Massive Money Maker

This is a guest contribution from freelance writer, Ayelet Weisz.

A big part of the pro blogger dream is to be your own boss. No more office politics, competitions with colleagues or having to prove yourself to someone who reaps all the benefits of your hard work. You’ll set your own rules and live life your way.

Yet if you’ve never had to be accountable to yourself on a large-scale, long-term project, you might find yourself overwhelmed.

1. Unrealistic expectations. If you don’t know your own limitations, you could end up planning to invest too little time or leaving too little flexibility in your budget. You could also work yourself to exhaustion.

2. Getting lost. Being a full-time blogger leaves you plenty of opportunities to get lost – online, in sleep, in your own fears.

3. Missing tools and skills. There are lots of skills to master and tools to learn – not only in your chosen field of blogging, but in business management, time management, marketing – and the list goes on.

Do You Have The Skills?

Fortunately, tools and skills to be a successful full-time blogger are learnable. You need to incorporate the process of learning into your business plan, and don’t despair if you find yourself taking longer in one step or another. Instead, relish in your blogging journey and, as you challenge yourself, remember to give yourself a break.

Would You Hire You?

Few jobs will take you in without an interview – and your blogging business should be one of them. You must define the job before you can find out if you’ve got the right stuff.

You need to research what it means to run a full time blog and own a business, how to live on fluctuating income, what kind of marketing strategies are usually used, and where you could break the marketing rules to help your blog shine.

Read sites and magazines about your chosen niche, as well as general sites about professional blogging (like Problogger!), entrepreneurship and small businesses.

Once you have a vision of what your daily and annual life could look like, ask yourself the tough questions:

• Are you ready to get started on the job?
• Which areas require more learning, practise, tools or expertise?
• What could you do with the skills you have right now to start building your blog?

Just as importantly, put on the interviewee’s hat – and ask yourself if you even want the position.

Go on at least one good course

Getting educated is valuable in gaining a deeper understanding of what you’re getting yourself into, as well as to speed up the process. Your chosen course, or several courses, might be about getting certification or about improving through feedback you’d get from professionals on your creative work. It might be about writing, marketing, business management or creating more self confidence in your life.

You could choose to learn all these aspects or some. You could learn them one by one or mix them together. You could decide learning is another business task, like marketing – or you could set aside a concentrated learning time before you take your first practical step in building your blog.

While you’ll likely keep on learning as you develop your blogging business, it’s easy to get caught up in the learning and never take a step beyond that.

Give yourself a deadline for when you absolutely have to go register your business or pitch a guest post for the first time.

Do You Have The Budget?

Importantly, remember that you need to save money in advance and put it aside to cover the cost of the course and the hours of paid work that you might miss.

Don’t forget to budget enough time for implementation either – homework tends to take longer than what you first expect.

Do You Need a Mentor?

At times, it’s recommended to hire a mentor even if you took a course or few. With a mentor, you’ll be able to ask questions you might not feel comfortable asking in a group, get a sense of direction and compile a list of actions it’s best to take for your specific blog and situation.

You might choose to keep this mentor on payroll for longer, yet sometimes even an appointment or several will do. Then, you could go on your merry way and sign up for another session when you feel one is needed.

Another option is to join a community of peers or top professionals, or one that’s combined of various levels of skills and successes. These can be paid or free, an online message board, meetings in your community or networking organisations’  gatherings.

Either way, that personalised attention will enable you to learn the inside world of launching and managing a blog, of marketing, of communicating with readers and of being the best blogger you can be.

Click Here To Learn More!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/0bz81JaMrEQ/

This is a guest contribution from freelance writer, Ayelet Weisz.

Blogging is hard work.

You need to come up with fresh, quality materials on a regular basis, promote them, connect with readers, network with peers and mentors – and that’s before you even see a single dollar for your effort.

I’ve put together some simple business tactics to help you set your blog for success, so you can live the pro blogger dream.

Set Inspiring (But Realistic) Goals

Now that you’re your own boss, you’ve got to set up internal motivation. The biggest success stories didn’t get there with someone telling them what to do every five minutes.

Mark Aplet – Fotolia.com

A great way to keep yourself motivated is to set up goals. Of course, I don’t just mean any goal. Making a million dollars by the end of your first year as a blogger might not be the most realistic goal you could think of.

The truth is, you have no way of knowing what will happen by the end of your first year, and you have no control over of others’ choices – Will they read your blog? Will they buy your products?

However, you can eliminate some of these unknown factors by conducting research about the possibilities your market contains – and you can increase the chances of realising your dreams by setting a different type of goal.

Focus on what kind of content you’ll write, how much content you’ll write, how you’ll promote it and when.

Focus on numeral items, like 8 posts a months on your blog and 8 guest posts that you’ll pitch to big blogs. Don’t set a goal of publishing 8 guest posts, only of submission. If someone says no, you’ll still have the confidence boost of reaching your goal. Then, you can exceed it by pitching that guest post to an additional blog.

Track Your Progress

The next step is to get the gold stars out track your progress. Write down what you are doing, what your productivity rate has been and notice what times a day or situations support you in getting more work done.

Set a meeting with yourself – be it once a week, once a month or once a quarter – to see how well you did, to discover your strong points. It’s important to be honest on where you need to be more accountable or get support.

Encourage yourself to ask questions, to say “I don’t know”, to ask for help. Sometimes, that help will come in the form of adjusting your expectations or re-shaping your schedule. Embrace your humanity as you embrace your new blogging journey.

Give yourself time, be gentle – and leverage your failures

Starting a new venture is never easy. Acquiring an abundance of new skills and tools takes determination, focus and accountability.

You will make mistakes.

Give yourself a time of grace and don’t be hard on yourself. People around you might pressure you. They could be your friends and family members, they could love you and want the best for you – and they might not believe your blog is what’s best for you. If it takes you time to Blogging Income Streams [And the Story of My 10 Year 'Overnight' Success]" href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2013/05/09/12-blogging-income-streams/">monetize your blog, and it probably will, they’ll doubt it even more.

Don’t get carried away with that. It will take time. Embrace it as an opportunity to show yourself you can do the impossible.

Support yourself through this time. Join professional online and offline groups, share your challenges with people who understand rather than with people who don’t, and plan ahead financially.

It might work best for you to save a few months’ or a year’s worth of salary, then take that time off paid employment and market like there’s no tomorrow. Alternatively, it might be best for you to start building your blog slowly, as you keep a part time or full time job.

Expect to make mistakes. 

These mistakes will be your guiding points to grow your blog even more as you go on. They could be transformed into guest posts on big blogs, case studies you can use to show your expertise (and how you turned failure to success) – and they can even turn you into a good mentor one day!

