by Ryan Biddulph | Blogging, Guest Posts |
This is a guest post by Ryan Biddulph. He shares smart blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise.
One thing you quickly learn; successful bloggers step forward daily. Hyper successful bloggers ALWAYS step forward and rarely step back in fear. For example, daily, I publish 10-12 posts because I learned from pros to keep edging forward a little bit day.. Between my blog and guest posts, I hit double digits every single day these days. That is stepping forward.
Every day, 10 more posts point to me, my name and my brand to help you rocking readers out there. Bingo! We both win. I love that.
Stepping forward positions you to succeed.
Stepping forward allows me to experience greater blogging success because doing so increases my exposure, grows my traffic and profits. Stepping forward positions you to succeed. Succeeding allows you to live your dreams, through blogging. My content helps you. You help me. We all help each other because we collectively step forward.
Bloggers usually step backward way too often.
Imagine writing and publishing one blog post. Awesome. Count that as a step forward. See the content expanding your reach, a little bit. But then you spend zero time blogging for the next 3 weeks. For 504 hours, you chose NOT TO BLOG. That means you took 21 steps backward.
The one post published disappears into oblivion because no one reads it or sees it past the first 2-3 days, because you stepped backward once, twice, then 21 times, spending 0 minutes blogging over a 3 week period.
Now imagine 3 weeks down the road. You took 1 step forward and 21 steps backward, so you are 20 steps behind where you could have been, if you began blogging 5 hours daily, 3 weeks ago. No sense crying over spilled milk, you blogging kitten, you. No sense regretting the past.
Blog now. Begin again, now. Start now, again.
Hey; at least you have one blog post in your cyber arsenal, right? At least you write blog post #2. Write. Publish. Good job. You took one blogging step forward. Congrats on being 19 steps behind. But then you take off 1 month from blogging, which equals taking 28 steps backward. Now, you are 47 steps behind where you should be, if you blogged 5 daily for the past 7 weeks of your life.
Blogging simply gives you what you give blogging.
So….if you step backward, you fail and quit. If you step forward, you succeed and live your dreams. But you want to step forward for 4 to 12 hours daily for the next 5000 hours to go full time and to live your dreams in a spectacular way. Spectacular results grow out of taking simple steps forward every day for many years of your life. Simple accumulates to spectacular. Simple builds up something fun, freeing and special.
Plus you need to create and connect generously for those 5000 hours. Plus you need to trust. No panicking and bailing allowed, because every time you panic and bail, you take steps backward, making your job that much tougher and delaying your success by that many more months.
Step forward.
Spend 2-4 hours creating and connecting generously today.
Then, spend 4 hours generously creating and connecting tomorrow. Then, 4 hours generously creating and connecting, the next day. Work done today, is work you never need to do again. Sure you work again tomorrow and do similar things, but the stuff you did yesterday to build your foundation for today never needs to be done, again.
Have you ever pondered blogging in this fashion? My friend Julie Syl Kalungi taught me this concept. I love it. Do the work today. Complete today’s work. Allow the work to work for you. Let it go. It lays a foundation for a successful blogging campaign and you never need to do that specific foundation laying, again, because those specific building blocks, those bricks, well, ya placed ’em.
Tomorrow, you add bricks to the bricks you already placed. All because you only take steps forward in love and service, even if it feels scary, to keep moving forward…..and to never step backward.
Step…..forward!
Never step backward.
Be led by your dreams. Do not be bullied by your fears into stepping backward. Remember why you blog. Seize that fun, freeing reason to wade through fears and to never step backward in fear, ever again.
I believe in you guys.
Let’s step forward together, shall we?
by Ryan Biddulph | Blogging, Guest Posts |
This is a guest post by Ryan Biddulph. He shares smart blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise.
One of the toughest lessons to learn in blogging is that you need to BE a successful blogger before becoming a successful blogger.
Thinking, feeling and acting like a pro before going pro feels like an uncomfortable quantum leap for most bloggers. How can you feel like a pro and blog with posture if you see virtually no positive returns for your hard blogging work?
Work comes before getting rewards. Most of you know this basic blogging truth. But dealing with emotional turmoil during the work process feels overwhelming sometimes. How does it feel to work gratis for 5 months to see zero profits?
Sometimes you feel OK working for free. Part of the game. Other times, you feel frustrated working for free because people feel accustomed to getting paychecks for work completed. We tend to be employees during some stage of life.
Goodness knows I was in that blogging boat for a bit. I felt OK working for free sometimes. But I felt frustrated to work for free, most of the time. I thought like an employee; work to get paid. Blogging is a different game, though. Work to gain skills, exposure and credibility. Pay days arrive down the road.
