Blog Marketing

This is a guest post by Marcus Sheridan, recently named one of the Top 10 Social Media Bloggers of 2012 by Social Media Examiner.

We all want our blogs to grow. I do, you do, we all do. But as many are now finding, it’s getting more and more difficult to experience growth quickly, especially in industries that are more saturated with many great bloggers and tons of excellent content.

Notwithstanding, every year bloggers come from nowhere and explode onto the scene, finding a way to build a large audience quickly and become a leading voice of authority and trust within their field.

So how does it happen? How can a newbie blogger increase their ascension to the top of their chosen industry? This article will demonstrate qualities of successful bloggers and how they have found a way to stand out from their peers in a very short period of time.

1. Be Relentless in Getting Stuff Done

I put this one first because often times when we read about ‘shortcuts to success’, we forget the most important principle of all- hard work. And when I look at bloggers that have shown a propensity to push with an unrelenting enthusiasm to get things done, one name really stands out to me — Danny Iny.

For those of you unfamiliar with Danny, he started his blog Firepole Marketing at the beginning of 2011 and managed to not only build a name for himself, but also produce one of the Year’s best works (IMO) with his excellent book, Engagement From Scratch, a must read for any blogger.

What was so impressive about Danny was the sheer amount of ‘stuff’ he did during the year to get going. Not only did he produce 2-3 great articles each week on his own blog, but he also managed to land more guest posts in one year than anyone I’ve ever seen… by a landslide.

Moreover, Danny also commenced a marketing training program, published his book, and found the time to get married in the process. Seriously, I thought I was pretty motivated until I saw everything Danny was able to accomplish in 2011, but he certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities if we put in the time and truly ‘will’ success into our lives.

Continue 5 Essential Qualities of Growing Your Blog Quickly in a Crowded Niche

This is a guest post by Timo Kiander.

Many people live their lives without understanding, that there is a giant potential inside them. In fact, if they would realize this, they would achieve so much more in their lives.

This is where the personal development comes into play. Once you get involved with different self-improvement topics, your mind starts to change and you’ll start seeing everything differently (the people, the world, the events).

What I love about personal development is that it can be applied to many areas in one’s life. When you improve yourself first, you can have better results in whatever you do.

1. Build Confidence

Having a strong self-confidence is essential for any successful blogger. If you don’t own this trait, you are building invisible obstacles of your path to success.

To build your confidence, you need to take action and go outside your comfort zone – constantly. I know, this may not be very easy to accept for some people, but this is the only way to do it.

However, it is relieving to know, that you don’t have to make a huge leaps at once, when you are testing the boundaries of your comfort zone.

For example, if you want to start guest posting, but are afraid to give it a shot, start by submitting your posts to smaller blogs first. As your blog posts get accepted, move on to the bigger blogs. Finally, you have enough confidence to submit your guest post to big blogs too.

Once you have stretched your comfort zone a bit, you will feel more confident to take even bigger steps outside the zone. Finally, you realize that you have a rock-solid confidence and you are not limiting yourself from success.

Continue 6 Ways Personal Development Can Make You a Better Blogger

As many of you know, I love writing about Google Analytics. I’m a data junkie, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than learning more about the visitors coming to my blog. One of the best ways to get actionable data out of your Google Analytics is to set up goals.

Setting up a goal in Google Analytics tells it that someone has completed something important on your website, such as buying product, signing up to your email list, or similar. For those who aren’t interested in selling products or capturing mailing list subscribers, is there anything else you can count as a goal on your blog? Absolutely – you can start with your comments!

What You Can Learn from Setting Up Blog Comments as Goals

Here are a few things you can learn from setting up comment form submissions as goals in Google Analytics.

• Discover what referral sites are sending the most commenters. This will let you know what social media sites, guest blog posts, or other referrers are sending traffic that not only reads your posts, but also gets engaged. On the flip side, if you are getting a lot of spam, you might discover the sites sending spam traffic to your blog. This could lead you to finding lists that are sending you nothing but spam and, if that is the case, you can ask them to remove your blog from their list.
• Learn the difference between commenters and regular traffic. On my blog, one interesting tidbit is the average time on site for regular visitors is 1:23 vs the average time on site for commenters is 10:31! A good reason to encourage comments!
• Find out what content on your blog your most engaged audience enjoys so you can produce more of it.
• See what part of the world your commenters are coming from. If you are targeting a specific region, but your commenters are coming from somewhere else, you might want to look into the reasons why.

So now that you know just a few reasons to set up comments as goals, let’s look at the ways you can set up your WordPress and Google Analytics to track your blog comments as goals.

Continue How to Set Up Blog Comments as Goals in Google Analytics Using WordPress Hacks