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5 Secrets For A Successful Blog

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5-secrets-for-a-successful-blog

The journey towards a successful blog is full of twists and turns. With so many ways to approach your growth strategy, blogging can feel like a blessing or a curse. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and lose sight of what’s most important. The purpose of this blog post is to help you prioritize.

To ensure the growth and success of your blog, focus on the following five strategies:

 

#1: Growing Your Email List

Your email list is your most valuable asset. Gaining more subscribers to your blog or newsletter should guide nearly all of your business initiatives. Everything I do for my business has a focus on growing my email list.

For example, each visitor to my blog is greeted by a welcome mat offering a free ebook: 27 Ways to Get More Retweets on Twitter. Similarly, if a visitor clicks on the ebook image via the sidebar, he or she is sent directly to a landing page.

When I share content on social media, I try to include a post promoting my landing page (but remember to keep self-promotional posts to no more than 10% of your overall content). On YouTube, I include a CTA and link to my landing page in the video’s description.

If you don’t have an email management system and are worried about the costs, MailChimp offers a free option for up to 2,000 subscribers.

 

#2: Outsource Most Of Your Tasks

If I attempted to do everything for my business myself, my work-life balance would suffer. While I do a lot of work for my business, the work of my freelancers combined surpasses my own efforts. Freelancers schedule my social media posts, create images, edit my content, and much more.

If I had to take on all of these responsibilities, I couldn’t spend as much time writing and promoting great content.

Pareto’s Principle states that 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of efforts. Outsourcing the other 80 percent of your efforts makes it easier for you to maximize the results you get from the most important 20 percent and focus on what’s important.

 

#3: Consistently Write Valuable Content

Never underestimate your audience. They have access to millions of blogs with fresh, consistent and valuable content. Their expectations are high. Your blog needs to stand out among the competition.

Consistently writing valuable content is not optional. You won’t survive, let alone thrive, online unless you consistently provide your audience with something of real value.

Set a publishing schedule that you can stick with. As your blog gains credibility, you’ll attract guest contributors who can help you keep your content fresh and interesting. Blogs that are updated several times daily enjoy a dedicated staff of writers and regular guest contributors.

Consistently writing valuable content will result in returning visitors and the type of Google love that will put you at the top.

 

#4: Build Relationships

If you’re the only person leveling up your blog, it will only spread so far. While it’s possible to build an audience and increase traffic on your own, it’s much easier when you’ve built the right relationships.

Begin to build relationships with bloggers in your niche if you aren’t doing so already. Some relationships will grow so strong that these influential bloggers will start promoting your content to their own audiences, and your traffic will multiply.

There are plenty of ways to build relationships, but nearly all successful relationships with influencers begin with you doing something to get noticed. Sharing an influencer’s content, commenting on their blog posts, or asking them questions are just a few ways to get their attention.

Lately I’ve been building relationships by inviting people to be guests on my podcast. Getting influencers to participate in your podcast is perhaps the best way to get a free consultation session while tapping into a wider audience (guests often share the episode with their own fans and followers).

Remember that satisfying relationships benefit both parties. Influencers can see right through selfish intentions. Build relationships based on genuine interest and think about how you can give back.

 

#5: Sell A Product

Imagine that you’ve taken the time to grow your blog and email list, but don’t have a method of accumulating revenue. A blog with millions of visitors per month that never generates revenue isn’t as good as a blog with 10,000 monthly visitors that accumulates revenue.

If you don’t have your own product, start with affiliate links (but don’t rely on affiliate marketing exclusively for long-term profits).

Eventually you should be publishing your own ebooks, offering training courses or creating your own products and services.  You will always have more control over a product that you create compared to an affiliate’s product.

While service-based offerings can be profitable, products likes training courses and books literally enable you to make money while you sleep.

 

In Conclusion

Blogging is a complex venture with many avenues for growth. If you find one profitable path, and stick to it, you’ll achieve success faster than bloggers who change direction again and again.

But regardless of which path you chose, these five essentials will make or break your blog. I learned about these five essentials the hard way. Before I optimized my blog for email subscribers, I only gained 300 new names from my first 150,000 visitors. If I had focused on my email list from the start, that number would have been closer to 10,000 subscribers.

If you haven’t yet implemented one or more of these five strategies, now’s the time to get started. No regrets! Rather than focus on could-haves and would-haves, concentrate on the opportunities ahead — the sky’s the limit.

What are your thoughts on these five blogging essentials? Have any others to share? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Instagram

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Instagram

Ever get random blog traffic? It’s a mixed feeling of excitement and the question, “What can I do to get more traffic from that source?” I was recently surprised by Instagram traffic to my blog.

I followed targeted people on Instagram to grow my account, and I noticed that Instagram brought 10 people over to my blog that same day. Ten visitors a day adds up to 3,650 new visitors each year. I’m not doing cartwheels over an additional 10 visitors, but neither am I discounting the potential power of Instagram to increase my blog traffic.

In fact, I am doing cartwheels precisely because those visitors came from Instagram. At the time, my last Instagram post was two months old, and the one prior to that was almost a year old. I attracted 10 people to my blog via an inactive Instagram account. Imagine if it was an active account.

That’s why I was doing cartwheels.

Now I’m dreaming of the day my monthly Instagram traffic surpasses my monthly Twitter traffic. One-thousand daily visitors from social media alone has a nice ring to it. Today my blog is consistently getting more traffic from Instagram, and that traffic is growing.

Want to get blog traffic from Instagram? Follow these five tips:

 

#1: Link To Your Blog In Your Bio

This is how I got my initial 10 visitors. I followed people, they followed me back, and some of those people decided to check out my blog. I was also experimenting with a second method (but more on that in a second).