Blogging is being a successful blogger and doing as success does before seeing tangible, real world success. Bloggers work like millionaires before making millions. Bloggers work like millionaires while earning 0 bucks or 100 bucks or maybe 10,000 bucks.
Put in work. Be patient. Be persistent.
All this pro blogger BEING leads to you SEEING pro blogging results down the road. How far down the road? Who knows? Not decades. But suffice to say, months to years pass because going pro requires thousands of blogging hours before your skills, exposure and credibility increase to professional levels.
I developed the skill of seeing a few trees growing into a forest, blogging-wise. I counted seemingly small wins to feel good about being the pro before becoming the pro. Feeling good about every visitor and penny in blogging profits influenced me to feel successful. Feeling successful goaded me to keep doing as pro bloggers do: create, connect and self-promote my multiple streams of income.
Sure I ran into blogging bumps in the road masquerading as my fears but I faced, felt and released these energies to continue being a professional blogger before going pro.
Do you BE a pro blogger daily?
If you see success you BEed a pro for many thousands of hours. Being a pro means generously creating, connecting, opening multiple income streams and trusting in self and process. Imagine having immense posture. See yourself succeeding well before physical, actual, tangible success finds you. Cultivate a knowing that success is yours.
Patiently keep being a pro well before you go pro. No one goes pro and sees pro dough until you work like a pro for a sustained period of time. Being precedes seeing. No way you see pro blogging success in traffic and money terms until you be the pro for years.
Imagine you intend to maximize your blogging profits.
Being preceding seeing means you BE the pro generously and genuinely for a time before seeing the profits boost. Nothing happens overnight. Expect a hefty lag to exist because lags bridge being and seeing. Lags give clarity to the process. Lags weed out lazy bloggers. Lags allow blogging cream to rise to the top. Lags cull deluded bloggers who try to get rich quick or seek overnight success.
No such fallacies exist. You BE as successful bloggers BE, generously creating and connecting, then, over time, you SEE more traffic, profits and business from your blogging efforts. The process is logically simple to follow but emotionally uncomfortable to follow sometimes because facing fear is never comfortable, pleasant or seamless. No one enjoys feeling fear. But….welcome to going pro.
Keep being and you will eventually keep seeing. Be the pro and pro blogging results find you after working diligently and persistently. Nobody takes free rides. We all put in work to blog successfully. No shortcuts exist. Never let bloggers fool you. Hacks do not exist. Good old fashioned hard work exists. That’s just the way that it is.
Be it before you see it.
by Sue-Ann Bubacz | Blogging, Guest Posts |
This is a guest post by contributing author and content writer Sue-Ann Bubacz. Today Sue-Ann shows us how we can make our blogs matter for business.
If you’re a business website owner, having a blog gives you an opportunity to establish yourself, business, and brand as an authority in your industry. But credibility is only the tip of the iceberg for the benefits of having a living, breathing blog for your site’s activity hub.
A blog run properly allows you to:
- stay top-of-mind for customers,
- grow your reputation, and
- get in front of new potential business opportunities.
A blog is your digital content hub, anchoring your valuable content. It’s also the welcome wagon to your business. And, an excellent way to introduce the world to your business personality, products, and services. Your blog is a central touchpoint for people to find out about you. And, if handled wisely, it can lead to new customers and ongoing work.
But a business blog is a BIG JOB! Plus, there’s a lot more to it than merely publishing blog posts. If that is, you want your blog to power up your Marketing Machine. Your blog fuels effective Content Marketing to gain sales and deliver results for your business.
The way I see it, both your website and blog are key components in your valuable digital presence. And both, ultimately, are part of your larger marketing strategy and a way to build your business in the digitally connected world.
If you have a website and not a blog, the connectivity part of your digital connection hits a disconnect. Stop. In case you’ve been sleeping over the winter, you’re obviously aware that marketing today is customer-driven more than ever in history.
And what this means to you, dear business owner, is people want to connect via your digital channels. Connecting, I hate to remind you, is a two-sided discovery, so your stagnate blog-less web presence just won’t cut it in 2020.
[bctt tweet=”Having a blog gives you an opportunity to establish yourself, business, and brand as an authority in your industry.” via=”no”]
Your Blog is An Extension of Your Business
Positioning your blog to market your business isn’t that hard to do. Your bigger business picture gives you a framework for developing a blog content strategy that aligns with your company’s mission and goals.
Make sure you hone in on a core message to differentiate your business and communicate your brand (product or service) with clarity, consistency, and universally.
Establish a singular (exact) understandable message so anyone who hears your name will know exactly what you’re about.
With business objectives to guide your content, selecting key categories for your blog and finding topics flows easily, as well as helps you structure your site’s architecture for ease of use.
