Smarty (Founder)

So far my biggest success with driving traffic has been StumbleUpon. When anything goes hot on StumbleUpon, you get several months of low-converting (still good) traffic. The very first article that I felt that with was this one. When I was writing it, I had no idea what StumbleUpon really was, then I was a huge spike in traffic and discovered the platform. The traffic from it is still coming, even though the article is many years old. As you can see from comments, many of stumblers actually interact.

At that time, that article looked somewhat innovative: No one was talking about color in that respect. Also the chart and the visuals made it look nice, so it did well on SU. I also found ViralContentBuzz and SU ads (promoted URLs) can help a piece go hot on SU as well but you still need the basics: SU-friendly article and a good relevant category it was “discovered” in at SU…

Paul Manwaring (Paul @ IMH Blog)

I think it really comes down to having something to say on your topic that has your personality on it. Regardless of the niche that you enter you are more than likely going to come across a website that has already done it but don’t be put off by this. Try to create content with your personality, it will surely come off unique in some way and visitors will enjoy reading YOUR views on the subject.

Apart from having personality and knowledge in your niche, things like understanding on-page seo can give you a nice boost in traffic. Essential plugins for getting your onpage seo in check are:

• Yoast SEO Plugin
• SEO Friendly Images
• W3 Total Cache

Michelle Fach

I’ve been doing not bad on Pinterest. In fact, it’s my #1 referral (higher than Google!)

I haven’t done anything special about it: I just make sure to add a good picture in my blog posts. Pinnable quotes are doing particularly well! I am using this tool to create them: http://quotescover.com/

I pin my own blog posts and all the other pins are generated almost organically. I am also member of a couple of active Pinterest shared boards where several contributors can add images to one board. I am getting a lot of referrals from those group boards. I would recommend anyone to go ahead and find relevant group boards on Pinterest.

I guess that also depends on the niche: Food, DIY, stay-at-home moms, kids – all these are doing GREAT on Pinterest and very easily.

Anna Fox (Blogger)

I am not really a very experienced / knowledgeable blogger but I got my first traffic spike just recently. I did a MyBlogU group interview and it got quite a few answers and here’s what happened to my traffic:

Traffic spike on my blog thanks to @MyBlogU interview #wow -> http://t.co/f2OG18PEaw pic.twitter.com/K9yxnniINP

— Hire Bloggers (@hireblogger) August 5, 2014

I think a few things contributed to the traffic boost:

• ALL the contributors shared it (I didn’t even have to ask!)
• MyBlogU was promoting it as well
• It features personal stories which I guess resonates with readers (so they are willing to share)

I am going to publish my second group interview soon and see if it does good as well. So far I like what I see. Also after the spike, the traffic didn’t quite go away completely… It’s higher than it used to me. I actually feel as I am not alone any more.

Nishadha (Freelance Digital Marketer)

For me one of the best ways that give long term results is search engine optimization. Most bloggers focus a lot on creating and adding content to their blog but often ignores the SEO part which is rankings. Of course you can optimize the blog post with proper titles, good keyword density etc. but to rank for any targetted keyword you need back links.

This is why there is often gaps between posts in my personal blog. Whenever I write an article I tried to get it to rank for that targetted keyword. This way all the effort I put into creating the article will be justified because of the long term traffic potential.

merylvdm (Social Studies Chat)

I have found one of the best ways to get traffic to my education blog is through forums. I knew the best forum in my niche and had already been active on it before I started my own website and blog, so it wasn’t hard to continue participating there. I use my signature to point to specific pages or posts on my site. I change my signature regularly to highlight whatever I want them to see and then I just participate in discussions and try to provide valuable insight. I do not promote my website at all – excpet in my signature, but now I am thrilled to see that my website regularly pops up in other discussions on the forum and so my traffic from this source just keeps on growing.

hhoefele

Two underutilized sites that can generate quality traffic are: Slideshare and Medium.  I have found that both writers and readers of those sites seem to truly care about the information being shared and the topic being discussed there.  Thus, you will get more quality and qualified traffic than quantity.  Both sites are free to use, have simple interfaces and also conveniently provide simple built-in traffic stat trackers.  However, the key to getting these sites to work for you is to clearly indicate what action you want your readers to take: whether it is to subscribe, click on a link, download an ebook, etc.   These calls-to-action are free form, so it is up to you to determine where to put them, what links to use, and how to write the copy to be most effective.