Linking to your blog in your bio is perhaps the easiest way to increase traffic. It takes a few seconds and requires little to no effort. All you do is edit your bio and add a link to your blog.

instagram blog traffic

It’s that easy!

 

#2: Grow A Targeted And Active Audience

There are many ways to grow an audience on Instagram. Many sites out there offer myriad ways to grow your Instagram fans, particularly those encouraging you to buy followers.

That method doesn’t interest me. In fact, buying followers will not give you an authentic picture of your account activity and most will be bot accounts. At one point, I used a point exchange site to build up my Twitter audience during its infancy stage (I stopped when my account had 1667 followers), but I did nothing like that for my Instagram account.

I am more interested in methods that will actually result in an audience of people who are interested in my pictures and ready to engage with my posts. And you should be too.

Build a targeted and active audience by hanging out where the targeted and active people hang out. How? First, find an influencer in your niche with a big audience. Next, visit the influencer’s account and look at his or her latest post and who has engaged with, or liked it. Finally, follow all of those people.

It’s that easy. People liked the picture because they were interested in that topic (your niche). These people are likely active and engaged on the platform, so this simple follow strategy will help you build your own audience.

 

#3: Post Pictures Of Your Latest Blog Post

The day I received 10 visitors from Instagram to my blog I did not include an image from my latest blog post. But if I had, I would have easily doubled my visitors. Posting pictures of your latest blog posts on Instagram is a creative way to use the platform to increase your blog traffic.

Most of my blog post images are 300×300 pixels, but I can quickly and easily resize them to 400×400 pixels so that they are optimized for Instagram.

 

#4: Post Pictures Made To Spread

If I share a motivational quote on Instagram, it doesn’t usually result in a direct increase in my blog traffic. If anything, I’ll receive an indirect increase in traffic because some curious people will click on my blog link.

These types of posts are designed more for spreading power than traffic power. The stronger your image’s spreading power, the more people that image reaches. Motivational quotes happen to perform very well on virtually every social network. These pictures normally get a lot of engagement and attract followers.

This means my blog post images are seen by a larger audience. Motivational quote pictures motivate others and increase my following, which brings more attention to the blog post images that drive my traffic.

 

#5: Make Those Pictures Awesome

Each picture you put on your Instagram profile needs at least 10 minutes of care and attention (with the exception of random pics taken in the moment). I hire a freelancer to choose and edit my blog post pictures, and it looks like I’ll be hiring another freelancer for the motivational quote pictures as well.

If you want to create the pictures yourself, use Canva. It’s a free tool that makes image editing a breeze.

 

In Conclusion

While ten visitors in one day doesn’t look like much, Instagram is attractive because of its potential to bring in serious traffic and revenue.

Instagram users are active and engaged, so if you aren’t already using the platform, start now. You don’t need many followers to get dozens of likes for each picture you post.

The potential Instagram has to transform your business is huge. However, the only way Instagram will transform your business is if you take action.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for business? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Have any Instagram tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Ways To Find Time For Freelance Writing

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freelance writingI recently came across the Side Hustle Nation podcast and went through some of the episodes. I was intrigued to discover that several freelancers were making between four and five figures per month.

Considering the extra time I have during the summer months, I decided to take a look at freelancing. Why turn down a good opportunity when it won’t have a negative affect your business? In fact, it may even help it.

At the same time, extra time doesn’t come easily. Maintaining a blog, podcast, YouTube channel, Udemy courses, and everything else I do for my business, I need to plan my extra time wisely.

If you are a freelance writer or considering to pursue freelancing as a side hustle, these five time-saving methods work wonders.

 

#1: Build A Team Of Writers To Help You Out

For anything that requires a big time commitment, I will always have a team of people help me out.

At this point, my freelance writing isn’t at full throttle. I am just exploring the possibilities and sending out a few pitches. But I’ll build a team once I start doing more freelance writing.

The key to freelance writing is to crank out as much valuable content as you possibly can. The more content you can write, the better.

On some days, it will be easy for you to think of ideas and write lots of content. On other days, however, thinking of new ideas will be a struggle. But that’s just the nature of writing.

On those difficult days when it’s hard to get rolling, you have a few options: the first is to write out a bunch of outlines and use those outlines to form your content.

The second is to have a team of people who provide you with the outlines. You can then choose which outline works best for you.

Another option is to hire a ghostwriter and then edit the ghostwriter’s work to fit your style. I have never done this but know of several people who do.

Some full-time Kindle authors hire ghostwriters to write all of their books. Ghostwriters allow you to produce more content, but all of the content produced in your name must also be written in your voice and style.

Having a team behind you makes any goal you are pursuing easier to accomplish. A team saves you time and keeps you accountable.

 

#2: Find Extra Time In Your Day

Side hustlers are ninjas at finding extra time each day. To find the time to pursue freelancing opportunities, I had to find at least some extra time in my day.

I have extra time in the summer, but there are many people with more time than me who still don’t manage to accomplish their goals.

When school is back in session, my business will continue moving forward, even while my time is sliced and diced.

The point is that no matter what your schedule, you can make freelancing work.

Think about all of the things you do on any given day. If you are like the average American, you’re watching 32 hours of TV every week. I watch the NBA Finals, the World Series (if the Red Sox are in it), the Super Bowl, The Big Bang Theory, and Super Girl.

But now that the NBA finals are over and all of my favorite shows are out of season, I won’t be watching TV for the rest of the summer.

