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Wednesday 22 June 2016

6 Ways to Improve Your Blog Readership

If you want to build a better blog, you need a thriving audience based around your blogging community.




And you can only build a great community around your blogs when you have active readership. When I talk about improving readership, what I mean is generating traffic which doesn’t stink.
Good traffic is targeted traffic, and it converts better in every sense. As a subscriber, as a product buyer, and as an engaged audience member, these kinds of visitors are the ones who will be marketing your blogs in the offline community.
The hard part is building this active readership; you need to be consistent and patient. It takes time to build this improved audience base.
But don’t worry. In this article, I will share a few strategies which will help you build an audience base around readers who need your blog.

The Definite Guide to Growing Your Blog Readership

1. Use social media sites to grow subscribers
Social Media Attention
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ can REALLY provide a great platform to build your online reputation. If you want to build a great readership for your blog, an active social media presence will you help you do that.
Regardless of how busy you are with your online businesses or offline work, make sure you are spending quality time on social media sites to engage with other bloggers and influencers in your niche.
One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make with their social media pages is they focus on getting more likes and shares, but fail to build a community. Once your readers are engaged, they’ll be the ones getting you more likes and shares.
The key is to make your readers/blog followers feel like they are part of your community. That’s one reason why I always call Bloggeria readers, “Bloggers“.
Try promoting your best content and comment on them regularly to build healthy relationships with your audience.
But, don’t be a scumbag and promote ONLY your stuff; no one will care about you or your blog if you only talk about yourself. Use a win/win approach by sharing other’s content and, in turn, sooner or later, they will share your posts.
This is how to build great long-term readership on your blogs using social media sites.
  • If you are a busy blogger, you can use apps like Bufferapp to schedule content, and your primary role will shift to charging up engagement on your pages.
  • I use a combination of Flipboard, Nuzzel, Bufferapp to stay pro-active on Twitter, G+ & FB.
2. Connect with other bloggers
Connections are everything in blogging.
Blogging is an online business. It needs good contacts, relationships, and a healthy network with other bloggers and influencers to succeed.
The more relationships you have built up around your blog, the better your quality of readership will be. Once you have a thriving audience, everything else becomes super easy.
You will get:
  • More sales
  • More profits
  • Better traffic
  • Better online visibility
Use other people’s blogs to connect with themTry guest posting, blog commenting, and sending them emails about their posts to quickly build these great relationships.
Again, don’t be selfish! Introduce their blogs or best posts to your readers on your blogs. This way you will be actively building a great online reputation and a strong network of fellow bloggers.
3. Use guest blogging as a weapon
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is no doubt one of the best ways to quickly build a brand around your blog.
Guest blogging not only brings you quality back links, but it also gives you more online presence and more readership for your blogs.
Tips for successful guest blogging:
  • Don’t post mediocre content on your guest posts; always write high-quality posts. People will only follow you back to your blog when your posts are amazing, unique, and really, really good.
  • Try landing on top blogs with your guest posts because these top blogs will alwayshelp you get loyal readers, more email leads, and an increase in sales.
  • Analyze the blogs where you want to guest post. This way you will know how to write in order to capture that specific audience.
  • Try to frequently guest post on blogs which are bigger than yours.
4. Make sure you have quality content on your blog
Quality Content on your blog
If you don’t have great blog posts on your site, no one will be interested in reading your stuff.
Even if you have a lot of influence online, it won’t help you if you’re writing mediocre, generic posts.
Identify what problems your audience is having. This will help you write much better blog posts. Know what they want and build a network around them and what they need.
Research well and connect with other influencers to know what they are writing on their sites. Observe how they are connecting to people on their blogs to improve their readership.
5. Invest money on blog design
Invest Money on Blog Design
First impressions are crucial in blogging.
If you want to quickly grab other bloggers’ eye balls, make your blog design look professional.
Make sure your blog serves up a mobile-friendly theme, as smartphone users are increasing every day. I use & recommend Genesis theme as it has inbuilt schema markup & is responsive.
6. Respond to everyone
No matter how busy you are, spend the time responding to your readers.
Try to engage with them through your blog comments, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and respond to emails. Most readers will express their problems using blog comments and emails. When you quickly respond to them and solve their problems, they will become loyal fans to you and your sites.

