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15 Key Steps to Run a Successful Business Blog in 2016

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15 Key Steps to Run a Successful Business Blog in 2016

When a B2B marketer maintains a business blog, they get 67% more leads than marketers who don’t. What’s more, companies with blogs earn 97% more website links than those without. Convinced you need to blog? Maybe the only problem is this question. How do you become a business blogger? How do you find blogging success in boosting your company, rep, and rankings online as a brand? Get our free guide: “The Fast-Paced Business Owner’s Guide to Successful Blogging In Just 5 Minutes A Day”. The process isn’t as hard as you might think. We’ve outlined 15 key steps to get you going this 2016. Ring in the New Year the right way – with great business blog foundations! 15 Foundational Steps to A Successful Business Blog There are 15 key things you should be focusing on for blogging success—here they are. 1) Determine your niche With so many businesses online right now, it can be tough to stand out from the crowd. For this reason, it’s important to decide what it is that you can do better from anyone else. Determining your niche is the foundation of everything from your target audience to your style of content, and it can help you go far in terms of deciding exactly what and how you will write. 2) Determine your goal If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to have a difficult time getting there! That’s why it’s important to make a decision about the purpose of your blog at the outset. Are you trying to drive conversions? Make sales? Increase engagement? No matter what your goal is, defining it will help you reach it. 3) Decide on topics Now that you know what your blog’s goal is, which topics are you going to cover? The universe is a big place and it’s impossible to write about everything well. For this reason, it’s important to decide on which topics within your niche you’ll write about. For example, if you’re a business that specializes in inbound marketing, some of your main topics could be inbound lead generation and social media marketing. 4) Hone your point of view Nowadays, honing your business’s point of view (POV) can go a long way toward earning you readers. Today’s consumers are much more willing to connect with a person than they are a company, and when you hone your POV you personalize your company, thus gaining a direct line into the minds of consumers. 5) Learn from your peers Once you’ve decided what you want to write about and how, you’ll want to look around at what others in your industry are doing. Writing is a learned skill and if it doesn’t come naturally to you, you can learn a great deal from watching other people. Even if you are a strong writer, watching industry leaders can give you ideas for content and help you stay up to date on the hottest happenings in your industry. Tip: Use a tool like BuzzSumo to find leaders and track the most-shared content in your niche. 6) Be consistent One of the most important aspects of business blogging is remaining consistent. I almost put this as #1. Just how consistent? I’ve put out 600 blogs now between 2013 – today. 600. And 50+ website pages. Over 100 of my content pages (blogs, web pages) rank in the top 10 positions of Google. I gained that by writing and posting content at least 3x a week for over three years. Business blogs that publish content on a regular schedule gain more leads than those who don’t. Additionally, every blog you write is one more page indexed in Google, which means that blogging on a regular basis can help produce an SEO boost that can make your company more visible online. 7) Interact with readers Imagine if a band went out onstage and sang their songs but never signed autographs, gave high-fives, or took photos with their fans. Do you think they’d have fans for very long? Probably not! The same goes for your business blog. Once you’ve started to gain readers, it’s incredibly important to interact with those readers. Tip: You can do this by reading and responding to your comments and polling readers about topic ideas and what they’d like to see more of. This creates an environment in which your readers are engaged and interested, which is the perfect platform for your business blog to thrive. 8) Be ethical Your business blog isn’t going to get far if you don’t insist on ethics from the beginning. Blogging ethics can be a little complex and they go far beyond not copying other people’s work. Ethical blogging also includes things like ensuring your links are legitimate and not spamming readers or other bloggers. While building blog traffic doesn’t happen overnight, maintaining an ethical blogging practice is one of the best ways to ensure that your blog has a healthy, long lifespan. 9) Diversify your content While 44% of B2B marketers have a content strategy, only 42% feel that the strategy is effective. Many experts believe that part of the reason for this perception this is true is that business bloggers aren’t diversifying their content enough. When you use your blog to share a variety of content types, you diversify the experience for users. This can lead to more readers, more leads, and more sales. 10) Use video & good visuals in your content While it may not seem like videos have a place in a business blog, videos are some of the most popular content on the web right now. In case you needed proof, YouTube is uploading 72 new hours of video content each minute and, as a general rule, visitors spend approximately 88% more time on sites that include video. What’s more, video earns a site 3 times as much traffic as other types of content and consumers are a whopping 46% more willing to seek out additional information about a product, good, or service after being exposed to an online video. Along with that, infographics and … Read more

10 Reasons You Should Start Blogging for Your Business Today

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10 Reasons You Should Start Blogging for Your Business Today