Each time I make adjustments in areas like these, I remove procrastinators from my life. I welcome these adjustments because as a result I enjoy an overall increase in productivity.

But I still find other ways to procrastinate. While I rarely watch more than an hour of television per week (once the NBA finals are over), I spend a lot of time on MLB’s website when the Red Sox are playing.

What activities are sucking up your time? How can you reduce or eliminate those activities? Asking yourself those two questions will allow you to find the extra time needed to pursue freelance writing.

 

#3: Increase Efficiency

The next place to look for extra time is within your business model and your life model.

For example, if something normally takes you 30 minutes to complete, find a way to get that time down to 15 minutes per day.

There was a point when it would take me at least an hour a day to schedule my tweets. That’s why I decided to invest in HootSuite Pro. Now I can schedule all of my tweets (100+ per day) in six clicks or less.

That one investment has saved me from DAYS of scheduling tweets. I must have saved myself over 1,000 hours at this point. 1,000 small crumbs add up to a cake.

Don’t take my word for how many crumbs add up to a cake, but you get the point.

Look for any possible way to increase your efficiency as long as you stay happy and keep the important people in your life happy.

 

#4: Outsource Other Parts Of Your Business

The more efficient you get, the more difficult it is to become more efficient. Six clicks to schedule over 100 tweets is as efficient as efficient gets.

I can’t get that down to five clicks to schedule over 100 tweets. Even if I managed to do so, the extra .1 second I would get each day wouldn’t add up to much (less than a minute per year).

The only option left to save more time was outsourcing that part of my business. Not only do I forgo the six clicks, but I don’t have to go on HootSuite every day.

All of the time it would take for HootSuite to load, for me to enter my log in credentials, and get everything set up to do those six clicks now gets taken off my hands.

HootSuite loads fast and is an easy website to navigate, but now I save an additional 10 minutes each day. That adds up to an extra 153 hours each year!

 

#5: Choose More Profitable Writing Assignments

Part of finding more time is to pursue the opportunities that result in more revenue.

Freelancer A writes three articles that are 1,000 words long and gets paid $50 for each article

Freelancer B writes one article that is 1,000 words long and gets paid $150 for that article.

Let’s assume both of them write about topics they are passionate about.

I’d rather be Freelancer B because you make just as much money writing one article as Freelancer A makes by writing three articles.

You get the same result ($150) but save a lot of time. Some freelance writers make over $500 per article.

As you gain more credibility and submit more pitches, keep an eye out for the opportunities that give you more money for the same work.

 

In Conclusion

Freelance writing is a great side hustle for making quick money. While none of the money is ever truly passive, you can use your freelancing money to invest in your business.

If you turn freelance writing into your business, then you can turn that into a full-time income too.

In the long-run, it’s more beneficial to write a successful book. That way thousands of people pay you for the same piece of content.

In the short-run, you may need the extra money to pay for a consultation session, a valuable tool that will help your business, or you have a strong need for immediate money. That’s where freelance writing comes in.

What are your thoughts on freelance writing? Are you a freelance writer or thinking about getting started? Have any stories for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Ways To Make Training Course Creation A Breeze

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easy training course creation

Ever wonder how some people are able to crank out profitable training course after profitable training course?

They make it look so easy.

I remember the month when I created five training courses. It was a lot of work, but the reward was very high.

Training course creation can be a breeze for you too if you approach it in the right way. This blog post will give you clarity on how you can approach training course creation so it’s light work.

 

#1: Outline The Training Course

For this blog post, I will assume that you already have a training course idea. Once you have that idea, you need to outline that training course. Here’s how that works.

The first step to outlining a training course is to conduct a brain dump. A brain dump is when you think of several ideas related to the training course topic. You want to think of as many ideas as possible.

The more time you spend brain dumping, the more you will have to work with.

After the brain dump is over, the next step is to find common themes with all of the video ideas that you wrote down. Those themes will become sections within your course and the corresponding videos will fit into each section just like parts of a chapter.

That’s all there is to it. You have successfully outlined your training course.

 

#2: Identify Talking Points For Each Video

Once you have identified the video ideas within your training course, you must identify the talking points for those videos. You don’t have to prepare a script for this.

Write your talking points as if they are supposed to be the key takeaways that people should get from your videos.

The best part about these talking points is that they don’t have to be long at all. I usually put all of my talking points on a single index card:

training course creation

If you want to use ScreenFlow or Camtasia for your videos, you could face additional work. When I first started created Udemy courses, I thought that creating slides made the courses better, so I decided to do KeyNote presentations.

While I still delivered on my value, the problem is that creating all of those KeyNote presentations takes FOREVER. Direct-to-camera videos take much less time in the prep work and the production.

The only time I recommend using ScreenFlow or Camtasia for a training course is if you want to show your students how to use something on the web by showing them.

For instance, I can tell you how to use the HootSuite Bulk Scheduler, but wouldn’t it be easier if I showed you how to use it in a video?

 

#3: Hire As Many Freelancers As Possible

Outsourcing changed my life. I tried not to say “changed my life,” but there was really no other way of putting it.

As the work mounted up, I realized that I would be stuck with everything that I was doing. That meant I couldn’t explore any new opportunities. I didn’t have the time to do so.

Then, I decided to outsource all of the busy work. Scheduling tweets, creating pictures for blog posts, editing blog posts, and growing my Twitter audience were just some of the things that I outsourced.

The result was that my time opened up like crazy. I instantly had more time to create more videos for my training courses.

In today’s world, and probably long before, you can’t make it by yourself. The lonely wolf in the woods is going to starve to death. You don’t want that to happen to your business.