Of course, ease of use is one of the “people-pleaser, your customers market for you,” aspects of your blog design, but it also addresses search engine needs. SEO or search engine optimization is part of website and blog marketing so adopting content maps to reinforce what your site is about, helps people and search engines find and understand you. And that’s important!
As a bonus, using these content structuring techniques also help you develop a viable content strategy for your business blog. Take a look at these pro resources to get you going:
Don’t get too hung up on SEO though, especially at first, because other factors matter, and in this SEO Basics post, Andy Crestodina explains what I mean. He talks about important search factors like:
- Authenticity, authority, credibility
- Keyword phrases coupled with quality content = enormously relevant content
- Social signals/user impacts
Content Clusters to Drive Clarity
Grouping your content by using any of these techniques, forces you to dig deeper into any given topic, but helps you narrow your focus at the same time. I like the idea of thinking about the pillar content page (or some people prefer all posts) or cornerstone content pieces to also skew to evergreen as well, if at all possible. This gives you a sturdy long-term anchor for the central or hub piece of content for each key topic.
Remember to keep user-intent in your mind for the content you create so that the content is always helpful and answers questions people are looking for via search. Keep track of questions your customers or clients often ask, questions you see in industry groups, or questions that relate to one another.
Offer original ideas or unique perspectives highlighting your expertise and allowing you to stand out in your industry. It’s hard to bring something new or unique to the conversation but, that’s an essential element to good share-worthy content. Publishing shallow content for content’s sake is never a good idea or winning method.
While it’s great to offer content as a media mix, it’s also a good idea to start with one type of content where you excel and then build from there, adding as you go and grow.
Additionally, in my opinion, all content starts with solid writing skills at its foundation. So start there. Maybe this post on my favorite writing apps on my friend, Saurabh’s, website will give you some helpful writing tools to try out! No matter what, it’s never too soon to start grabbing ideas, saving resource links, and reading.
The more you start thinking, and the more content-aware you are, the better things will go when you plan and implement your successful business blog.
[bctt tweet=”Offer original ideas or unique perspectives highlighting your expertise and allowing you to stand out in your industry.” via=”no”]
Unique is No-Repeat
There’s one thing you need to be aware of and maybe, beware of, in mapping out your content plan and digging in from every single angle. Cannibalizing your content by having the same keyword or keyword phrase means you are competing against yourself (on your site!) for ranking for a word or phrase. This isn’t good practice, but you may not have known about this, or it may even be happening by mistake, so please note this now.
Julia McCoy of Express Writers talks about the topic in this video.
If you find you have duplicate use of keywords or phrases on your site, Julia suggests you:
1- update and merge content into a single stronger piece… combine into the best (strongest) one to make it even better quality.
Hint: 301 redirects from the URL you are getting rid of… change meta/title, etc as needed to improve.
Hint: Find and redirect all 404 or other bad links to the relevant and current pages on topics.
2- use a tool like screaming frog to audit your entire set for 404 and other content delivery problems, duplicate kw, etc. …upgrade and update for better site ROI.
Keep this in mind because you don’t want to dilute your content punch. Use a specific content hierarchy instead to solve this issue.
Additional Resource: Yoast on Content Audit Strategy and Cannibalization
If you follow methods for site structure, aligning content with business goals and objectives, and resolve to craft helpful and original content, plus strive for relevancy, you’re on the right track.
Is your blog a go?
by Frank McKinley | Blogging |
This is a post by contributing author Frank McKinley. Today he shares with us how you can reduce your bounce rate and present content the way people like to read it.
You’ve only got ten seconds.
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by Frank McKinley | Blogging, Writing |
This is post by Frank McKinley. He is a writer, published author and writing coach. Today Frank shares with us helpful strategies for writing better headlines.
Your headline is the most important sentence of every blog post you write.
So when should you write it?
Write it beforehand and you can use it as a writing prompt.
Write it afterward and it will point to your best idea.
Whenever you write it, remember this:
You can only have one main idea.
Formulas are great, but…
Headline templates are a Google search away.
Grab a good list and you can fill in the blank with whatever you’re writing about.
Here’s a few of mine:
J.K. Rowling’s Advice for Writers With Big Dreams
How to Find and Develop Your Unfair Advantage as a Writer
Stop Feeling Guilty That Your Writing Isn’t Perfect
Formulas are great tools. Your headlines will be better when you use them. But it’s even more important to know why they work.
Here are three reasons.
Make a promise.
What promise do those three headlines make?
If J.K. Rowling is giving you advice, you better listen.
An unfair advantage? Sounds a bit sketchy, but who wouldn’t want an advantage?
I don’t have to feel guilty? I’m so ready for that.