Nowadays, it seems like everyone has a blog. But have you ever stopped to consider why? For one, many people misunderstand the purpose of blogs. Blogs go far beyond the mundane – they’re used for everything from showcasing personal writing to offering actionable tips that can help people solve problems and make their lives better, raise brand awareness, and in many cases (like ours) drive a huge percentage of online leads to their business. 10 Key Reasons to Start Blogging For Business (Now) To me, blogging is like the surety of an umbrella on a rainy day. As long as we consistently blog (along with a formula of high quality content + promotion of what we create), we keep our SEO rankings up and thriving, and our visitor numbers flourishing. No matter how “rainy” the day gets, these leads will come in. If you’ve ever considered starting a blog for your business, here are the top 10 reasons you should do it right now. Learn how to be a better blogger today with our free email course, 10 Days to a Better Blog. 1) Blogging will drive traffic to your site Blogging is HUGE, HUGE for driving traffic to your site. Not convinced by me just saying it? Okay, okay… go read two of these posts: How We Gained 300 Positions in One Day – 100% through blogging! The Power of Content Today (Case Study) – Published back in July 2015, this is still relevant to our post today. I discuss how content is the cornerstone of online marketing. Seriously, though, how do people typically find your website? If they come to it via paid aids, it’s likely that you’re spending a lot of money that you don’t have to. If this sounds like your situation, it’s probably wise for you to start dividing your time differently. Instead of spending tons of money on paid ads, you can start blogging, beefing up your social media presence, and optimizing everything you do for SEO. Here’s why it works: if you don’t blog, your website is a little stagnant. It’s likely that you don’t have a ton of pages and, of the pages you do have, very few of them are updated that often. In a setup like this, you don’t have many pages indexed in Google, which means that you’re only marginally visible to people who may be searching for a company like yours. This, in turn, means that one of the only real ways to grab traffic for your site is to pay for it. When you blog, though, all of this changes. Every time you write a new blog, you provide a new page to be indexed in Google. By creating content that your readers and customers love, you ensure that people can find your page. Plus, when you share your blogged content on social media, you create an entirely new outlet for traffic and social shares. (And content is HUGE for Google. Their recent 160-page doc, which we analyzed, discusses how their standards rely on the quality and expertise of the written content.) 2) Blogging can help you make conversions Once you’ve begun to drive traffic to your site via content, you’ll need to find a way to convert that traffic, right? Enter the power of the blog. Because every page you write is a new page that Google gets to index, every page you write is also an opportunity to create new leads and help those leads convert into subscribers, sales, or shares. Blogs work best for conversions when you focus on including a high-quality CTA at the end of every blog post. By doing this, you tell your viewers exactly what you want them to do and help ensure that nothing is lost in translation. It’s really that simple. 3) Blogging helps establish you as an authority What’s one of the most important aspects both of ranking well and drawing in new readers, done with blogging for business? If you answered “authority” you’re right on. Page authority is incredibly important and it’s not something you can buy. The only way to create authority on the web is to create content that is genuinely useful, helpful, and interesting to readers. Nowadays, the majority of people (about 81%) conduct nearly all of their product research before ever speaking to a company or its customer service representatives. One of the primary places that people turn to conduct this research is the web. When you build and maintain a business blog where you publish valuable, educational, helpful content, you can be the person who provides the answers to questions your would-be customers ask during the research process. By doing this, you establish your company as a leader in the industry, as well as helping ensure that when the customer is ready to purchase, they’ll come back to your site. 4) Blogging for business is a long-term plan There are many marketing tactics that produce short-term results. While those things can be effective to drive huge bursts of traffic, they’re seldom cut out to be a long-term solution. Blogging, on the other hand, is designed for the long-term. When you sit down to create a blog, you create a valuable piece of content that long outlives your efforts and your investment in it. By generating shares, drawing views, and producing conversions, each blog you write has the potential to draw traffic long beyond the day it is published. In fact, HubSpot reports that upwards of 70% of its monthly traffic and 90% of its overall leads come from blogs that were published in previous months, some even as long as a year ago. 5) Blogging is low-cost, high-return Have we mentioned that blogging only costs what you want to invest for writing and imagery? The ROI is way, way worth the small investments. Blogging is both one of the cheapest and one of the most effective ways to drive traffic, views, and attention to your business website and, while it has the potential to produce a huge return investment, … Read more

The Age of Visual Content: Your Guide To Placing Photos in Everything You Write

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The Age of Visual Content: Your Guide To Placing Photos in Everything You Write