The most successful entrepreneurs have teams behind them.

I know the two biggest complaints of outsourcing. The complaints revolve around budget and the classic, “Why would I pay someone else to do something that I already know how to do?”

I knew how to do all of the things that I outsourced to my freelancers. The problem is that those activities took up my valuable time which as a full-time student, I don’t have much time to begin with.

I am approaching the point in which the only things I will do for my business are create videos, write blog posts, conduct podcast interviews, respond to my audience, and promote myself.

My freelancers will take care of the rest so I can focus on the priorities that I enjoy the most.

Some of the freelancers who will help you with your training course include a video editor, someone to write video descriptions, and a copywriter.

 

#4: Do A Little Bit Each Day

It is better to do a little bit for your training course each day than it is for you to attempt to do it all in one day. It’s more manageable this way.

Imagine doing three videos per day for an entire week. While it involves a little work each day, it’s doable. Now imagine choosing one day of the week and doing 21 videos.

What would your voice sound like on that final video? Could you still show people your passion or would it get sucked away? Could you still deliver value?

See why it’s better to do a little bit each day versus designating a day to get it all done?

Building this habit is just as simple as doing it each day for 66 days. Even if you only record one video on some days, one video is better than nothing…and it will help build the habit.

Once you do a video every day for 66 days, that habit will stick. Soon you’ll find it effortless to show up every day and record videos.

 

#5: Get Into A Workflow

Ideally, when you record the videos, you want to record your videos for the day in one shot. It’s better to record three videos in one sitting than it is to record one video in the morning, one video in the afternoon, and one video at night. Here’s why:

Even if you managed to have a perfect workflow despite stopping yourself short twice, you still have the time cost of setting up.

For me, that means turning the lights on, getting dressed in appropriate attire for the video, turning on the microphones, and hitting the record button. When I’m done, I have to turn everything off and then get dressed into something more casual.

I don’t spend my entire day in a collared shirt 🙂

Instead of only doing that once, I’d have to do that three times.

To help get into the workflow, I identify video ideas and talking points in advance. Staring at the camera trying to think of your next video idea is the video creator’s version of writer’s block.

It’s easy to avoid with just five minutes of preparation for each video.

 

In Conclusion

Creating training courses doesn’t have to be hard. The level of difficulty depends on your overall approach.

I have created as many as five training courses in a given month. If a teen can do it, then you can do it too.

Are you thinking about creating a training course? Have any tips on how to create a quality training course faster? Which of these tips did you like the most? Sound off in the comments section below.

22 Experts Recommend Their Favorite Blogging Tools

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expert blogging tools

Wondering what blogging tools the experts like to use? I recently contacted 22 experts and got their takes on what the best blogging tools on the web are.

What I like about these tools is that there is a perfect blend of well-known blogging tools and blogging tools that you will learn about for the first time.

I know I definitely learned a lot by hearing about these experts’ favorite tools, and I am sure you will too.

 

Andrew Choco is the VP of Marketing at a digital agency, Directive Consulting. Directive Consulting is a Google, Bing, Moz and Unbounce partner.

#1: Answer the Public: This tool allows you to search a keyword and then gives you the questions that people are searching involving that specific keyword. This is great for thinking of topics and prompts to blog about.

#2: Grammarly: This is a popular tool, but one that is really helpful for making sure your blog post has perfect grammar and sentence structure. It’s like spell check but on overdrive.

#3: Small SEO Tools: Plagiarism Checker: This is a great tool for making sure your content isn’t crossing the line into plagiarism, even if it is by accident. It’s always best to be safe than sorry, and this is a great way to ensure our content is original!

 

Eric Brantner is the founder of SleepZoo.com. He runs several blogs in a variety of niches. Some of them have been featured in USA Today, Time, MSN, TechCrunch, Fortune, and other top publications

#1: CoSchedule: This is by far my top tool. I use it to plan out content, assign to writers, edit, and share via social media–all in one place. It has streamlined our content marketing dramatically, cutting out hours of work and allowing us to tremendously increase content production and sharing across all our sites.

#2: Yoast: You have great content, but you need to make sure you’ve optimized for keywords to get found in Google. Yoast provides a detailed checklist to help you do just that.

#3: MailMunch: Before using MailMunch, my mailing lists were pitiful. Hardly
anyone signed up. Now, I created pop-up forms with MailMunch and my lists
have grown exponentially.

Using this platform, you can plan out content, assign content to writers, edit, and share via social media–all in one place. It has streamlined our content marketing dramatically, cutting out hours of work and allowing us to tremendously increase content production and sharing across all our sites.

 

Peter Kim is a marketing strategist who specializes in social media management, SEO, and blogging.

#1: Buzz Sumo: Buzz Sumo is great for discovering popular content to see
what you’re up against as you’re about to start your next blog post and
it’s also great for discovering influencers for content marketing.

#2: SEMRush: This tool just about does it all from keyword research to
competitor research. The new SEO Keyword Magic tool they’ve built has made
it even easier to put together a winning blog post.

#3: SEO Yoast Plugin: This is the best tool to make your posts SEO friendly
especially if you’re putting together evergreen content that’ll continually
bring organic traffic to your website.

 

Mike Kawula is the CEO of Social Media startup Social Quant, a top ranked Twitter tool by HubSpot that helps you find the most relevant followers on Twitter that will interact with your business.

#1: Warfare Plugin: Warfare is an amazing social shares tool that really helps drive traffic. It has a ton of features, one is counting how many Tweets you get, which many have removed. Warfare also allows you to customize what graphics will be shared and the text, which is super helpful.