Take the time to respond to your readers and other bloggers and you will surely create a great impact.
Don’t forget the importance of creating healthy relationships with your blog’s readers.In order to build an amazing long-term blog, you need active, engaged, ravingfans supporting you.
These are some of the strategies which work for me. This is the reason ShoutMeLoud is as successful as it is; we are a community of bloggers.
Try to implement few of these strategies and you will notice the difference.
Do let me know about some other tips which will help a blogger build a strong readership around their blog.  Share your advice in the comments.
If you find this article useful, share it with your friends on Facebook and Google Plus!

5 Effective Ways to Connect to Professional Bloggers



Every blogger starts career alone but sooner or later he want to start his own network of blogs or want to connect with successful and pro-bloggers, with whom he can achieve the goals. It is always better to connect with other bloggers whom you think are ideal for you and who can give you a new twist to your blogging career.
You should never think that a blogger is successful only if he is earning good income, he should be a nice person to work with. Connecting with such a successful blogger might be a problem for newbie, but there are few tips to attract your ideal blogger with whom you want to work or who can help you in your blogging career.
Every one knows a difference between a Professional blogger and part-time blogger. Professional blogger has to deal with lots of things like writing articles, promoting brand,search engine optimization, networking, advertisement sells and many other activities. In the end blogging is bread and butter for pro-bloggers.
Know them properly
As I said, Successful blogger is not only one who can earn money by hook or crook. I came across bloggers who offered me to work with them but I never liked the way they use to work for making money online. You must only connect to bloggers who have passion to work and highly determined to achieve their goals in ethical way; after all it’s about your blogging career.
Praise them
It is always good to praise others for their work. But again, it should be a genuine one. Bloggers keep track about whatever is said about them. So, write about them, compliment them and they will love to respond you.
Communicate
Communicate With Blogger
This is the key for getting noticed by successful bloggers. Ask them for help if you have any problems, one can ask them about their blogging career and how to go ahead in blogging career. However it is always better to communicate when they are free and therefore one should ask which is good time to contact with them.
Implement their advice
Asking questions with your ideal bloggers is not enough. They will only help you if you will implement their ideas. If successful bloggers share blogging secrets with you and when you give them good results, they will be glad that they played their part in your journey to a successful blogging career.
Understand his Time Value
Blogger's Time is Valuable
Most of blogger once connect with a pro-blogger tries to talk to them every time they see him/her online. Understand the value of his time and with pinging him every time you might be making him to delete you or block you from the list. Most of the people think that such bloggers are Egoistic and impolite. Truth is being a Professional blogger is not easy, and one find it hard to give you all the time. So when you get a chance to interact with them, try to ask only important questions, which answer you can’t find on web. Being professional you can win anyone heart. This is normal human psychology and I’m sure it will work for you too.
These are very basic things to know when it comes to connecting with successful bloggers. Just remember be polite and professional while communicating and be passionate to work on tips provided by successful bloggers.
Do let us know how do you connect with Professional bloggers? Do they answer you politely or they ignore your messages?

Important Blogging Tips For College Students




Few years back, no one would have imagined that blogging will become a major way for anyone to make money. In last 2 years, we have witnessed an incredible increase in the number of bloggers. Specially school and college students are the majority of adopters. .
There are many college students (most of them from engineering college) who spend day and night to fulfil their blogging dreams. Unfortunately, most students are missing their classes ,and spending their precious time in researching and writing articles. This habit ultimately effects their overall academic performance. Here are few tips for them to maintain a balance between College and blogging:





Blogging for College students:

If there is one thing which I regret about my blogging career, that would be: I didn’t started blogging in college time. College time is the best time to start a blog of your own, as in this period you will be getting maximum leisure time, and instead of spending time on Facebook, or playing counter strike, you can work on your blog.
Additionally, it will help you to enhance your personality, and by the time you are out of the college, your blog will be making handsome income. Imagine, how good that would be if your blog income will help you to pay most of your bills. If you are one of those students, who are in school or college, and have a blog, here are few more tips to help you make most out of your blogging:
1. Attend Your Classes
It is true that blogging gives lots of fame and money, but you should accept the fact that degree is most precious thing for any student. Companies judge you by your academic performance, not from your blogging experience. So never ignore your studies. Attend all the classes and maintain a good percentage.
2. Make A Proper Schedule
Make a time table and decide the time which suits you for blogging. Don’t be a night owl by doing research and blogging. It will affect your schedule. Try to complete your work and go to bed before midnight.  Take at least 6-7 hours of sleep.
3. How much time you should devote
It totally depends on your college timing. If your college ends up at 5:00 p.m then you have 7 hours for blogging and studies. Try to create a balance between these two work. Both are necessary. Stick with your schedule.
4. Tell everyone about your blog
Try to tell everyone about your work. Don’t become a suspicious guy among your friends. Give your blog address to your friends and ask them to read your blog and leave comments.
5. Part  time job
In college many students join call centers and various other part time job. But blogging is a favorite part time work and it pays you more than any other part time job. Try to catch some web publisher and show your writing skills to them. You can easily get work if you are an efficient writer.
6. Attend Meetings in Your City
Try to catch some famous people of your field. Attend blog camps, blogger’s meet and Tweetup organized by various bloggers in your city. Register for these events and catch big fishes of your field and discuss them about blogging. You can also ask for help regarding any subject.
7. Organize Blog classes in your college
If you are an established blogger then you can organize blog camps for other students of your college. You can take permission for the classes from your head of department of director of your college. You can educate your fellow students about blogging business, and how they can earn from a blog.
8. Impress your friends
Blogging is an immediate source of fame for any student. You can become famous among your friends by showing your blogging skill. Try to research for different articles on your niche and write about them on your blog. Try to solve various technical problems of your friends through your blog.
9. Read blogs related to your branch
If you are a student of Computer science then you can read blogs related to your study.Lifehacker and Howtogeek are very well-known blog for computer users. Similarly you can read HowstuffworksTechcrunch and Mashable for knowledge of various startup companies and Social Media.
These are the basic Blogging tips for college students. Are you a college student who loves blogging. Do you follow any one of the above mentioned tips. Kindly leave a comment.

Reasons Why It’s Impossible for You to Monetize your Blog

Many bloggers quit blogging career because they don’t earn any income. Earning through blog is not due to luck, you earn after doing with lot of smart work and dedication towards your goal. There are bloggers who are earning good online income, but other bloggers just read their article and never implement that’s the reason they fail to earn online. You need to find out the reasons why you face failure in making money online.




1. Shortcut to earn money:
Many bloggers want to make money fast, which is not possible. You will need time and smart work to make money online. No affiliate programs, eBooks or advertisers can make you rich in few days. Working for 4-5 months won’t make you a professional blogger. Give your best efforts and time to your blogging career; you will surely earn online income.
2. Lack of efforts
You might get a purchase a blog and start wishing that it will generate money. Just having a blog and posting articles won’t lead you towards your dream. You need to learn everything about making money online and equally put efforts to it. Just reading article and not applying the tricks with proper planning will only result in failure.
3. Fear of hurdles
If you want to make money you have to pass through hurdles, you won’t find red carpet always. You will find lots of problems in beginning. Be confident, search for solutions, ask other bloggers but don’t fear from failure.
4. Distraction
This is very common mistake bloggers make. They will choose lots of options to make money online and keep jumping from one option to other. This will surely lead to failure in making money online. Focus on one project at a time and give your best to it, you will surely get success.
5. Lack of passion
Only passion will drive you towards your goal. It is important to have passion and positive energy to achieve what you want from your blog. If you have passion, you will overcome barriers and achieve your targets.
Hope this post will help you to earn money online. Do share your insight for making money online.