Imagery in blogs and web content: they vary from the sublime to the ridiculous (crash test dummies in love, anyone?) but they’re vitally important to your content. Research has shown that articles that feature images earn 94% more views than those that don’t. This makes sense given the fact that we live in what some have dubbed “The Visual Age.” There are currently more than 2.5 billion camera phones in existence (whoa!) and image-sharing sites like Instagram are exploding in popularity. With all of this in mind, it’s clear that images should be playing a large part in your content strategy.   The Power of Visual Content According to an infographic created by Wyzowl, only 10% of people remember things that they have heard and only 20% of people remember the things they read. In contrast, though, 80% of people remember the things they do and see. This is why so many of us, myself included, categorize ourselves as “visual learners.” The human brain is wired for visuals. We process visual information 60,0000 times faster than we process textual information and 93% of all human communication is not verbal. For this reason, the addition of visual content into blogs and other content marketing materials has the power to boost views and strengthen your content. Get Your Free Copy of 13 Incredible Free Stock Photo Resources. In fact, Jeff Bullas states that the COO of Shuttlerock, Paul Bingham, has noted these changes firsthand. According to Bullas, when customers optimize visual content using Shuttlerock, their email lists grew by upwards of 44,000 subscribers and they earned 23 million new impressions via Facebook timelines. One user even experienced a 57% growth in sales and another gained over 33,000-page visits after running a photo competition. How’s that for proof? 5 Benefits of Visual Content Visual content, which includes images, videos, infographics, memes, and many others, has many benefits. These include the following: Visual content can promote sales Visual content can increase brand awareness and help consumers remember your company Visual content can promote sharing on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter Visual content can provide an SEO boost Visual content can increase reader engagement While many marketers steer away from visual content because they believe that the only option is cheesy stock photos or that they’re not qualified to create other types of visual content, like infographics, that provide marked traffic boosts, including visual content in your marketing is actually much simpler than it sounds. The 5 Main Types of Visual Content You Should Be Using There are many types of visual content, but some perform better than others. According to KISSmetrics, there are several types of visual content every marketer should be using. 1) Images You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. But when you augment your high-quality blog posts with equally high-quality images, they can be worth a thousand views instead. Now more than ever, people don’t want to wade through dense, impenetrable content that offers no relief. For this reason, images are an important addition. There are many different types of images, varying from personal photos to high-quality stock photos and each has its own unique set of benefits. On one hand, images taken by you add a personal touch to your content and can help add value to deeply personal topics (it would be strange, for example, to purchase a stock photo for an article about your family). On the other hand, unless you’re a professional photographer it may be difficult for you to produce images that are as high-quality as they need to be in order to feature prominently in your content. In these cases, it may be a better idea to purchase images from a reputable stock photo company. You can even do something really cool and get a custom artist to illustrate for you. Like we did in the How to Tell Your Best Story post above. You can find decent $5 artists on Fiverr. To give your stock photos an extra boost, you can use a service like Canva to create unique photos via a drag-and-drop design interface. We’ve added a link in this post to a free resource we created giving you 20 awesome free stock photo resources. Just remember that if you are going to use images, you must be conscious to always purchase them from a reputable source rather than simply copying and pasting them from the web, as this can easily result in a lawsuit. 2) Videos According to Moz, posts that feature videos earn 300% more inbound links than their video-less counterparts. Videos are one of the most useful ways for marketers to present solutions, relay information, and introduce products. When done correctly, a high-quality video can boost a content campaign by providing a personal touch, giving readers an insider view of the company, or clearly showcasing a product. Videos can also be used to drive conversions. In fact, one study demonstrated that featuring a video on a landing page increases conversions by an average of 86%. There are many different types of videos, from how-to videos to interviews, to customer service and tutorial videos. What’s more, live-streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat have ballooned recently and many marketers are using these platforms to offer behind-the-scenes footage or to promote secret sales and giveaways. 3) Infographics Infographics are the prom queen of images. By combining visual and textual content into an information-dense powerhouse, a great infographic can easily go miles in your content marketing strategy. In order for an infographic to be as effective as possible, though, there are some important things to remember. Here’s an infographic we did on the Ultimate State of Content Marketing. First of all, the layout of an infographic needs to be simple and impactful. This means using the right colors, images, and formats to convey data in a simple and easily digestible way. Additionally, the information included in an infographic must be accurate, authoritative, and relevant. Because infographics are boiled down to … Read more

7 Things You Can Do Now To Make Your Blog Traffic Start Growing

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7 Things You Can Do Now To Make Your Blog Traffic Start Growing