#2: Post Planner: Post Planner has a ton of great features, but one of my favorite is their requeue share feature. When you write a good piece of evergreen content, you should make sure that it is continually shared on all Social networks occasionally. Remember people on Twitter for instance are moving fast and can miss your content and if you’re increasing Twitter followers daily, then you’ll want them to see your previous content. Post Planner makes this easy and highly affordable.

#3: Social Quant My last tool I’d recommend is Social Quant. Social Quant helps you get more Twitter followers, but relevant Twitter followers who will engage with your content. Remember it doesn’t matter how often you share your content if you don’t have a following, thus Social Quant makes it easy for you.

Always remember with Content Marketing the Marketing part, and these 3 tools will help with that!

 

Rob Boirun is the CEO of Reviewster Network, a network that specializes in tech, software, and app reviews.

#1: EagleStats: For those that are worried about using Google Analytics on their blogs there is another free service out there that offers just as good stats if not better for bloggers. Look at EagleStats. I really use it for the real-time geo-location stats it offers.

#2: WP Distraction Free Editor plugin: For WordPress bloggers I recommend getting the WP Distraction Free Editor plugin. This is basically feng-shui for your editor. Makes working on your posts a aen-like experience if that is even possible.de

#3: Buzzsumo: This is a great inspirational tool if you need blogging ideas or if you get stuck on a topic you are writing about. This gives you up to date topic ideas that people are actively looking for. So if people are looking for it, may as well write about it.

 

Nicholas Tenhue is currently UX and Product Strategy lead at Genospace. He is also an alumnus of Microsoft Ventures, Founder and former President of EIT Digital Alumni. He also holds a dual MS in ICT Innovation from UCL and KTH.

#1: LSI Keyword Generator: Using latent semantic indexing keywords is great for getting high-quality SEO content out there. You just typing your main keyword and LSI Keyword Generated gives you a set of related terms to weave into your article. Magic.

#2: Title Capitalizer: We all want to get that title case lettering right for that engaging title we spend so long thinking up. Simply copy and paste your title and let Title Capitalizer takes care of the capitalization rules for you.

#3: Pixabay: It’s hard to find genuine and eye catching stock imagery for blog posts on the web. Pixabay is a free community curated photo site where all photography is free for commercial use.

 

Sanjay Nasta is the CEO of Microassist, Inc., a learning and application development and delivery company focused on digital accessibility for all. He is a frequent contributor to the Learning Dispatch and E-Learning Council.com.

#1: Twitter Lists: I use Twitter Lists to find great information to share with my audience. For example, when writing about Digital Accessibility I peruse what the thought leaders are talking about on my Twitter list.

#2: iAWriter: To write my blog posts I use a iAWriter. It is a simple markdown editor that makes sure I’m not distracted. It keeps the formatting simple, and exports clean HTML.
#3: Canva: For quick graphics for blogs I use Guy Kawasaki’s favorite tool Canva. The results are good enough that every now and then my graphic designer complements me…Shhh…don’t tell her the secret.

 

Angela Zade is a content marketing executive with over two decades in traditional and digital marketing. Today, she works as a Digital Marketing Analyst with seoWorks

#1: Grammarly: I like to think I am a grammar genius, but even I miss a typo or two. Grammarly highlights any and all grammar mistakes automatically no matter where you are typing online. It’s spared me from humiliating missteps on countless occasions.

#2: Fotolia: I’m a firm believer that visual images take a plain article much further when you add compelling and relatable images. Fotolia is a paid, stock photography site so the blogger (i..e. me) never has to worry about being slapped with a copyright suit for using a photo without permission. Plus, I almost always find an image I am happy with and it’s shopping cart is extremely user-friendly. The only downside is that the images are rarely compressed for web publishing, so the blogger has to compress those prior to uploading into an article.

#3: Textbroker: Let’s face it, as an SEO’er….sometimes you have more clients than you can blog for at once. Either that, or you have a client that’s just not glamorous enough to inspire you to crank out a quality piece. Say, writing about garage doors, for example. Textbroker is a reasonable writing service that you can submit ideas to, and pay someone else a cheap price to write it for you. Granted, if you select authors with a quality rating less than 4 stars, you can bank on having to copyedit the text yourself. Nonetheless, it can save a blogger quite a few hours of labor when managing multiple SEO clients.

 

Brett Farmiloe is the Founder and Managing Partner of Markitors, a data driven digital marketing agency for small businesses.

#1: Google Autocomplete: At a loss for what to write about? Google Autocomplete will automatically suggest blog post titles with moderate search volumes to keep you creating content that will drive organic traffic.

#2: Canva – Readers make a decision to read a post within a second of landing on the page. Creating a compelling image using Canva compels a visitor to stay a little longer.

#3: Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin: Real-time suggestions on how to improve the readability of a post helps a blog become more digestible for internet reading.

 

Tamas Torok is an Inbound Marketer at Momentum, a content promotion platform.

#1: IFTTT: This tool simply connects the APIs of different applications and services. These connections are called recipes. You can partly automate your workflow and save tons of time and energy every single day. I connected my Twitter account to Buffer so once I tweet something, it will be automatically added back to my Buffer schedule.

#2: contentmarketer.io: This tool makes sending outreach emails much easier. You can schedule and send personalized outreach emails via your Google account. Followups can be also automatized, so I don’t have to track my progress in a messy excel sheet. It also provides different email templates tailored to your outreach
campaign.

#3: Canva: If you’re not a designer, but still want to create awesome visuals for your
blog post, then Canva is a handy tool for that. Without using Photoshop you
can create pretty nice visual explanations and images for your posts by
using its drag and drop editor.

