Entries Tagged '2 Week Blog Launch' ↓
December 17th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
I created this series of posts about launching a new blog some months back.
During the site redesign, somehow the links to it got knocked off the homepage and I’ve had a few questions from readers asking where it went.
Well, it’s still here - so this post is primarily to link to the different sections.
The multi-part guide covers topics like:
If you find the series helpful, please spread the word. And add your feedback and suggestions to the mix so others will benefit from your wisdom. Thanks.
New here? Please pick up your three FREE gifts - click here. Hope you like them. And drop by often!
September 1st, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog Launch post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Well, it’s finally over! The 2 week long project,
“2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog”
just ended today. It’s been an exciting, fun 2 week overview of the blog launch process.
In all, we’ve had 49 posts and another 11 guest submissions - that’s 60 blog tips for your use when you launch your next blog. In addition to the short guidelines I posted, our guest contributions helped fill any gaps in the structure, and even expanded the scope and horizon of the process.
You now have a blueprint that you can model during the launch of your next blog - in 2 weeks or less!
To quickly recap our discussion, what are your main activites as a blogger?
It will depend on your blogging strategy, but will very likely include some or all of these tasks:
- outlining a cohesive blogging strategy to follow
- finding, creating or outsourcing your content
- designing your blog along the lines of the blogging structure tips
- publishing your blog content, following your blog process
- marketing and promoting your blog to drive traffic to it
- including, monitoring and testing income streams to identify the best ones
- managing elements of SEO
- measuring progress and making course corrections
In addition, 2 other things you must do as a smart blogger include:
- Watching trends, keeping your eye on the big picture, noticing shifts in the blogging environment and in your niche, so you can recognize changes and prepare for them (or even re-orient your business) before circumstances force it upon you.
- Tracking performance, studying your critical numbers and comparing them against past reports to make sure you are progressing and making satisfactory progress along your chosen course. Carefully monitoring these internal trends will help you modify and adapt your strategy to an ever-changing reality.
In summary, these are the tasks and activities that will ensure that your new blog will be fast off the blocks and race away to become wildly successful. There may be tasks in this list that you are already a master at. And there may be a few you don’t do at all, or are not maximizing.
Hopefully this short course and our wonderful guest contribution tips have helped identify areas to improve and solidify so your progress ahead is smooth, fast and profitable.
August 31st, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
SEO Secrets
Basic search engine optimization is something every blog will benefit from. By their architecture, blogs are natually SEO’ed to a great extent - but you can still tweak a few things to your benefit.
Some quick and easy SEO tips for your blog:
- Include your top keywords in post titles
- Work on getting inbound links from other bloggers. You can do this by
- making high quality posts (also called ‘link bait’)
- issuing press releases
- linking back to the blog from your other blogs/websites
- organizing link swaps with other relevant websites
- buying links from high PR websites
The best inbound links are the ones coming from higher ranked sites than your own, relevant to the topic you are writing about and which link to you using relevant keywords.
- Post tightly themed content
- Use simple HTML validated site design
- Keep your posts to modest length (around 250 to 400 words)
- Stay focussed. Keep one post devoted to one topic, or one keyword
- Register the domain name for your blog for at least 2 years
- Make sure your blog has no duplicate content
- Everything else being the same, large content sites are better
- Put your best keywords in your image ALT tags
- Watch your colours. If your text is similar in colour to your backgrounds some search engines will consider this spam
There are many more advanced SEO tricks, but these basics coupled with a high quality content rich blog can bring you serious benefits over competing blogs and websites.
What is your favorite SEO trick or tip that has worked well for you? Please share your thoughts.
August 31st, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Forum Postings
When you make one of the more ‘newsy’ posts, preferably something controversial or provocative or hot at the moment, mentioning it on forums can bring in a surge of visitors to your blog.
Here’s what to do:
- locate an interesting news story or article or opinion/editorial relevant to your niche
- think about what you want to say
- type a short introduction or ‘lead in’ to the material
- copy-paste an excerpt (short paragraph or snippet) from the article or news story or website
- place a link to the rest of the story/article/website
Then, search on Google for forums/discussion groups/bulletin boards on your niche topic. You can do this by searching on Google for ‘Your Niche’ + forums
Pick 3 of the busiest, most reputed, high ranking forums, where many people visit and post regularly.
