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5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

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5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

Since the beginning of 2014, there has been an ongoing debate about whether guest blogging is still a good way to increase blog traffic. On January 28, 2014, Google said that any attempts to get spammy backlinks by writing guest posts would no longer work. Since this statement, some guest bloggers have stopped writing guest posts because headlines such as “Guest Blogging Is Dead” have appeared more often around the web.

On the contrary, guest blogging is alive and well. There are still people who are utilizing it properly and writing for popular blogs. The guest blogs that allow people to write guest posts are still sending out numerous posts every day. If you are not writing guest posts, you definitely should, and here are five reasons why you should do so.

 

#1: You get backlinks

One of the important takeaways from Google’s statement is that spammy backlinks that you get by writing guest posts would no longer work. When Google says spammy, that’s referring to you writing on a guest blog completely out of your niche. Spammy backlinks refers to something such as you having a social media blog and guest blogging on a fashion blog. The two topics are completely different.

The quality backlinks from guest posts, the ones on guest blogs related to your niche, are still valuable. The person with the social media blog would want to write on guest blogs about social media such as Business2Community and Social Media Today. When you write your bio for your accounts on these guest blogs, be sure to include a backlink to your main blog.

 

#2: You get your content in front of a large audience

When I was struggling to get 100 daily visitors, I often wrote guest posts on Business2Community. Writing these guest posts allowed more people to know about me because I was writing to a larger audience. Business2Community is a blog that gets thousands of daily visitors. Business2Community boasts an Alexa rank under 3,000 and a bounce rate under 40%.

Every guest post I put up on Business2Community got shared over 100 times. Getting shared this many times allowed more people to see my content. Some of these people scrolled down to my bio and visited my blog.

 

#3: You can get more blog traffic

The people who like your guest post may decide to go to your bio and read your blog. This is the common association between guest blogging and getting more traffic for your own blog. However, there are more ways to get traffic from your blog posts.

One method of getting more traffic for your guest posts is by including links to the content on your main blog throughout the content of your guest post. For some guest blogs, including a link here and there to your blog posts won’t be any trouble, but you should check the rules of writing guest posts before implementing this strategy.

Whether you can implement the first method or not, you are getting another backlink for your blog. Backlinks are still very valuable for SEO, and most of the successful blogs that get thousands of daily visitors are getting that traffic from SEO. These blogs also happen to have thousands of backlinks, and that is not a coincidence.

 

#4: You can get more subscribers

There are many guest blogs that allow users to write a bio, and the first three lines of that bio appear at the bottom of every guest post. If the guest blog you are writing on permits you to do this, you should tell your readers about a free prize. That free prize, whether a video or a guidebook, should be related to the guest post you just wrote.

With this in mind, your guest posts should be geared towards the free prize that you already offer. When you write these guest posts, be sure to get them to at least 1,000 words. Writing longer blog posts makes someone read your content longer, and the longer someone reads your content (as long as your content is valuable), the more content that person wants from you.

Your guidebook or video that you tell them about in the three lines that appear at the bottom of every guest post will be the content that they want. When someone clicks on the link, send that person to a landing page. Entering an email address will give that person the ability to read more of your content, and you will have another person on your list.

 

#5: You will become a better writer

In order to be the blogger who people come back to again and again, you need to produce valuable content. Writing more guest posts will allow you to get more practice in. The great thing about writing is that there is always room for improvement. You can be a phenomenal writer, but it is even possible for the best writers in your niche to get better.

By getting more practice with your guest posts, it will be easier for you to write valuable content on your blog as well as any books that you may write in the future. Writing is a powerful skill for dominating the web, and many people utilize it. Whether writing takes the form of a blog post or an email, it is a big factor towards success on the web.

 

In Conclusion

Guest blogging is alive and well. In addition, now is the perfect time to utilize guest blogging. There are numerous guest blogs in your niche that are waiting for contributors like you to submit content. You should strive to write one guest post each week so you can become a better writer and get your content in front of multiple audiences.

Some of these audiences will consist of hundreds of people while other audiences will consist of thousands of people. However, getting quality backlinks for your blog will help your blog posts rank better on SEO and get more traffic. Guest blogging is the perfect win-win because you get your content in front of people, you get the quality backlink, and the person who owns the guest blog gets more content.

Are you a guest blogger, and if not, do you plan on becoming one?

8 Word Of Mouth Marketing Tips To Get More People To Talk About You

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Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful ways to spread your ideas, products, and overall message. The more people there are talking about you, the more you will spread. Spreading farther allows you to get more subscribers and customers. Friends tell their friends about you, and those friends tell their friends about you, and the cycle continues.

