How to Succeed at Blogging By Making Your Blogger Life Rewarding

I would guess that more than 99% of all blogs started never last for more than 30 days or get more than 10 blog posts. Those that do continue to grow, grow because they produce results for you, the blogger.

Within that top 1% are the bloggers who blog religiously. They do it because their blog produces results-- divinely. What are they doing that you're not? What's the difference?

Whether your goals for blogging are personal or professional, the metrics for success and the strategies for achieving it are the same. And here they are:

1. Get More Comments.

Comments are the biggest source of traffic for most successful bloggers. They feel rewarding.

Comments generate even more traffic than Google, especially in the short run. Techcrunch had a major troll problem so they went to Facebook comments to get rid of anonymous commenting. Their comment numbers plummetted. So did their page views. Apparently, people that like to throw around verbal garbage like to do so anonymously. Surprisingly, what surprised them the most was that their advertising revenues nosedove too. They charge their advertisers on CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions). So they dropped Facebook comments.

A) To get more comments, don't censor.

Inflamatory people are like a train wreck. They cause rubber-necking. And in blogging, that's a very good thing.

B) Next, comment in the biggest blogs to drag their traffic over to yours.

There's an art to this. Nobody likes when their hard earned traffic is syphoned away from them. Smart moderators will delete any comment that does that. So make it unfavorable to delete your comments. Leave a comment that both brings value to that blog (stats, insights, three additional "ways to" for their top ten ways to post). Then, close your comment by appologizing for rambling and leave a link to your blog post that continues to ramble.

Leave a comment in big blogs that are even more sly than my example.

C) Ask itchy questions in your blog post.

Leading the witness is only banned in a court of law. On your blog, lead, lead, lead.

2. Get Google To Rank You On Page One.

It always feels rewarding to see that very first referral click from a Google search. It feels even more rewarding when you're still getting 750 unique people per day clicking on your blog post three years later. This is how you do that:

A. Mention lots of Names

Bloggers and PR departments all over the world have Google Alerts set up for their executives' names and their product names. If you include a lot of these names, your blog post will get caught up in a lot of their filters. You'll get noticed and if they like what you're saying, they will link to you.

Do this with government agencies and universities. Getting a link from a .gov or .edu website vaults you to near wikipedia credibility status and rank.

B. Physically tweet, email, call other bloggers and ask for a referral link.

Just tell them that you're going to add a "for more information" link to their blog. Then tell them that you'd love if they did the same. Continue till you find bloggers that do.

C. Do a press release about your blog post.

Seriously. I don't know wny bloggers don't do this. It's literally the best $50 to $5,000 you're ever going to spend. You might be thinking that press releases are only for corporations or new product launches. Balderdash! People who throw their kids' barmitzvas do press releases about their kids' barmitzvas. PhDs do press releases about their thesis (is that the plurl form too?) . Do a press release. You'll instantly get masses of links if your release is done right.

Even on the higher end, if you spend $5,000 and that rewards you with a client that pays you $5,000 a month, it was worth it.

D. Learn Google SEO

There are 25 more key factors to know about how Google picks who they put on page one. Most professionals don't know more than 5 of those factors. You might also want to learn about the three most important Google SEO factors nobody realizes.

3. Get Rewarded More and More Frequently

Success breeds success. You'll get addicted to success. It's like crack (according to some reports I've read). Just one little taste and you're hooked. This is how you get rewarded more.

A) Clearly identify your goal and measure daily

If your goal is just traffic, make that clear in your mind by starting a spreadsheet that shows your traffic : word count : social media stats. You do it with your calories, weight, bank account, and blood pressure. So do it with your blog. It's a living breathing entity too.

B. Segmentize your conversion metric (take baby steps)

In other words, if you're waiting for your first big sale from your blog, you'll likely get disheartened and quit-- just like the 99.9% out there. Instead, realize that it takes:

500 random viewers to get 1 email address

50 emails to the same person to get 1 phone conversation

3 phone conversations to get one client or sale. 

Meter your metrics. Do a micro celebration everytime you get 500 more unique blog views. See if that generated a single new email subscriber. Do a mini celebration every time you send out another 50 blog announcement emails. Did you get one of your subscribers to call you for consulting or to ask about your products? Celebrate every third phone call you get because that means that your blog just got you paid.

C. Innovate and bring all the numbers down by 50%

Can you get 1 email subscriber per every 10 readers? Try it. Learn direct response copy writing.

