How to Grow Your Blogs Readership Through Offline Events
Over in Third Tribe this week there was a discussion in the forum about using speaking opportunities at offline events to help grow your email newsletter list. Leon shared how he used MailChimp’s Chimpadeedee application to collect email addresses after a presentation. I’ve not used that app but it reminded me of a time that I did something similar when I was starting out 6 years ago at an event I spoke it.
You might think you can’t do this because you never speak at events – but the reality is that 6 years ago I didn’t get invited to speak at places either – so I volunteered to speak at a local community event. Here’s the story I shared in Third Tribe about it.
I think too many people forget about ‘offline’ as a way of growing their online. I’m a big believer in leveraging current networks and opportunities, whether they be online or offline.
For me when I was just starting out I did something similar – I did a free workshop at a local library on how to use a digital camera. The library did free workshops run by local people every Thursday night so I volunteered.
At the end of the session I had arranged for the library to have one of their computers online and available and had a place where people could leave their email address to be contacted with more tips/updates.
There was no mailchimp app back then but it worked a treat and I had 20 out of 30 people sign up. To this day 3 of them still contact me from time to time to say hi and to let me know that they still subscribe to my newer photography blog 6 years later!
Keep in mind – this was 6 years ago when my first photography blog was in its infancy – 20 new readers might not sound like a lot but when you’re in the early days they’re invaluable (from memory I only had 100 or so people reading the blog at the time so it was a 20% increase) as they each have their own network and over the years that follow could bring along hundreds of others (not to mention all the pages they might view over the coming years).
This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.
How to Grow Your Blogs Readership Through Offline Events
The FBI Do Follow Blog Search (With Over 1000 Blogs)
The FBI Do Follow Blog Search
I'm very excited to be introducing The FBI Do Follow Blog Search Engine. I was inspired to make this custom search due to the lack of lists, directories and search engines for do follow blogs. I wanted to make it easier for you to find tons of blogs in your niche that you can build back-links from. So I started to compile a list of do follow blogs that would last longer than the sites I've been using to find them, the list started to grow and grow some more, to the point where it was over 20 pages and 1017 blogs long. I figured this was too many blogs to list so I made a Custom Search Enginewith them. Enjoy it, build links with it and get to the top of the SERP's with it.
Also leave me a comment if you would like your Do Follow Blog added to the Search Engine.
-FBI
5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs
One of the great things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running within minutes of deciding to start a blog.
Free tools range from hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger through to a myriad of plugins and themes around the web that can make blogging a breeze.
Of course while there are many many free options out there, sometimes to take your blog to the next level there can come a time when you need to spend a few dollars. I bit the bullet early in my blogging and did this first by paying for my own hosting and moving from Blogger to Movable Type (and later to WordPress.org). I also paid fairly early on for a custom design.
These days I continue to have a variety of expenses including hosting, design, paying a small team of writers (on dPS), paying for some admin support and some development costs.
There are also a number of paid tools that have become indispensable for me which I’d like to feature today. While there are free alternatives to some of them, I’ve found them to be of a standard that I’m more than happy to pay for.
1. Aweber
Perhaps the single most important decision that I’ve made in the last few years of blogging was to add newsletters to my blogs (particularly my photography blog).
I’ve outlined how I use newsletters to drive significant traffic and make money and have written previously Why I use Aweber so won’t rehash it all again – but this is a tool I’m more than happy to have invested in as it easily pays for itself and has been a key part of growing my blogs over the last 4 years many times over.
2. Ustream Producer Pro
This is the latest tool that I’ve invested in. It wasn’t particularly cheap at 9 but enables me to take my video streaming sessions up a notch and do things like have more than one camera angle, do live screen capturing, add a logo to my ustream sessions, import movies and audio into them, have extra transitions, do picture in picture etc.
Some of this is in the free version and you might find you don’t need to upgrade unless you want a few more bells and whistles.
3. MindNode Pro
I’m a big fan of mind mapping. I used to do it without having a name for it on whiteboards and note pads but when I saw online tools that could help me with it I was in heaven. I’ve tried a lot of the Mac based tools (both free and paid) and the one that suits my workflow best is MindNode.
Their free version is brilliant and you might not even need to upgrade but I’m willing to pay for the Pro version simply because it adds the ability to fold down sections of your mind map and do things like add images to it.