If nothing else, you’ll be able to look back one day and have a really good laugh. You’ll also be able to see how far you’ve come.

Socialise

Starting out at the blogsphere can be intimidating.People already know each other and the job.Friendships and communities have already been formed. Relationships with influencers are being shaped and re-shaped every single day.

Image copyright stock.xchng user lusi

This experience becomes easier once you feel there’s someone you could turn to. You, of course, need to have communication tools and the courage to connect when entering a new environment.

If you’re fearful about connecting with industry members, start small. Post comments on their blogs, then connect with them on Twitter or Facebook. Join online communities and reach out to one person at a time in a personal message.

Ask for their help, or offer a solution to a challenge they brought up. If they happen to just start out as you are, perhaps you could be a force of empowering support to one another, sharing tips and encouraging each other when one loses sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe you’ll even find you have additional interests in common!

Click Here To Learn More!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/XFeI3ksyTCc/

Last week I was on a panel discussing social media at a conference here in Australia and a question from the floor asked about how often is ideal to post to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest?

I was fascinated to hear the range of answers we gave as panelists and I thought it might be a good discussion to have here on ProBlogger.

What frequency do you publish to the social networks that you’re active on?

I’ll kick things off:

Facebook Pages: On the dPS Facebook page I try to update 3-4 times a day with posts spread out over a 24 hour cycle. I find if I do it too much more regularly that the posts don’t get as much engagement.

Twitter: On my ProBlogger Twitter account I find I can post at a higher frequency on Twitter as tweets tend to have a shorter life. Having said that most of my tweets are done live when I have something to say (and time to tweet).

Tweets go up automatically when I post a new post here on the blog or when a new job goes up on the Job Boards and I’ll often share another link to a blog post 12 or so hours later. The rest of my tweets are more personal/conversational and not scheduled.

Pinterest: on the dPS Pinterest account I’ve employed Jade to update our board.

Google+: My Google+ account is something I don’t update with great frequency. I use it more when I want to test an idea that I’m thinking through, ask a question or share something I’m excited about.

As a result there are days when I might post 2-3 times and then it might be 2-3 days before I post again! My posts there can be as short as a link or up to 2000 words!

LinkedIn: I’m a dismal failure on LinkedIn. Status updates are largely new posts on the blog and automated. I feel like I could improve a lot in this area.

What about you? What’s your posting rhythm on to social media? Do you update them all the same or have different strategies for each one?

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/wBCJ0S9ecPk/

This is a guest contribution by Frank Angelone.

It’s safe to assume that you want your blog to succeed, right?

It’s easier said than done, but whenever your trying to market your blog to others, it can be a very discouraging process.  Not only that, as bloggers, we continually suffer from the inability to get in touch with those we aspire to be like.

It’s not that those individuals don’t want to connect with us, but their email inboxes are full to the max and the Internet is flooded with content.  Tough obstacles ahead of us to stand out from the crowd I’d say.

Obviously, email marketing is an effective way to communicate with our readers, but more often than not, a well known blogger is not signed up to your email list.  The thing is…being associated to these well known bloggers in some capacity can help build the authority your blog needs to get attention.

So how are you suppose to grab the attention of these people?

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

I’ve learned, from my experiences, the best way to grab the attention of others is to keep my enquiries simple and straight forward. 

Granted, in reality, I am marketing to them.

It’s true, whenever you email someone and you wish to market yourself to them, it’s never a good idea to just email them a link to your blog.  You can be sure you won’t be contacted at that point. You want the email to capture their attention from the subject line.

Since you only have a short period to grab their attention, what can you do?

The Subject Line Is The Magic Potion 

Before you start trying to think of creative headlines, let me stop you right there. That kind of advice you’ll see many people give for blog posts and email newsletters.

This doesn’t apply when you’re trying to encourage a well known blogger to open your email. 

In fact, it’s much simpler and easier than you may think. On top of that, you may have used this tactic before and never even realised what a POWERFUL strategy it is.

Tell Me What To Do Already!

This brings me to my personal sure fire way to grab a response…

The magic answer is…

Use the subject line – “Quick Question.”

Really?  That’s it?  Yes, that’s it.  It’s worked for me many times. It’s how I’ve published guest posts on sites like CopyBlogger and here on ProBlogger.

The goal is to create a relationship. Quick Question lets them know…”this won’t take long.” This is what I use all the time.

I can’t believe I’m giving this away because it’s my best kept secret, until now!

How Does This Apply To My Blog?

Interestingly enough, I’ve used this little subject line to build my blog’s credibility. 

I’ve been able to leverage my podcast to build authority for my blog. An authoritative blog is something all bloggers strive for.  By using that “Quick Question” subject line, I’ve brought guests onto my podcast like Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Pirillo, Brian Clark, Seth Godin, and Robert Scoble to name a few. 

I can officially say that all these great people in some way are associated with my blog.

I’m not throwing these names at you to brag, but rather show you that by having these relationships, I’ve been able to connect with new readers / listeners and provide advice to others on how to go about podcasting.

This additional layer of my blog that started with a simple subject line also gave me the freedom to not have to rely on writing blog posts. Writing can be tiring, time consuming, and writers block can occur frequently. Doing audio interviews was my way of overcoming these obstacles and in the process I’ve developed relationships with well known bloggers.

You may not be able to build the readership that you want at this point. You may not be able to get a ton of comments on your posts. However, you can start finding other avenues to build that authority for your blog.

Don’t believe that just because it’s a blog that you’re restricted to only written content…you’re not!

Even though podcasting isn’t what I talk about on my blog, because of the well known bloggers I’ve connected with, I was able to talk to Chris Pirillo’s mastermind group in a webinar on bringing guests to your podcast and wrote a blog post about it too.

So, try this in your next email and let me know how this works out for you in the comments and if you’re able to build some new authority for your blog.

Frank Angelone teaches people how to use social media in business and how to adapt to technology.  He’s also coupled these teachings by interviewing well known entrepreneurs like Chris Pirillo, Robert Scoble, Brian Clark, and Leo Babauta to name a few, on the STZ Podcast.  Be sure to subscribe to be notified of new episodes!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/IeymsAcbPZI/

Facebook announced last week that it is, once again, making changes to its ad offerings, streamlining the number of ad units from 27 to fewer than half of that. Facebook says the changes are being mapped out to match the business objectives that matter most to marketers and to simplify its overall offering. This article will explain those changes, which are important as you plan your Facebook advertising.

Say Goodbye to Questions

Facebook will discontinue is Questions product. You can achieve the same result by simply asking your Fans a question, which allows for better engagement within the community, as Fans can comment and build dialog. No big loss here.

Asking Fans a question (at right) achieves the same result as Facebook Questions (at left).

