Slowly, like a baby caterpillar struggling to escape its pupae, words appeared. My jaw relaxed, releasing the built up tension in my neck and spine. A small smirk spread slowly across my countenance. My fingers flew like leaves in a hurricane. Momentum began to unravel the resistance from mere minutes previous.

I was writing. HA-HA! Bite me you drunken leprechaun.

Does it really have to be such a struggle to write?

I’ve been writing since 1994. Not every day. There were a few years when I never scratched a single word on the back of a napkin. But after nearly 2 decades of pounding the keys, I’ve learned a few tricks that help me to get rolling when it’s time to write. And to keep me from going mad.

10 Ways To Trick Yourself Into Writing.

1. Determine Your Peak Time

Are you a morning writer, or an evening writer? Me? I am definitely morning, the earlier the better. My iPhone goes off with its vibrating alarm at 5:55 am 6 days a week. Listen to your body! Of course it’s going to whine and complain first thing in the morning. Disregard that voice and search for your inner writer. What’s it saying?

Can you produce 1000 words at 10 pm, or 6 am?

2. Use Your Toes

I generally wear slippers when I write. Partially because it’s chilly first thing in the morning, and I write in my basement office. But mainly because of my toes. When I get stuck on a paragraph, I kick off my slippers and curl my toes into the carpet. I rub them quickly back and forth to make some friction on the soles of my feet. It wakes me up a bit. I can’t seem to write in socks nearly as easily. It affects my flow.

Don’t judge me, writers are weird.

3. Beverage of Choice?

I always have a cup of coffee or peppermint tea within reach when I write. What’s your beverage of choice? The extra fluid intake forces me to pee every 45 minutes or so. That gets me up from the keyboard and forces me to take a break. It refreshes my poor brain and central nervous system which is doing the heavy lifting.

4. Music or Silence?

I used to play Linkin Park and 80′s hair metal in the background when I wrote. It negatively affected my productivity. My subconscious started to listen for lyrics, and to sing along instead of doing the bulk of the writing. Nowadays I write in either silence or with sounds of nature as ambient noise. I found iTunes radio stations still had commercial breaks even when it was supposed to be commercial free.

What music works best for you?

5. Home or Coffee Shop?

This one is tricky. Even with headphones I find writing at a coffee shop has too much external stimulation and distraction. I can write 500 word ezine articles no problem at a McDonalds. But creating good meaty content I save for the early morning at home with minimal distraction. Maybe it’s because I’m heading into middle age but I can’t seem to create art when a 5 year old punches his baby brother in the ball pit at Mickie Dees and screams for the next 8 minutes.

6. Paper or Plastic?

Years ago when you went into a grocery store the clerk would ask you if you wanted plastic bags or paper bags for carrying out your purchases. Nowadays where I live they treat you like an environmental terrorist if you buy a plastic grocery bag for a nickel. They expect you to bring your own canvas bag made from locally-grown natural fibres that you weave at home on your own loom. Some writers look at anything except a shiny Macbook Air still under warranty as Old School writing. I do some of my best work with a pen and an old Moleskine knockoff from Walmart.

Can you create with a pen and paper, or are you a keyboard warrior? Have you tried?

7. Is Wi-Fi Your Friend?

I turn my wi-fi off when I write. I usually use Evernote on my laptop when I get into creating. With no wi-fi I have no interruptions from Skype, IM, G+, Twitter, or push notifications from the myriad of apps I have. When I have to pee because of the steady intake of fluids, I fire up the wi-fi to sync my notes in Evernote. When I sit back down, wifi goes back off. It’s a little ritual I have to reset my brain each hour to keep writing.

8. The First Sentence Is Like A Shout In A Crowded Bar

Staring at a blank page is a recipe for resistance. I write an opening sentence like I was shouting at a couple of friends of mine across a British pub common room. “Hey Chester, I sat down to write in absolute agony!” My goal is to get Chester to shrug like a “what did he just say?” kind of face and saunter over to hear the next line of the story. If I can write one sentence, I can generally write a second. Before I glance around I’m into a paragraph and we’re moving. Get good at writing opening sentences. I have a page of them in my Moleskine.

9. A Man’s Gotta Know His Limitations

Mine’s about 2800 words. Roughly 3 hours straight of work, sometimes 3 and a half. With 2-3 bathroom breaks in there. My first clue is I lose my sense of spelling. Homonyms become the enemy. Horse? Hoarse? And I lose the ability to conjugate verbs in the future tense. It’s a sign that I need to sync my work in Evernote and eat something resembling food.

10. Kick The Critic In The Balls

My inner critic has an Irish accent and points and laughs at me in a voice similar to a drunken leprechaun. He constantly screams that my work stinks like shiiite and I just wasted 3 hours and that I’m going to starve and end up like drunk Uncle Wilbur. I’ve learned to love the little jerk. What does your inner critic say to you? What effect does it have on your work?

