Blogging

How To Properly Write Your First Blog Post

August 29, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

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Every blogger has that awkward feeling. It is the absolute struggle to come up with an idea for your first blog post. You can write about anything, and that’s the main reason why writing the first blog post feels so awkward–anything doesn’t really narrow it down! There are so many topics, sub-topics, sub-topics of the sup-topics, and other things to choose from. It’s just too much.

What makes the situation awkward is that people overthink the situation. Overthinking makes the entire experience more awkward because many people try to put all of their knowledge in a particular area in one blog post. In order to make the experience less awkward, I am going to share with you good limitations you can use so you write the first blog post faster.

Create a blog post relating to your niche.
Choose a topic you know enough to the point where you do not have to do any research.
For how-to articles, make it a list of three. No more and no less.
You have a 200 word limit. That will make the entire experience less awkward.

You want to write a quick blog post the first time just so you know what it’s like to be out there. Blogging becomes less awkward as you publish more blog posts for the blog. Then you will get into a comfortable groove. The first blog post is the hardest, but afterwards, it becomes easier to write blog post after blog post.

Did you write your first blog post, and if so, how was that first blog post? After you wrote the first blog post, did it become easier for you to write blog post after blog post? Are there any words of wisdom you would like to offer people who have not written their first blog posts yet? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

4 Incredibly Easy Methods To Achieve Social Media Balance

August 28, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

It is fair to say that social media has taken over the lives of many people. People’s emotions are controlled by what other people post, and many people spend hours surfing on these social networks without thinking of the tasks they need to complete. Some people have been known to become depressed by spending too much time on their social networks. However, that’s not because social media is bad. The reason people get depressed is because they spend too much time on social media doing the wrong things.

On social media, Facebook in particular, friends take pictures of themselves living the good life. This makes a person feel horrible because they are not up to par with that friend. However, just because a friend took a picture that indicates happiness, that friend may have only been happy in the moment. Not everyone is happy just because they’re smiling in their avatar.

For some people, their uses of social media has gone too far. With more time checking out tweets and liking posts but less time outside and being with the people who are important to you, some people have lost themselves on social media. However, this is the time to break loose of the addiction. Most of us need more balance between the time we spend on social media and the time we spend doing other things. Here are four ways to restore that balance.

Do less surfing. A big reason why most people get trapped in social media is because they surf it too often. Without question, more time is spent surfing social media than is actually spent taking the time to write posts. If you cut down the amount of time you surf by 15-30 minutes every week, you will notice more time opening up and you being able to spend more time doing other things that you love to do.
Limit yourself to three social networks. I do not suggest limiting social networks for the business side, but if you are addicted to social media, more social networks will not do you any good. If you spend 1 hour every day on each social network you go on, and you have seven social networks, that’s a grand total of seven hours being wasted on social media. Limit yourself to three social networks. If you have more than three social networks, enter humongous passwords with your eyes closed for the other social networks so they can’t get hacked and you don’t remember the password. Then, if you choose to recover your password, you will have to click “Forgot your password.” Now you have more time to think about what you are going to do and if you should stop before logging into the social network.
Do more things outside of social media more often. Some people are addicted to social networks because they have nothing else going on in their lives. Some people have no one to interact with outside of home, and more unfortunate, some people have no one to interact with in their own home. You need to pursue other hobbies that take up time. I run for a minimum of 30 minutes every day, and some of my runs exceed two hours.
Get fit. This is not the corny 4th example because I could not think of a good one. Getting fit takes a lot of time, and it gives you more discipline. Getting fit requires you to workout as often as you can putting in as much effort as possible. Soon, surfing social media will no longer be the priority. Getting fit will take its place. In order to maximize the effects of getting more fit, do workouts with a partner. You will both challenge each other to show up every day and get the task done.

Social media addiction take up hours of your time, but if you know how to fight the addiction, you will find more time to do the things you forgot you loved to do. Some people feel that social media is their only source of happiness, but there’s more to life than tweets and selfies. Although I am on Twitter often, I don’t let it consume my life, and no one should have to stoop to that level. If you are at that level now, do these four things so you can successfully break your social media addiction. It may take some time to pull it off, but the more you think about it, the less likely you are going to start. Make the choice to start now so you do not live in regret and a bigger social media addiction later.

6 Tips To Expand Your Blog Audience

August 26, 2014 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

Growing Blog Traffic Statistics

The size of your blog audience is one of the determining factors of how far your content spreads and how many sales you make. Many of the successful bloggers who have turned blogging into a full-time income also have low Alexa ranks to boast about. The low Alexa ranks indicate that those blogs are popular and getting thousands of daily visitors. Your blog’s growth may be the difference between the sales you are getting now and the extra sales you could be getting later. In order to expand your blog audience, follow these six tips.