No More Offers

Beginning July, Facebook will drop Offers. Facebook claims that marketers have found that using a Page post link ad is more effective in terms of driving people to deals on their websites. This change may impact retailers who have found success using Offers. If you’ve successfully used Offers in the past, make sure to test Page post links with different calls to action and images to get the most out of Page posts around sales and promotions.

Marketers can replace Facebook Offers with calls to action in Page posts.

Sponsored Stories are Changing

Sponsored Stories are not completely going away, but Facebook is making some dramatic changes to them. Currently, Facebook offers 13 different types of Sponsored Stories, which are separate from Facebook ads — i.e., advertisers have to purchase Sponsored Stories and ads in order to add the social context to their ads. Beginning in the fall, Facebook plans to add the social context that exists in Sponsored Stories into their ad units, significantly streamlining the offering for marketers.

Facebook will combine the social aspect of Sponsored Stories to ads.

More Consistency

Facebook ads can be confusing. The good news here is that Facebook will be rolling out changes to its ad platform that will have a more consistent visual display. It plans to reduce the number of ad formats and simplify the ad creation process for advertisers who run multiple campaigns and/or want to test ad creative. This will significantly improve that overall users’ experiences and make it that much easier to run Facebook ads. These changes will begin rolling out later this month.

Overall, the Facebook changes will make it easier for marketers to run ads and for consumers who are engaging with the ads. Time will tell how much of an impact the changes have on the ads’ effectiveness.

Article source: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/Understanding-the-New-Facebook-Ad-Updates/

Recently, I attended an event and heard a speaker talk about how they’d build a passive income from blogging. The person sitting next to me leant over toward me and at whispered:

“Based on your Twitter Stream, I’m not so sure that blogging is ‘passive’ – is it?”

I thought it might be an interesting discussion to re-open here on ProBlogger – do you think that income earned from blogging could be classified as ‘passive income’?

Wikipedia defines ‘passive income’ as:

Passive income is an income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.

Wikipedia also goes on to define it from a tax perspective, which I’m won’t get into here. I’m more interested talking about the ‘with little effort required to maintain it’ aspect of the definition, which I think is what many people are attracted to when they hear anyone talk about ‘passive income’.

Let me kick off the discussion by making a few comments:

Most Bloggers Making a Living from Blogging, Work Hard

This has been a recurring theme here on ProBlogger, since I started the blog in 2004. While there’s no single way to make a living from blogging, most full time bloggers I know – who blog as their primary income stream - work pretty hard on their blogs.

They:

• Post content on a daily basis
• Spend a significant amount of effort to maintain the community around their blogs
• Work hard on promoting their blogs and finding new readers
• Build relationships with other bloggers
• Work hard to maintain their income streams (whether that be by liaising and working with advertisers or developing and launching products)
• Also work on any number of other tasks including SEO, maintaining social media accounts, answering emails, moderating comments, blog design, racing other blogs, managing hosting etc

Some full time bloggers have grown to the point where they are able to outsource some of the above – but then there’s the task of managing a team!

Income from blogging is neither quick or easy. In short, if you expect to earn an income from your blog, you need to consistently put time and effort into it.

Some Aspects of Blogging Will Generate Passive Income

Having just said that blogging for income takes a significant amount of work, there are some elements of blogging that could be said to generate ‘passive income’. Let’s look at a few examples:

There’s Gold in Those Archives

Each post I publish could potentially generate an income for me, on the day it’s published but also tomorrow, next week, and next month. Even years into the future.

Example 1 – when I dig into my Google Analytics account and drill down into the AdSense stats there, I see that last month my post ‘Aperture‘ on dPS earned me $233.23 and this Wedding Photography Tips post earned $222.61.

Those posts were published in 2007, five and a half years ago!

Example 2 – when I look at my Amazon Affiliate earnings, I can see that my Popular Digital Camera and Gear post generated $60 yesterday for me. That post has been up since 2009 and while I do update it from time to time, it has been over 2 months since I reviewed it.

Of course, part of the reason those old posts continue to generate income for me is because I continue to publish new content on the site. Alongside the new content, the posts in my archives have the potential to earn income for years to come (if all goes well).

You could argue that a blogger who spends years doing all of the above could then completely stop doing any work and still make some income based upon continued traffic from search engines. However, that traffic (and the income from it) would decrease in time without you maintaining your blog (depending a little on how evergreen the content of your blog might be).

The Long Tail of Products

In a similar manner, when you develop a product to sell to your readers that product can continue to generate an income for you into the future, without needing continual development.

Example – when I first wrote and released 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, it took significant work to get ready to be published. There was the time I put into creating the content, the editing, the design, the setting up of shopping carts, the marketing etc.

In return for that effort the eBook produced a good income when it launch during the launch period.

However, it has continued to sell almost every day since then. I did a full update of the eBook and added new content in 2012 but other than that, the 31DBBB continues to sell (as do our other eBooks) thanks to it being promoted in our sidebar/navigation areas and through annual discount promotions we’ve run.

This is the beauty of creating something to sell for your readership, particularly if it’s evergreen and doesn’t date.

Click Here To Learn More!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/b1nQf-sxZxQ/

This is a guest contribution from Karl Staib of Domino Connection.

You’ve probably been at a party where some fool is talking his face off at everyone he meets. He talks about his trip to Spain and how he is such an amazing photographer. He never asks, “What you do or what interests you?” He just blathers on and on about himself.

On a good day I silently chuckle at this guy’s lack of social common sense. On a bad day I snap and scream, “PLEASE listen to me for just 10 seconds!”

When all you do is talk about yourself, you send people running in the other direction. If you don’t care about other people they for sure won’t care about you.

This was how the old school way of marketing worked. Megaphone style.

Image by nem_youth

Many of you might not think of your blog as a business and I understand, but one day you might want to create a ebook, product or use your blog to leverage a new career. When you improve your engagement your blog it becomes a tool to help you level up your life and career.

Spray and Pray

Back in the day, companies used to spray and pray. They sprayed their message in as many places as possible (magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, etc) and prayed that they picked the right advertising spots. Larger companies could afford to pay for market research, so they were able to make sure most of their efforts paid off.

Smaller companies didn’t have this luxury. Straight out of college, I worked in the marketing department for a high pressure valve company. They grossed about 10 million a year in sales. Not too shabby, but nothing compared to the bigger players in the industry.

We had to carefully choose our national magazines and our marketing company told us who read the magazines and which ones we needed to advertise in. We had to believe them. We had nothing else to go on.

This style of marketing has been turned upside down due to blogging and social media. Every business has the opportunity to measure their engagement on their website, email and social media accounts. The problem with all these new tools is we have the wrong attitude toward them. Companies are afraid to be transparent and engage with their customers.

Why? Because it’s hard work.

