1Click Virtual Assistant » Building Better Blog

What Makes Blog a Subscription Magnet

yelena — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:00:51 +0000

I recently cleaned up my blog subscriptions as part of my Getting Organized challenge. Looking through dozens of blogs made me think what is it that makes me want to come back to some blogs and unsubscribe from others.

As I thought about it more, I decided to jot down some of the points. So here we go, in no particular order, what makes me want to continue reading a blog:

A well-defined niche that matches my interests - if a blog is too general or strays off topic often enough, I switch to something else.

Regular updates – I see blogs that go from daily posts to weekly ones or even once every couple of weeks. Worse yet, I see blogs with latest posts being a couple of months old. That’s not good. I might sign up for RSS feed from a infrequently updated blog, but I sure won’t sign up for a blog that appears dead.

Not too many posts – I simply don’t have enough time to read through multiple daily posts from the same blog. Ok, this is not entirely correct. I do make a couple of exceptions, but these are for blogs that are highly visual, with lots of images and links to resources.

Limited monetization – by this I mean promos of blog author’s own products and services or those of her affiliate partners, sponsored posts, etc. Some blogs get downright ridiculous – every link is an affiliate link, every other post is a promotional post, and the blog itself is plastered with banner ads. Yikes!

Great content – I’m not saying it has to be 100% original nowhere-else to be found content (although that’s a big plus). There are a few blogs I follow that have almost no original content, but are more like aggregators. They scout the web for interesting and relevant articles, products, questions, blog posts, images and videos and then put them up on their site, with proper credits and links. But people behind these blogs make sure that whatever they select to publish is really and truly great content!

Great presentation – images help, but I’m talking more about proper formatting - short paragraphs, lots of visual markers (sub-headers, lists) that help me to scan your content quicker. Some say blog posts shouldn’t be any longer than 500-600 words. My thought on this that it’s not so much the length of the post as the information value it carries.

Full posts in RSS feed – some blogs’ RSS feeds are configured to only show a post summary. You have to click on the link to the original post to read the full article. That’s very annoying. I understand why it’s done, but I still don’t like it. A blog better be really outstanding and the summaries are very enticing for me to continue subscribing to and reading it in this case.

Links to resources – my favorite blogs, the ones that I’ve been reading for over a year, have lots of these. Some have links to and reviews of books. Others point to events, happenings, webinars, etc. Others regularly put up helpful documents, checklists, templates, and reports for download and make them absolutely unconditionally free (they don’t even ask for an e-mail). Yet others post step-by-step instructions or upload how-to screencasts. And most of the blogs I subscribe to link to other great blogs.

With all this in mind, I’ll be taking a good hard look at my own blog. I’m sure there are things I can do much better that would address at least some of the issues I mentioned. If you have some blogging pet peeves, let me know!

Technorati Tags: blogging, business blog

What Makes Blog a Subscription Magnet is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Am I the Only One Reading This Blog

yelena — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:00:43 +0000

Am I here alone? Does anyone bother reading this?

If you write a blog that doesn’t seem to be getting much action, you probably ask yourself these questions quite often. Do you care to find out the answer? If yes, then there are a couple of ways to figure out how many people read your writing.

Quick and Dirty – Google Reader – it’ll take just a few seconds to get the results, but they might be rather off. Open Google Reader and click on Browse for Stuff link, then on Search and enter your blog’s name or URL in the Search by Keyword field.

Exact Science – a combination of Feedburner and Google Analytics.

Feedburner – go to www.feedburner.com and login with your Google ID and password. First, you’ll need to burn your blog’s feed, if you haven’t done so already. Then give Feedburner 24 hours to do its magic. Log in the next day (or a few days later) and the first thing you’ll see is the number of subscribers for each of your feeds.

Google Analytics – analyze the number of visitors, absolute unique visitors, average time on site (longer time would likely mean more reading gets done) and bounce rate (higher bounce rates mean less reading or even skimming)

And now you know how many people regularly read your blog (subscribe to it) and some other stats. Frankly, my numbers are absolutely crushingly abysmal. At some point, just a couple of months ago, I had 15 subscribers. But somewhere along the way I lost all but one of them, between not posting regularly and not writing stuff that would be of interest to my readers. Oh, and I changed the blog’s URL and its RSS feed at some point in the last few months.