Grow your social media audience. The bigger your social media audience is, the more people you will be able to reach. The best way to grow your social media audience is by growing a targeted following. Growing your social media audience is one of the best ways to boost your blog’s SEO.
Get people to stay on your blog longer. The longer someone stays on your blog, the more likely that person is to visit your blog in the future. If you are able to get numerous returning visitors to your blog, those visitors will continuously share your content and tell their friends about you. Some of the ways to get people to stay on your blog longer are by making your blog load faster and reducing your blog’s bounce rate.
Write blog posts consistently. If you are consistently writing blog posts, your visitors will have a reason to come back to your blog every day and eventually subscribe to your blog. Writing blog posts on a consistent basis will allow you to get more blog traffic, and as you add more blog posts to your blog, math will start to work in your favor. If your blog has 100 blog posts, each blog post needs to get 10 visitors every day in order for the blog to bring in 1,000 daily visitors. However, if your blog has 1,000 blog posts, then each blog post needs to bring in 1 visitor every day in order for you to achieve the goal of getting 1,000 daily visitors. You need to ensure that your blog posts are valuable enough to be something that others would want to visit.
Get on more podcasts and interviews. Radio Guest List has been a powerful tool for me to get featured on more podcasts and interviews. Although my credentials help, I have been able to get opportunities from Radio Guest List that I would not have gotten before. What you can also do now is create a page on your blog that tells people you can do public speaking and get interviewed. What you need to do for the long term is build your presence so you become someone that others would want to interview.
Make sure you are getting the most out of your individual visitors. It’s great to have numerous visitors, but you also want to make sure you are getting the most out of your individual visitors. If you cannot optimize on 50 engaged visitors, then how are you going to optimize on thousands of engaged visitors. Set up your blog so people would want to subscribe and buy your products.
Get more people to subscribe to your blog. It is essential to get as many people as possible to subscribe to your blog. The bigger your list is, the more people there are on that list to buy your products. All you need to do at that point is send emails to your subscribers that they enjoy. Getting more blog subscribers is as easy as pie if you know how.

Growing your blog audience is an important way to spread on the web, get more subscribers, get even more visitors and get more sales. What were your thoughts on the list? Did you have a favorite tip or an additional tip (or both)? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The Simple 10-Step Guide To Better Blogging

August 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are millions of blogs on the web, and hundreds of thousands of blogs get added onto the web every day. With the amount of blogs on the web rapidly increasing, more people than ever are looking for ways to become better bloggers and get more traffic. If you are one of those many people, you have come to the right place. In this blog post, I am going to provide you with the 10 steps that many bloggers including myself have used to become better at what they do.

Identify your niche. You need to know what your niche is before you write your first blog post.
Get comfortable with the dashboard. Getting comfortable with your dashboard means knowing how to publish a new post, publish a new page, add sidebar widgets to your blog, and more.
Read other people’s blogs. Doing this will allow you to learn more about your niche. Even if you just read other people’s blog posts for 15 minutes every day, you’re ahead of the game.
Get ideas from other blog posts and from idea generators. This makes the process of thinking of ideas easier. When writer’s block hits, blog post idea generators and other blog posts come to the rescue.
Only write about the things you enjoy writing about. You may be writing about the same thing for years to come, so make sure you have fun every step of the way.
Keep it simple. I could have added an extra 5,000 words to this blog post and convey the same messages, but I don’t think you would want to read a blog post that large.
Make it easier for your visitors to read your entire blog posts. Make them shorter, make lists, use bold font so some people with busy schedules can skim through the content, and write in bite sized paragraphs instead of one giant block of text.
Write better headlines. Headlines attract people to your blog post and encourage them to keep on reading. Here are some ways to write better headlines.
Practice every day. If you are able to practice every day, you are naturally going to get better at what you practice in. Why not practice writing every day?
Never limit your scope of possibility. Why settle with where you are when you can do something much greater and more empowering.

Implementing these 10 steps will allow you to become a better blogger and write in a style that would encourage visitors to come back. Which step was your favorite?

5 Blogging Myths Debunked

August 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Blogging Myths

A blog is a powerful way to interact with more people, boost your presence on the web, and get more sales at the same time. Some people have been able to make full-time incomes with their blogs. However, most people have not made full-time incomes with their blogs yet. Quite on the contrary, most blogs bring in little to no revenue despite all of the work those bloggers put into writing valuable content. There are many reasons why a blog does not bring in revenue such as not being monetized or not bringing in traffic, but another reason why most blogs are not successful is because the bloggers behind them live under five myths. These myths are commonly practiced, but they are also not as powerful as they are thought to be. Here are the five myths:

Writing more blog posts equates to more traffic. Most of the popular blogs just happen to be filled with content. What allows these blogs to become popular is that the blogger has developed a strong social media presence that gets used to promote the blog. Then, as social media traffic, goes up, SEO traffic goes up.
SEO is king. SEO is something you should look into, but social media is more powerful than SEO. While you have to hope for the best with SEO, building a social media audience is a reliable way to bring in more blog traffic.
Traffic is more important than good content. Once you get the traffic, the value of your content will determine how long people stay on your blog. It is better to get 10 visitors that stay on your blog for 10 minutes each than it is to get 1,000 visitors that only stay on your blog for two seconds.
You can be a successful blogger overnight. If overnight success means a few years, then yes, it is possible. The reason there is no such thing as overnight success is because it takes a long time for people to know about you. This blog got 38 views on its first month and is now getting hundreds of thousands of views every year. Many bloggers become demoralized if they do not become overnight successes, but it is just part of the process. Here is a picture that shows you exactly what I am talking about.
The knowledge you have is good enough. No matter how smart you are, there is still more information you can learn about your niche. That is why I strongly encourage you to read more articles on the web, read more books, and watch YouTube videos related to your niche.

These five blogging myths continue to deceive bloggers into thinking in the wrong way about their journey and making the wrong decisions. By addressing these myths now, you can stop thinking the wrong thoughts about blogging and continue your journey on a brighter note. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any other blogging myths you would like to debunk? Please share your thoughts and advice below.