7 things I wish I knew before starting to blog



The following are the things you must know before stating a blog as I did'nt knew them when I started my Blogs, so I want all the new bie bloggers to know it.
Users are not waiting to come to my blog:
I wish users were smarter and they got to know about start of a great blog as soon as the blog started. But unfortunately that does not happen and they need to be told about the blog again and again before they bookmark it.
Everything takes a hell lot of time
Getting google to index pages and send traffic, building twitter followers or a powerful stumbleupon profile, getting admitted into adsense and everything else will take a lot longer than what I had thought. Checking the stats 20 times in an hour does not help.
Google is pathetic at recognizing good content –
If google bot were a person, it will be one of the stupidest user of my blog. Posts written after hours of research do not even get indexed while posts that were put together in 10 minutes time have reached number one position and driven crazy amount of traffic and earned me loads of time.
There will be time when I do not feel like posting
All of us face the writer’s block at some point of time or the other. It helps to have a co author as he/she can keep the blog going while you struggle to complete even a single post. Otherwise keep additional posts ready for such times.
Fellow bloggers are way more nice than I can imagine
If you think about it most of us bloggers compete for the same traffic. Yet we link to each other’s content, stumble and do everything that we can to help the other guy. It may not sound a lot but on a day when I am completely down on spirit, a nice gesture like this helps get the smile back and has been one of the biggest motivators to keep me writing.
The theme mattersA LOT
This is one mistake that I think most geeks make. We love writing the core algorithm and never care much about the front end.  No wonder my blog always had a horrible look (the theme sucks even now) and I believed that it does not matter. Only after I saw a post about blogging without passion on Shoutmeloud, I was surprised to see how much more impressive the post looked. Shoutmeloud is a very good blog by Harsh Aggarwal, through shoutmeloud only I got all the important tips and tricks to start my own Blog.
Denial can kill my blog :
Sometimes we do not get something important. I did not get the importance of themes and I did not get the importance of social media including twitter. That is OK. But what is not OK is the fact that I got into denial about the importance of these two things and convinced myself that they do not matter. What is it that you are in denial of? The importance of SEO, need of better monetization method for your blog. Hope you will get out of the denial today itself and start working on things that are important for your blog.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing In Blogging



Social media has changed the world of SEO and online marketing. Google adopting ” Search Plus your world” as a signal in ranking shows how social media is getting important for Bloggers and internet marketers. In last couple of years, many social media marketing companies are coming into the market to create brand awareness via Social media promotion. There was a time when traffic to a site was only dependent on search engine and via buying traffic. Now, scenario has completely changes and Internet marketers and Bloggers are using Social media marketing strategies to tap targeted traffic from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Before, I go in-depth of benefits of Social media, lets learn what Social media is all about.
Being a Blogger you have already achieved the first mile-stone in your social media presence and now it’s time to move to leverage the power of these social media sites and turn it into your profit. From a Blogger perspective, it will be more idle if you are driving traffic and converting them into subscribers. From a brand perspective, getting feedback from user/costumer and engaging them on your social media campaign should be first target. Once the trust part builds, converting user into costumer will be more easier. By the end, it’s all come to building trust and reputation.

What is Social media Marketing:

Social media marketing in simple word is process of brand awareness and drive targeted traffic from social media sites. This include using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Video marketing, Flickr, user groups, Forums, Social bookmarking sites, Social news sites  and so on. Blogging is also a part of SMM but since this post is targeted for Bloggers, we won’t get in depth of Blogging.
SMM relies mostly on user interaction and comments. A brand success in social media promotion is usually calculated based on conversions.
  • Social Media : It refers to websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, YouTube, Flickr, etc. where users or groups of users share the media contents openly. i.e Videos, Images, Songs, Texts, etc
  • Social Bookmarking : It’s the system similar to that our web browser’s one. These are the website like DIGG, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc. where users can bookmark favorite url(s) or say blog. Since these bookmarks are visible to every user, if other users would search for same, then he/she will get through the results.
  • Social news: Sites like TechMeme are considered as Social news site.
  • Social app: With the increasing usage of Smartphones, we can’t afford to ignore the importance of Social reading and Social apps like Zite, Foursquare.
Popular Social media sites:
  • YouTube 
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Google+ (Also impact search engine ranking)
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit
  • Stumble-Upon
  • Foursquare
Now depending upon your blog niche, you should pick the right social site for your promotion strategy. Here is a nice slide from Slideshare, which will give all newbie about What is SM and why it’s like teen Sex, or not:

Impacts Of Social Media Marketing for Blogger:

