Blogging

8 Reasons Why Most Blogs Don’t Get Any Traffic

May 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

no blog traffic

There are some blogs that get a few hundred visitors every month while other blogs are getting hundreds of visitors every day. While some blogs are getting a lot of traffic, some bloggers struggle to get 3 visitors every day. Many bloggers give up after looking at the bleak numbers for a few months. However, there are reasons why most blogs do not get any traffic. These are 8 reasons.

Your blog is new. People do not know about new blogs. At one point for any blog, whether it be Mashable or a social media expert’s blog, was getting 0 visitors. People need to know about you in order to visit your blog. By writing blog posts consistently and building your presence on your social networks, you will get more traffic.
You are not utilizing social networks properly. If you are neither tweeting about as many of your blog posts as you possible nor engaging with your followers, then you are not utilizing your social networks properly. You need to engage with the followers that you have so they stick around and visit your blog posts. In addition, your posts need to send people to your blog instead of someone else’s blog.
You do not write blog posts consistently. If you do not write blog posts consistently, the people who were visiting your blog will forget about you. If someone visits your blog for the first time, and you don’t add any new content to your blog for that month, you lose the chance of that person returning to your blog.
You do not build your list. Building a list is essential towards your success. The more people are on your list, the more customers you will have each time a new product gets launched. These are some tips you can implement to build a bigger list.
Your blog has a high bounce rate. If your blog has a high bounce rate, that means people are visiting and leaving your blog without sticking around. You need to get people to stick around the first time so they will come back a second time and eventually add themselves to your list. A lower bounce rate will also allow your blog to get more views. These are some ways that you can lower your blog’s bounce rate.
Your blog is not up to par with other blogs. In the beginning, your blog posts will not be as good as competitor’s blog posts. My first blog posts were not nearly as detailed as the blog posts that I write now. The only way to get better in this regard is to write every day. By writing every day, you will become a better writer which will lead to better blog posts.
Your blog has bad SEO. Although SEO is not the best way to get short-term traffic, having good SEO will allow you to get good long-term traffic. Having good SEO will make your blog easier to find in search engines, and when you start experiencing the surge in traffic over the long-term, you will be very happy that you enhanced your blog’s SEO. These are some of the methods I used to improve this blog’s SEO.
You don’t have a plan to increase traffic. Whether your blog gets 10 visitors every day or 100 visitors every day, you need to have a plan to increase your blog’s traffic. You need to identify the things that you are going to do differently to see your blog grow. The more your blog grows, the more sales you will make.

Those are the 8 reasons why most blogs do not get any traffic. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and tips below.

Why You Need To Respond To The People Who Comment On Your Blog

May 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

blog comment

Why do you want more comments on your blog posts? Most bloggers want more comments on their blog posts to show that people interact on their blogs. Bloggers want conversations to get started on their blogs to indicate that their blog is popular. The most popular blogs also happen to have numerous comments on every blog post. It’s not a coincidence.

What most bloggers forget is that they can build conversations by simply responding to other people’s comments. Responding to someone else’s comment counts as a comment in the grand total. If you respond to 25 comments, people will see that your blog post has received 50 comments. That shows bustling activity and popularity: the two things that people look for in a blog.

Not only is responding to the people who comment on your blog a way to bring up the numbers, but responding to other people’s comments will allow you to further open discussion. By further opening the discussion, you will encourage more people to comment and possibly learn about things in your niche that you did not know about before. As you continue replying to comments and building your presence on the web, some people will write a good comment on your blog just to get your reply. There is a point when a blogger becomes so famous that a reply from that blogger means a lot.

Another benefit to responding to comments is your ability to build stronger connections. The advantage with WordPress (and many others) is that the person who comments must enter their email address. By requiring everyone who comments to enter their email address, you will be able to reply to those comments and send emails to those people. The people who commented on your blog will be very grateful that you took the time to send a personalized message, and that will allow the connection to build. A new connection can end up becoming a customer, subscriber, or better yet, a returning customer.

There are many benefits associated with replying to comments on your blog. Do you reply to the comments on your blog? If you leave a comment below, I will be sure to respond.

17 Ways To Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines

May 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Attention Grabbing Headline

The most read blog posts are the ones with the best headlines. Your blog post could get more traffic just by making your blog post’s title something that grabs the reader’s attention. Most people who share blog posts on social networks use the headline to determine whether they should share a blog post on their social networks or not. These are the 17 ways to come up with attention-grabbing headlines.