We’ve all been there. You launch a blog and create great content and then you wait anxiously, obsessively checking your blog stats and waiting to see a drastic boom in readers. This process can get tiresome. Your scenario could vary: maybe you’re dreaming of overnight fame or a life as a professional blogger. Maybe you just want someone, anyone really, to read the post you just spent four hours writing. Whatever your reasoning may be, you’re not alone if your blog traffic is less than what you hoped it would be. Many bloggers who start new sites expect a boom and get a trickle of traffic instead and, if you’re not careful, this drastic difference between expectation and reality can easily cause bloggers to become frustrated and disillusioned. Most new bloggers struggle with this issue and, fortunately, there are many effective ways to boost your blog’s traffic. Read on to learn more. What Really Brings In Blog Traffic? Blogs exist for different reasons, including but not limited to conveyance of information, building of community, encouragement of conversations and production of revenue. If your blog is getting a good deal of traffic, it’s a safe bet that your site is meeting the needs of the readers you’re targeting. The 3 Pillars of Blog Traffic People who read blogs often want the following things: 1. Interest If you want people to visit your blog, you have to provide them with something interesting, thought provoking, helpful or exciting. Nobody is going to keep coming back to a site that features dull, dry, poorly written posts. Because of this, interest is one of the primary driving factors in creating blog traffic. It doesn’t matter at all who your target readers are as long as you seek to provide them with interesting content they can relate to. 2. Value Does your content provide something of value to your readers? If not, this may be one of the reasons you’re not getting much blog traffic. Value can mean a variety of things depending upon who your readers are and what they want, but one of the easiest ways to increase blog traffic is to provide value in your content. How-to articles are valuable, VIP updates are valuable, coupons and promotions are valuable and high-quality, niche-related content is valuable. Readers who get something from a blog are far more likely to keep reading and to tell their friends about the page. 3. Consistency Would you continue to visit a page that featured the same, boring post for six weeks? Most likely, the answer is “no” and you can bet your readers feel the same way. One of the best ways to boost your readership is to maintain a consistent web presence. Aim to add a new blog post at least once a week and consider sending out automated emails to your subscriber list when you do. Striving for fresh content is a great way to keep readers interested and expand your fan base quickly. And Here Are 7 Key Steps to Boosting Your Blog Traffic 1) Create Great Content: Audit What You Have, & Ask Yourself Is it Great? Although running a successful blog is about much more than simply writing well, crafting great content is by far the most effective way to expand your reader base and garner more blog traffic. Crafting great content means using proper grammar, writing well and knowing who your audience is, but it also requires a mind for strategy. Being strategic in your blog-building efforts means that you’re seeking to meet a specific need for readers. Blogs are used by readers primarily for education and entertainment purposes and, either way, it’s important to give readers what they want. If your blog is an educational platform, check out websites like Quora to see what readers like yours are curious about and then write posts that answer their questions. If your blog is an entertainment blog, watch the social and political climate for current events worth writing about or seek to provide humorous, relatable commentary about your niche-topic, like Brittany Gibbons does on her smash-hit parenting blog, Brittany Herself. By being hilarious and empathetic, Gibbons creates content people want to share and, as such, she’s made a name for herself in the blogging world. Also, auditing what you have is a really good way your blog has what it takes to bring in traffic. It might be time to delete some fluff that may be too low quality, and could even be pushing people away. 2) Make Content Shareable Once you’ve got great content, how do you get more people to read it? The main trick is to make your content as social as possible, meaning that you need to optimize your blog content for social media sharing. When you take into account that 74% of American adults are on at least one social media site, it becomes clear why this is important. While it’s great to have a high-quality blog, a blog that isn’t shared across social media is going to have a very difficult time gaining readers simply because it’s not hanging out the same place the readers are. Although people do many different things online, 28% of most people’s daily online time is spent on social networking sites, which means you better get thee to Facebook. In order to better promote your content across social media platforms, it’s wise to take simple steps such as adding a “share” button to your blog, doing some analytics research in order to share content when your audience is most active online or adding an image to a blog post and sharing it on Twitter. Additionally, it is important to be active on a few different social media sites, such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. This allows your readers to find you on their favorite social media site and interact with your content in the way that is easiest for them. Additionally, once you’ve begun to garner shares on social media sites, it’s … Read more

How to Add a Blog Feed to Create Meaningful Relationships with Your Readers  

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How to Add a Blog Feed to Create Meaningful Relationships with Your Readers  