Before people can talk about you and spread your message, they need to know who you are. In order to spread farther, you need to optimize these 8 word of mouth marketing tips.

#1: Utilize social media

Social media is a powerful place to connect with more people. There are millions of people on various social networks, and with this big of a selection, there will be thousands or even millions of people who will be a part of your target audience. The people in your target audience will be the ones who talk about you the most.

In order to boost the chances of these people talking about you, you need to do two things on social media. The first thing you need to do is share valuable content. Sharing valuable content will make others see you as a credible expert in your niche. The second thing you need to do is interact with your followers. Interacting with your followers will allow you to build strong relationships with those followers. Those strong relationships may result in people spreading your ideas, products, and overall message through word of mouth.

#2: Post valuable content on your blog

Although it is great to share valuable content on your social networks, it would be ideal to post valuable content on your blog and share that content often. Sharing your content with your audience allows that audience to paint a better picture of who you are. If you are constantly promoting other people’s content without promoting your own, your audience will not know much about you.

The content on your blog is your unique voice on the web that people talk about. When people talk about the Huffington Post article you tweeted out, most of these people will only reference the Huffington post article, not the tweeter. If you tweet your blog posts, and your blog posts spark up a conversation with a group of people, you will get referenced. Then, some of the people listening will ask who you are. The person who talked about your blog post tells them who you are, and word of mouth marketing continues to spread your message far.

The more someone visits your blog, the more inclined that person will be to tell their friends about you. The best way to keep someone on your blog for a long period of time is by writing valuable content. It may take more time to write valuable content than the content that anyone could create, but the extra time you invest in making your content valuable is well worth it. In fact, if you keep someone on your blog long enough, that person may become a subscriber and/or customer.

#3: Over deliver

We like to talk about the people who put in 110% in their expertise because we want to give that person kudos. We like to talk about the people who influence our decisions and how we act. We like talking about these people because we want others to get influenced as well, and it allows us to show off our intelligence.

Over delivering is something that few people do. Over delivering means going the extra mile that others have deemed as unnecessary. Some of the people who talk about your niche will talk about you with their friends. Just as bosses like to reward the good employees with raises, we like to reward the over deliverers by spreading the word about them.

#4: Have a compelling story

Your compelling story is another factor that determines how conversations about you develop. There will be people who have not heard of you before. When a friend asks who you are, the person who was talking to you needs to be armed with the appropriate knowledge to answer that question.

Your compelling story is what the people talking about you need to know in order to advance the conversation. A compelling story allows people to know

  1. Who you are
  2. What you have been through
  3. What your mission is
  4. A simple, general idea on how you plan on accomplishing that mission
  5. Your credible accomplishments.

While including this knowledge in your compelling story, it is important to write a compelling story that people would want to read. A compelling story is not the opportunity to go on a boring rant about how awesome you are. A compelling story conveys those five main points in a way that makes people want to read from the beginning of the compelling story to the end.

The compelling stories all have those five main points, but there are slight differences for how a compelling story is written based on the niche you are in. If you want to create a compelling story, I recommend looking at the stories that other individuals and businesses have on their websites. While reading the stories, ask yourself whether they were compelling or not. If a particular story was compelling, ask yourself why you thought that story was compelling. Then, use that knowledge to add elements to your story so you can make it compelling.

#5: Turn yourself into someone worth talking about

This phrase simply means to accomplish goals and do things that people would want to talk about. You want to be remarkable in your niche and stand out of the crowd. We like talking about well-known people who have a lot of credibility.

Even if you have many credible accomplishments, you should always strive to boost your credibility. There is no limit to how much you can boost your credibility. The more things you do, the more things people can mention when they tell their friends about you.

#6: Reward your returning customers

Your returning customers are the ones who may end up buying your products for years to come. In order to strengthen those relationships and turn customers into the customers who will buy your products for many years to come, you need to reward the returning customers.

You should offer returning customers an exclusive deal, or better yet, an exclusive product. The more you reward your returning customers, the more likely those customers will be to buy your products over a long period of time.

#7: Create a referral program

A referral program is a great way to get more people to spread the word about you regardless of how strong your connection with that person is. These people will promote your products and services so they can get a small cut for each sale they make. You will make an overall profit, and there will be one other person promoting you.

Creating a generous referral program (as long as you are still making a profit) may entice people with big email lists to promote your product. This will result in more people knowing who you are, and then word of mouth marketing will continue to allow more people to know who you are.