Basically in this article I will discus about benefits of social media marketing and its impact on Blog and we need to accept the concept that Blogging and Social Media goes equally hand-to-hand. And for the betterment of readers I divided this topic in two Sub topics.
Benefits Of Social Media Marketing for blog:
It’s impossible to cover promotion technique for all the sites as every Social media site, works differently and need specific promotion strategy. For example, Pinterest and Flickr need Image, Infographics strategy. Youtube and Vimeo need video content, Facebook Need engagement to improve your page visibility and Google+ pages need more niche related discussion.
From a blogger, marketing on SM sites will directly help in more traffic, more links, better PR, Better Alexa rank and other traffic rank and most important more subscribers. And if we look book to golden rule of MMO. More targeted traffic = more sales/Income.
  • Get Free & Niche-Oriented Traffic : There are tons of social bookmarking websites floating on web, where an amount of users are interested in niche that your blog is propagating. These users are then transformed to better targeted visitors and results in decreasing bounce rate as they are interested in the topic offered by your blog.
  • Increase Google PR and Alexa Ranking :  Consider your blog is fetching viral amount of traffic but you don’t’ see much improvement in your Page-rank or Alexa Rank, and some other blog, having less number of visitors but better Alexa Rank. Search Engines and Alexa gives much importance to Social bookmarks, if blog is linked with then it will help you to get better SERP/s and will bring you good PR because those are the one having high-authority among search engines. 
  • Better Visibility And Popularity : Most of the bookmarking website have the system of vote and ranking, if your content is really good, then you will get fruits for that, as you will get considered amount of votes, will help your blog to get more visibility among the users, resulting to again more traffic. More over, your presence will be global. After all internet is all about being endless.
  • Cheap and better conversion : Using other methods to drive traffic like PPC advertising, CPM advertising, Banner ads and other are costly medium, where as social media is cheapest and most reachable medium. More over, demographic and targeting will help you to reduce the cost and time.
Benefits directly for Blog:
Social Media is what much concentrated for business blogs as well as other websites. Business get boosted with social networking websites and for Blogger/s, their blog get higher ranking in search engines.
  • Get Higher Ranking And SERP/s : Search Engines give partial importance to the contents shared on Social Media and Networking sites. The main purpose of them is to provide better results for users and its the fact that those contents at Social Media sites are the one introduced by users only. Thus those websites are actually helping search engines indirectly. So, if your blog is active on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus then you will definitely get improved ranking/s and SERP’s. Specially, Google+ has seen as one of the major influential social site for better ranking in search engine.
  • Better Crawling of Blog : Social media promotion helps in better and faster crawling of your site and new posts. By promoting old content on social media sites, help in better and deep indexing of your site. You can also set a strategy of creating resource pages like WordPress guide, which will help in more social sharing and deeper indexing of important old content.
  • Blog Brand domination : You might have heard about domination of business brand, but at Social Media sites, you get a chance to turn the blog into dominated one. Users will be more active and will be discussing about your blog and work, this will effect your blogs reputation in an better way. This will ultimately bring more traffic and better rankings.

Do’s and Don’ts of Social media Marketing :

Dos and donts of Social media marketingVery first suggestion which I would like to give you is, Social media sites are all about being social. Instead of being a machine, you need to be a human. You need to understand people emotions and offer content/media/product based on their mood. Numbers are good for any brand but target more on acquiring target users and consumers. Else, negative comment from un-targeted readers might not be very pleasant for brand reputation. For example, you posting about Adsense earnings and every one starts asking about, is making money online possible? And such question. Rather, your real win is when people actually talk and discus about points mentioned by you or add their tip.
So lets, look into some of the things which you should and should not do on social media sites:
Do’s:
  • Engage with Users
  • Post in a schedule manner. Post daily or regular interval.
  • Share links/Images/Video related to your niche and your comment or better ask a question.
  • Make your rules/Philosophy and follow it.
  • Keep an eye on Social media trend and upcoming sites in your niche.
  • Talk about trending topic in your niche/market.
  • Keep your profile information up to date.
  • Target users based on demographic and interest.
  • Monitor brand presence on Social media sites.
  • Add humor and add personal touch into your updates and comments.
  • Keep an eye on competitor strategies.
  • Increase trust, Loyalty and brand awareness.
Dont’s:
  • Avoid over posting
  • Don’t drink and update on Social media sites
  • Avoid spamming (Too much of self promotion is spamming in a way)
  • Avoid buying Fans, Users and don’t use bots to increase your number.
  • Never fight with your readers. Stay calm! Avoid insulting your fans, subscribers.
  • Don’t ignore single feedback and comment. Acknowledge all of them.
  • Don’t spent too much time on Social media sites. Your target is to do business and a successful business is measured by number of sales. From Blogger perspective, it’s traffic and revenue generated via it. It could be your affiliate sales, email subscription or simple ad views.
Conclusion:
At last, I need to conclude that Blogging is not just about SEO and content writing, with other important factors like Social Media & social Bookmarking are added then it will give new way to blogging career. It will not only help you, but at the same time will help the readers, and helping is the prime motto of Bloggers!
Here are some more meaningful article on web, which will help you to learn more:
P.S: User engagement is the key for Blogger. It helps in building trust and brand reputation.