A Guest Post by Nathan Hangen of Making it Social.
As much as many of us want to get our blogs up and running and create an overnight success story, the truth is that having desire alone just isn’t enough. For starters, guys like Darren make it look extremely easy now, but it’s not like he rolled out of bed one morning and became an instant success. He poured hours of blood, sweat, and tears into his blogs before they became income worthy, but don’t fret just yet, help is on the way.
Even though we have to make our way through the learning curve until everything “clicks” into place, there’s no reason that we can’t shorten the learning curve so that we can spend less time wishing and more time living. By learning from our own experiences and, more importantly, the experiences of others, we can do just that. Darren does a great job of doing that here, but I’d like to present a list of things I learned the hard way, things I wish I knew sooner, and things that I think new bloggers could use to elevate their game to the next level.
1. Good design is crucial
Most bloggers don’t have a very long time to make a good first impression, and with the abundance of great content throughout the interwebs, readers try fo find ways to cut back and/or make quick decisions on which content they consume. One of the ways they do this is by judging a book by its cover. It might not be fair, but it’s reality. You dont’ have to give your kidney for a good design. There are dozens of theme providers that have both inexpensive and free themes that look much better than what was designed 2-3 years ago.
2. Narrow Your Niche
This is something that took me a long time to understand. I thought that by covering a bunch of topics, casting a wider net so to speak, that I would attract more people to my blog. The problem with that strategy is that when you do attract new visitors, you throw them off if your content isn’t consistent. They’ll wind up leaving and you’ll have to recruit new readers for every single post. So, try fishing with a spear instead.
3. Comments Really Do Matter
I didn’t take this seriously at first. I thought that my content was special enough to get noticed on its own. Boy was I wrong! It wasn’t until a few months ago that I crafted a comment policy that has helped my traffic explode. I do it by subscribing by email to a dozen or so blogs in my niche so that I’m notified as soon as there is a new post. I try to comment right away and do my best to add something meaningful to the conversation. More importantly, I come back and reply to other comments in the discussion. Do this often enough and on enough blogs and you will start to get noticed. You can’t give commenting lip service either; it is something that needs to be done every day.
4. Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Your Knowledge
When you master a skill, it’s easy to think that others might be on the same level as you, which can lead you to discount the value of your skill set and experience. However, most people don’t know what you know and would to pay you to teach them. Things that might seem simple to you can look like Greek to a reader. Don’t ever take your skill set and knowledge base for granted.
5. When You Have a Blog, You are the Authority
Own It! – We blog from behind a desk and see our lives as imperfect or incomplete. However, to a customer or new reader, you have an incredible amount of authority. If you have gone through the work of publishing content, then you need to step up to the plate and own that content. Take the authority and use it. You might be a 6 or 7 (on a 10 point scale), but to that new person, you are a leader. This excites people…they want a piece of your vision. Use that authority to step up to the plate and give them what they want. Don’t be afraid to be an expert!
6. Consistency Counts
I thought I could get away with blogging whenever I felt like it. I thought I could change the topic based on what felt right at the time. Looking back through my archives, I’m almost embarrassed by the casual attitude I took with my blog. These days, I know better and I keep a steady editorial schedule (3 posts per week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday) and have narrowed the topics of my content to a degree that keeps my readers feeling like they belong. Changing it up all the time confuses people and scares away good readers.
7. Have a Plan
What are you going to do when your readership doubles? How are you going to handle getting hundreds of emails per day? How will you respond to comments? How do you see your platform evolving over the next year, 2, or even 5? These are some of the questions that you need to address early and often. Your plan might not be perfect, but at least you’ll have a direction to head. There’s nothing wrong with being flexible, but allowing your circumstances to dictate your business can lead you down roads that are better left untraveled.
8. Start Networking Early!
I cannot emphasize this enough. Use Twitter, comments, and guest posting as a tool to meet new people. The wider your reach, the easier it is to get noticed. Don’t wait for people to come to you…get out and network. People love personal connections! Go to conferences and shake hands with other bloggers. You never know which contact could turn into a great guest posting opportunity, a JV deal, or a new devoted fan. Blogging is a business, and you’ve got to get out and meet people if you want to take your blog to the next level.