The lesson learned, of course, is to never let your blog go! It takes a lot of time and effort to win new followers. Another huge lesson is to do things right the first time with setting up the blog and the feed. But if that’s not possible, then at least be very careful about making drastic changes.

So now here I am writing this post knowing that it is eagerly anticipated by an audience of one. First of all, to my one and only subscriber, whoever you are, lots of love and a huge THANK YOU! Thank you for choosing to continue reading my posts even with all the changes and breaks in service.

Second, I will continue writing this blog and making it better. Isn’t it just a waste of time? Well, I don’t think so. And here’s why:

I enjoy brainstorming ideas for new posts and writing them (even though I have less and less time for this)
I remain very optimistic that not only will I be able to get back to my previous record of 15 subscribers, but will surpass it.
I work on my writing – as a virtual assistant specializing in content writing, I want to use this blog as a test ground not only for my ideas, but for post formats, topics, headlines, writing techniques, etc.
It wins me clients – interestingly, most of my clients either found me through my blog or made up their mind about using my services based on my blog posts. In other words, my blog is part of my portfolio and as such it’s been working very well.
It helps me grow my list – I might not have many subscribers (again, a big shout out and a THANK YOU to my lone ranger out there whoever you are). Yet my blog keeps popping up in searches for relevant keywords (how do I know? I check Google Analytics and yes, occasionally Google my keywords). People look for answers, come to my blog and download my info product.

All these reasons do keep me going. And now I feel pretty pumped up about the direction my business is taking and the niche I’m carving for myself based on the feedback I get from my blog (yes, blog statistics is a great feedback).

Technorati Tags: business blog, virtual assistant, blog writing

Am I the Only One Reading This Blog is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Get a Blueprint for Your Business Blog

yelena — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:00:49 +0000

I wouldn’t be the first to say that one can learn much more from failures than from successes. When I started my first business blog, I failed pretty miserably at it, but learned a few good lessons. Some were strategic, some – tactical, and others – operational (yes, it was a bit of everything).

One of the tactical mistakes was relying 100% on spontaniety when writing blog posts. Here’s what happened. I had a very good idea (or so I thought) of what to write about. I jumped in and banged out my first 10 posts in my first 2 weeks.

Then it got a bit harder to come up with fresh ideas for blog posts. As a result my posting frequency plummeted. I don’t think I managed to post more than once a week after the first month. And then there were weeks when I didn’t write anything at all.

Oh, I remember sitting in front of my computer just staring at the blank screen… Then again, I would get a really good idea in a car on the way to pick up my son or while I was shopping or at a networking event. Guess what – by the time I’d get home and turn on my PC, I’d forget most of my ideas.

That was before I learned about mindmaps and editorial calendars. I previously wrote about using mind mapping tools to stay organized. The same concept can be applied to organizing ideas for a blog. So even before I set up this blog, I spent time creating a blueprint for it – a mindmap (click on the map below to enlarge).

Over time this mindmap went through several revisions and changes. My first map was more of a “brain dump” than a blueprint. But that’s the beauty of a mindmap – it can be very flexible and will, if well-maintained, reflect changes in your ideas, strategies and steps you plan to take.

If you need a template to build your blog’s mindmap, then I highly recommend checking out Dragos Roua’s blog mapping post. As you can see, my map closely matches his (unintentionally). There are several differences though:

Posts section – I used to put all my posts (and ideas for the new ones) into the mindmap, but quickly gave up. It was simply too cumbersome and time-consuming for me. Plus, for balancing and scheduling purposes I needed something more linear than a mindmap when it came to tracking individual posts. More on this a bit later.
Headline section – again, not something that I use (but it’s a great idea). I only open my map about once every couple of weeks, so I keep the headline in a different document (again, more on this – later).
Far-out ideas – this is something I added very recently to my map (and for several reasons prefer to keep very private). These are strange, untested, unthought-through, very ambitious and otherwise “far-out” ideas that I might implement in some form in the future. Essentially, it’s a future-oriented brain dump.