Bonus: Momentum.ai: This is a content promotion platform, helping me to decide what content and when to share on Facebook to maximise its engagement and drive more traffic to my blog. It’s even more useful when I want to spend my limited content promotion budget smarter since it predicts which post has the highest potential to get more engagement. I don’t have to take a deep dive in Google Analytics to choose what post to share.

 

Marcus Miller is the head of SEO & Digital Marketing at the UK Agency Bowler Hat. He has worked in the SEO industry since 1999 and currently has a monthly column on Search Engine Land. He was also featured in the top 50 digital marketing influencers and brands this year.

#1: Your Customers: a little unconventional maybe but your customers and prospects should always be your best blogging tool. Your idea generation should be based on clearly helping your customers relieve their pains and achieve their goals. I am going to suggest something radical here but how about talking to your customers and getting their input – turn this or the questions you are commonly asked into content and you are on the right track.

#2: Google: the best tools are often the ones overlooked by the masses. Google provides a range of advanced search operators to allow you to really dig into a topic. Find a gap in a given subject? There is a great blog post. Find a difficult question without a good answer? There is a good blog post. I am an SEO at heart and I have always pushed the concept that difficult answers make for easy links – build out that content no one else has or can and it will fly.

#3: answerthepublic.com: I love this tool. Pop in a keyword. Get a list of common questions. Want to tap into what your customers, prospects or marketplace is thinking then drop your main keyword in the box. Simple, common sense content that you can use to really add value and help your audience and at the end of the day – that is exactly what your blog should aim to do.
Ryan Scollon is an SEO Consultant & Blogger at a company called Bowler Hat, located in Birmingham, UK. He writes blog posts for both the company blog and his personal blog focused on marketing and his own experiences.

#1: Canva: It is a great tool for people like myself who struggle to make high-quality imagery for posts. With a range of templates and icons, you can design pretty much anything you want ready to upload to your blog post. The best bit…It’s free!

#2: Yoast SEO: This is a great tool to make simple SEO tweaks such as page titles and meta descriptions. It is fairly easy to use and can really make a difference to your blog post rankings if you know how to use it properly.

#3: Portent Title Maker – As I sometimes struggle to come up with a catchy title, I rely on the title maker tool by Portent. Simply stick the subject in the box and click away until you find the right one for you.

 

Caitlin Bolnick is on the Founding Team at VentureApp which connects high-growth businesses to top vendors, saving them significant time and money in the process.

#1: All In One SEO: this is an amazing free plugin for WordPress that helps to optimize your blog for SEO. It allows you to submit your sitemap to Google and Bing, can automatically notify search engines about changes to your blog, and allows you to manage your SEO keywords, title tags, etc. per post. If you are a beginner in SEO, you can simply install it and have it run, but if you are an expert you can customize everything directly through it.
#2: Max Buttons: This is an excellent tool if you are looking to create ready-to-go buttons for strong CTA’s. This might seem simple, but when it comes to prompting user’s actions on a post, a strong button can help drive the point home. The tool is free and you can completely customize the look of the button to match your brand. They also have a Pro version which has pre-made packs and allows for social sharing and use of icons for only $19.00
#3: List Builder by Sumo Me: Sumo Me has quite a few excellent tools for growing and optimizing your blog, but the one specifically that we’ve been using and love is their list builder. It’s super simple, but it is a pop-up that you can completely customize for use on your blog to capture readers’ email addresses. It’s one of the only pop-up plugins that is mobile optimized and it automatically integrates with a ton of email providers, so that you can immediately begin messaging people who provide their contact information. We’re currently using their free version, but they also have a pro version that removes the Sumo Me branding and allows for A/B testing and more.

 

Dave Hermansen is a 13+ year ecommerce veteran. He has been featured in national media several times as an e-commerce expert.

#1: BuzzSumo: Many people are familiar with BuzzSumo which shows you what the most shared articles/videos are for any given seed word or phrase. We use BuzzSumo to find those hot articles but aren’t really concerned with the social buzz. Once we know that an article has been shared a lot, we want to also see if it has been linked to a lot. That’s where the next tool comes in – Link Thief.

#2: Link Thief: Our own proprietary tool, Link Thief, is normally used to discover and organize the best backlinks to the top 20 pages for a targeted keyword phrase. It can also be used for finding all of the backlinks to a specific page. Once we have discovered a hot article with BuzzSumo, we will feed that URL into Link Thief to see the number of backlinks it has received. If it has received a lot, we write our own similar article. If the hot article was Tips to Keep your Dog From Barking, ours may be Tips for Making Sure your Dog Stays in your Yard. Then, we contact the places that linked to the hot article, letting them know about our article and that their audience may like it.

#3: Hootsuite: There is no better tool out there for discovering content ideas and for automating social sharing than Hootsuite. Find the RSS feeds for a few dozen blogs that constantly write about your general niche (you can most easily find RSS feeds by viewing the source code of a page and then doing a CONTROL +F and searching for RSS or feed). Add an RSS feed reader stream to Hootsuite and those blogs’ RSS feeds. You’ll never miss the latest posts from the blogs you want to follow. Share some of them with Hootsuite’s auto scheduler and save the best ones as ideas for your own blog articles (and, of course, use Link Thief to see which ones have received backlinks).

 

Danielle Hutchins is a public relations specialist for FreightCenter. She shapes public perception of FreightCenter and increases awareness of its services and goals. She create and share engaging content that positions FreightCenter as a thought leader in the transportation logistics industry.