Truly Listen

Mr. Blather Lips, from the introduction, had a great time at every party he went to because he didn’t have to gauge people’s emotions. He just blathered on until he found someone to listen or it was time to go home.

Now businesses actually have to listen to their customers because if they don’t, a social media storm comes crashing down upon them. Just ask Netflix if they wished they had a better plan for when they doubled their prices.

Listening to your readers isn’t just for dealing with social media storms. It’s also so you can anticipate them and avoid them before they even happen. Now, every business has the opportunity to do market research. You can ask specific customers if they would be willing to fill out an online survey. You can ask them direct questions on your blog or social media that help you figure out what they want from you.

You don’t have to guess what you think people need. You can ask them directly and find out. You can even include them in the process of creating your product.

Invitation to Join In 

Threadless created their million dollar t-shirt company from this idea. They have people send in t-shirt designs, have the users vote on which designs they would like to buy and print only the most popular ones. They already have a built in audience for their t-shirts. It’s a win-win for everyone.

The company prints the most popular, making some good cash and the buyers get a limited edition t-shirt that they are proud to wear. Even the winning t-shirt designs are helpful to the designers. They can add this accomplishment to their resume.

You probably knew that engaging your ideal people was wise, but now what?

Now you have to go out and find them and start a conversation, but before you do you need to find out where you can connect with them.

1. Write a description of the ideal client for your product

You have to ask yourself some specific questions to help you gain clarity:

• What does she look like?
• What motivates her?
• What does she do for fun?
• What are her career goals?
• Where does she hang out? (Facebook, conferences, Twitter, etc.)
• How do you engage with her? (light banter, philosophically, monetarily, etc.)

The hard part is making the mental switch from talker to engager.

I’m not just talking about being a better listener. That’s a good start, but to engage with people you have to be listening and asking great questions. It’s part art and part science.

If you want an example of someone who understands her community then visit Mayi Carles to see how she is creating content that engages and builds trust. You’ll notice that she creates content around branding and business building. All a perfect target market for her.

Engage Your Readers

Image used with permission

If you want to engage your readers, start by asking questions to show them how much you care about their success. Ask them:

1. What topics they would like you to cover?
2. What products you could create to help them?
3. How you can improve your services?

By keeping the focus on your readers you’ll improve engagement, find new ways you can help them and use your blog to grow your influence.

You will also learn the type of language they use. It’s this copywriting trick that you need to use to engage your ideal readers.

Using the language they use in the copy on your sales page will increase your conversion rate. It’s that simple.

For example, let’s say Problogger gets a lot of questions on how to create content for their blog. His ideal people might not reference the word “copy” they might use the word “write” or “blog”. If this is the case then the key to writing a great sales page is to insert these words into the page so they feel comfortable with the sales copy.

Click Here To Learn More!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/zGskn1Z63qM/

This is a guest contribution from Jonathan Goodman.

There are other people blogging about the same subject as you, maybe better or maybe worse—but, as you probably have figured out by now, content is no longer king; context is.

Getting repeat readers who become brand ambassadors for you is pertinent to the success of your blog. So is getting repeat customers. It allows you to focus on what you do best: make great art—writing material that people enjoy reading and writing material that will help thousands of people around the world.

All successful blogs are communities and if you want to turn your blog into something special, something that will grant you financial freedom, and something that will help countless people then you must create a community out of your blog.

There are a lot of great blog posts about creating communities, but this one is different. The 8 steps I describe below is the exact process I used to build the world’s biggest collaborative blog for personal trainers, in less than 2 years, with no connections and no technological acumen.

Whether you’re starting anew or you already have a blog you can apply these steps, in any order, to build your audience, network, and repeat readership.

Step 1 – The Idea

Photo credit: María Magnética from Flickr

All good blogs are based on a powerful idea that fulfils or hits on a need. Perhaps there’s a knowledge gap in your industry or, in the case of the personal training industry, there was a lot of information but it was all boring text-book material.

The gap I filled was teaching personal trainers the soft side of training but adding in jokes, usually about how much I hate that stupid useless green bird in Angry Birds. Seriously, let’s talk about that bird for a minute. Anybody else hate that thing? He adds an element of difficulty into the game that I don’t appreciate. I just want to smash pigs and move onto the next level.

But I digress.

Build your community on a single powerful idea. Understanding the blogging medium requires a lighter and more approachable tone — don’t be afraid to approach your topic with humor and wit.

Most of all don’t ever hide your personality. People buy into what you do because of the 1% that makes you different, not the 99% that makes you the same.

I should also note that once your blog grows, it might grow out of your initial idea so you need to flexible about its evolution. An experts power doesn’t come from knowing, it comes from knowing where to find and that’s why step 2 is so important.

Step 2 – The Sea Lion System to Build Your Network

I’m reminded of a family trip I took to Alaska. We found ourselves watching a group of whales bubble feed — it was spectacular — but something grabbed my attention and it wasn’t the whales; it was the Sea Lions.

You see, Sea Lions wait patiently on the outside of the vicious bubble feed and catch the fish that the whales fling out. Sea Lions are opportunistic.

You must be the Sea Lion

In any industry there are existing influencers who I’m sure you can name off of the top of your head right now. These people have social media pages and blogs. Existing on those pages are what I call connectors.

When an industry influencer posts a status update or a new blog, there’s a flurry of activity. Instead of trying to get the influencers attention, be the Sea Lion and find the people who are avidly liking, commenting, and sharing the influencer’s material — there are your connectors.

Over a short period of time, you’ll notice the same names keep appearing. Likely they have blogs and even if they don’t they will probably be open to network. Read and comment on a blog post or two of theirs and send them an email saying hi. Or, if they don’t have a blog, send them a message saying that you would like to connect.

Step 3 – Implicit Understanding, Explicit Meaning

Choosing a name for your blog or community is an important step. Even if you blog in your basement at night, the name should make it sound like it’s bigger than you. You’re building a community here that others will want to be a part of.

In addition, you want to have the option to sell the blog later on. A community blog is valuable and it’s a nice option to have. JonsAwesomePersonalTrainerBlog.com isn’t going to be easy to sell but the Personal Trainer Development Center is.

Lastly, your blog name should be something that is intuitively meaningful for your audience. It should also be something that will make them feel like they look good by passing it on to colleagues, friends, or family members.

Step 4 – Contact potential contributors

Now the fun part starts.

There are 3 different types of contributors that you want for your community blog.

1. Camp Busters

In every industry there are established camps that you should be able to identify. There’s probably an influencer at the top and varying levels of followers underneath him or her. Ideally, you want to break into every camp that serves your industry. To do so, try to find somebody that’s well connected in that camp and is currently lower down in the pecking order.