#8: Be nice

When people talk about you, it is ideal for those people to be saying good things about you, your expertise, and what you stand for. Having influence is not enough. You need to have a good influence on the people you impact.

There are nice people and mean people all over the world. Many of us enjoy talking and hearing about nice people, and they are the ones who remember in a positive way. Many people remember Chesley Sullenberger III for saving all of the passengers on a U.S. Airways airplane by crash landing into the Hudson River. Derek Jeter is another person who we will remember very well.

These people have a good influence and are embedded in our memory because they were nice people who we admire because of the actions they took to make a goal happen. When we talk about these people, we enjoy talking about them. We talk about how Chesley had to land the plane so effectively that it did not hit land. We talk about how Jeter got 3,000 hits and was the icon of his era. We talk about the nice people, and those are the people who easily have a strong influence on others.

You can utilize the other seven methods to get people to talk about you, but being nice is what will result in people saying good things about you.

In Conclusion 

Word of mouth marketing is a powerful way to spread. In high school, rumors fly around at a crazy rate, and if one person discovers the rumor, everyone knows about it the following day. That’s word of mouth marketing at its best.

The more accomplishments you have, the better people will be able to talk about you. Therefore, any type of mediocrity that you have must come to an end for you to be influential in your niche.

Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any additional methods for effective word of mouth marketing?

10 Social Media Tips For Entrepreneurs

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Social media is one of the most powerful avenues for traffic and connections. The only problem with social media is that it is also a giant maze. Not everyone knows where they need to go, how to get the connections, how to grow an audience, and what they want to be known for.

Each time another person becomes successful or well-known because of social media, entrepreneurs are seeing the importance of social media more and more. The truth is that every entrepreneur only needs two things to become successful on social media:

  1. Guidance
  2. Dedication (the will to implement and make it happen)

Although all of the dedication comes from you, I will provide you with the guidance you need to have a smoother journey on social media. Here are the 10 social media tips that you can utilize to be more successful.

#1: Identify Who Your Target Audience Is And Focus On Them

One of the most important things you need to do before anything else is identify who your target audience is. There are many people who make identifying a target audience much harder than it needs to be. I am going to break it down into two questions:

  1. What do you post about often (what is your niche and expertise)?
  2. Who would find those posts valuable?

Answering these two questions will allow you to find your target audience. The main benefit of identifying your target audience is that you now know which types of people are going to retweet, favorite, and engage with most of your tweets. Having an engaged audience is critical towards success on any social network.

Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to be successful. The person with 50,000 targeted followers is doing better than the person with 100,000 non-targeted followers that rarely engage.

#2: Engage With Your Audience

Engagement is a two way street. You want to build an audience that engages with your content, but you also want to engage with your audience. Engaging with your audience allows you to see more than just a number.

Regardless of how many followers you have, it is important to individually know the followers who interact with you. I know a few people who comment on numerous blog posts (if you are one of them, you know who you are). I respond to all of these comments on my blog and respond to all of the people who share my content on my social networks.

Does this take up time? It definitely takes up about 30 minutes every day, but this interaction allows me to know my audience. Knowing your audience allows you to realize what type of content they like. In addition, some of the people I interact with have subscribed to this blog and bought some of my products.

Interaction allows you to get a friendship going, and friendship in itself is a two way street. That’s why, “I owe you” is a common phrase. If one of your friends does something good for you, chances are you will do something good for that friend in return. Being friendly to your audience and engaging with them may entice them to do something in return such as subscribe to your blog or tell their friends about you.

#3: Post As Consistently And Frequently As Possible

Many people think that posting often is a bad thing because it will annoy followers. I decided to give it a try and found the complete opposite. Posting more consistently and frequently has allowed me to engage with my followers more than ever before, and it has also resulted in my blog getting a big spike in traffic that never seemed to go away.

For the tweeting in particular, I send out one new tweet every 15 minutes. Some people may think I would be annoying my followers at this frequency, but that is not the case. The truth about social networks is that many people are simply using social networks to check their activity for a short period of time.

The average Twitter is never on the social network for more than 20 minutes at a time. That means most of the people who go on Twitter only see one of my tweets unless they log in again or scroll through my timeline. It is okay to post often, and it is also recommended.

#4: Use A Universal Avatar On All Of Your Social Networks

If you think of a business, you think of their logo. When you think of Apple, you see the white apple that someone took a bite out of. When you think of Twitter, you see the blue bird. Similarly to how people think of the logo associated with the business, the people in your niche who think of you will think of your avatar.