ModestMoney

It has to be Search Engine Optimization.  What other marketing strategies allow you to build up a steady stream of traffic that grows exponentially the more effort you put into it?  Done right that traffic is highly relevant, searching for specific keywords that you can benefit from.  Sure it takes a lot of time and effort to build up that SEO strength, but the benefits can last a significant length of time – pretty much until Google changes up their algorithm drastically.  Even then, you still have a solid base to climb back up the rankings.  When your site has that SEO strength you can also easily rank for all kinds of other new keywords simply by posting new content.

Andy Nathan (Start Up Gap)

My favorite way to drive traffic is through blog tribes. Not only do you create solid connections with amazing bloggers throughout the world, it is also a goldmine for networking with other bloggers in your niche.

Additionally, blog tribes increase your social media reach. Over the years, I have generated tens of thousands of visits to my site through various blog tribes.

Finally on Triberr, I have build solid relationships with many great bloggers in my niche. Through these relationships I guest blogged on JeffBullas.Com, MichaelQTodd.Com, and SteamFeed.Com. The blog posts that I wrote on Jeff Bullas’s site alone have generated a few thousand dollars in business.

Conclusion

Thanks a lot to the aweome participants of this interview.

And I hope you have leaned something new from reading these experiences!

Do you have something to add?

Can you share your best way to get traffic?

Please let me know in the comments, thanks!

The technical skills involved will have an impact on the usability of the final work.

For example, if the navigation is difficult then the visitors will find it hard to get to the pages in order to visit the content, or purchase certain products.

These core principles will also influence your rankings in search engines.

Let’s see some technical aspects of blogging.

Loading Time Gap

A well designed page should be able to download quickly regardless of the browser the readers is using.

For example we know that visitors rarely spend more than 30 seconds on a URL.

If they are spending most of that time downloading your material then they will leave the page for good.

On-page SEO requires a certain amount of procedures, but this must not be at the expense of the download timescale.

In other words your SEM strategies require that you make things as easy as possible for the surfer that wishes to visit your blog pages.

A regular page should load within 10 seconds.

You can extend this gap to 5 seconds in terms of internal processing.

Some useful tools to use for measuring and improve your blog loading speed:

– GTmetrix.com;

– Pingdom;

– Google Developer PageSpeed tool.

Accurate Coding

If you do not know about web coding, then it is probably a good idea to hire someone.

The written elements should be clean and therefore free of errors.

You may visit the validator.w3.org website in order to check your site compatibility with the internationally accepted standards.

Although Google Panda tended to concentrate on the quality of content, there are certain penalties for those pages that are poorly designed.

In cases of CSS, the page jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator will be of help.

The W3C standards have to be followed even before you think of adding content to your pages.

All your SEM strategies will go to waste in the absence of good on-page SEO.

Design of Your Pages

There are certain SEO elements which may be attractive but they can make the code heavier than it needs to be.

For example you should avoid the use of unnecesary Wordpress plugins.

If you are in doubt then concentrate on text.

Of course SEM is wider than a piece of text, but your online marketing strategy should take into account the practicality of the URLs that you are promoting.

Go Simple

Simple is better.

For example there is no need to use dynamic URLs instead of HT Access files.

Also, it is important to maintain consistency in the standards of your content.

A single bad page is enough to ensure that the Google Panda update will punish you.

Conclusion

These are just examples of blogging issues you may pay attention to.

At the end of the day, the success of your site will also depends on these technical things.

What do you think?

Are you a technical expert?

Please let me know your experience in the comments below, thanks!

Image courtesy of iosphere / FreeDigitalPhotos.net