Steve Jobs once said that true artists ship. Seth Godin constantly pushes Publish. I’ve discovered that your best work is still inside you, waiting to get out. Strengthen your opinions, be bold in your blogging, step on some toes, and let your art see the light of day.

I’m out of coffee, I have to pee, and this post is finished. Go write something.

David Ledoux is the author of half a dozen books including How I Went From Welfare To Millionaire Without Winning The Lottery. He coaches entrepreneurs, owns several businesses and writes a witty and irreverent blog at http://davidledoux.com. His newest book, 10 Quick & Easy Strategies For Successful Living is available for free at his website.

My struggle was if I should enter the contest. My first one. I just decided to have fun and do it. There is so much to write on the topic of traffic generation that I didn’t want to miss the chance.

So how about me helping you by reminding you of some usual traffic sources and telling you about some you might have missed along the way?

I will tell you about those that brought me the most traffic over the years. If you are in a niche, don’t go away – the tips are not only for blogs about blogging.

Use video/image/other files to get traffic

Youtube.com is an awesome place to find targeted traffic. How can you get more traffic besides creating great and viral videos?

• Make sure to add your blog’s URL to an opening or closing “scene” of the video.
• Add a link to your blog in the description (must be related of course).
• Create video responses to related videos with a lot of views.

Vimeo.com, like YouTube, will house your videos. Don’t forget your blog’s URL in the opening scene!

Flickr.com is great not only for photographers but bloggers as well.

• Any time you use a photo from Flickr, make a comment under it and include a link to your post. Photographers love seeing how their photos are used. I have had great traffic results with it, especially if you use an image in a funny, non-related way (a bunny reading a book on a post about Google PR).

Slideshare.net is a place where you can post slide shows to promote your blog and get more traffic. Not sure what a slide show would do to get traffic?

• Turn your most popular posts into slide shows. As simple as that.

Scribd.com lets you upload documents and share them with a big community of readers.

• Write useful how-tos for your niche and make them available for download. Don’t forget to include some links to your blog. PDF files work great for this. All files I make available for download can be shared and given away as long as they are not edited (so my link is shared along with them). Great guides get shared a lot!

Wikimedia.org is a great place to find new, targeted traffic.

• Let’s say you have a great image of a travel destination (Rome, Italy, for example). Upload it to Wikimedia with a Commons license and go to Wikipedia. Find a project that is related to your image (Rome, Italy). Go to a project and attach your image as a related image to the Rome page. Your photo will be a new traffic source for your blog.

iTunes – podcasting is a great way to get fresh, targeted traffic. With millions and millions of users this is still a traffic generation source that is not saturated as some others.

The usual traffic generation sources

Commenting on other blogs – we all know about this way of traffic generation. But don’t rely only on posting a comment. Answer other people’s questions as well. And visit a new blog every once in a while, don’t stay on the same ones all the time!

If you are commenting on a blog that has Comment Luv enabled, make sure to master the art of good blog post titles.

Guest posting – again, a well known traffic source, but how much of it are you really using? Are you afraid of guest posting on bigger blogs? Go to new, up and coming blogs which are more likely to accept your post. You never know, few months from now, one of those blogs might be “the next big blog”.

Round ups – There is nothing better for traffic than being included in a round up on a blog like Kikolani or NittyGriddy. But you never are… If you think you wrote a great post that deserves to be in a round up like that, contact the blogger and offer your post. Great posts are not always discovered by themselves.

Social bookmarking sites

Digg.com – you don’t have much success with it? Stop submitting your posts, submit and digg other people’s posts and connect with as many “diggers” as you can. They will return the favor.

StumbleUpon.com – the best strategy is to do the same as I wrote for Digg. An extra thing to do would be being very active as a stumbler. Seems that the more active you are, the more “valuable” your submissions and votes are.

My biggest success with SU was a friend of mine (a pretty active one) submitting one of my posts. Talk about 1.000 new visitors in a day (low bounce rate and long times they spent on the blog was the cherry on top of a chocolate cake).

Reddit.com – I had great success with this site by submitting funny and controversial stuff. Funny images will bring you crazy amounts of traffic.

Delicious.com – Although there were some rumors it will be shut down, it is still working and bringing the traffic. Same tactics as other bookmarking sites. Great posts with numbers in the title (like this one) often get a lot of traffic from Delicious.

Google Buzz and Yahoo Buzz allow you to share blog posts. Any kind of sharing is a potential for traffic generation.

Amplify.com is a sharing site where you can connect with people, spark conversations and get more traffic for your blog.