4. Market Samurai
I’ve not ever really paid money for SEO before until I came across the Market Samurai tool but it’s excellent. I may not use it quite to its fullest potential (yet) but have touched on how I find it useful for choosing a niche to blog about as well as optimizing a single post on your blog for search engines.
The cool thing is that they have a free trial of the tool which will give you access to its great features to try before you buy – you might find that that’s all you need to do some research and get your blog optimised pretty well.
5. Screenflow
This is a mac only tool which allows users to do great screencasting. I’ve used it more for private resources that I’ve developed for a couple of companies in consulting but it is a very cool way to show what’s on your screen in video as well as insert a view from a camera. A few videos I’ve made with it include -
- How Leaving Comments on Blogs Can Drive Traffic to Yours
- How I Use Social Media to Promote my blogs
- How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to find topics to Write about
Note: I am an affiliate for Market Samurai and Aweber but am both a user and a fan of both.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs
Blogs, bandwidth and the iPad
This post is all about the importance of having a reliable blog host. I was prompted to write it, after watching some of the world’s biggest blogs totally fail to cope with the traffic from their coverage of Apple’s iPad launch.
Here’s what happened AND what we can learn from it!
Blogs, bandwidth and the iPad launch
Every technology blog knew that Wednesday was going to be a monumental day for traffic, with the Apple iPad about to be announced to the world. However, many of the world’s leading technology blogs literally ground to a halt, having not provided enough bandwidth for their iPad coverage. Many top tech sites were impacted to some degree. Worst was ZDNet, which they admit was down for several hours.
However, some tech sites planned ahead effectively and will have gained tens of thousands of new readers as a result. That’s because when a reader in unable access a reliable service from a site, they go and find a working alternative!
This is a great example of what happens when a blog is either down or too slow to use.
What does this mean for bloggers like us?
Sure, that a month hosting package might seem like great value in the short term, but if it’s so slow and unreliable that it’s stopping people from being able to actually read your blog, it’s a waste of ! It will also slow down your progress in developing the blog. It’s hard to build a readership, when your content is hard to access. And it doesn’t stop there. Putting your blog on an unreliable host can also impact your search engine performance; if the blog is consistently down, when search engines try to crawl it!
If you are serious about developing your blog, I very strongly suggest you invest in the most reliable host you can afford. Forget wasting your time and money on having kick-ass SEO and wonderful content – none of this has any value, if your site is down or too slow / unreliable for people to bother with.
This does not have to cost a fortune either! Some of the less expensive providers are hundreds of percent more reliable than equally priced competitors.
Quick Tip for finding a great blog host
The best way I know for finding a reliable host, is to email the owner of a site, which you visit regularly and which tends to load quickly and reliably. Ask who they use and what their experience has been. For those of you that are interested, I use CSNewmedia (affiliate link) for hosting this blog and they provide me with exceptional value for money. A fast, reliable and surprisingly inexpensive service.
Photo: Gizmodo
Forget having kick-ass SEO and wonderful content – none of this has any value, if the site in question is down or too slow / unreliable to use.
Write a Blog Post about the Major Blogs in your Field
Who are the respected bloggers in your area, field, milieu? Seek them out. Read some of their work. What would you change about the post or article if you were the author? Was there something important left out? Was part of the blog unclear about anything?
This is easy stuff. Movie critics, software evaluators, book reviewers, and many other professions depend on others to provide them with their inspiration. You don't need much to get you started. Follow the simple pattern in the next paragraph, and your blogs will practically write themselves.
"This is why I hate/love the movie, book, program, car, blog, this is what I would change, and this is what I think was really good/bad about it."
It's a simple pattern. It has been used to death. And it works like a charm.
By the way, there are two main ways that you can attract traffic to your blog with this kind of post. As you read other blogs, you can pull in extra readers by writing a comment on their blog with your link attached.
The second way is to write to any bloggers or sites that you mention favorably and let them know that you think that they are No. 1 in your book. They will probably write in their blog about you writing about them in their blog.
Of course, you can go the way of the hip-hop/rap industry. One of the most common ways for an artist to make a name is to write and sing about other artists in a negative way. The artists that are attacked then respond in a similar fashion. The fans learn about the "war" between the artists, and for the most part, both artists become more popular.