9. Be Everywhere
This is tied in with the previous point, but to keep it simple – try to be in as many places as you can. Use Twitter, Facebook, USTREAM, YouTube, LinkedIn, and any other social network you can. You don’t have to live there, but having a presence there is important. People need to be able to find you in as many places as possible. You never know where that next source of income or the next reader might come from.
10. Hustle
Really, it all boils down to this. If I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be that you need to work your tail off to become a problogger. There’s no secret recipe, no golden ticket…you’ve just got to work hard and treat your blog like a business. It might seem like you aren’t getting anywhere at first, but be patient and keep at it. Adjust your plan on the fly if you have to, but never stop hustling. You’ve got to love what you do…absolutely enjoy doing it every day, if you really want to quit your job and go full time. If you don’t love what you do, then stop what you’re doing and go do what you love. Trust me, the work will come MUCH easier at that point.
Although this is just tip of the iceberg, I believe that if you just learn to improve on a few of these points, then you’ll shave a tremendous amount of time off your learning curve. You still might have to learn the hard way, but at least now you’ll have the context to understand what’s might be going wrong. If nothing else works, then you can’t go wrong with #10. In fact, I’d say that’s a great place to start.
Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, and co-author of the book – Beyond Blogging.
Hey Nathan,
I think my favorite part of this is the networking component. Obviously that’s how we’ve become friends and been able to help each other in our blogging efforts. I guess I actually haven’t thought about what I will do when I get 100+ emails a day, so that’s a good point. Now that I think about your commenting strategy which will probably inundate me with email, it’s still a really effective way to get yourself out there because you will always be one of the first to comment on everything.
This is a great article Nathan, clear and well verbalized. I definitely need to work on a more consistent editorial schedule. Seeing as I have not posted in months… :| I got away from blogging for a bit, but now I have some inspiration to get going again! Thanks!
Hi guys
Blogger should also treat his site special. What I mean is that you must love it and of course know what you write. Consider you reader and their needs. Share something that they will gain much information. I like also the part of networking.
Kind Regards
Sam
X
Hey Nathan,
Commenting really does work – my young site Lifebeat is proof of that. By regularly posting value-giving comments on high-traffic relevant sites, I’ve gotten most of my traffic just through that so far.
I kept reading how Leo Babauta or Chris Guillebeau recommended doing it, but was skeptical. After all, why would people scroll through and read the comments, much less click on your name to go to your site?
But lo and behold, soon after I started doing it, I got my first visitors and comments. The bounce rate was low, the staying time was high, and the quality of the early comments was fantastic (I’m still grateful and humbled by such remarkable readers that visit my site).
The trick is to not choose just any site, but one where the comment activity is of high quality. Real discussions (where the author most likely moderates them) means people actually read through and participate in the comments section. And that is what increases the chance of people reading your value-giving comment and clicking through to check out what else you have to say.
I see quality comments as unsolicited mini-guest posts.
And because what you write is relevant to the topic of the original article, you increase the quality of visitors clicking through to your site. Not only do they know what to expect topic-wise, but you gave them a preview of your writing as well.
Great other points as well. Your blog just keeps growing and improving – it seems you’ve done an excellent job turbocharging it, and I feel it’s going to go to even greater places soon.
All the best with it Nathan,
Oleg
Great post. I totally agree with you. I always tell my readers that they should not expect to become millionaires overnight. It doesn’t happen that way. They all need to follow certain guidelines and your blog post outlines it very well.
-Guna
Thanks Darren, those are well written and informative tips. You spelled it out! I have been following intuitively most of your steps and seeing results. Now I know I am on the right track. iHing
This is a great post. I agree that commenting on other’s blogs are critical. I use Google Reader to organize all my subscriptions and try to comment on five blogs every day. It really has helped increase traffic on my site. And, though, I am nowhere near “problogger” status, I would add one more tip: “Have fun blogging.” I read a lot of blogs and the best ones are from bloggers who seem to love what they are doing.
Thank you. Very helpful just at this stage. Most of this I had heard. The point about stepping up to claim one’s authority, I had not. And I just went to a networking event last night, found myself talking about what I know and have learned on my style blog, and was amazed at how interested most people were. And surprised that what I took as common knowledge is in fact useful, hard-to-come-by, information. Again, thanks.