Using a universal avatar for all of your social networks will make it easier for people to remember who you are. The easier it is for someone to remember you, the more often that person will visit your blog and see what you are posting on your social networks.

#5: Do not be afraid to promote yourself often

There are many social media users who go by the fear that promoting yourself too often will make their followers become unfollowers. This is a concept that many experts use to tell marketers to avoid over-promoting their products on social media. If you are using social media for that reason, it’s not going to work out well.

However, it is okay to promote yourself. In fact, it is okay to promote yourself often, but only if you promote yourself the right way. The right way to promote yourself is by promoting your blog posts on your social networks. It is entirely okay to tell people about the same blog post twice as long as the two social media posts are spaced out for a long period of time.

On Twitter, I go by a 4-7 day cycle depending on how my spreadsheets are organized, and I send out over 100 tweets every day. Someone would have to scroll down for a very long time to find any social media posts that repeat themselves.

As long as your blog posts are valuable to your followers, they will not mind that you promote them often. On the contrary, some of your followers will be eager to read the other blog posts that you share on your social networks.

#6: Focus On One Social Network

There are many social networks to choose from, and that’s the problem. Many people create accounts on numerous social networks and have small audiences on all of them. It is better to have a large audience on one social network than it is to have a bunch of small audiences on a bunch of social networks.

When I started my social media journey, I decided to focus most of my time and energy on Twitter. It paid off nicely, and Twitter now brings in a bulk of this blog’s traffic.

However, it is important to have multiple social networks with big presences. The best way to approach this is by taking another social network seriously after you master one social network. After I mastered Twitter, I went over to Pinterest. Now that I have over 15,000 Pinterest followers, I am now finding time to focus on YouTube.

The main takeaway: you need to eventually be on multiple social networks, but in order to have large audiences on all of them, take it one step at a time.

#7: Identify Where You Want To Be Month By Month

Many people do better on social media by giving themselves goals. The reason why goals are very effective is because they create a sense of direction. You need to have some kind of an idea of where you are heading.

What are some of the things you aspire to do on social media? Maybe you aspire to get 100,000 engaged followers, or you aspire to get more blog traffic.

The aspiration is a starting point towards social media success. After you give yourself the aspiration, you need to identify the steps you are going to take to get there. It is important to take give yourself steps that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve.

Gaining 100 followers every week is a great start. It’s not far out there, but it’s not incredibly easy either. If you are at that point already, raise the bar to 150 followers every week and keep on raising the bar as you accomplish the goal. Then, once you identify the aspiration and give yourself the steps you will need to get there, all you have to do at that point is implement.

#8: Be on social media every day

Just like everything else, social media requires practice. The more you show up and do the right things, the more likely you are to have the big audience. “Do the right things” is in bold because most people are already on social media every day. However, not all of that time is being used effectively.

Some people who use social media are using it to procrastinate. There are many videos and social media accounts to choose from. In essence, social media can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.

When I say be on social media every day, I mean you are utilizing it as an entrepreneur who interacts with the audience, not someone who procrastinates. Definitely use social media, but use it wisely.

#9: Do not let social media consume too much of your time

Social media is a great tool to grow your business and get more traffic. However, you need to have a good business and valuable content so all of the work you put in on social media was worth it. Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to make a full-time income.

Having that many followers does significantly help out in the process, but you need more than a big audience. You still need to find a good chunk of time in your day to create products and work on big projects for your business. That way, when you grow your social media audience, you can lead them to places that can bring in more revenue.

You should constantly be trying to perform the same activities on social media is a shorter amount of time. If you can do something in 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes, then make that change. I use HootSuite Pro and am able to schedule hundreds of tweets per day in just five minutes instead of a few hours every day if I had to manually schedule tweets.

#10: Be patient

This last tip is a tip that commonly appears in numerous articles, and it appears in this one as well. Being patient is the most important tip on the entire list. Sure I went into more detail in the other tips about growing an audience and boosting numbers, but none of those changes happen overnight.

It took me 993 days to reach 100,000 Twitter followers, and most of that big change happened in the last year of that span. For more than half of that time, I was lost and had no idea what to do. I was struggling to grow my audience and was stuck at 1,667 followers for many months. Then, methods started to work, I modified them along the way, and now I have a large, engaged Twitter audience.

There is no such thing as an overnight success. All of the leaders in your niche got to where they are after years of work. By not giving in and learning new techniques along the way, you may become a big player on social media.

In Conclusion 

Social media is a powerful way to get more traffic and build an engaged audience. There are many entrepreneurs in various niches who have utilized social media and seen their traffic, subscribers, and sales jump up. Patience is the key to success on any social network, and the more time you put into the learning process, the better you will become.