One thing I mentioned was that keeping individual posts’ titles and ideas in this map did not work for me. Instead, I now keep a separate editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is simply a calendar of topics (and possibly titles) you want to blog about over the next few months.

I prefer keeping mine in Google Docs so I can access it from anywhere. Also, I prefer to keep it as simple as possible. I update this calendar with actual titles and post URLs once a week (see below).

Even if you only post 2-3 updates each week to your blog, you’ll find that an editorial calendar can help

Keep track of ideas - remember how I said I’d get some good ideas and then forget about them before the day was over? Not any more. Now I jot them down on pieces of paper (post-its, backs of business cards, etc) and transfer into my calendar at the end of the day.

Brainstorm – once I start putting post ideas down in the calendar, new ones start popping up. It’s kind of like microwaving a back of popcorn – takes a bit to warm up, but then it’s like pop-pop-pop – next thing I know, I have enough ideas for a couple of months.

See patterns and balance – reviewing the calendar will help you notice interesting patterns in your posts. It helped me come up with an idea for the Best for Last category a few months ago. You also get a bird’s eye view of category usage – which ones are being neglected and which ones get too much attention.

Keep your marketing channels in synch – if you use several content-heavy channels in your marketing – newsletter, direct e-mails, articles, online groups, etc - it makes sense to synch them with your blog. You’ll get a couple of benefits from this. One is by re-using, repurposing, and expanding your blog posts you’ll spend a lot less time coming up with content. Another one is the message you send to your audience will be a lot more consistent.

In my experience, it really pays off to take some time upfront to draw a blueprint for a blog and build an editorial calendar for at least a couple of months.

Technorati Tags: business blog, mind map, editorial calendar, blog calendar

Get a Blueprint for Your Business Blog is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

5 Tips for Better Blogging

yelena — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Blogging is great – it’s inexpensive to start and your content can be easily syndicated and distributed, again at little cost. Tracking results of your blogging efforts seems fairly easy as well - just get Google Analytics, subscribe to Feedburner and put an opt-in form with a free download. Mission accomplished!

And then you check your analytics report and see only a handful of visitor. Your Feedburner shows no subscribers at all. And you have to go to page 15 of Google Search to see your blog. What’s going on?!

Learning the basics of blogging takes fairly little time. That’s why so many people can get into it. But it takes years of experience to get really good at it. There are hundreds of tips and tricks to help you get better results. Some of the most fundamental ones include these 5.

Avoid Duplicate Content issue

Assign each blog post to only one category and instruct the search engine spiders to not read duplicate content (archives, categories, comments) by making changes to the robot.txt file. Go

Optimize Each Post for Keywords

Choose 2-3 keywords from your list of target keywords for each post. Include one keyword (or phrase) in the post’s title and as close to the beginning of the first paragraph as possible. Distribute the rest throughout the text, aiming at 1-2 keywords in each paragraph.

Make Blogposts Easy to Scan

Most of the blog readers don’t actually read, but scan through content. Complicated sentences and long paragraphs make such scanning very difficult. Instead, aim for short and simple sentences. Keep paragraphs short as well and use lists and subtitles to help guide your readers.

Make Blogposts Easy to Share

There are some great plugins there, such as Sociable and ShareThis, that allow your readers quickly share your posts via e-mail or by submitting them to favorite bookmarking sites and social networks.

Syndicate Your Blog

Without promoting your blog, even the best content will go undiscovered and unread. Make sure that your ping list is set up; claim your blog on Technorati; show updates in your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts; and post links to your posts on Twitter. Consider setting up blog broadcasts through an e-mail management services such as AWeber or ConstantContact.

Technorati Tags: business blog, blog promotion, blog optimization

5 Tips for Better Blogging is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

How Often to Post to a Business Blog?

yelena — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:00:59 +0000

Q: How often should I post to my business blog? Many blogs I subscribe to get updated at least daily and sometimes several times a day. With everything else I have to do, I simply don’t have time to post this often.