Bookmarking and voting for bloggers

There are 5 sites I use for bookmarking best blog posts and voting for them.

BlogEngage.com
BlogInteract.com
Serpd.com
Blokube.com
BizSugar.com

I don’t submit all of my posts and I try to vote often for posts I like. Try to connect with people and vote on their posts. Keep it real and don’t go “blind voting” for everything on the home page.

These sites can bring very targeted traffic to your blog considering they are pretty focused. Not to mention that once you have a great post shared on those sites (and it makes it to a home page) you will have your blog flooded with targeted visitors.

Traffic generation by writing content for other sites

Ezinearticles.com, although hit by the new Google algorithm, it is a great source of highly targeted traffic. The bounce rate of visitors I get from EZA is always less than 20%! Choosing a good keyword for an article can result in incredible amounts of traffic. I have been receiving a lot of traffic from a single well written article for a year and a half now!

I will not list other article sites cause it would look like pumping up numbers of traffic sources in this post, but there are many of them that can bring fresh eyes to your blog.

Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com will not only bring you targeted traffic but can also be a nice source of income. If you don’t want to spend too much time on these sites, you can always make a single page about your blog and update it from time to time with links to your must-read and most popular posts.

About.com – How many times have you tried to do something and needed instructions? You Google it and it brings up how-tos from About.com. Well, you can contribute to this site with some of the how-tos for your niche and get traffic from it. Additional tip – there is an About.com Forum where you can be helpful to people in need and get additional traffic to your blog.

Never underestimate Wikipedia and WikiHow. These two sites are an awesome place to further promote your blog and get, again, targeted traffic. Depending on your niche, you can contribute some great tips and bring thousands of visitors back to your blog.

One forgotten traffic generation source

The Forums – yes, I know some bloggers are telling you that you can not get anything from the Forums, but I can prove them wrong. One example: I met one of my dear blogging friends on a Forum way before I started blogging. She has been helping me since. Instead of struggling with some newbie mistakes, I skipped most of them and went straight for success. Most forums allow links in signatures – use it!

Your niche will determine which forums you will visit, but great forums for bloggers are Website Babble, My blog guest, Warrior forum, Blog Frog, etc.

Social media sources

Facebook.com – Do I need to explain this one? You can use your personal profile to post about your blog, you can use groups and pages. Ask your friends to share your blog post to their wall and groups and wait for all the traffic to pour in.

While on Facebook, I need to mention Networked Blogs. I use this application to post my RSS on my personal profile wall and my blog’s fan page. You can also use this application to follow other blogs in the network and rate them.

This is one of my biggest traffic referrals at the moment. You should use all possible tools to get your blog shared on Facebook as much as possible because with so many users, Facebook can bring a lot of traffic to your blog.

Twitter.com is one of the best ways to get your blog out there. Main thing – communicate and connect, don’t spam. Tweet relevant and quality posts and don’t self-promote too much. Don’t forget to participate in Twitter chats. I get a lot of “fresh” visitors from those chats!

LinkedIn.com is a place where you can get traffic from more than one source.

Connect with people you know and they will see your updates. If you are a good writer and post great content, you will receive traffic from them. You can generate traffic by joining LinkedIn groups and helping people in your niche by pointing them to your relevant posts. Besides groups, there is an answers section. Answer questions the best you can and point people to relevant links (your blog).

Yahoo Groups – join groups in your “area of expertise”. Again, do the best you can to help people.

Paid traffic sources

Facebook ads are a great way to get highly targeted traffic to your blog (landing page, fan page, what ever). Although not a free traffic source, it is a great one. The price is not very high and I think it is pretty acceptable considering that you can choose demographics of Facebook users that will see your ad. I had great success getting traffic that converts on one of my niche sites.

Google Adwords is a well known paid traffic generation source. I, presonally, did not get too much into it since it takes some learning to make it work for you. But you can easily find coupons for $75 to try it out, so why not? Those who can use Google Adwords well convert that traffic into subscribers and buyers in no time.

Ads on related blogs. Most blogs are open for advertising and you can always buy advertising space on them. Choosing a blog that is related to your niche (while not directly competing with you) and has a lot of visitors is a great way to get more traffic.

Answer sites – Why aren’t bloggers using them more?

This is one of my favorite ways of traffic generation. Using answer sites is not only a great way to generate targeted traffic but establish yourself as a “know it all” in your niche.

The main tip about using answer sites is not to link to your blog every time you answer a question. Especially if the post is not closely related to the question. Answer some questions for the sake of answering them. You will always have links in your bio/profile, so if you answer a question like a rock star (without a link),  some traffic will come from people checking out your profile.

Vark.com is owned by Google. Interesting, right? Last time I checked, their links were dofollow. All you need to do is choose topics you are interested in and you will get relate dquestions that need answers. Answer the best way you can, and if it is convenient, point people to your blog with a related link.