Visit them, register for an account (use your keywords as your user name and craft your ’signature’ to get some SEO benefit as well - don’t forget to include a link back to your website in the signature)
Now, post a ‘curiosity builder’ message. Use a headline like this:
- Have you read this news about … ? or
- Did you know … ? or
- What did you think about … ?
In the body of your message, make a vague reference to the news story or article you blogged about. Do NOT give out all details, but hint about how important it could be to others in your niche. Then, sign off!
The link to your blog in your signature then acts as their roadsign, bringing visitors to your blog.
Liked this tip? Got any of your own to share? Please post a comment to this message, or blog about it and send me a link to your blog to feature in the list of guest comments.
August 30th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Press releases
Try and look for anything news-worthy about your blog… and draft a press release around it.
The aim of your release is to get reporters interested in doing a follow up story - so you need a ‘hook’ and an ‘angle’.
Learn about writing press releases from excellent online resources like B.L.Ochman’s www.WhatsNextBlog.com and Paul Hartunian’s site www.PaulHartunian.com.
And when you’re done, distribute your press release to sites like PR Web which not only give you publicity but also a high PR inbound link to your blog from a link which you include in the release.
Viral Giveaways
Once you have written some blog posts and have enough original content on hand, you can compile it into a short ebook or report.
So do it - and this will give you another traffic driving vehicle. Create a PDF document with your blog content. Sprinkle it with links pointing back to your blog.
Then give it away to everyone. List it on all free ebook directories you can find. Offer redistribution rights to others in your niche, so they can spread it around.
You might even put a price tag on it to heighten the perceived value. If the quality of your content is high, the ebook could get distributed virally, driving traffic back to your blog.
August 29th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Email your house list
The best way to get a quick burst of traffic to your blog is to send out a short mailing to your in-house list.
This is the best kind of traffic - targeted, trusting, ready to buy or take action.
Working with mailing lists, building trusting relationships and marketing to subscribers is a skill that takes time and experience to acquire and master. But at the very least, sending them a short note to call them back to your blog where you post content valuable to them is a good use of your mailing list - and in time, this alone could be very profitable.
Publish an Email Newsletter
Take the concept of mailing your in-house list a step further by publishing an email newsletter (or ezine).
Instead of just inviting them back to your blog, you could send them valuable content on a periodic schedule, by email.
Publish your ezine on a weekly basis. Include summaries of your blog posts, and useful links you find on forums you visit.
Then, invite readers back to your blog, and your streams of income will kick in - and it all happens via email.
Google Adwords
Google Adwords traffic (and other PPC services) is quick, targeted and guaranteed. It is also expensive.
Only after you’ve tested and tweaked the profit generating parts of your blog process should you invest cash into driving more traffic to your site.
Set up your Google Adwords account. Study all you can about running PPC campaigns.
Run your ads after picking your best keywords for the campaign. Start small. Test and track EVERYTHING.
Cut your losses and let your winners ride. By carefully optimizing the process, one change at a time, you will soon have a profitable, sustainable Adwords campaign that earns you more income than you spend on advertising.
August 29th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is all the rage today.
And there’s a service that makes it quick and convenient to handle multiple bookmarking sites easily.
Go to ONLYWIRE - http://www.OnlyWire.com
On the right side of each form field, you will see a link to the various bookmarking services. Register for accounts with each.
Then, drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s status bar. This will make it easy to bookmark your blogs/sites at all these services.
Each time you update your blog, you can add the individual blog post URL to your social bookmarks - and have it accessible to everyone else who uses those services.
Ezine Ads
This involves spending money - and is not guaranteed.
The response may be great. On the other hand, there may not be any response at all. A lot depends upon how well targeted the ad is to the audience who reads the ezine or email.
Spend some time picking the best ezines to run ads on. Charlie Page’s ‘Directory of Ezines’ is a comprehensive directory and Ezine Articles has a good resource collection too.
Email solo advertising using paid ads, or services like ListDotCom.com and Solo-Ads.com are another option.