2. Up and comers

In step 2 you identified your connectors. Many of these people will be up and coming bloggers. Have a read through their material and note which ones are good. In addition, look to contact the ones who are hustling the hardest and get them on board with your community.

3. Established authorities

There’s a Catch-22 here. You need readers to attract established authorities to write for you, but you can’t get readers without established authorities right?

Here’s one approach: When you sign up for my free content course, you also get to download my free Diamond in the Rough System Ebook. This is how to use Twitter to get the attention of the people behind the people.

When contacting authorities you probably can’t pay them but you can offer them value. Usually these people have years of archived high-quality material on their blogs. Sell them on your powerful idea in step 1 and ask them to come on board as a “coach” or “advisor” for your community. Assure them it is 0 work on their part.

Tell them that you want to go through their entire archive and will send them a list of all the material that you would like the opportunity to use. You will re-edit and re-format the material so that it’s different enough that Google doesn’t view it as duplicate material and post it to your blog attributing it to them as the sole author with links back to their site.

Some people may say no, but many will agree.

Having established authorities on your site does two things: It establishes credibility for other contributors and you gain the audience of the authority.

Step 5 – Planes, trains, and automobiles

As personal as social networks are (sometimes too personal) nothing can ever replace meeting, shaking hands, and having a conversation with somebody in real life. Look for more intimate industry events that leave time for networking. I’ve even been known to skip entire afternoons of talks to sit down and network with one person at a conference I was looking forward to meeting.

Step 6– Develop a course

What’s the biggest issue or misconception facing your industry?

Identify it and write a course that you will integrate with an autoresponder sent over 10-20 days. Here’s a breakdown of how to plan out the course:

To start, I suggest some brain mapping software (I use the MindNode App)^? or grabbing a note pad and writing it down the old fashioned way.

• Put your topic in the middle of page and write down everything you can think of surrounding the topic. Don’t consider whether or not you want to include it at this stage, just write it all down.
• Upon finishing, come back the next day with another blank piece of paper and copy the exact same formula.
• When you’ve finished this 2-4 times, take all of your brain maps and create a master map out of them eliminating all the obvious dumb stuff you wrote down and keeping the good stuff.
• Then grab some cue cards and write out each sub-topic on a cue card or in Scrivener (an awesome word processor for organising large projects like this). After you’ve organized the course on cue cards or in Scrivener, it’s a matter of filling in the blanks.

When you’ve finished writing each section, tie them all together.

Start the course with an introduction email saying hello and telling the person what to expect. At the beginning of each email refer back to the previous lesson for a line or two. At the end of each email, let the person know what they can expect for the next email.

Go to fiverr.com and get a cover created for your course and integrate with your email marketing software. Create a simple squeeze page for your course — this will be important in the next step.

Step 7 – Build up a fanpage for social proof

You’ve probably already created a fan page on Facebook, but now it’s time to get it cranking and, to do so, you’re going to get a brief lesson in Facebook advertising.

Create a Facebook status update with a link to your squeeze page for the course. Keep it short and include the following 3 things:

1. Have a punchy headline that grabs attention.

2. Give 3 points that are secrets or that you “reveal” in your course.

3. Tell the reader to click the link to grab their course right away and provide the link.

Then you need to target your Facebook ad.

Step 1: Identify your audience. Is it 25-30 year old females who workout and are interested in holistic fitness? Be as specific as you can.

Step 2: Identify any other pages on Facebook that specifically serve your audience. Be as precise as possible.

Step 3: Think about parallel industries that your lead may be interested in. For example, somebody interested in holistic fitness is probably interested in Lululemon clothing and Yoga. Identify the main pages here.

Step 4: For $10-$25 you can run an ad promoting your post to each of these pages individually, for at least 3 days. After creating your first ad, you can copy the ad and simply change the targeting. You should see the option in your control panel.

Step 5: Take stock of which pages gave you the best response rate in terms of click-throughs . Write down all pages that had at least a 0.3% click through rate.

Step 6: Run an ad to all of the pages that had a good response together and run that ad continuously for more money.

Bidding for clicks is a bit of a science. The better you target your ad, the less you’ll have to pay. Reason being, if you have a high converting ad then Facebook will show it to more people for cheaper.

If your ad isn’t converting well, you’ll have to pay more per click to get Facebook to show it to people. If you’re targeting a big audience or a big page, clicks will cost more than an audience in countries outside of North America interested in oddball stuff. Ideally, you want to pay no more than 25 cents a click.

This ad will both get people to like your Facebook page and add a slew of new subscribers into your email list.

Step 8 – Viral!

This is where my real interest lies.

Now that your Facebook ads have gotten a following on your page, you have an avid audience to spread your materials — so make them viral.

The easiest way to get status updates to spread throughout a niche industry audience is by following these steps:

1. Write down any issues or misconceptions that face your industry. For example, in the fitness industry the fact that too much of the public still thinks that women shouldn’t lift weights is a sore spot.
2. Note beside your topic, which side of the debate the majority of your audience sits on.
3. Write a status update or upload a picture 4-6 times a day (you can schedule them) that articulates the majority of your communities views on the issues you’ve identified. Don’t be afraid to be one-sided and somewhat brash. Emotion drives sharing. People will share if they love you or hate you.

Step 8 – Post 1-2 times per week

Post 1-2 top quality blog posts on your webpage per week (or even less). You can write them or have contributors write them. Continue to spend the majority of your time growing the community through your email list via the course and through Facebook through ads and viral material.

Take in guest contributions on your own blog so that you can spend your time writing awesome material for other blogs in your niche creating link juice and getting traffic back to your site.

Rinse and Repeat.

It won’t happen overnight but when you plan your strategy and dedicate the time, you can turn your blog into a community.

Click Here To Learn More!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/LvSaEJdZ47s/

I recently took some time out to do a bit of travelling across East Asia (which was incredible!) and decided that I would, along with a group of friends, set up a travel blog. Knowing that I would be embarking on some amazing adventures, I thought it’d be a waste not to blog about them. Plus, the idea of bringing in a little extra cash to go into my travel fund helped in my decision.

After a month or so of development the site was finally ready and I wanted to start thinking about how to get some traffic going on the website. Whilst paid advertising and social media were a huge part of the strategy, I knew that appearing in the search engines for a wide selection of long-tail phrases was going to be instrumental to the blog’s success. This is when I began developing my link building strategy and, after trialing out some very successful approaches, I’ve decided to now share my link building tactics with you all – you can thank me later

Identifying My Link Targets

As a brand new blog it can be really tough to gain links from high authority sites. Unless you have something particularly unique or special (and even then you might struggle), it’s an uphill battle to get your content in front of anyone. With this in mind I decided to start off small. However, the general rule of thumb that I kept for any links that I was looking to build was this:

“The link must have a genuine potential to generate traffic back to the blog”

Resource/Links Pages

Many blogs and other websites have ‘useful links’ or ‘ useful resources’ pages. These pages generally list partner websites, relevant blogs or other sites that they work with. Although these types of links aren’t going to result in ground-breaking link building wins they could, if you prospect correctly, provide a link that will not just give you an SEO boost, but actually generate traffic to your site as well. These types of links are particularly relevant for the travel industry.