Use a different language in the title. You have to be Spanish to know what consejos means. In one of my popular blog posts, I used this word to grab the reader’s attention. This method drew in the reader’s curiosity, but do not get carried away with this option.
Use action verbs in your title. Grab your reader’s attention right from the start by using action verbs in your headlines. You will probably not be able to do this for all of your blog posts, but when you can use action verbs, they help.
Offer something special. Among my most popular blog posts are 100 Amazing Blogging Tips and 100 Amazing Pinterest Tips. Offering 100 tips stands out from the competition. Your headline needs to tell people what extra, above and beyond information you are giving them.
Use better adjectives. Good is a boring, overused word. “5 Good Tips” is not the kind of headline that grabs attention. “5 Powerful Tips” is something that grabs your attention by emphasizing how valuable those tips are.
Make your headline either really long or really short. A short headline will make the reader curious. In this scenario, readers will wonder why you decided to write a short headline. A long headline will give the reader information about your blog post before they read the first sentence.
Have a strong topic sentence. The topic sentence is to further emphasize your headline and grab attention.
Include the NSA in your headline. This one never fails. With Heartbleed and corruption on the loose, millions of people want to know what is going on with the NSA (the not so secure agency). You may win a Pulitzer Prize while you’re at it.
Write a headline about a breaking news story. Everyone wants to know the news. That’s why there are trending topics on social networks.
Write a headline with the name of a famous person and connect it to your blog post. A blog post called “How To Become As Dedicated As Mariano Rivera” would get more attention than a blog post called “How To Get More Dedication.” When you use this method, everything you say needs to be true (then again, that is always the case).
Use words that have been hardwired to get people’s attention. MONEY, FOOD, and SEX. I’m sure those words popped right out of your screen.
Look at the pros. The people who are making a living off of their blogs are the ones who typically master writing good headlines.
Use bigger words. Effective is a bigger word than good.
Occasionally use words people do not know the meanings of. Don’t go Shakespeare on us, but for 5-10% of your blog posts, you should use words that people do not know the definitions of. In order for this to work, you need to define the word within the first 5 sentences of your blog post.
Be controversial. What are your thoughts about President Obama, The United Kingdom, and a Jesuit Pope? Although you may not talk about those three on your blog, you can be controversial in your niche. Is retweeting better than mentioning? Is stretching better than lifting weights? The possibilities are endless.
Trial and error. As you write more blog posts, you will be able to see which headlines on your blog get the most traffic. Write headlines similar to the ones that get the most traffic.
What headlines catch your attention? 2K To 10K is a book about writing more words every day. That headline caught my attention, and some of my headlines are modeled around that headline. Everyone does this. A classic example is 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. Now there are blog posts about 7 habits of any highly effective person in any field.
Have a 7 in the headline. It works in getting more conversions, so why not headlines?

Those are the 17 ways to write attention-grabbing headlines. By writing attention-grabbing headlines, more people will read and share your content. What are your thoughts on the list, and do you have any additional tips to add? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why Guest Blogging Builds Preeminence

May 8, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

guest blogging

Guest blogging has been established as a way to gain traffic to your blog and put your content in front of a larger audience. With enough guest posts, your blog becomes more popular and you get more subscribers. However, there is another advantage to guest blogging that few people know about. Being a guest blogger builds your preeminence on the web.

For some guest blogs, becoming a contributor involves going through a series of steps such as sending an email to get permission to submit content, submitting your content, and getting that content approved. In a nutshell, not everyone is able to become a guest blogger. There are cuts that take place in order to separate the best from the ordinary. People who do not guest blog only know that there are cuts. These people do not know the percentage accepted or how writers get cut (or make it), but they know that there are cuts.

That means many people see guest bloggers as people who were able to make it past the cuts because of remarkable content. In addition, visitors will see the guest blogger as someone who is good enough to write for other blogs. Guest bloggers on Business2Community, Social Media Today, and others are seen as people whose content is good enough to be featured on popular and prestigious blogs.

If you are guest blogging on some guest blogs, others will realize that you write good content. As a result, guest blogging opportunities will come to you. Once you build preeminence as a guest blogger, you will never have to perform a Google search to find good guest blogs about your niche. Bloggers will come to you and ask if you would like to write for them.

Being a guest blogger tells people that your content is special and worth reading. If you want to relay that message to all of your readers, then you need to start guest blogging. These are some tips to help you get started.

5 Ways To Get More People To Contact You

May 8, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

The strongest connections are the ones that take place one email at a time. There is no limit to the number of characters someone can use in an email. In addition, people in the conversation can go in-depth since their followers will not see the conversation. Five emails can have the same amount of content as 50 tweets. Followers who get 50 straight tweets about a conversation they are not in would get annoyed very quickly. Annoying your followers with these long conversations may result in some of those people clicking the dreaded unfollow button. Taking the conversation off social media and to the email solves that problem.