Like PPC advertising, the trick to staying profitable is to test small, track carefully and tweak until you have a winner.
August 28th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Blog comments
Done the right way, commenting on other blogs can bring a lot of targeted traffic to your site.
Browse the Web, searching for blogs on your niche. When you find a post that intrigues or interests you, and on which you think you can comment, post a short note - and include a link back to your blog.
Or you may prefer to use the ‘Trackback’ feature to post your comment on your blog, and let the other blog’s owner know you’ve done it.
Either way, you benefit both from a link from a targeted, related blog/website and from traffic that may reach you from the other blog. If you don’t have time or interest doing this, you could outsource this task too.
Article submissions
Write a short article on any topic related to your niche.
It should be between 450 and 600 words, include your main keyword around 4 to 8 times, and maybe have your secondary keywords too.
Try for around 3 to 5 paragraphs, write short simple sentences that are easily understood. Choose topics likely to interest readers in your niche. At the end, craft a catchy ‘author resource box’ mentioning the author’s name, special skills, and something attractive about your blog - with a link back to it.
You could even use keywords in this section to add relevance to the link back to your blog.
If you cannot write an article, you may consider outsourcing it to a writer. Expect to pay between $8 and $15 for a good quality piece.
When you are happy with your article, submit it to the top article directories only. These are good ones to start with:
August 27th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blog MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Using RSS button and email opt in form
By prominently displaying the RSS subscription button PLUS an email opt-in form, you can give your blog readers the twin options of subscribing to future updates via RSS or email.
This serves as a reminder to visit your blog every time you add a new post, and could boost your blog traffic and readership significantly over time.
Blogroll
You (or someone you train) should contact bloggers in your niche who are highly reputed, have busy or high ranked blogs and contain high quality content.
Negotiate an exchange of links by way of including each other on your Blogroll list, which will be mutually beneficial.
It may take some going back and forth, even getting on the phone or writing a letter - but if it works, this could boost your blog’s ranking on search engines higher than most other marketing tasks you will do.
When setting up such linking arrangements, try and get the other blogger to include your choice of keyword as the anchor text of your Blogroll listing, so you get more value from the link.
Strive for a target of 5 quality links per week, and within a year, you could have around 250 links back to your blog - which will go a long way in making your blog an AUTHORITY site in your niche.
August 27th, 2007 — 2 Week Blog Launch, Blogging, Blog
This Blogging MARKETING post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.
Now let’s get into the specific high impact blog marketing methods that are capable of bringing you as many readers as you want or need.
Each tactic works. Not all work equally well, all the time. Most are free, but require you to spend some time and effort to make it happen.
Let’s begin:
Listing in directories
Once you have around 10 to 15 posts on your blog, begin submitting it to specialized blog directories.
Get as many of these done as possible. There are many different lists of directories.
If this takes too much time, outsource it to someone, but get it done. As your blog grows in content, the directories will drive more traffic to it - the sooner you begin the better.
Your blog automatically generates an RSS feed. This allows easy syndication of your blog content to other sites, and lets ’subscribers’ to your blog read it conveniently in a ‘feed reader’.
The quickest, easiest way to extend the reach of your feed is to submit it to various RSS feed directories.
There are hundreds of them - but don’t let that put you off. Start submitting today - and keep going for as many days as it takes to get your feed listed in many places.
Automated software to help you do this is available.
Pinging every blog post
Technorati tags - Read an explanatory article about it here
Technorati tags are a powerful marketing tactic for your blog, bringing you inbound links from an authority site as well as some targeted traffic.
An easy tool to generate Technorati tags for your blog posts is available at Evil Genius Marketing
Use the tool to generate tags for your blog posts. You may use the same common set of tags for all posts, or generate specific keyword rich tags targeted to each individual post you make.
Paste these tags to the end of every blog post before you publish it, and then ping Technorati to let them know you’ve updated it (this will be done automatically if you include Technorati’s RPC code in the list of services you ping)
Many Wordpress templates allow you to generate tags automatically, through plug-ins like Ultimate Tag Warrior - but these are not the same as Technorati tags which specifically ping Technorati (and bring some traffic back!)
Got any tips of your own to share? Please post them here or on your blog.