A lot of people write-off these types of links, classing them as ‘spammy’ or ‘low quality links’. Now, whilst I agree that they aren’t enormously powerful, I disagree that they are useless. To find the pages where I wanted to get a link placed back to my blog, I followed these quick steps:

1. First, I ran this query through Google – intitle:travel blog inurl:”links” OR “resources”.
2. I then went into Google’s search settings and selected to view 100 results per page instead of 10.
3. Once I had 100 listings, I scraped all of the URLs using the ‘Scrape Similar’ plugin for Chrome and exported them to a .CSV file.
4. I did a bit of manual work to remove irrelevant links and then grabbed the domain/page authority for each of the links using MozCheck.com and pasted this into the sheet. I could then sort the links by page authority and remove any that had a PA lower than ~25. This helped to find higher quality targets.
5. After witling the list down to around 40 targets, I scanned the amount of outbound links on the pages using Niels Bosma’s SEOtools plugin for Excel and sorted the list by pages with the lowest number of outbound links on them. This not only improved the power of the link by it also meant that there was more of a chance that I would get some traffic from the page.
6. Finally, I got in touch with webmasters from the sites to see if they would list my site on theirs (using only branded anchor text) in exchange for their site appearing on the ‘Our Friends’ section of my blog.

The end result was that I managed to gain around 15 links to my blog that actually brought through some traffic as well. This took me around 3-4 hours in total (including outreach) and helped to create a nice bit of domain diversity to the site’s link profile. On top of this, it also helped me to start building a few relationships with webmasters that turned out to be very useful later down the line.

Useful: within this article I explain how to sort through link targets in Excel in a bit more detail.

**BONUS: here is the outreach email template that I used when contacting webmasters…

Hi NAME HERE,

Just thought I would drop you a quick mail regarding your website, DOMAIN URL HERE. I really enjoy the stuff you write and it has been getting me excited for my travelling trip!

I am starting up a travel blog myself and it has just gone live a couple of days ago. The blog will follow our group as we travel across East Asia and Australia (we leave today!). I was just wondering if you would be kind enough to drop a link to the blog (http://www.meltedstories.com) on your links page (URL OF THEIR LINKS PAGE HERE) as it would be a big help. I’ve added you onto my ‘Our Friends’ page anyway because it will be a great resource for my readers.

Don’t worry if you don’t want to add our blog, but if you let me know your Twitter handle anyway then I will make sure we follow you and drop you some retweets! You can follow us at @melted_stories.

Feel free to get in touch at any time though!

Matthew Barby
Just an Honest Backpacker
www.meltedstories.com
@melted_stories
facebook.com/MeltedStories

Prospecting Through Competitive Research

The next stage of my link building strategy was to do some competitive research. For many SEOs this is a staple part of any link building campaign and can reveal some very interesting insights into what other websites related to your own are doing to acquire links.

My first port of call is always the amazing, and strangely under-rated, ‘Competitive Link Finder‘ tool from SEOmoz. By simply plugging in the URLs of five other travel blogs, similar in style to mine, I was able to instantly get 20 solid link targets from a list of around 45. This took me 15 minutes to do and I just placed all of the links into an outreach spreadsheet that I created. Here are the types of links that I found:

• High authority travel blogs that my competitors have guest posted on.
• Blogs that run weekly ‘photo of the week’ competitions that will link to your photo if you win.
• Good quality travel-niche directories.
• ‘Top travel blogger’ lists and competitions.
• Content that my competitors have collaborated on in order to get a mention.
• Links to interview articles where my competitors have answered questions on a high authority blog and have received a link in return.

All this within 15 minutes – not bad, eh?

Every bit of information that I gathered I kept inside a link prospecting spreadsheet. This formed the basis of my link building strategy and allowed me to identify a list of targets that I could approach with a variety of content and propositions. My advice for any blog owner would be to do the same because it allows you to sustain your link building efforts in the long term. Then, every few months, I do some further research and add to the spreadsheet.

Acquiring Links from Your Targets

Now that I’d done some competitive link research, it was time to plan out the approaches that I would take to actually acquire links from my targets. This can often be the place where many people hit a brick wall. During the early stages of my time at Wow Internet, I found that I was overcomplicating the process of acquiring links. However, the reality is that it’s often best to keep things simple. You don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune on creating an amazing infographic, or bit of video content. More often than not, all you need to do is simply ask (I know, crazy, right?).

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging has taken some stick recently and I can, in some cases, see why. A recent post on the SEOmoz blog by James Finlayson outlined the slippery slope of poor guest post content and I completely agree. This brings me back to my initial link building rule:

“The link must have a genuine potential to generate traffic back to the blog”

Forget judging your guest blog opportunities based solely on the PA/DA of the site and start thinking more about site engagement. If I see a website with a domain authority score of 40 but there are no comments from readers and minimal social shares, then I would generally ignore this site, in favour of a site with lower DA but more comments/social shares. This is particularly important when building links to a blog, so as the old saying goes – don’t judge a book by its cover!

Finding Guest Blogging Opportunities and Gaining Them

I had already found a handful of guest blogging opportunities from my competitive research, but I knew I would need a much greater sample size to work with in order to build a solid profile of high quality links. This, unfortunately, takes quite a bit of time. This is where I took a leaf out of Paddy Moogan’s book.

I recently read Paddy’s link building book (which was awesome) and he talked about outsourcing menial research tasks through oDesk in order to save time and increase productivity overall. One thing that Paddy stressed was to only outsource micro-tasks and leave as little obscurity to the task as possible. With this in mind I put together an extensive brief for the task of finding travel blogs that accepted guest posts and fit the following criteria:

• PR of at least 2.
• The blog must be English speaking and related to travel.
• Must have some form of interaction on the blog posts.
• Should have social shares on the recent articles.
• Must have posted new content within the last 2 months.

**BONUS: you can take a look at the full brief that I used for the link research project here.

As you can see in the link research brief, I didn’t just want to simply gather the URLs of the blogs but I tried to get as much information on them as possible. This was so that I could use this valuable data for other link building methods and also to connect with the blog owners through social media and build long-term relationships with them. The data that I asked the oDesk applicant to gather for me was:

• The website URL.
• The name of the website.
• A contact name.
• A contact email (if possible).
• The URL of the contact page.
• Twitter handle of the contact.
• The Facebook page URL of the website (if relevant).
• The title of the most recent article posted (this is so I can easily see if the website is relevant without having to visit each one and check).