In addition, emailing blocks all of the distractions. When on social networks, some people are having 10 short conversations at the same time. Being able to email people will allow you to have one powerful conversation with someone and provide more information than you would be able to in a 140 character tweet. The person who you are having the conversation with will view your blog posts more often. Most of the people who are actively commenting on my blog are also the people who contacted me via email and had a lengthy conversation with me about social media, business, blogging, or my story. Some people may want to contact you about a speaking opportunity or another opportunity as well.

Basically, the more people get to contact you, the more connections you get to build. Allowing people to contact you is one of the most important ways to become successful. Everyone–whether the newbie or the people on Shark Tank, provide their visitors with a way to contact them. In order to get more people to contact you, implement these 5 tactics.

Create accounts for multiple social networks. Although my main social network is Twitter, I use a variety of other social networks as well. I have a strong presence on Pinterest, occasionally use GooglePlus, and I have my own Facebook Page. Most people come to my blog from Twitter, but some people find me on Pinterest. The Little Pickle Press found me on Pinterest, and as a result, I ended up getting featured on their site.
Have a Contact Me Page on your blog. Visitors should be able to contact you without scrolling up or down on your blog. By having a Contact Me Page that appears on the header of your blog, more people will know how to contact you.
Forms are overrated. Before leaving my email address on the Contact Me Page, I had a form. The problem with having a form is that the form can be buggy. Although I was getting 100 daily visitors at the time, no one contacted me on my blog. I later learned that the reason people were not contacting me like before was because the form I used on my blog was buggy. All of the people who tried to contact me at that time got a message saying, “Are you sure you want to do this?” with no way of saying yes or no. Since then, I simply have my email address right there on the Contact Me Page. Leaving your email address on your Contact Me Page cancels the risk of a buggy form.
Give the visitor at most three email addresses to choose from. A common mistake I see is that people create 10 email addresses and lump them all together on one Contact Me Page. Instead of creating a lot of email addresses, give your visitors subjects to choose to relay their message. If you need to have more email addresses on your Contact Me Page, you should have a Media Inquiries email address and one more of your choice as well. My recommendation though is to only have 1 email address available. Less is more.
Turn yourself into someone who people would want to contact. Seth Godin is someone who people would want to contact. Mariano Rivera is someone who people would want to contact as well. In order to get more people to contact you, you need to boost your credibility. The person with a Klout score of 70 gets contacted more often than the person with a Klout score of 50. The person with 100,000 real followers gets contacted more often than the person with 10,000 real followers. The bestselling author gets contacted more often than the author that published his first book a few days ago. By turning yourself into someone who people would want to contact, you will be able to have more conversations that go from social media or your blog to back and forth emails.

In order to grow your presence as an entrepreneur, business, or writer, you need to build strong connections. Whether someone from NBC contacts you or a potential customer, you will be more likely to build a strong connection when you are sending emails back and forth to each other. Those strong connections can lead to business opportunities, but any of those connections can lead to a customer. When people contact you, be sure to respond as quickly as possible no matter who is contacting you.

The One Thing Most Bloggers Forget To Do

May 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Blogging mistake

Authors do this several times for their books. However, many people skip this part of writing blog posts. What could it possibly be? I could say that I will reveal the answer in 9 minutes and have callers guess the answer similar to the Lite FM Radio Station. However, I am going to simply reveal the answer right now in bold letters.

Most bloggers forget to proofread their blog posts.

There are many bloggers who make the mistake of misspelling words. I recently read an article on a very credible blog only to discover towards the end of the blog post that tweets was spelled as “tweeets.” That is a mistake that could have been avoided with a spell check, but since the blogger did not use spell check, readers will notice that mistake. However, there are some mistakes that the spell check does not catch such as run on sentences and words that have been misplaced in the blog post.

A blog is a free book for your readers to read. If the free product does not deliver the way it should, people will be less likely to buy your products. The logic behind this is that if the free product does not deliver, the paid product probably won’t deliver either.

Proofreading a blog post will probably take up 5 minutes of your time, and really lengthy blog posts can take gasp 10 minutes of your time. However, by proofreading your blog posts, you will be able to provide your readers with better blog posts, and you will see the rewards of your hard work as you see your sales go up.

Proofreading your blog posts will allow you to see the mistakes. If you wrote 99 flawless blog posts, but one of your blog posts is flawed, then the proofreading was worth it. What are your thoughts on proofreading blog posts? Please share your thoughts below.