The first promise is about status. You can raise yours if you do what J.K. suggests.
The second is about maximizing something you already have (but don’t know about). Success means attention for writers – and possibly money.
The third promises relief. Guilt can be heavy – so heavy it makes you want to run and hide, give up, and do anything to make it go away. Get rid of it and you free yourself to write your best.
What promise can you make?
Use appealing words.
The best way to get people to click your headlines is to evoke their emotions.
Trigger words like guilt, success, happiness, and money appeal to most of us. We all want to be happy, healthy, and wealthy.
Write 10, 20, or even 30 headlines for your post. Then take a break. When you return, forget that you wrote them. Ask yourself, which of these moves me to do something?
If you’re really ambitious, see which headline gives you goosebumps.
That’s the one.
I know it sounds manipulative. But let’s face it. There are countless choices out there. You’ve got to be audacious to get noticed.
Use words that move people.
Have a specific reader in mind.
You’d love everyone to read your posts, wouldn’t you?
Don’t worry. Everyone won’t.
That’s okay. You want to be specific. When your writing sounds like a friend’s voice, people will listen.
My three headlines are for writers. I want to build a library they can read and benefit from.
I can’t do that if I water down my words to reach the masses.
Consider this. When the President speaks, he speaks to the masses. But he’s speaking to specific issues. He’s appealing to a specific point of view. Some will love it; others won’t.
Make your headlines meaningful to particular people and you’ll get clicks.
Do This Now
Before you write your next blog post, set aside 15 or 20 minutes to craft your headline.
First, choose your main idea. Limit it to one thing. Take a deep dive into why it matters. Make a list of the idea’s benefits.
Next, pick a standout benefit and write headlines from it.
Write as many different headlines as you can. Play with the words. Inject some emotion into them. The most powerful ones are pleasure and pain.
And be sure to throw in some urgency for good measure.
The more you do this, the better you’ll get.
With these strategies, you’ll attract all the readers you could ever want. Good luck!
Let’s hear from you!
What strategy do you use for creating attention grabbing headlines?
by Ryan Biddulph | Blogging, Guest Posts |
This is a guest post by Ryan Biddulph. He shares smart blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise.
I want to help you learn a lesson I had to learn, to succeed.
No one can outrun their self image. I care not if you work 15 hours daily. It matters not if you generously serve people. I do not even care if you trust in the process. If you see yourself as a certain person, you will be that certain person, until you change your self image.
Why? Where your attention and energy goes, grows.
Give your energy to being a broke, struggling loser and it shall be so. Give your energy to being an abundant, victorious winner and it shall be so. Life follows your self image. You choose how to see yourself and more key, how to feel.
My Deal
10 years ago, I feared life. I was a scared security guard living mainly to get a paycheck. After being fired from my job I decided I would never work for anybody again because I became sick and tired of working 60 hour weeks and 18 hour shifts at times. I hated being bound. I hated NOT being free.
Through the power of a firm, definite decision, I slowly but surely saw myself as a blogger the day I bought my domain and hosting. Hell yeah I made scary, highly uncomfortable decisions. I wished to quit on Day 1 of my blogging career; I panicked and wanted out.
My wife eased me off of the ledge. 10 years later, here we are. But i needed to see myself as a blogger to think, feel and act like a blogger. Thinking, feeling and acting like a blogger helped lay the foundation for sweet blogging results, down the road, at least.
I gradually felt like a blogger so I did as a blogger does. Imagine if I felt like a security guard? No matter how hard and long I worked at blogging, I would fail forever because I would eventually self-sabotage or flat out struggle mightily because a security guard succeeds as a security guard, not as a blogger. Why? Where your attention and energy goes, grows.
One common self image mistake often spotted involves full time employees who see themselves as full time employees terrified to invest time, energy and money in a part time blogger career.
This crowd thinks, feels and acts like full time employees, so the full time employee reality continues to be their life until they think, feel and act like a blogger. Nobody outruns their self image because how you see yourself dictates how others treat you and how you live your life.
Change the Self Image
Spend time in quiet. Play with an image of your dream life in mind. Relax. Allow a calm, peaceful, empowered image of self come to mind. How does it feel? Remember that feeling. Carry that feeling with you. Listen to silent instructions.
Only you can build your self image because it is a “self” image, or, how you choose to see yourself. If you struggle with blogging or writing or any aspect of your online business, change your self image from struggling to successful. See yourself as a current day, successful blogger in mind, versus seeing yourself in your prior profession.
I never could have retired to a life of island hopping if I saw myself as a struggling, fired security guard. I never could outwork or outrun that self image. Changing the image to being a pro blogger quickly influenced me to think, feel and act like a pro blogger, well before I became a pro blogger.
As within, so without.