Yahoo Answers is one of my favorite traffic generation sources when it comes to answer sites. It has been one of my main traffic sources on a niche site for a long time, even after I haven’t used it for months. The main thing is to give your best when answering. If your answers are chosen as the best ones, you will have more respect in the eyes of the visitors so… yes, more of them will come to check out your blog.

Google answers is one of the great answer sites you can use for traffic generation. I mean, isn’t everything that is connected to Google something we should master?!

Quora.com is a pretty new but already very popular site among bloggers. Connect, ask questions and answer them. Same “laws” apply like on any answer site.

Fluther.com is great in a way that it will find questions related to your expertise. After using it for awhile, the site gets “smarter” as it learns more about you and offers you questions related to your niche.

Other great answer sites you should start using today:

• Blurtit.com
• Wiki answers
• Yedda.com or AOLAnswers.com (same site)

A few more interesting sources of fresh traffic

eBay.com can generate traffic in more than one way. You can sell reports and e-books you write (write some useful how-tos and sell them for very low price, the point in this case is the traffic, not the money). There is also an about page you can create, where you can put a link to your blog.

Craigslist.org – Yes, you can post ads and generate traffic. Depending on your niche the ads will be different. You have a “blog about blogging” and can’t imagine how you could post an ad? Aren’t you offering a service? That is an ad right there.

Paper.li is a site that automatically creates “newspapers” based on who you follow on Twitter. You can base it on Twitter lists or make other settings. When it posts to your Twitter, it will mention one or two people who are featured in it. How about sending tweets mentioning all the people featured in it that you haven’t connected with yet?

Generating traffic by offline promotion

You can always generate some traffic by promoting your blog offline. I can think of many ideas, but here are just a few (depends a lot on the type of blog you have):

- handing flyers to your targeted audience (University students, high school students, coffee drinkers…)

- buying an ad in printed magazines or local newspapers

- giving away free samples of what ever you offer on your blog

I bet there is at least one traffic source mentioned here that you have not used yet, and I am sure there are some I forgot to mention.

So I would like to ask a favor from you. Suggest number 51 (post a comment) and then share this post…go crazy…tweet it every day, digg it, stumble it, vote for it, tell your friends about it. If you like it and I win a prize, I promise to write more great posts for you

This article is part of the Traffic Generation Blogging Contest, please add a comment and tweet it to support the author.

Fresh New Content

Do you know what fresh new content mean?

Traffic. Of course, not all fresh new ideas are accepted at first. Your idea may be on the rejected list. But you still have created the idea. You did it, using your own Brain. Producing Fresh New content have always been dilemma for bloggers. Some bloggers find it easy while other find it hard. Easy or Hard – You need to use your Brain, no matter what.

For years, many bloggers have advised you that Social netwoking and other blogs can help you with getting new content. Most of the time, the social media – including other blogs will only help you to get new content not create new content.

Use Your Own Brain

You have a small thing in your head that can do all sorts of stuff at the same time. Use it!

Why do you need one if you don’t want to use it at all? Human Brain is capable of amazing feats. With determination, many scientists from Albert Einstein to Modern day Scientists have accomplished great deeds due to thier determination. Determine for yourself. Do you want to blog ? If you do, then continue the process, you your brain. If you don’t, close this window, shutdown your laptop and ask yourself “Why the heck did I start a Blog ?” If you find an answer, use it guide you. May it be Money-making, May it be your hobby. Whatever it is use it to guide you in the path of Blogging – Use it like a torch might be useful to you in a dark path.

BrainStorm! Create a storm in your brain. Think, think, think. Think about Blogging. Write down what comes to your mind. Make connections. Frame Your work. Write A Draft or Start writing Your actual article.

What is Your Goal ?

Before You write down your article. Think about your goal. What are you trying to accomplish? No goal?!

Better not publish the article. Your Goal may be simple as to persuade the reader on a particular issue or your goal may be Hard. Simple or hard, easy or delicate.

Make Connections

Connect Your ideas with each other. Can you make anything out of the connection i.e. any conclusions? No?!

Think about what you can say about the different things you wrote down. Connect Your goal with your body content. Connections are viral networks. They are delicate. If you use it well, you can accomplish great things.

Write…..

Write Your actual content. I would go with informal writing rather than formal. Talk to your readers. You conversational english rather than formal, written english. Speak to Your Readers !

Conclusion

If you don’t want to use your brain, fine. You can send me your useless brain to recycle and reprocess at Brain processing Inc. Use Your Brain Wisely. It will help you to succeed. After all, it is helping you to read this article. I hope that the ideas presented in this post will help you to write your next post. If it does, I am satisfied. I have achieved my goal for this post.