#1: Asana: This a project management tool that our marketing, development and enterprise teams use. While I write a majority of our posts, I usually require resources from other employees. For example, I might need a quote from our software support specialist on technology integration, or a unique image designed by our creative director. Asana allows me to organize the blogging process by assigning tasks and due dates to everyone involved from initial brainstorming to final approval.

#2: Hemmingway Editor: This tool checks writing for readability. All you
have do is copy and paste your text into the editor and it highlights
sentences that are hard to read, that have a simpler alternative or that
use passive voice. You can even edit and format your text in the tool.

#3: Google Docs: My blog posts usually make it through several pairs of
hands before it’s ready to be published. Google Docs makes it easier to
share edits and track changes along the way. And, it’s so much easier to
share a Google Doc link than to attach a Word document every time. Asana
even integrates with Google drive so I can easily upload my docs right from
the Asana task.

 

Brandon Harig serves as the dominant branding and marketing arm for The CP Lawyer. He has worked in PR and agency operations aimed at helping businesses engage consumers online for over 7 years.

#1: Google Alerts: This tool is shaped around key terms you determine that are relevant to your personal brand or organization. Users can receive a daily summary of topics published for inspiration or sourcing. Google Alerts can be a great way to kick the slump caused by writer’s block while also posing as an opportunity to find new authorities and perspective.

#2: Non-Obvious, Clean Visuals: You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars each month to have high-quality images capture a reader’s attention. PicJumbo and StockSnap are two exceptional resources for strong offerings that can make your blog look professional and dynamic without a budget. Services like iStock and ShutterStock also have a weekly image available -just be sure to check their use

Smartphone Voice to Text Features – are you a better speaker than a writer? Remove the block between your thoughts and fingertips by using your smartphones voice to text feature to dictate a blog post. While you may have to email it to yourself to clean up auto correct or grammar, it’s a great way to get ideas down and build upon conversational ideas you can’t seem to capture while typing

 

Asaf Darash is CEO and Founder of Regpack, an online registration system used by more than 4,000 organization worldwide including the NFL, Goodwill and Stanford.

#1: Buffer: This tool has been great to help automate blog publicizing on social media and just generally reducing the time I spend on setting up posts to go out. It has also allowed me to continue promoting the post, not just in the short term but months out to keep it circulating.

#2: Yoast is a wonderful plugin for WordPress, where my blog is hosted. It ensures I have a focus keyword to target, and that the title and meta description are exactly how I want them.

#3: Google Docs is the best and FREE tool to collaborate on post drafting. I can have my staff review it for grammar, go in and add comments, etc and it’s all saved in the cloud so I can access it anywhere!

 

Alex is the Creative Director for Brolik, a Philadelphia-based digital agency. He believes bold, beautiful design should go hand-in-hand with human psychology and good usability principles to make sites that are both awe-inspiring and easy to use.

#1: Google Trends: It’s important when writing a blog to know what people care about. Using Google Trends you can get a good idea of popular search terms as well as the vocabulary that people are using around the subject. The result is a pertinent topic infused with search engine optimized keywords.

#2: FoxType: Users have short attention spans. They want to get to the point as quickly as possible. FoxType is a useful tool for quickly editing and simplifying copy. Their concise tool is particularly useful as a good reminder of when to keep it simple, stupid.

#3: Stock Up: Breaking up large blocks of copy with high quality images is a great way to make a blog more engaging. Stock Up aggregates over 13,000 photos from 27 different stock photo websites all for free!

 

Alex Barsha is the CEO of Third Temple which specializes in digital marketing and web development.

#1: Google Keyword Planner: This tool is perfect for optimizing the content of your blog. Upon your entering your current keywords, it will suggest other terms you might use. It will even show you how often those terms are searched.

#2: Trello: If you produce a large amount of content, Trello is could help you tremendously. Trello is basically an optimizer for your workflow. It helps you visualize who is doing what and prioritize projects.

#3: Medium: This tool is perfect for those who wish to publish their content with little else to distract from it. Both the user interface and the reader interface are clean and without distraction.

 

Max Robinson is the co-founder of Aims Media Glasgow, a digital marketing and web design agency based in the United Kingdom.

#1: Dragon Dictation: I’ll use this tool in the car when I’m driving to work and just spouting blog ideas. So when I get into the office I can take a look at the notes and try to create something!

#2: Easy Clock: I’m constantly dealing with other bloggers who are located in different countries than I am, and trying to find a time when we are both available for a Skype call can be tricky. So I use the Easy Clock plugin for Chrome to try and match up our schedules.

#3: PayPal: It’s important to get paid! I use PayPal as I’ve never had any problems with the platform and find it really easy to use. I tend to pay for services like graphic design and translation using PayPal as most other bloggers use it too. Max Robinson, Aims Media Glasgow http://www.aimsmedia.co.uk

 

Anatasia is the Content Manager for SEMrush, a tool that helps you crush it on Google. She is a frequent contributor to major digital marketing publications.

#1: Faqfox: You can use this tool to get ideas for guest posts. Just type in your targeted keyword and the URL of the website on which you’d like your content published. FAQ Fox will then generate a list of articles from the website that include your keywords, plus it will estimate the amount of interest in this topic or show you some “white spots.”

#2: IFTTT: With this tool, you can easily automate quite a bit of your content workflow. One smart idea is to use it for content curation by creating recipes like “if a particular keyword appears in your feed, then save this post to Evernote.”

#3: Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule: Coming up with a compelling headline
can be a real headache. This tool provides you with detailed and insightful
analysis of your headlines and suggests optimization tips such as to use
certain keywords, content lengths or sentiments.