Good design or layout is really a factor when you’re site is new as we know that first impression lasts.Publishing great content,narrowing your niche,networking your site and having good relationships to your readers is a must factor
A thorough post that is helpful for people who blog fulltime as professionals. But as a part time blogger I can only dream of having enough spare time to do just half of the ideas mentioned.
I don’t even know where to start in expressing what a great article this is. I’m a web designer and am regularly in contact with people who “want a blog” but don’t understand what they’re getting themselves into. I am actually emailing this link out to my blogger clients right now.
Thank you so much for putting it all out there in simple straight talk terms.
Jessie
@j2MiA
narrowr your niche. Ehm, i agree with you. That’s what i am trying to do now.
A good and excellent blogging techniques. I hope I can learn knowledge from it. I happy to know the ways of improving my blogs. I hope that many of us will see it.
Very helpful info! I should probably take heed of #2 because right now my blog is all over the place.. but right now I’m mainly focusing on networking and rule #10, the hustle and pumping out content.
I’d just like to say, guest posters at Problogger are 100X better than the ones I see at johnchow and shoemoney. I can’t even read their blogs anymore.. even when the main author posts it just seems like a waste of my reading time. Problogger is so much better with far superior info.
“a steady editorial schedule,” I agree that’s key. I’ve slacked off to posting 2x weekly and my readership has dropped a bit. I guess it just comes down to deciding what’s really important — my blog or my “real life” pursuits. Hmmn, thought-provoking for me.
With this knowledge, I know how to improve my skills and talent in commenting your article. It is very nice. And it gives me the best solution in everything.
@ David Poindexter,
Thanks for visiting my blog. Its like this, i do intend MONETIZING like every other blog at some point, but it won’t be Ads, it won’t be affiliate, it won’t be consulting or coaching. It won’t be e-books even. It will be something and that something i do will bring in revenue indirectly.
Honestly its more of a profile building exercise for me. Seth Godin writes the world’s no 1 marketing blog. No Ads in it. But the blog makes money for Seth. It always pays to blog. I’m experimenting a subtle, indirect monetization method.
Thank you for your candid comment. I appreciate it very much.
Good post Nathan,
Strange and exciting that it has the sme title as a post I did a few weeks ago.
http://www.integralwebsolutions.co.za/Blog/EntryId/397/10-Things-I-wish-I-knew-and-did-before-I-started-blogging.aspx
Its amazing to see the differences and the similarities of the Two post.
Would appreciate your look see, and let me know what you think.
It’s good to look back and see your mistakes. But only if you learn from them. If you don’t then it aint worth it.
I like the Be Everywhere tip! I feel like I am being pulled in a million different directions but it is starting to pay off, that’s for sure :)
3. Comments really do matter — I agree with your point, but I would also expand this to share that Comments should be a central focus of blogs themselves. Social media is about 2-way communication, so if you are not commenting on other’s blogs and they are not commenting on your blog, something is not going right. (I have a lot of work to do in this area).
I also resonated with 9. Be everywhere and 10.Hustle ; both speak to the immediacy of information needed and wide access available now. Also I use different tools for different purpose — facebook email for private discourse rather than twitter for example.
You’re absolutely right! It’s so easy to underestimate the value of what you know. The truth is everybody is an expert at something. And don’t be afraid to share even as you learn. I’ve run into some strange obstacles, and there’s been many times when I just want to quit. But I can’t – because I love writing and blogging too much.
What I’m seeing now is that those older posts that I thought fell on deaf ears are the ones that are bringing new visitors on a constant basis.
Thanks for this excellent post.
I think we would all love to have the ability of hindsight.
Commenting on other blogs, #3, is valuable in so many ways. Besides visibility, and potential backlinks, just think about who is actually seeing those links. Most likely it is those that fit in your target audience.
wow, this is exactly what i was looking for. As a newbie blogger, sometimes i have no idea what i’m doing or always find myself wondering if what i’m doing is the right thing to do. thanks for the tips.
In #9 you mention to be everywhere. I would agree with this but would add another piece of advice – map out where you live and how they relate. You can quickly get lost in all the places you live and what is publishing to where. You can make it much easier on yourself by publishing certain content only once and letting the tools put that information in all the other places. Keep it simple – yet be everywhere.