Whether you are selling software of some sort or an e-book, offering amazing cooking insights, the chances are that with a great article on the subject, you can get far more people to see and probably buy what you are offering.

In order to make the whole undertaking to work, knowing a few basic things is required though. Big percentage of the marketers fail, exactly because they don’t have good knowledge on those same basics. With the following article I aim to give you some content related advices, which should be taken into consideration when starting out with blogging.

The Title – User-Friendly vs SEO-Friendly

Trying to please both the search engines and your visitors is of course what you should be striving for when coming up with a title for an article. Unfortunately this is not always possible, since what search engines call a killer title, might turn out a disaster for your visitors’ eyes. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you should completely exclude one of the two. The question is, towards which one should the scales be tipped?

If I were to make a decision, my choice would definitely be to first think of the visitors. In the end you are not writing your content for the search engines. They are nothing more than a mediator between you and your readers. That is why getting 100 really interested people from the search engines is far better than getting 1000 folks, who clicked your blog just because it was the first on the list. Those same folks are fast to hit the ‘Close’ button after few seconds.

Article Length – Short vs Long Articles

Giving an accurate answer to that question is a daunting task. Some claim that short and straight to the point content is what one should be striving for. Others are on the opposite side of the coin, explaining that long posts that dive into the deepest of detail are what visitors are hungry for. Although both of the two approaches have their pros and cons, I would advice novice bloggers to try and go for the first one. Short of course doesn’t mean an article, three or four sentences long. Keeping your thoughts to around 350-400 words is perfect for first time visitors, as they quickly tend to browse away to a different site. If the articles is over a thousand words for instance, they will probably get bored and leave, before reaching the essence of your message.

Do not Disregard the Importance of Comments

Having comments on your articles plays its role when it comes to achieving better conversions. Although you will not directly benefit from the number of comments, they can significantly raise your credibility. And being credible is what can make the difference between success and miserable failure.

Let’s say you are trying to promote some sort of a marketing tool alongside another blogger who is selling similar product, offering similar features for roughly the same price. Your blog is getting around 20 comments per post and the competition a mere 4 or 5. No doubt that for the average Joe, who’s just reading around this might be a small detail. However things would have been far different if that same guy was to make a decision between the two expensive products. I bet that in such a case the smallest details can prove the turning stone.

Exactly for that reason I would advice you to take comments more seriously. The least you can do is encourage readers to leave their feedback. Why not ask a question, related to the topic you have just discussed? Simple yet effective solution!

Your Thoughts

What do you think about the above points? Do they matter for you? Feel free to leave your feedback and criticism below in the comment section.

Image Credit: Qisur

Social Media, SEO and Keywords are of course important to every blog post. But in my opinion the meat and two veg to the success of your blog lies within the hands of your audience! If your reader loves your content then nothing will stop them spreading your content with others and sending it rocketing virally into the amazing world we call the World Wide Web!

In my second guest post for Famous Bloggers I wish to share with you 9 tips I have gleaned while on my journey to become a successful blogger! I hope you enjoy and learn something new!

1. Passion!

This should be perfectly obvious, every blogger need passion about their chosen niche! If you have no passion about something then it will show in your writing and kill your content! Not only will you not enjoy the experience but your audience will not share it with others! In fact it could have the reverse effect and your readers can tell others not to go to your blog! Try and write something creative that your audience will love and share!

2. Everything changes!

Nothing stands still for long on the World Wide Web! New Topics and Trends are springing up all the time, new ways of doing things come and go!  So you need to be up there with the latest trends! Write about things that are current, new and upcoming! Writing about something from last year is no good as it does not interest your audience anymore. Visit forums related to your topic for the latest trends to see what people are talking about! Which leads me onto…

3. Do your research!

And be knowledgeable! When you decide to write on a certain topic or subject, spend time researching it. Knowledge is the key to writing good content! Wikipedia, Google, Ezine articles are always a good place to start! If you are not knowledgeable on what you are writing then it will show in your post! Your audience is smart enough to see that you have not done your research and will stop reading your post and not share!

4. Quality not Quantity!

Less is more as some people may also say! Never take short cuts on the quality of your post! I can go weeks without writing a post, but every time I do write one I always take my time and make it attention grabbing! I would rather have 1 post of quality content then rushing out 10 posts of dubious content! The quality of your post determines if your reader will stick to the very end of your post as well as deciding to share with others!

5. Catchy headline!

You want to grab your audience attention with a catchy headline! As well as tell them what the post is about! The content “Above the Fold” should be catchy as well to bring your audience in to read more!

6. Relevant Content!

Try not to go off on wild tangents as this can send you into procrastination and you will lose all hope in completing your post! Focus like a laser beam and stick to the subject in hand! Focus on how the post can be useful for your reader, try and help them out by providing tips or tricks about your subject matter! Make it about them and not so much about yourself!