This post was updated in December 2019. Do you want to learn how to add a blog feed to your site? Maybe you have the best blog on the web. Your ideas are genius. With your writing, you compel readers to read to the very end of every post. You are relevant and interesting. Unique, even. But it isn’t enough to have the best blog on the web. Because what if visitors read a post, love it, and then never come back to your blog? With social media, instant messaging, and tons of other blogs vying for their attention, it’s even possible they’ll forget your blog. So how do you ensure they read the next thing you post? The answer is by adding a blog feed to your blog. In this post, I’ll show you how to add a blog feed to successfully boost your readership. How to Add a Blog Feed to Create Meaningful Relationships with Your Readers How Adding a Blog Feed Works to Boost Readership 1. Advantages for Blog Readers 2. Advantages for Bloggers How to Add a Blog Feed to Your Site 1. How to Add a Blog Feed to WordPress 2. How to Add a Blog Feed to Blogger [bctt tweet=”If you’ve been publishing for quite some time, you could have already gained fans. ‍♂️How do you keep them close? Add a blog feed to your site to keep them updated with the freshest. @JuliaEMcCoy shows how.” username=”ExpWriters”] How Adding a Blog Feed Works to Boost Readership Before we go into how to add a blog feed, let’s understand how blog feeds work. Blog feeds work using RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) technology. Therefore, a blog feed can also be called an RSS feed. RSS feeds were invented to give people ease and convenience when browsing the web. For example, imagine yourself browsing the web. You have a list of your favorite sites. These are blogs and news sites which have content relevant to you. But maybe you love more than 20 sites. How do you find enough time in a day to visit all 20 to check for new updates? The answer is RSS. With RSS, you can get the content of your favorite blogs and websites to come to you. All you need is to find the right RSS reader. When you create an account, you can subscribe to blogs and websites you like. Every time these blogs and websites post something new, it will come straight to your reader. RSS is as simple as that. 1. Advantages for Blog Readers For blog readers, RSS feeds save a lot of time. For instance, maybe you make it your habit to keep up with business trends. You also want a guide on investing and finances. If so, all you need to do is go to your RSS reader and subscribe to sites like Entrepreneur and Forbes. If you choose Feedly for your reader, your feed will look something like this. On the left side, you can view the sites you subscribed to. On the right, you can see all Entrepreneur’s and Forbes’ new posts. You can also search for something specific in your RSS reader. For instance, you can type the keyword ‘real estate’ into the search field provided on the left. Your reader will bring up all real estate-related articles from both Entrepreneur and Forbes. With blog feeds, you can stay updated without wasting time. 2. Advantages for Bloggers As the owner of a website or blog, adding a blog feed will keep your readers from forgetting about you. Once they click the subscribe button on your blog, they get your updates each time you post. Also, if they have their own blogs, they can share your content there. This gives you the chance to get exposure and even more subscribers. Finally, you can benefit from RSS as a blogger because it helps you avoid the email spam folder. While successful email content marketing is a good strategy, some of your emails may be filtered as spam. Having an RSS blog ensures that your content reaches the users who are interested in it. As can be seen, adding a blog feed is the answer to how you can make a mark in today’s vast sea of online content. So now you might be wondering “How to create an RSS feed for my blog?” Here’s your comprehensive guide to doing it yourself. How to Add a Blog Feed to Your Site The good news is you don’t need to be a techy person to add a blog feed to your site. Here’s how to add RSS to your blog on WordPress and Blogger. Need to learn how to craft great SEO content? Download our free guide to SEO content writing secrets here. How to Add a Blog Feed to WordPress The advantage of using WordPress for your blog is that it’s easy to add an RSS feed to it. Since WordPress already does contain RSS for both content and comments, all you need to do is to set things up so readers can easily click subscribe. Here’s how to do it. 1. Find the Location of Your RSS Feed First of all, you need to find where your RSS feed is located. To do this, you can use software like Feedburner. Since it’s owned by Google, you can access it with your Google account. Once you log in, this is what you’ll see. Type the URL of your blog into the given field. Feedburner will then locate your RSS feeds. Select one and click Next. This is what you’ll see. You’re now ready to burn your feed! Select Next on the bottom left of the box. What comes up next is this. In the red box marked above, you can find your feed URL. Copy this URL. 2. Add Your Feed to WordPress On the WordPress platform, select Customize from the left-side toolbar. From there, select Widgets. This will allow … Read more

What is The New Blogging Platform Ghost All About?

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What is The New Blogging Platform Ghost All About?