A: Most Internet marketing gurus agree that posting frequency is a lot less relevant to your blog’s success than quality content optimized for your keywords. But you are more likely to keep your subscribers… well, subscribed if you maintain a consistent posting schedule whether it’s once a day or once a week.

Actually, very frequent posts might be a turn off for your readers because they feel overwhelmed and/or your content’s quality drops since you have less time to research and write each entry. I am subscribed to a couple of blogs that get updated way to often for me; I simply don’t have time to keep up with such volume, so I don’t read them any more.

Many new blogs tend to start out strong strong with daily posts. But after a few weeks or months gaps start to appear – a few days here, a week there, 2-3 weeks of silence followed by 3-4 posts in one day.

However often you decide to post, you should stick to it. This might be a tough thing to do if you decide to update very frequently. You might run out of ideas even before you run out of time. But as many blog writers and readers know, blog-reading and writing is a habit and as any other habit, requires regularity to really stick.

business blog, writing for blog

How Often to Post to a Business Blog? is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Technorati Tags: business blog, writing for blog

Does My Business Need a Blog?

yelena — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:44:18 +0000

Q: It seems like everyone has a blog and I feel like I’m really missing the boat here! I’ve read up a bit about business blogs, but I’m still not sure if I need one. I don’t want to end up wasting the little spare time that I have.

A: If the only reason you are thinking about starting a blog is because “everyone does it”, you are heading for a big disappointment. Instead, think of what business goals are you trying to achieve. These might include

educating potential clients about your products and services
generating traffic to your website
building your reputation as a subject-matter expert in your niche
creating an outlet for a two-way conversation with your customers
showcasing your work
selling your products and services

Depending on your goals, you might find out other marketing channels that will be more effective and efficient than a blog. After all, there are other, possibly less costly or time consuming ways to reach your goals. This is especially important for small business owners and solopreneurs who are short on both time and money.

Starting a blog is relatively simple and inexpensive, even if you get it designed from scratch. But you have to be prepared for a long-term commitment of your time and creativity.

Once your blog is set up, you’ll need to regularly write content that is relevant to your business, helps you achieve your goals, and that is interesting enough to attract and retain readers. You will also need to optimize your blog and its content and promote it. There is a learning curve for all these tasks.

So before you invest time and possibly money into a blog, make sure that you enjoy writing (write 2-3 posts in MS Word first to see how long it would take you), have enough to say (brainstorm at least a dozen ideas that can be turned into posts), and have enough time (to write, research, and maintain blog).

Technorati Tags: business blog, writing for blog

Does My Business Need a Blog? is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant

Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com?

yelena — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:55:51 +0000

Q: I’m thinking about starting a business blog. Should I be using Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com? And what’s the difference anyway?

A: When I first started my blog, I would inevitably get a “deer in headlights” look any time someone mentioned hosting services, FTP transfers, HTML and similar techno-speak. There was also the issue of money. Third-party hosting is not terribly expensive, but it’s not free either. And I was trying to stick to my ”no-budget” budget.

So when I first read on Wordpress that you can start a Wordpress.com blog in less than 1 minute (nothing to install) and for free, I was totally sold! I started my first blog right there and then. It was easy to maintain, very powerful, and considering very little effort that I put promoting it, attracted an ok traffic. And did I mention it was absolutely free?!

However, based on my personal experience, I would strongly recommend you to go with a self-hosted blog instead. As it turns out, with a Wordpress.com blog, you can’t

fully brand a blog;

have a short and professional-looking URL (it will always be http://yoursite.wordpress.com)

upload useful plugins and widgets that make life easier for both you and your readers;

install Google Analytics or any other third-party analytics program to track your performance;

explore all the options for monetizing (making money from) your blog.

After a few months of hitting these kinds of road blocks with my first blog, I decided to get over my fear of techno-speak and get a self-hosted blog instead. Luckily, many hosting services now offer one-click Wordpress installation through Fantastico Deluxe. With this service installing a self-hosted Wordpress blog is very easy and quick.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress.com blog, business blog, Wordpress, Wordpress.com

Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com? is a post from: 1Click Virtual Assistant