BONUS: Build blogging alliances at major trade shows

Sure, you can message and tweet bloggers all day long, any day. Trouble is, they are always in the middle of doing something more important than talking to a stranger-- except during a trade show. They are in networking mode. Get to know the biggest events happening in your industry. Start with Otradeshow.com for Trade Show Events, Displays, and Exhibit News

--

Robert Wan is the VP of Business Strategy at Sparkah Consulting LLC. His marketing tips and discoveries are all at http://sparkah.com/blog and his guerrilla marketing strategies google+

How To Get More Clients and Customers by Blogging and Find Inspiration against Writer's Block

Have you ever wondered why anybody blogs?

You may not have noticed any ads, the blog may not even talk about anything commercial. So who do they do it?

Because it's profitable.

Blogging is profitable from two perspectives. First, it saves you time. Blogging the answers to the most common questions you get creates a system by which you can quality control the answers your customers and prospects get. This is ideal if you've got a customer support staff or a sales team. All they have to do is send a link to the answer that the most experienced CSR or Account Exec wrote.

Blogging also reduces your HR training time. You can see how that directly adds to your bottom line.

The big question on everyone's mind is, "then, how do I get blogging to add to the TOP LINE?" How does blogging generate revenues from my company.

The answer is surprising to most executives.

Back in feudal Japan, martial arts masters got clients by publicly demonstrating their skill. They'd break up a gang fight. The onlookers would be impressed by the demonstration. A large portion of the observers would become dojo customers.

Use your blog to solve problems for your target market.

Solve them well. 

For example, if you sell low calorie carrot cake, post your recipe online. Information is now a commodity. Your readers will Google for you and find you because they want a low calorie carrot cake. You will engender good will from them. They will have a decision to make: "should I spend 4 hours baking or should I just drive 30 minutes to buy."

If you're a cosmetic surgeon, blog. Blog about how to make your nose look better with makeup, diet, a skin care regimen, hair style, and maybe even how to pick the right plastic surgeon. People will find you in Google and in Facebook and Twitter too. You will engender good will from them. They will have a decision to make: "should I keep up this regimen my whole life or should I just get a nosejob."

If you ever get writer's block or want inspiration to blog, just look in your sent mail. Blog the answers to customers you write most often.

Writer's Block: How To Find Inspiration to Blog: What Should I Blog About Next?

Hi Cheryl,

Thanks for the kind words...

The way I blog is to simply post answers to the most common questions my clients ask me.

1. That way, i never have to repeat myself. I just send them the link! =)

2. Other NON clients who have the same questions type it into google and find my answer. Then contact me to work for them because I gave them confidence in my capabilities.

Not sure if that helps but Blogging has gotten me amazing clients and new relationships... AND saved me tons of time.

Hope that helps!

PS... I'm going to write a blog about THIS now =)

If you're on Google+ let's talk about your blog at -- Marketing Strategies+

--
Robert Wan,
Web Business Growth Strategies
http://twitter.com/sparkah
http://facebook.com/greenisimo
http://www.linkedin.com/in/journik
310 598 1606
NYC | LA | SF | LON | SEOUL

Posterous Closed: How to Fix Broken Links and Picture or img Links Automatically

Posterous Closed: How to Fix All Your Dead Links and Images

I know you're here because you're pissed off.

If your blog has any dead links and any dead images or pictures, Google will immediately drop you. If you're like me, you can't, you won't afford for that to happen.

But posterous is shutting down and there are three different links that point back to posterous servers even if you thought you were done cleaning up because you used autopost to wordpress, blogger, squarespace, or tumblr:

1. When you autopost, there's a tiny link at the bottom of each blog that says "autoposted via posterous.com" and it links to your soon to be dead posterous blog.

2. Then there's images and videos that you directly uploaded to Posterous. All your <embed> and <img> links will break

3. Finally, there are photos you uploaded as a slideshow. There will be a link under any series of photos or images saying, "see full gallery at posterous.com"

All these links will die. I put about 3 images in each blog and I've got about 300 blog posts. So that means I will have 1,000 dead image links and about 500 dead hyper links.

I'm going to post two solutions for you here:

1. I am currently researching HOW to autoreplace all my posterous image links. I do NOT have a solution YET.

2. Meanwhile, so that I ATLEAST don't lose what's most important to me: my Google ranking, I have a patch I can share with you now: Replace all your "posterous.com" tags: <a href="http://yoursite.posterous.com"> and <img src="blah.server.posterous.com/getfile..." using RegEx to 

"<a rel=..." and "<cite title=..."

Atleast that way, Google doesn't see any dead links or images while I figure out how to actually make the images show back up.

If you want to stay in touch with me for my next hack and guerrilla marketing strategy, just drop your email at http://sparkah.com/private And check back here as I will be updating this page.

 

How To Double Your Sales and Users in 72 Hours by Direct Response Copy Writer

How many people do you have to drive to your shopping cart or registration page before one of them does what you want them to?