Do you have any social media tips for entrepreneurs? Which of these tips was your favorite?

10 Methods To Free Yourself From The Chains Of Writer’s Block

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Getting stuck can be an overwhelming feeling, and in the case of writer’s block, a blogger struggles to think of more content to write. This is a feeling that hinders progress and in some cases, results in a decline in confidence. Even the most experienced bloggers on the web experience writer’s block at some point in their journey.

Luckily, there are ways to free yourself from the chains of writer’s block. Writer’s block is a problem that can be fixed, and by fixing hat problem, it will gradually become easier for you to write content. Eventually, you will be right back at your peak, and the words will be flying across the page. Here are the different methods you can use to free yourself from writer’s block.

#1: Use Topsy

Topsy is a website that allows you to see every tweet ever written. By easily being able to see all of the tweets with a certain keyword, you will see titles that can inspire future blog posts.

If you see an article called 4 Ways To Get More Pinterest Followers, you have several options to play with. You can write an article called 7 Ways To Get More Pinterest Followers or 4 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers.

Changing one word or number in the title gives you the power to create a completely different blog post. That means you can turn one idea you get from Topsy into multiple blog posts. Imagine what you would be able to do if you discovered 10 good tweets on Topsy that could be the inspiration for future blog posts. You may come up with 20 different blog post ideas which will eliminate writer’s block for a while.

#2: Read Other People’s Articles

There are other people in your niche who are also writing blog post after blog post. Similar to how you were able to get ideas from Topsy, you can also get ideas from other people’s articles. There are some bloggers who write titles that grab our attention that we can use to create titles for future blog posts.

In addition to the titles, some of the content in the blog post itself can serve as inspiration for the next blog post you write. Maybe there is a tip a blogger mentions that you can expand upon and turn into a lengthy blog post.

The more sources you have, the better. I have a separate email address that I use to subscribe to other social media experts’ and entrepreneurs’ blogs so I can constantly learn more about my niche and get more blog post ideas.

#3: Watch YouTube Videos About Your Niche

Similar to reading articles, watching YouTube videos about your niche also has the power for you to learn new things and get more blog post ideas. You should subscribe to at least 10 YouTube channels of the people in your niche.

The benefit of a YouTube videos is that you can watch and listen instead of reading text. This makes multi-tasking more possible to implement. An example of this is that you can check your email while watching and listening to the YouTube video at the same time.

If you enjoy watching YouTube videos, you should also consider listening to podcasts in your niche. Podcasts are also great sources of information because some of the hosts ask really good questions, and then the expert on the podcast gives really good answers. Those questions and answers can also be used for future blog post ideas.

#4: Take A Break

There are going to be some days when writing will become difficult. Just because you want to comfortably write again does not necessarily mean that constantly writing until you get out of writer’s block is the right approach.

In some cases, taking a break is the best approach. The worst thing you can do when you are stuck is stay stuck by trying to perform the same action. It leads to frustration, and in some cases, a loss in confidence. When I encounter a writer’s block in which writing through it is not enough, I take a break.

The three main breaks I take are running, playing video games, and reading a book. I only do one of those three, and then I get back to writing. There are some miscellaneous breaks slipped in there, but the main point of these three breaks is to get my mind out of writing. Restarting fresh is better than sticking with writing the content but staying stuck.

#5: Write Every Day

The more you write, the easier it becomes. Many people get stuck in writer’s block because writing comes unnatural to them. In a really good hour, I could write 4,000 words. However, there was a time when I could barely write over 1,000 words in the same timeframe.

The reason I have gotten better at writing over the years is because I write more often. I am approaching 400,000 words for this blog, and I have written well over 100,000 words for my Kindle books.

#6: Write even if you don’t publish

Writing even if you don’t publish is a great way to get more comfortable with writing, and therefore encounter writer’s block less often. I have written numerous articles and books that never got published. One of these books is 40,000 words long while the other book is 25,000 words long. Writing these books gave me more experience.

Would I ever go back and publish these books? I would have to think about it for a while because although the content is there, I wrote the books in 2013. My knowledge and writing have dramatically enhanced, but in order to enhance your knowledge and writing, you need to start. You need to start writing even if you do not publish all of the content.

#7: Write about something outside of your niche

In many cases, writer’s block occurs because a blogger does not want to constantly write about the same things. When I get writer’s block, I am tempted to write another article about getting more followers on a social network, but I already have numerous articles about that.