One week and $30 later, I had a list of 50 different guest blog targets – amazing! Don’t underestimate the power of giving a good brief to a freelancer; it really can make the world of difference.

Useful: the name of the freelancer I used for the link research project (who is now also doing some further research for me now, as well) is Michael Howells. Here’s a link to his oDesk profile.

**DOUBLE BONUS!: as I’m feeling particularly generous, I’m going to give you the list of 50 awesome travel-related guest blog opportunities that Michael gathered for me. You’re welcome

Once I had the list of guest blog targets, it was then time to identify which would be the best places to start reaching out to. This is an important and often over-looked stage of many outreach campaigns. Bearing in mind that I had only a little bit of content on my blog, I needed to try and find an angle to work on with my pitch. To do this I split up my guest blog targets into sub-sections based on their primary theme (i.e. if five of the websites all specialised in backpacking on a budget then they would go in the same group).

Once I’d categorised all of the websites in my list, I had to now decide what I would use in my pitch to the webmasters that would gain their trust and allow me to post on their site. In my armoury were a wealth of photos that I had taken during my time travelling and a whole host of first-hand experiences. From looking at many of the websites that I was targeting for links, it was clear that they were heavily focused around lots of good images and most of them preferred to have the author’s voice clearly present throughout most of their articles. Knowing this, I carried out the following steps:

1. Highlighted blogs that talked about East Asia specifically in a few of their articles.
2. Narrowed down the list to find which of them accepted guest authors more frequently.
3. Picked ten initial targets and began to follow all of their social media accounts, comment on their articles and share their content through my blog’s Twitter/FB/G+/Pinterest.
4. Got in touch with the webmasters in a friendly, quick email that let them know who I was, my travel plans and a brief intro to my blog. I then mentioned that I was looking to write for some travel blogs about my adventures and wanted to see if they would consider letting me do this on their blog.
5. If I received a reply, I made sure that I looked at the types of articles they posted on their blogs and then gave only relevant suggestions for possible article titles.

After I had a few articles published on different travel blogs it meant that I could reference these articles in my next flurry of outreach. This proved to be really effective as I progressed and gaining guest post opportunities seemed to get easier and easier. One tip that I would give to anyone doing any outreach is not to mention ‘links’ at all in your written communication as you risk losing your legitimacy as a genuine blogger. Travel blog owners particularly don’t enjoy this.

**Bonus: Here’s one of the outreach emails that I sent to a travel blog owner (as you can see, I keep it as personal as possible):

Hi Shannon,

I hope you’re well. We spoke around a month ago simply about a link exchange for my travel blog, Melted Stories. I have something slightly different to ask about now!

Firstly I just want to say how much me and my girlfriend enjoy your blog (especially considering my girlfriend, Laura, is also a vegetarian).

I know that you don’t really do this on your blog but my girlfriend and I have just finished 2 months of travelling around and experiencing Thailand and I wondered if you would consider letting us do a guest post on your blog?

It would be related to an experience that we had within Thailand and one that we feel would fit in with your audience. For example, we recently visited Chiang Mai and took a trip across to all the best places to see, including spending a day looking after ex-working elephants and visiting the tigers (that are most definitely not drugged!).

I won’t babble on too much because I know you must be busy but you can take a look at some of both myself and Laura’s writing at these links (below) and if you could let me know either way that would be great.

http://www.meltedstories.com/monkeys-muay-thai-and-magical-marine-life-in-ko-phi-phi/
http://www.meltedstories.com/sun-sea-and-snorkelling-in-koh-tao-3/

Also, we would love to have you write on our blog so if that’s something that would interest you then you can have a free reign on what you talk about!

Matt
www.meltedstories.com
@melted_stories

Take Guest Blogging to the Next Level – Become a Columnist

I have to admit that this wasn’t something that I necessarily planned from the outset but, as I moved forward with the guest blogging activities that I was doing, it became an obvious next step.

One of the first articles that I wrote was for the WildJunket Magazine, an online general travel publication. During my conversations with the magazine editor, Nellie Huang, I started to form a good relationship and she then asked me if I would consider becoming a regular columnist on the blog, specialising in ‘travel tech’. I jumped at the chance, of course, and as a result of this I write 2-3 articles a month for the website and get some great links back to my blog. Not only this but WildJunket have a huge social following and loads of activity on their website. This was certainly something that I could use to my advantage.

After I had written a few articles for Nellie I got in touch with her to discuss any ways in which she could help me out, for example, with sharing my content, getting in touch with other bloggers and any other ways she could suggest. The response was really positive and Nellie allowed me to use the WildJunket press pack when contacting websites and she also said that if I wanted to write a sponsored post for companies on the blog then that is fine too (as long as it fit in with the editorial guidelines). On top of this she agreed to share anything I wished on the WildJunket social media accounts, which was great. I then added the following paragraph into my outreach emails:

As well as running Melted Stories, I am also a regular columnist for Wild Junket, which receives over 1.65 million pageviews a month and has a Twitter following of just under 30,000. Any article that I did write for you would be shared across all of my personal social media accounts, plus that of Wild Junket and Melted Stories, so it could be a win-win situation

This dramatically increased the number of replies that I received from webmasters. My advice would be to try and secure a similar type of setup on related blogs within your own industry. Look for blogs that have clear topic areas and, once you’ve built a relationship with the webmasters, suggest that you could become a regular columnist specialising in a specific topic on their blog.

Tip: Industry-relevant online magazines can be a particularly good target for this.

Sponsored Posts and Paid Tweets

This is likely to cause some controversy amongst a few readers, but in my opinion this can be a fantastic way of driving traffic through to your website and encouraging links back to your content.

Sponsored Posts

A sponsored post is, in essence, a guest post that you pay for. Many websites, especially within the travel industry, will allow you to write an article promoting your products/services in return for payment. Matt Cutts has voiced his opinion on this activity a few times and has said the following:

“Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute).”

My suggestion is not simply to find blogs that offer this and then place a link to your site within them. What I would suggest is using sponsored posts to increase your online community. To do this I found websites that had a particularly large social following, loads of interactivity on the website and a captive niche audience. I then wrote a post related to my travels and a little intro to my travel blog. What I found was that I was able to bring over some good levels of traffic from the post and capture some new readers for my blog – exactly what I wanted!

NOTE: If I ever pay for a sponsored post then I make sure that any links back to my site are ‘nofollowed’ because it’s not worth the risk of having a Google penalty imposed.

Paid Tweets

These are similar, in a way, to sponsored posts and are pretty self-explanatory – you pay someone to tweet something from their twitter account.