For people who want a simple, elegant blogging platform that doesn’t require them to sell their souls or become wasted apparitions of what they once were – Ghost might be for you. (Just kidding with the deathly references there.) What is Ghost All About? John O’Nolan – a designer, world-class developer and a former head of WordPress’s UX team, developed ghost in 2012. The concept was for an elegant, simple, original blogging platform that allowed users to create everything from blogs to weekly newspapers. He called the platform Ghost and it quickly made ripples across the WordPress community and the web at large. The platform was touted as a “WordPress Killer” and, in the months following the development of the idea, O’Nolan and his team took to Kickstarter to make it a reality. The campaign raised upwards of $250,000 and the platform was born. Although the buzz over the new platform had begun to die out during its development, Ghost began to rock the boat once more when people began calling it things like “the new direction of blogging” and “the first exciting thing to happen to blogging in years.” Although those were large shoes to fill, Ghost seems to have done it in many ways. When O’Nolan developed the concept for Ghost, the idea was to provide users with a user-friendly interface that, unlike WordPress, focused on blogging as a priority. Like many, O’Nolan was frustrated by clunky blogging platforms filled with difficult-to-use widgets that weren’t exactly applicable to the everyday blogger so, he decided to change the tides. Although WordPress is currently the largest blog provider on the web, it’s not difficult to imagine that changing in the near future. It bears mentioning that, of the $250K that O’Nolan raised during his Kickstarter campaign, a large portion of that was provided by frustrated former WordPress users. So, supposedly, this is where Ghost comes in – to fill some pretty big shoes, I must say. Testing The Ghost Out: The Pros and Cons To test this new “blogging platform” out, I set up an account. It took me roughly all of 10 seconds. Enter username, password, email. I picked a name for my blog, and it showed me the URL I would have: copywriting.ghost.io . But, as soon as I got to my dashboard, I saw a big “Trial Account – Upgrade Now”. As it turns out, the free Ghost platform is very limited. As a free user, you technically have no active subscription through the service. You can, however, download the Ghost software and install it to your own web server without passing over any cash. This requires you to manage all of your own codes and updates, although you do have access to the community support discussions in the Ghost forums, in case you get confused managing it all on your own. If you want a little less DIY and a little more built-in convenience, however, you can upgrade to Ghost Pro, which offer a variety of different account options. The “Personal” account, for example, is $10 a month and offers hosting for one blog and up to 25,000 views each month. The “Advanced” plan is $30 a month and provides hosting for three blogs and up to 100,000 views a month. From there it goes to the “Team” plan ($100 per month, 10 blogs and 350,000 views a month) and “Business” ($250 each month, unlimited blogs and a million views a month). Obviously, Ghost is unlike many other blogging platforms that don’t charge for their services and, as such, many bloggers are wondering what the heck Ghost is charging for. The answer, it turns out, is a little complex. Depending upon which version of Ghost Pro you update to, you’re paying for unlimited storage and transfer options, automatic updates and content backups, unlimited theme and app choices, security protection or priority support and migration options, although the latter two are only available on Ghost Pro’s two most expensive options – “Team” and “Business.” In the future, Ghost Pro plans to offer perks like 3rd party apps, analytics and tools for developers to its paying users. Although the platform offers blogger-focused facilities, it also makes would-be bloggers jump through quite a few hoops to gain access to the same services that other blogging platforms offer for free. The Pros of Ghost 1. Ghost Is Only For Blogging. (This could be a pro, or not.) The most obvious difference between Ghost and WordPress is that Ghost is dedicated only to blogging. No web operating systems, no CMS….just blogging. In addition, Ghost uses an MIT open source license, which, in their words “Our mission is to create the best open source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world, and have a real impact on the future of online media.” WordPress, on the other hand, uses a GNU open-source license. This license has caused some friction within the WordPress community and as a general rule, people don’t like it. 2. Ghost Is Set In Simpler Code. Another difference between WordPress and Ghost is that WordPress was written in PHP. While many tout this coding language as being a great one to use for hacking or prototyping, it’s difficult to use on a blogging platform due to it’s propensity toward change and copious semantic errors. Because O’Nolan had been involved with WordPress, he understood this frustration and set out to make Ghost different, which he did by writing the site in Node.js. 3. UX Is Different Than WordPress. When it comes to user experience, there are some unique differences between Ghost and WordPress. While WordPress’s admin center can be excessively difficult for new users, advanced users love it and tout it as being a great platform to develop high-level blogs and websites. Ghost, on the other hand, sought to remove the bells and whistles and incorporate important blogging functions like social sharing and SEO into the core of the blogging platform. This means that users of Ghost have total control over content … Read more

A Guide To Compounding Blog Posts: Increase Your Blog Traffic Month after Month

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A Guide To Compounding Blog Posts: Increase Your Blog Traffic Month after Month