If you don't know that number, go straight to jail, do not collect $200.

BASICS: Track Metrics and Track the Metrics That Actually Predict Sales

For those of you who do treat your business like a business, you're probably using Google Analytics. Don't. Use a user tracker instead of a traffic tracker. There's a huge difference.

1. In a retail store, you can directly watch passers by pass by and see what they saw before 

A. they walked into your store

B. looked back in the direction they were going

2. In a retail store, you can see what isle or rack people gravitate toward before they

A. bring an item to your point of sale

B. return the item to your point of purchase and do 1B.

Using Google analytics to track your conversion rates is like just counting the number of "ding-dongs" from the infrared walk-in sensor-- and ONLY that. You might disagree and say that Google Analytics can do that. But it can't. The most important part of user flow tracking metrics is:

A. counting the number of people who purchased upon first visit.

B. counting how many visits it took before each visitor purchased.

This is the most important thing you need to track. If you're tracking everything BUT this, collect $200, but still, go to jail.

ADVANCED: How to Make Twice as Many 'First Visitors' Buy

Now that you're tracking data that actually matters, you've got to get more people to buy on their first visit. Most people will slip out of your drag net. So you've also got to get the people who didn't buy to come back and purchase with fewer and fewer 'come backs.'

There are only two factors in making this possible.

1. Visitor targeting.

The better you do you marketing, the sharper you'll be able to target people who are actually likely to buy from you. You don't need freeloaders. You don't need lookie-loos. You don't need fremium leeches. You need customers.

In a Harvard MBA course, the class was asked, "if you had  to sell Bibles," who would you sell it to? The responded with Buddhists, atheists, people in crisis, etc. The professor said, "I would sell to people who already had several bibles. They have a behavior pattern of buying bibles."

Online, you can do the same thing.

Isolate people who talk about and already buy the products and services you sell. We at sparkah have over a hundred thousand twitter and facebook addresses of people who said they purchase XYZs and ABCs. Do you?

2. Direct response copy writing.

You can train two different salesmen. One will outsell the other every day of the week. It's not just what they say, it's how they say it. Your website shopping cart or register page or download page IS your salesman. How well written is that page? How often do you change the copy and remeasure your conversion rate? 

If you haven't rewritten and measured conversion rates on your website for months, send it to us and we will see if we can double your buyers in 72 hours. Use http://sparkah.com/contact ... In Europe, use http://sparkah.com/ben (we've written for Forbes, Fast Company, ESPN, etc...)

You might also want to read about Google SEO for eCommerce Stores. Then, click to read about Google SEO secrets

Google Glass Developers Learning Mirror API Will Boom. Your First App Will Too

Most of the world didn't know what was going on at WWDC 1. Steve was going to change the world and most people were still trying to program their VCRs. 

Now, there's a collective sigh from the millions who only recently tried to build an app for the iPhone to realise that the App Store is crowded with dozens of apps that do exactly the same thing yours does. Now, to get any marketshare and build a user base, you're going to need a corporate scale marketing budget. You're going to need to bank on reaching your target user base 7 to 12 times over the course of months to finally convince them to go out of their way to download your free version.

Same goes with Android app development now. There was a window of opportunity when the G1 first came out on Android but most developers were too busy trying to play Itunes catch-up to go the lonely route of being one of the first and only apps in the Android Market.

Well, Google Glass is your new golden ticket.

Glass can listen, record video, take photos, overlay map and gps data in your field of vision, and it can browse the web for you. 

Based on these broad base capabilities, what can you envision? How quickly can you get it built? If you need help building your first, everybody's first Google Glass app, contact us: http://sparkah.com/apps.php

Facebook Marketing Strategies: How To Show All Updates from Like Pages Liker's / Friends On Feed

https://social.ogilvy.com/wp-content/uploads/brand1.png

Have you noticed on your own Facebook that there are people you KNOW you friended but they never show up in your feed? You may have just figured they were too busy and evolved to use Facebook any more. Well, you figured wrong. They use Facebook all the time and update like like your X's wardrobe. 

Sadly, your customers and fans may have thought the same thing about you because they never see the umpteen updates you post either.

Yep. Facebook hides 87% of your posts.

Why? 1. They want you to "pay to promote all your updates."

2. That's how they make money.

3. Money.

So, is there a way around this? Well, it wouldn't be a worthy blog post if there wasn't a hack. Tricky part is that your updates are going to have to be pretty damn interesting because you're going to have to convince your likers and friends to do this: How to Show All Updates from My Like/Fan Page to My Likers and Friends.

Continued: Social Media Marketing Strategies.