7. Simple and short!

Not all your audience have degrees from Oxford or MIT.  Try and keep your post as simple as possible so a wider audience can understand and appreciate it! You don’t want them to check the dictionary every five minutes! Long paragraphs can make your audience lose interest as well as make your post look to long and ugly!

8. Professional!

Your post should display how much of a professional writer and blogger you are! The more professional your post looks the more respect and trust you will earn! And it will become more likely that your content will go viral around the globe! Always check your post for spelling and grammar mistakes as silly mistakes will make you look unprofessional! Get another pair of eyes that you trust to proof read your post before publishing as this will help you find things you may have missed!

9. Enjoy!

Above all blogging should be an enjoyable experience both for the reader and you the writer! If you do not enjoy writing a blog post then your audience will not enjoy reading it! Go now, Have fun and start your own blog today!

Well this is the end of my post dear reader! Have I missed something out here or do you wish for me to expand on a point above? On a totally different subject I would like to thank the Famous bloggers team for letting me publish this post on his blog for you all to see and hope to write more content for you guys! Discuss?

However, if you’re just starting out as a site or blog owner, there are plenty of other ways you could be spending your time more constructively. Here are the facts:

• Social media can be an effective marketing tool – AFTER your site is already popular. That’s when your viewers will sign up to your groups, or follow your tweets. Before then, you’re just another unknown quantity!
• When you’re starting out – whether it’s an online business, a niche website, or a website for a brick and mortar company, it’s better to focus on creating amazing content, so that all those visitors you’re sending to your site find something worth looking at!
• If you already have a great site, and you want to drive traffic to it via social media, it’s still going to take a lot of your precious time. There are plenty of freelancers out there who will start and manage your social network presence for you – freeing you up to do other important things to your site.
• Automate it! It’s so easy to add a sharing button or two to your site or blog that allow visitors to your site to share your links on their social media pages. Why go to the added effort of doing it yourself, when you can have the people who are viewing your site sharing your information with their friends for you! If you haven’t already got a button that allows sharing, stop reading right now, and go get one! I’ll wait for you.
• Many people who already have a site (and plenty who don’t) wind up wasting time on social media marketing simply because they have no plan. Instead of spending hours aimlessly wandering social media sites, draw up an online marketing plan. You could aim for 5 new friends each day, 5 new tweets, and to update all of your page and groups. That way, you can get in, and out, without spending ages on each site.
• Choose your sites carefully. Not all social media sites are targeted towards the demographic you want to reach! Marketing trendy clothing for teenagers, for instance, on a professional network like LinkedIn is pointless – about as pointless as trying to market top level business consulting on a site like MySpace! Choose the sites you use to market your business according to the target demographic you want to reach.
• Limit your time! Many business people I know bemoan the amount of time spent answering and sending emails. It eats into their productivity, and results in them achieving far less than they could. My advice is to set aside times – say an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening – to spend on social media marketing and emails. Then stick to it
• Multitask. If you have downloads or uploads to do, do them at the same time as you’re on social network sites. Prepare an email marketing campaign and upload it to your email marketing software, then run it while you are on social network sites. If you can achieve more than one thing while you’re on a social network site, then you’re not really wasting the time.

Focused on the business

As I’ve mentioned earlier in this article, social media marketing can be an effective marketing tool for your website or business. However, that’s when it’s used as a supplement to all of your other marketing efforts, and when you’re actively focused on the business itself too.

No one I have ever heard of has ever created a fantastically popular blog or website based purely on the social media marketing efforts. You need to focus on the site first, and then on the marketing. As the line from the movie Field of Dreams goes, ‘If you build it, they will come!’

learn more about social media marketing

So by all means, learn more about social media marketing. Spend some time figuring out how it all works, and toying with a page or a group or two. But don’t write off what’s important now in favor of gaining fans on Facebook, or connections on LinkedIn.

In order to get comments you need traffic, that’s a given. But even if you’ve already got the traffic, getting them to comment is another story altogether, and it’s a process that starts long before you write that post.

I remember when I first started blogging I had no comments at all. This was OK because I also had no traffic. Then the traffic started to trickle, and then it started to flow. However, I still wasn’t getting comments. I had some, 100 after 20 posts to be exact, but some of them we’re probably spam (I was desperate ) and at least 30 were mine. I needed to do something about the way I blogged, because clearly what I was doing wasn’t working.

I set about changing the way I blogged, both on the site and off of it, and now – with 69 posts and just over 2000 comments I think that whatever I did worked. I’ve looked at what it is that I think has had the most impact on the number of comments I receive and I have broken it down into three Key Elements that I think you need to have as a blogger. This is not about how to drive traffic, or the etiquette of commenting on blogs in general (if you want blog commenting tips check out the ‘Ultimate Guide to Effective Blog Commenting’ here) those topics are far too broad to be covered here anyway. No, this is about the way you blog, and learning to make the process more engaging.