When this problem occurs, choose to write about something outside of your niche. Just because you write something does not mean you have to publish it. If you are a social media expert, you can write about baseball. It may not be your best content since you do not know as much about it compared to your niche, but writing about something different may be enough to get the ball rolling.

#8: Eliminate all distractions

The more distractions you have, the more likely you are to encounter writer’s block, and when you get the writer’s block, distractions will make you stay stuck for a longer period of time. This is why it is essential to remove the distractions around you.

There are plenty of distractions around us. The distraction that affects the majority of us is the inbox. Anytime a new message comes up, it has turned into a human desire to see what that new message is. When I am writing content, I remove my inbox from my screen so I can no longer see it. Out of sight, out of mind.

In addition, I make sure I am working in a clutter free zone. The more clutter there is on my desk, the more difficult it is for me to concentrate on writing content. Take some time to look at everything on your desk later today and ask yourself what really belongs and what can be removed. Vases can surely be removed, but you may find a good reason to keep a notebook on your desk (writing down blog post ideas, writing down goals to achieve, etc).

#9: Write down the ideas the night before

Every writer has a time of day in which they are very productive as well as a time of day where they are not as productive. For a majority of writers, nighttime is the least productive time of day. It is the time when our bodies are thinking about going to bed instead of writing more content.

It is during these nights where you can brainstorm different blog post ideas. You always want to start off the day knowing exactly what you want to write about. The first hour you wake up controls how the rest of your day goes. If you wake up and are productive, chances are you will be productive for most of the day.

#10: Create an outline for your blog posts

I have been experimenting with a new method which is creating an outline for your blog posts. Although outlines are ideal for the bloggers who write long blog posts that are over 1,000 words long, bloggers who write shorter content can still benefit from the outline.

In an outline, you write down the title of your blog post and the main points that you want to discuss. For this blog post, I wrote the title and the 10 methods that I wanted to discuss. Nothing more, and nothing less. In the end, I was able to turn about 50 words into this blog post.

Creating outlines allows me to come up with more ideas and organize those ideas. Before creating an outline, I would write down a bunch of ideas, but after a week, I would completely forget what I was thinking when I wrote down a certain idea. Wasted opportunity! That won’t happen if you create an outline for your blog posts before writing the content or searching for the next idea.

In Conclusion

Writer’s block is one of the worst things to get stuck with. It affects all bloggers, but how a blogger responds to writer’s block depends on how strong that writer’s block is as well as how long it lasts.

What are you doing to stop your writer’s block?

6 Blogging Tools That You Should Start Using ASAP

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Blogging tools have the power to give your blog more functions, make it more valuable, and get more blog traffic. However, with a variety of options, many of the good blogging tools get overlooked. Some of these blogging tools may sound unfamiliar to you or too good to be true.

All of these blogging tools provide some value in a different area. When combined together, these tools have the power to enhance your blogging experience and get better traffic at the same time. Here are the six blogging tools that you should be using.

#1: Google Webmaster Tools

If only there was a tool that allowed you to see why your blog posts are not getting search engine traffic. This is the tool. Google Webmaster Tools explains why your blog is not getting much SEO traffic and how you can fix it.

An example of this is that http and https sites are two different things. Google will see http://yoursite.com as duplicate content of https://yoursite.com. In addition, Google sees your blog differently from you do. You also need to make it easy for Google to crawl on your blog.

To the typical newbie, all of this information sounds just like another headache. For the most part, Google Webmaster Tools comes along with valuable articles that take a part of the mystery out of SEO. If you want to get more SEO traffic from Google and ensure your articles are indexed on Google the way you want them to be, then Google Webmaster Tools is the right blogging tool for you.

#2: Optimize Press

Optimize Press is arguably one of the most powerful WordPress plugins out there. It allows you to create landing pages that match up with your emailing service (Aweber, Mailchimp, iContact, Infusion Soft, etc). These landing pages are easy to edit with the live editor. You get to change the button color of your subscription button, and what the text says. The best part is that you do not even need to know a lick of code!

In addition to coming with a variety of landing pages, Optimize Press also allows for membership site and training course creation. That means Optimize Press can bring in a big chunk of your revenue.

Just like almost every piece of technology, Optimize Press takes some time to get used to. That is why there are many tutorials that the people from Optimize Press provide for their users. If you are confused about something, chances are there has already been a tutorial done for that particular issue, and the tutorials are explained in an easy-to-understand manner.

#3: Canva

One of the most common practices is using a picture without asking for permission. Although some of these pictures have no licenses, there are other pictures that have copyright protection, and you don’t want to use those.