Again, there are going to be a few people who say how wrong this is and that they would never do this for one of their clients, etc, etc. What I would say to those people is that if you would be prepared to pay for advertising space on someone’s website then what’s the difference in paying them to tweet your content on Twitter?

I must admit that I’ve only done this a couple of times and have had varying results, but in one case I managed to generate a few hundred visits to one of the articles on my blog, which is often more than I would get with a banner ad and for a fraction of the cost! There is also the advantage of being able to expand your own Twitter following in the process, which is another added bonus.

Useful: You can use BuySellAds.com to search for Twitter users that sell tweets within your niche.

Bringing it all Together

It’s still early days for my travel blog but I’ve had some awesome initial results and hopefully this article has given you a few ideas of your own to help you go out and build some quality links to your blog. The key message that I’m trying to convey here is the importance of building relationships online and forming a solid community within your blog.

Simple things like blog commenting, which was traditionally a staple part of link building, has now become a fantastic way to build relationships with bloggers and actually drive traffic back to your own blog. A lot of link building can be quite indirect and it isn’t always the quickest to do, but if you follow my one simple rule then you should be able to keep on the right track:

Click Here To Learn More!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/e4JjWMnTmQQ/how-to-build-links-to-your-blog-a-case-study

This is a guest contribution from Kelly Diels-Rostant.

Image courtesy of Suat Eman FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Where’s The Beef?” asked the lil’ ol’ lady and in so doing launched her late-blooming acting career.

It was 1984. Clare Peller was eighty-four years old. It was her first acting gig and it was a hit. Her Wendy’s spot spawned a series of follow-up commercials, launched a slew of licensing and merchandising deals (t-shirts, coffee mugs, beach towels, oh my!), and became an instant cultural catch-phrase.

It may even have turned the tide of a presidential primary. In a televised debate, listening to presidential hopeful Gary Hart talk about his “new ideas”, rival Walter F. Mondale leaned forward and said, “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?’”.

Mondale, not Hart, won the democratic nomination. That’s the power of a pithy, provocative phrase. A hook. The beef. And your blog post has got to have it.

So let me tell you where your blog post beef is: it’s the best, most quotable line of your piece, and I promise you it’s already there.

Really, it’s there. You already wrote it. It’s just in the wrong place.

But first, a little background.

The most quotable line of your blog post could – and should – be the first line. The hook. Hook your readers.

In conventional newspaper journalism, the first line of the piece is the entire piece: Who. What. When. Were. Maybe even how and why. All in one line. The way if the reader stops reading right there after the first line (bad reader! lazy reader!), she still got everything she needed to know.

Which means she can stop reading, yes?

NO.

Is that what you want your blog readers to do? Stop reading after the first line?

So that’s instructive. To write effective, compelling, must-read blog posts, accept the dramatic imperative of classical journalism and hook your reader with the first sentence. Then abandon the methodology – do NOT spill the who, what, where, when or how. At least not yet.

Write hooks, instead, which means don’t give it all away the first line. In fact, don’t lead with any context at all. Context can come later, in the second pararaph, or even later, in the second section of your post.

Because the more provocative, mysterious and insensible the first line, the better the hook. Your reader has to keep reading to figure it out.

Mwahahaha.

That was my evil bloggess laugh. It’s genetic. For example, remarking upon my progeny – one of whom is the incomparable, six year old Lola whose first viewing of 101 Dalmatians provoked her to confide, I really like that evil girl [Cruella DeVille], I like her style – Amanda Farough once said, “She’s only one bad science experiment away from becoming an evil genius.”

True dat.

I digress. Sort of. But like any good villainess/bloggess, I do have a signature, sneaky trick in reserve.

It’s a guide to finding your blog post hook in one step.

Notice I said hook finding, not hook writing.

IMPORTANT: I want you to avoid performance anxiety – I mean writer’s block – because so far, there’s no little blue pill for that. Alas. Because if I sit down and try to write The Best First Line Ever, a hot-and-sexy hook, I won’t be able to get my writerly mojo up…so lo, the page will remain blank. Unloved.

But.

If I just write and write and write until I’m finished (I call this Draft Zero because it’s the utterly unselfconscious and necessary blathering that precedes what writer Anne Lamott calls The Shitty First Draft) and then go back and ask,

Where’s The Beef?

AKA

Where’s the Quote?

Then and only then can I get it on. That’s when I’ll find it: the great line I’ve already written. The hook.

And you can, too.

So, when you’re hook-finding, ask yourself this:

Where’s the beef? If you were a reader, what line would tickle, stroke or slap you? Where’s the leap-frogging, cart-wheeling, caterwauling sentence that demands to be known? Where’s the wisdom? Where’s the beef? The quote? Doncha wanna give good quote?

Yes, you do – and if you can’t find a few foundational, architectural phrases that transform your piece from sentences laid end-to-end into “arcades and domes”, then your Draft Zero work is not done.

But if you seek, you will find them: arcadian, majestic, domestic lines of genius already embedded in your blog post. They’re there because you let yourself write them.

Yep, it’s true: there are gorgeous phrases and stunning sentences already in your blog post just waiting to be relocated to where they really belong.

And one of them is your hook. It’s already there, you already wrote it, you just have to find it.

That’s why this exercise is called Hook Finding, not Hook Writing.

So that’s all you have to do.

Flow, write, finish, realize you’re not finished (editing is 90% of real writing), ask yourself, where’s the quote?, and voila! there’s your hook. Cut ‘n paste to the first line -

        which will, inevitably suggest a new narrative arc and the direction for subsequent editing, hallelujah!

 - then revise your piece to support and amplify your new hook, answer the hook in the last line…

…and just like that, you’ll have a hook AND a cohesive, compelling, must-read blog post.

So that’s how you find your blog post’s hook and then use your hook to tie it all together. Tie it up.

Some people like it like that.

Like, your reader.

The one who was hooked. The one who read your piece right through to the end.

And like the hamburger-eating public. Asking Where’s the Beef? increased Wendy’s annual revenue by 31%. One stunning phrase in the right place – a television commercial, a presidential campaign, the first line of a blog post – can change everything.

So please sally forth right now and find your hook. Yum.

—————

The Moral of the Story in Four Short Tweetables*:

1. Asking yourself “Where’s The Beef?” works for burgers AND blog posts. (click to tweet)

2. The more provocative, mysterious and insensible the first line, the better the hook. (click to tweet)

3. “She’s only one bad science experiment away from becoming an evil genius.” (click to tweet)

4. Hook Finding 101: Write; reread your work; ask yourself, “Where’s The Quote?”; and voila! Hook, found. (click to tweet)

*Wanna know how I wrote these tweets? I didn’t. I found them already written in my post. Yup, hook-finding works for crafting Tweetables, too.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/r67LapZ6RGE/