The one not so secret secret to getting comments is engagement, and the key is to engage them in such a way as to promote INVOLVEMENT. Here are the three key elements to getting your readers involved

Personality

I could go on and on about personality, because it has so much pulling power in the blogosphere, and so many bloggers either don’t have it, or leave it at the door when they put their blog hat on. For the new blogger it is understandable, it takes a while to find your own voice amongst the screaming masses. But once you have settled in there is absolutely no excuse for blogging without personality, because what it does is create engaging content – instantly.

Personality is the one ingredient that makes your blog posts stand out. There are only so many topics one can discuss within a specific niche, and chances are someone has already blogged about it before, so the only thing you have left is personality.

The key is to make your readers feel like they have known you for years, because then they’ll happily tell you what they think, in fact they’ll WANT to tell you.

One of the ingredients I often see mentioned when trying to engage readers is to be somewhat controversial. I can understand the reasoning behind this but without personality it’s pointless. If I see a stranger being obnoxious I will go about my way and not worry too much about it, but if I know who that person is, then chances are I will say something.  If you haven’t first shown your readers who you are why are they going to give two hoots about what you think about XYZ? Write in whatever style you like – but make sure you inject some personality into it, otherwise chances are – I’ve seen that post before; and I already commented there.

Engage & Involve your readers

One of the reasons MacDonalds is so successful is that they engage their customers. Whether it’s a simple tray mat activity for the children or the ‘tell us what you think’ form at the counter – the whole process is designed to make you feel like you are a part of their brand, if even for a moment. You want this on your blog and the way to do it is through involvement. It is human nature to be a little tentative about doing something for the first time, in sales this is the reasoning behind the call to action – because it’s getting someone to do something the first time that’s the hard part.
But how do we capture this same ideology on our blog?

Ease them into it. Commenting is a pretty full on exercise if you think about it. You are giving up your email address, website (if applicable) and name so there is a lot for a new  commentator to go through. Provide them with other ways to engage and feel involved.

Polls and surveys are a plug-in away and are a great way to not only get your readers involved, but also to learn something as well. (I highly recommend PollDaddy plug-in, available through your WordPress Dashboard)

Link your posts and create post series. Getting readers into the habit of clicking links within articles is a great way to make them feel more at home when visiting your blog. It’s also a great way to ease them into the eventual affiliate link. Even though it is just clicking links, by including the links you are promoting a sense of involvement in your reader.

Ask questions at the end of the post. But ask open ended questions that provoke thought based on the post. If you just wrote about social bookmarking, for example – then end by asking what social bookmarking tools they recommend? Or what methods they employ? Don’t simply ask if they enjoyed the post.  We are all egocentric at heart, so

Give someone the chance to talk about themselves and you are increasing the likelihood of a response a hundred fold!

Blog layout, widgets, & plug-ins

Your overall blog needs to look inviting. You’d think this was a given, but I have been to many blogs that were going for the butterfly look but ended up with the moth. Making your content easy to find and your overall theme easy to navigate is important in general, but if you want to encourage comments you need to take it that one step further.

WordPress has a plethora of plug-ins designed to promote engagement on your blog so take advantage of them!  Plug-ins like the Top commentators plug-in to increase the link love and appreciation for the commentators, The Tweet MeMe and Digg Digg plugins that allow sharing with that big ol’ ‘look how easy it is to share me’ button – because let’s face it, people are lazy. And of course the now famous CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plug-ins which are VITAL to your blog if you want to encourage comments.

Creating a blog that encourages comments really only comes down to creating opportunities for them to become involved every chance that you get, and making it really easy for them to comment and share your content in the first place. Remember – everyone else wants to be noticed just as much as you do, so just give them a gently reminder that they are welcome to do so on your blog today.

Take for example the following comment made on a recent Famous Bloggers articles that was posted:

Thank you for your helpful voice. Honestly I think someone should write a post about spellchecking and reviewing a post before submitting it as a guest post. Most guest posts I’ve seen (even on other sites) have several mistakes in them, don’t have a clearly defined organization, or just repeat themselves endlessly. Someone needs to set these people straight! (You can find the post and comments ) Link

I agree with Laura Davis, spellchecking is a must not because we are all spellcheck police but because it’s simply the right way to do things. My problem is how do you tell people things like this. Jakes took it well and had his reason for why his post had what some would consider some grammatical and spelling errors. I can’t say for sure Laura’s intentions was to criticize his post and I’m sure she did not mean to be insulting in any way, but some people may take it the wrong way, still I think it’s necessary to mention it, but how to do it is the question.