Instead of looking for a picture on the web and possibly (accidentally) using a picture with copyright protection, you can create your own picture. Many people, when presented with this opportunity, think of having to learn graphic design or something similar which involves a big investment in your time.

The great news is that you do not necessarily need to be a graphic designer to create stunning pictures for your blog posts. Canva is a free tool that makes picture creation easier. Canva allows for better looking pictures that when customized, can appeal to your article’s content.

One strategy that can now be utilized because of Canva is including the title of your blog post in the picture. The reason including the title of your blog post in the picture is important is because pictures grab our attention more than text.

Some people skip over the text and go straight to the picture. When this happens, your visitors can see the picture, read the title in the picture, and then know the title for your blog post. Including this picture also allows people to know what your blog post is about when they see it in Google Images or anywhere else on the web before seeing the actual blog post.

#4: Topsy

For every blogger on the web, there comes a moment when thinking of content becomes difficult. This is what has become known as writer’s block, and it is one of the worst experiences a blogger can have.

There are many suggestions to breaking writer’s block such as writing the ideas the night before or reading other people’s articles. However, there is another way to break writer’s block and get access to numerous ideas.

Topsy is a tool that allows you to see any tweet ever sent out. You may be wondering why Topsy qualifies as a blogging tool let alone a way to cure writer’s block. The answer is that since Topsy contains every tweet ever sent, it also contains numerous ideas. There are over 1 billion tweets sent out every 2-3 days which means there are trillions of tweets to choose from.

It is impossible to read all of the tweets ever sent. Life is simply too short. That is why Topsy allows you to find specific tweets by entering specific keywords. Then, you can see all of the tweets within a certain time range.

When I search phrases like “social media” and “blogging,” I get to see the headlines that other people are tweeting. If I see an article named “3 Social Media Tools For Success,” I may create a blog post called “6 Blogging Tools That You Should Be Using ASAP.”

Although I do not remember whether Topsy was the exact tool I used to come up with this blog post, I have used it to come up with several blog post ideas over the years.

#5: iContact

Although any emailing service that allows you to easily communicate with your subscribers will do, I would give a slight edge to iContact (probably because of experience). iContact gives you many emailing formats, and editing the emails you send out is incredibly easy.

One thing you can do with iContact and most emailing services is send out emails with a summary of your blog post and then the ability for your reader to click on a link to read the rest of the blog post.

Another option that iContact and most emailing services present is your ability to create any email with any type of text as long as it is neither spammy nor inappropriate. This gives you the option to notify your subscribers about product launches. You can create the buzz for your products (that you possibly create with Optimize Press) using iContact.

#6: WordPress Editorial Calendar

The more blog posts you schedule, the more difficult it will be for you to know whether all of the days are accounted for. There are many bloggers who schedule blog posts weeks or even months in advance.

This is a great strategy to get more comfortable with blogging (always being consistent will not be as much of a concern since you are already being consistent for a long period of time). This strategy becomes a problem when the blogger checks their email and does not receive a new blog post.

One of the problems I had when I was writing two blog posts every day is that when I first implemented this change, I did not realize that on some days, I was sending multiple articles to my RSS subscribers at the same time.

This problem existed for a while until I got the WordPress editorial calendar. This calendar allows me to see all of the blog posts I have scheduled along with the dates and times they will be sent out. The best part about this editorial calendar is that its function is exactly what it sounds like: you can see the titles of your blog posts on a calendar that correspond with the day the blog post is scheduled to be published.

The WordPress Editorial Calendar is a great way for you to stay organized, especially when you are writing blog posts several weeks in advance.

In Conclusion

With the right tools, you can turn blogging into a full-time income that brings in thousands of daily visitors and turns you into an influential person in your niche. The quicker you can get comfortable with your blogging experience on a technological scale, the easier it will be for you to write more content for your blog and create products along the way.

Which blogging tool is your favorite? Which tools do you use?

7 Facebook Marketing Tips

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With over 1 billion users, Facebook is the largest social network of them all. In addition to being the largest social network on the web, people stay on Facebook for a very long period of time. Some people are on Facebook for a few hours every day. A majority of Facebook’s users go to their account at least once per day to look for any new activity.

Facebook businesses have been able to utilize this to their advantage. Some businesses make a big portion of their revenue from Facebook while others have used it to go viral.

The great thing about marketing on Facebook is that it Facebook is a social network that encourages oversharing. Some people go through the line of posts on a particular Facebook Page and click like and share all the way through. That helps in getting more attention. In order for your content to spread on Facebook, here are seven Facebook marketing tips.