 

Three-time entrepreneur Simon Slade is CEO and co-founder of SaleHoo, an online wholesale directory of over 8,000 prescreened suppliers.

#1: Coschedule Headline Analyzer: One of my favorite tools for blogging is the Coschedule Headline Analyzer. It helps me identify which titles will perform the best and gives me a preview how those titles will look in both mobile and web inboxes.
#2: Infogr.am: Another one I love is Infogr.am, which helps me create a chart or infographic using my own data. This makes it easy to diversify my content with engaging visuals.
#3: Hemingway:  This blogging tool ensures that my writing is clean, simple, and easily digestible. It breaks down run-on sentences and suggests simpler alternatives for overly complicated words.

 

In Conclusion

Choosing the right blogging tools impacts your writing, traffic, visitor experience, and everything else associated with blogging. The tools you choose can make or break you. Some can propel you months or even years ahead.

Not all of these tools are the right ones for you. Focus on the blogging tools that fit your needs and focus on mastering those tools instead of trying to become mediocre at all of them.

Which of these blogging tools was your favorite? Would you like to recommend a blogging tool? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Put Training Course Creation Into Your Schedule

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course creation

Ever think about creating a training course? Training courses are high in demand right now, and some training courses have made as much as seven figures within a few days.

But the recurring excuse is a lack of time. Some people believe it will take too much time to get over the learning curve. Others believe it will take too much time to crate a high quality course. Both of those can easily be accomplished.

You don’t have to commit an entire month to creating a single training course. I have managed to complete some of my training courses in a few hours instead of a few days, weeks, or months.

The purpose of this blog post is to let you know how possible it is for you to create a training course, and better yet, how you can easily get started.

 

Estimate The Workload

When I create a new training course, I always estimate the amount of work I must put in. For most of my Udemy courses, I only needed 1-3 days to go from course idea to getting published in the Udemy marketplace. Most of my Udemy courses are two hours long.

For my upcoming Total Social Media Domination membership site, I knew I would have to put in more time. My goal is to make TSMD one of the best social media how-to membership sites on the web.

I calculated that I would need to devote at least two hours each day for three days to finish creating all of the videos. To some people, committing two hours to the same activity in a given day seems like a lot.

Considering that this level of commitment is only required for three days to create a superb course doesn’t make it seem as time consuming. In three days, you have a high quality training course that you can charge hundreds of dollars for.

In this case, it is better to overestimate your workload than underestimate it. If you underestimate the workload, you’ll miss the deadline, feel overwhelmed, and give up.

If you overestimate the workload, you’ll have plenty of time to spare and might even finish the training course comfortably.

 

What Must You Get Done Today?

I have experimented with many workflows for creating a training course. It’s best to write a list of all of the topics you must discuss for your training course each day.

During the planning process of TSMD, I identified all of the topics I must completely discuss each day that I did videos. I knew on what day I would completely cover Twitter and on what day I would completely cover Facebook.

In three days, I had to cover 10 key topics, and each topic consisted of several videos.

I did plan out and think about how I would get everything done within three days. However, I didn’t plan deep ahead with the creation process because those types of plans are dependent on you staying true to the course each day.

I always focused on completing the video lessons I had to get done for the day. I set my goals for the day very high and then spread out the other video lessons more comfortably. On the following day, I change my plans to make that an intense day and repeat that process until I complete the course.

For TSMD, I had to put in two hours of work for three days which added up to under 10 hours total.

 

The Power Question

“When will you create the video lessons?”

When I was a kid and my dad asked me when, I’d say, “Soon.” Then he’d promptly say, “Give me a time.” Depending on the conversation, he’d say, “Give me a time and day of the week.”

This type of questioning annoyed me at first but forced me to get set on when I would take a particular course of action.

Being clear on when you will take action makes it easier to carve out time in your schedule. I was very specific with TSMD. I decided that evenings would work best for me.

I’d get everything else out of the way so I had more time in the evening. Podcast interviews were done, blog posts were written, and emails were responded to.

During those evenings, it was just me and TSMD.

 

Habit Development

If you do something each day for 66 straight days, you turn it into a habit. Every day, I do something for one of my training courses.

I’m creating video lessons, making changes to the membership dashboard, planning out the marketing, or something else. But I’m doing something for one or more of my training courses every day.

Turn training course creation and marketing into a habit by doing a little bit each day. It’s better to do a little bit each day than squeeze everything into one day. Doing a little bit each day makes the process more comfortable and allows you to deliver higher value training courses.

I was fine with squeezing TSMD into three days because even when the video lessons were created, I still had a lot more to do. To this day, I continue creating video lessons for TSMD and doing a little bit each day. TSMD won’t be one of those publish and forget about it training courses. I’ll be updating it every month.

 

In Conclusion

I created dozens of training courses before graduating high school. Training course creation isn’t a privilege exclusive to a small group of people. Anyone can get started and create the training course of their dreams.

Plus, training courses are highly profitable. I make more money from my training courses than any other product or service that I offer. And I’m not alone.

Joseph Michael started creating courses part-time during any extra time he could find. A few years later and Joseph has made over $1 million from his courses.

Joseph was kind enough to provide my readers (you guys and gals) with his course creation bundle. This bundle allowed him to go from training course idea to over $1 million in profit.

Joseph started out as your typical “Average Joe.” If Joseph and I can create profitable training courses, then you can too.

The course creation bundle will help make training course creation a breeze, but it’s only available for a limited time.

My recommendation is to get it even if you don’t want to create a training course. That way, when you decide to create a training course, you have the resource.

 

Have you created a training course before? If not, what’s holding you back? Sound off n the comments section below