Who am I to Criticize Anyone?

Really, who am I to criticize someone’s spelling and grammatical errors? I make mistakes too, my grammar is far from perfect and even my spellchecker can make mistakes. But does this mean one can’t point this out when one sees it? I think not, after all would you prefer we ignore the problems of life simply because we create them as well or should we point them out in the hopes we can all eventually correct ourselves as well?

Sometimes people need to see the positive side of what may come across as an insult when pointing out mistakes or contradicting a statement. An open mind is very important in order to make the world a better place because you may think you have a great idea to fix a problem but perhaps someone else has an even better one. The goal is the same so why concern ourselves with who reaches it first?

Sometimes we just have to accept the consequences in order to achieve a positive result

Too often I see people not take it upon themselves to correct a problem because A) they are not personally involved in the problem at the moment or B) they don’t think it’s their responsibility. But if the resolution to a problem can benefit everyone, why not involve yourself even if it had nothing to do with you in the first place?

Constructive criticism can be a good thing as long as the criticism is done with the intentions of helping so not only should the one getting the criticism be less sensitive and more open but the one criticizing should also be more considerate and do it for positive reasons not as a form of insult or attack.

Some Advise for you!

So here is some advise for everyone who enjoys posting articles on their blogs and as guestbloggers:

1. Make sure you reread what you wrote before posting.
2. Spellcheck your article before submitting. Don’t just use the built in spellchecker on what every you use to post the articles, do a visual inspection of your own. There are some words spellcheck may not catch due to grammatical reasons.
3. Check for grammar errors, sometimes I write duplicate words without realizing it or use the wrong past tense form such as the “ed” or the ‘ing” at the end of the word.
4. Check your links to ensure they are correct
5. Make sure the paragraph spacing is good. There are times I post stuff on my blog, do a small edit and for some reason all the paragraph spaces disappear.
6. Read it to yourself before submitting after all the error checking and editing. (this one is said alot )
7. Most importantly, be confident it’s worth the read.

Don’t be afraid!

Don’t be afraid to be criticized. Some may have good intentions to help make you blog better (0therwise how would you know you are doing something wrong); those who don’t can easily be dismissed. Also don’t be afraid to criticize. Do it the right way though. Not everyone will be very receptive but you’d be surprised how many may actually pay attention and even say thank you.

In blogging the only thing that is common in every blogger is that they are blogging, but nothing else is common. However every one has some hidden abilities and expertise that will really make you unique. Finding out those hidden abilities is very important to become the leader in your field. Following tips will help you to differentiate your blog from other blogs.

1. Goals

Every business has there own identical goals, and as blogging is also a business thus you must also define your blog goals. It will make your blog unique and different from several blogs. Goals help you to easily survive and make your own brand.

2. Struggle

The more you struggle, the better result you will get. If you really want to become unique and “the only one” then you must struggle. You must write, post comments, build links, engage your readers, interact with readers and keep promoting your blog.

3. Unique Ideas

The only thing to stand out of the crowd is to come up with unique ideas. Unique mean that are totally new and never discussed in the past. I personally don’t like those blogs who are discussing the same topics. We need some thing new and unique.

It is very important that you must provide unique ideas so that you can establish your own brand in blogging industry.

4. Ethics

Ethics also plays a vital role in your blog success. By ethics i mean that try to develop a very friendly relationship with your readers. In this way every one will talk about you in every social media website. Try to be very energetic and cool minded, respond to every comment and keep engage your readers with your blog.

5. Expertise

The only thing that will actually make your blog unique is your expertise in your field. If you are expert then you can deliver lot of information to your readers. In blogging the only thing to stand out of crowd is to provide quality and unique information to your readers. It will be only possible if you know about your field.

Your thoughts and opinions!

Sunday morning I wrote an article about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. As an afterthought, I checked Google Trends looking for significant keywords to include or tag my post with.

Once found, I added them to my article and posted it to the blog. The hits were fast and furious – for a few minutes, then — nothing.

Here’s a partial screenshot so you can see the times of the hits. Explanation follows.

My article posted at 9:49am – the Google searchbot came by at 9:51am – The 25 hits registered between 9:52am and 10:12am – 24 minutes! That’s how fast things turn over on blogsearch.google.com and
trends.google.com!

That’s a visitor-a-minute… and if just one comes back or subscribes, it’s all good!

So, iIf you’re not doing anything one day, you can select a few hot topics, post them up on your blog and see what will stick!

*** (Keep in mind: my blog is on Google’s blogspot platform, so the search engine responds immediately when I post an article!)

To ping your blog to Google blogsearches worldwide, go to Pingler.com

Follow the instructions… it’s FREE!