#1: Have a Facebook Page

There is a big distinction between a Facebook Page and a personal account. A personal account is great for socializing with your friends, but a business page allows you to get the professional dashboard. The dashboard that is exclusive to Facebook Pages allows people to see all of their scheduled posts as well as the extremely important Facebook Page Insights.

Facebook Page Insights allows you to know when your audience is on Facebook. That means you will be able to know when you should be scheduling your Facebook posts so they get the most likes, shares, and clicks.

#2: Post multiple times every day 

My recommendation on Facebook is to send out at least three posts every day. The reason you want to post on Facebook multiple times every day is because you want people to remember you. There are many Facebook users who scroll through their Facebook feeds, and the more of you they see, the more they will remember you.

When you are posting every day, it would be advisable to look at your Facebook Page Insights so you can determine the optimal times to send out posts to your audience. That way, your content has the power to spread and reach out to more people. The extra people your post reaches out to may decide to become a part of your audience.

#3: Post links to your own content so people remember you

Posting often on a Facebook Page is a great way for people to see you more often. However, what you post also has an impact on how people remember you. If you are posting links to popular articles such as The Huffington Post, most people will remember The Huffington Post instead.

That is why you need to provide valuable content on your blog and share that content on Facebook. Include motivational quotes that you have said. You want people to remember you for what you do which is why you cannot be afraid to promote yourself on your own Facebook Page.

#4: Post pictures often.

Facebook posts with pictures get more engagement than Facebook posts without pictures. In fact, a majority of the Facebook posts that go viral have a picture. When you are trying to choose which Facebook picture to include in your posts, be sure to choose a picture that is related to your posts.

The web is one source to get pictures as long as the pictures you choose are not copyrighted. However, there is an alternative; you can create your own pictures. For a very long time, I thought that it would be impossible to create my own pictures. That was the case until I discovered Canva.

Canva is a great tool that allows you to create your own pictures with ease. They allow you to put text in the pictures and make it easy to customize. Customizing a picture and moving certain elements around is just as easy as dragging an element from one place to the other.

#5: Interact with your fans.

There are going to be some people who repeatedly comment on your Facebook Page, like your posts, and share them with their friends. These are the people who you want to see on your Facebook Page often, so when one of them comes around, you want that person to stay around for as long as possible.

It is important to respond to any relevant comment that appears on your Facebook Page. That means you should not comment to the people who leave those spammy links about getting 1,000 Facebook Likes in one day, but you should definitely comment when your real fans do.

When you reply to a comment, also be sure to tag that person with the link to that person’s profile. Many people have their Facebook notifications turned on which means each time someone gets tagged, that person gets an email from Facebook saying they have been tagged. In the email, Facebook also allows its users to see the exact post they were tagged in.

Since most of us enjoy checking our inboxes too often, those fans will see they got a new email from Facebook, click on that email from Facebook, and realized that you tagged them.

In these emails, Facebook also makes it easy to go back to that exact Facebook post in one click. This makes it easy for your fans to see the email, go back on Facebook, and respond to you. Now you have a conversation building, and the more the conversation builds, the less likely that person is to forget about you.

#6: Host a contest or giveaway

Another great way to get your content to spread is by hosting a contest or giveaway.

A giveaway that often works is the one where you ask your audience to like and share your post in order to be eligible. $50 Amazon Gift Cards always work, but if you have your own product, that would be a better prize. Offering your own product as a prize will make sure more people remember you.

A contest that often works is the one where you ask your audience to take a picture with a hashtag. Esurance only relied on the hashtag which hurt them in the long run while Whole Foods hosts contests where users are required to use a hashtag and a picture. (Talk about the Whole Foods bike challenge)

#7: Stick with one niche.

A Facebook Page gives you the power to build an authority on the web. The reason why it is important to build an authority on the web is because many people know you for your passion.

On Facebook, it is very tempting to constantly like, share, and publish posts that are not in your niche. In order to build an authority on Facebook, you need to stick with one niche. That means if your niche is exclusively Pinterest, do not write a blog post about Instagram. They may be related, and you may know a lot about Instagram, but you need to label yourself with one niche on Facebook.

How you label yourself has a big impact on how people remember you.

In Conclusion

Facebook is a gold mine opportunity for anyone who invests their time in Facebook and posts the right content on a consistent and daily basis. Some marketers have been able to accumulate hundreds of thousands of Facebook likes. These people are getting a bulk of their traffic directly from Facebook, and some people use Facebook to promote landing pages and products that bring in the full-time income.

Is Facebook in your marketing strategy?