What if you could write a post that people loved so much, they kept sharing it month after month? You could take a vacation; give your blogging fingers a break for a while. Heck, you might even be able to go outside for a minute. Can you imagine how much traffic a blog like that would create? Unfortunately, some things are just too good to be true, right? Wrong. It’s entirely possible to produce blog posts like this. There’s even a name for them: compounding blog posts. Designed to produce perennial traffic, compounding blog posts are capable of generating the same amount of interaction and attention as six so-called “decaying” posts. Fortunately, creating these posts isn’t even as difficult as it seems. Read on to learn more.   The Difference Between Compounding Posts and Decaying Posts Compounding posts are like fine wine and decaying posts are like a three-day old cheeseburger: one is a lot more appealing than the other. Additionally, one gets better with time and the other doesn’t. Compounding blog posts command more attention as they age. They produce more visits and generally include authoritative words that reflect common search terms. If you needed more convincing, compounding posts are responsible for producing a whopping 38% of overall blog traffic. Decaying posts, on the other hand, glean less traffic as they age. They are far more common, however, and make up roughly 9 out of every 10 blog posts. Unlike their more glamorous cousin, decaying posts don’t add value to your site and may even drive readers away based on poor content or sub-par execution. Obviously, the smart content marketer wants to stay away from that three-day old cheeseburger and grab a glass of fine wine instead, right? Right.  How to Create Compounding Blog Posts: The 4 Pillars of Great Posts Fortunately, writing compounding blog posts is not as difficult as it may seem. Like most things in content marketing, compounding blog posts follow a somewhat predictable outline and, in order to write a compounding blog post, the smart content marketer simply needs to know what that outline looks like. Generally, a compounding blog post needs 4 things: 1) A Great Topic: When it comes to creating compounding blog posts, you want your topic to be broad. This is because narrowly focused posts lose attention over time and decline in value – except for a small category of niche individuals who may display continued interest. Broad topics, on the other hand, are interesting for a wide variety of audiences and are capable of drawing attention for a long period of time. Although narrowly focused blogs have their place in the blogosphere, they generally aren’t the go-to type of content for compounding posts. In addition to boasting a broad topic, compounding blog posts also need to offer tactical advice. This means that they should help readers make decisions, solve problems or learn new things. Examples of content like this include product reviews, instructions and how-to articles. These posts should be authoritative and welcoming all at once and should be thoroughly researched and fact-checked, so as to avoid disseminating improper information. 2) A Smart Title: When creating compounding blog posts, a great title is essential. Ideally, this title should reflect common search terms and seek to answer customer questions. People are most likely to click on the search engine result that best match their queries, so think about how people ask questions when it comes time to head to Google. When people are looking for answers, their Google searches generally begin with “how do I….” or “what to do when….”. When they’re looking for information, on the other hand, queries generally resemble “the best X, Y, Z” or “Highest-selling __________________.” That said, the titles of compounding blog posts generally contain the words “How,” “Why,” “What” and “Best.” Considering common search terms while writing your blog titles is an effective way to incorporate common SEO practices into your content. Keep in mind, also, that marketers have found that compounding blog posts often have 6-13 words in their titles. 3) Great Content Structure: It’s unlikely that clunky, difficult-to-read content is ever going to become a compounding post, so keep that in mind as you devise your content structure. The piece should be easy to scan and laid out in a user-friendly fashion, with headers and subheaders to break up content and separate ideas. Additionally, the post should make ample use of visuals, headlines marked out in bold, bullets, lists and high-quality links. These are all ingredients of great content and serve to make the piece more valuable and useful for your customers. Additionally, great content should be tailored to your target audience’s preferred word count. Most research suggests that the ideal word count for a blog post is roughly 1,600 words. This takes a reader about 7 minutes to complete and is short enough to maintain attention while also being long enough to cover the topic at hand. 4) Unique Information: In order to stand out and become compounding content, your blog post needs to present information in a decidedly useful and helpful way. This means that your post should help customers learn new things and solve problems. Additionally, it should drive awareness and be formatted in such a way that people want to share it. Learning from the Best: HubSpot’s Compound Post Analysis HubSpot is a popular inbound marketing and information platform for content marketers around the world. Although it may seem like successful organizations such as this are immune from worrying about compounding or decaying content that simply isn’t true. When HubSpot began to see the term “compounding blog post” popping up around the web, they did a bit of research into their own content. Over the next several months, they learned that content above 1,000 words receive the most social attention on their site and that posts with 2,000 words or more generated more social shares. According to the results, HubSpot devised a plan to fill in the gaps … Read more

50 Weak Words and Phrases To Cut Out Of Your Blogging

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50 Weak Words and Phrases To Cut Out Of Your Blogging

Could a few extra, unnecessary words in your blogs be costing you readers? We’ve all heard the commands “show, don’t tell” and “write what you know.” While these conventions are great advice for the everyday blogger, they don’t exactly address how you can go about making small tweaks that strengthen our writing and increase reader engagement. While its great to use descriptive words and write whatever pulls you into it, the easiest way to strengthen writing and blogging skills is to begin cutting out those weak words and phrases. Words and phrases that don’t add to the overall meaning of the writing only serve to clutter it up and make it difficult for readers to understand. Fortunately, this easy guide will help you learn which words and phrases should be cut from writing. Disclaimer: Some of these phrases may be essential to certain sentences or phrases of speech; if so, leave intact! My approach is more to show you which “overused” words and phrases could use a good shave to make your blogs tighter, more readable, and better. So, don’t throw these words in your sentences just to fill a word count, or to elongate a sentence: use as necessary only. Let’s dive in! 50 Words and Phrases That You Should Cut From Your Blogging (Now) 1) About: “About” is a vague, weak word and it’s wise to cut it out when discussing quantities. Get more specific by using the word “approximately” or giving readers a specific range, as in “15-20 cows got loose.” 2) Accordingly: Accordingly is a chunky word and it can make your text difficult to read. If you must use it, replace it with a simpler word, like “so.” 3) Actual Facts: Saying that something is an “Actual fact” is a little bit like saying something is a “new invention.” It’s redundant and clunky and you simply don’t need it. Remove “Actual” and stick to the facts. 4) Almost: Excess use of the word “almost” can spell a quick death for a blogger. Vague terms like this leave readers hungry for specificity and you’ll make your writing stronger instantly when you get rid of “almost” and replace it with specific terms. 5) All Throughout: “All throughout” is another one of those redundant phrases that can spell clunky, flabby writing for writers. Omit the word “all” and get to the point. 6) Amazing: Although “amazing” has some value as a descriptive term, it needs to be used sparsely if at all. Qualify your use of this word by specifying what, exactly, makes it amazing. 7) Better: How much better? Why is it better? “Better” is a vague and subjective appraisal unless you back it up with analyzed and summarized data. For example, “Susie was doing better” vs. “Susie was doing better after she began using an Asthma inhaler.” 8) Maybe: Do you know or don’t you? This is especially important when it comes to opinion pieces and authoritative writing. People are reading your words in order to learn something from you and use of the word “maybe” makes it seem like you’re really not that sure at all. 9) Perhaps: Unless you’re using this word to explore alternate endings on unknown topics (as in “Perhaps Amelia Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel and crashed”) then it’s time to get rid of it. It makes your writing seem unsure and nobody wants to listen to rambling musings for very long. Be confident in your writing and answer reader’s questions without beating around the bush. 10) Just: “Just” is a minimizing word and seldom adds value to a sentence. Get rid of it and streamline your thought process. 11) Literally: If something is literal, your readers should know it without you needing to use this word to clarify it. More often than not, the word “literally” makes writing sound flabby and juvenile, which is probably not what you’re going for. 12) Big: Once more, readers hate it when you’re vague and unclear adjectives like “big” only leave them asking “how big?” Instead of saying the horse was big, say it stood 5’6″ at the shoulder and weighed 2,000 lbs. This will give your readers a clearer picture and more satisfaction. 13) Really: Although you might use the word “Really” when you speak, you don’t want to use it when you write. It doesn’t translate into text and phrases like “really hard” only make writing seem half-finished. If the word “really” isn’t adding distinct specificity, cut it out and don’t look back. 14) Very: In the same boat as “really,” “very” is a word that offers little, if any value. “Very” is subjective, weak and best left out of your writing. 15) Stuff: Unless you’re aiming for an informal piece, stay far away from the word “stuff.” The bane of professional writing near and far, this word makes your writing seem informal and half-baked. In order to avoid this, be more specific about what the “stuff” is. Instead of saying “he grabbed his stuff” say “he grabbed his baseball bat and mitt.” 16) Things: Vague as can be, “things” leaves readers wondering. Instead of saying “10 Things You Can do to Get Better at Math” shoot for something like “10 Strategies for Acing Math This Year.” 17) That: This is a big one. Open a word doc on your computer and read through it once. Now read through it again without the word “that.” Did it detract from the meaning? Most likely, the answer is no. “That” is generally a filler word that adds no value to sentences and can easily be eliminated, especially when referring to people. 18) Went: “Went” is a vague word that describes only the action and not the method. Instead of saying “I went to class,” consider saying “I trudged to class through a howling blizzard.” Replacing “went” with more descriptive terms will do wonders for your writing and help your words pop off the page. 19) Always: Nothing is always true and nothing … Read more

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