I think the hardest tip to realize is that people love specifics. When I’m writing a post about an event sometimes I think it’s silly to post directions. I figure, people are going to visit the website if they want to know more because this is what I would do and people will visit a map website or punch the address into their gps if they want directions. But, I found that users really do appreciate a quick link with directions, that way they can estimate how long the trip will take. I had one reader say that they didn’t attend an event I posted because they just didn’t want to mess with looking up directions.
Right on. All the points are meaningful and more informative to me. Thanks for such a nice post.
Wow, so many great comments.
Thanks so much Darren for allowing me to hang out a bit.
@David – my commenting strategy is to sign up by email to 5-10 of the most popular blogs in my niche, and another 5-10 outside of it.
As soon as I get an email for a new post, I head over and make a relevant/useful comment. The trick then is to stay involved and comment/reply to others as well. Become well-known on that space and that will open the door to more traffic and guest posting opportunities.
@Srinivas – very true. I get lots of email, and it can be overwhelming, but I found that I cannot rely on checking RSS often. I also enjoy the networking, some people might not see the value…but the connections I’ve made in just the past several months have had a HUGE impact on my business.
@Nibras – if you read the point I made about comments, you’ll see that I wasn’t at all talking about allowing/disallowing comments. I was talking about a comment strategy to promote yourself on other blogs.
@Dan – Thanks!
@Blog Tips – perfect point.
Thanks so much for this! I just did up a new website with blog in September and didn’t have a clue.
Keep up the good work, your info is REALLY helpful.
Nathan,
All great points. How about “Don’t be afraid to screw up sometimes?” I think every new blogger will probably make some pretty major mistakes, especially early on, but they’re things you can recover from.
In my opinion, it’s better to take action and start hustling, like you said, than to be paralyzed be fear or by trying to plan or analyze too much. Sometimes you’ve just got to take the leap and learn from your mistakes instead of trying to prevent them from ever happening.
I have to agree with Mr. Poindexter’s comment regarding the “How” of Tip Three, particularly replying to comments on one’s own blog. Is there some sort of etiquette/expectation about replying to comments that are mostly complimentary, rather than conversational?
Sometimes I comment on blogs I’ve visited randomly, just to let the writer know their content brightened my mood, day, etc., and I don’t go back to check for Thank Yous. Do people really want an individual “Thank you” each time they comment on a blog? Or is it less about human interaction and more about generating traffic?
Nathan,
Very concise and well-written. As one new to professional blogging, the tips will all be useful, but specifically narrowing my focus and posting consistent content. While I have been able to consistently post at least an article per week, the days vary, and I think I need to correct that with a bit more discipline.
Thanks!
Nathan, I can honestly say that this is the most helpful, succinct advice for novice bloggers that I’ve read to date. I plan to take it and run with it, starting now.
#1 couldn’t be more important. I regularly land at sites with a great design, and spend more time looking around and even subscribing.
#5 is a great point, one I haven’ really taken to heart – yet. I notice it myself when reading other blogs. You’re right, it’s your site, you’re the authority, OWN the content.
Dear Nathan:
Thank you for sharing your wisdom. One thing I started noticing that this is not unique to blogging.
You could easily take the title and apply to any industry or profession out there. I started noticing similar advice by many successful people.
That actually gave me an idea of integrating your life in such a fashion that you wouldn’t have to relearn these lessons over again.
The best thing to do would be to create values from your experiences and use them in every situation of you life: blogging, writing, working, networking, etc.
The formula to success is not difficult: the steps are the same no matter what you are doing in life. It’s just a matter of doing them:)
In the mean while, I will go out and hustle :)
Best of luck and great writing!
Tomas
Great article Nathan. Yes I agree 100%. For me Hustle and Consistency are crucial to succeed.
See you :)
Awesome!
I tried point #9 these past weeks with Twitter, and it started to work. I don’t have large number of visits but for sure visits increased with a noticed ratio after using Twitter. :)
Thanks Nathan for the post. I will try to improve the other 9 points.
There was a great article yesterday in the Social Media Examiner written by Denise Wakeman which dealt with comments, etcetera. Your challenge to find a niche is the main item I am working on. I have so many interests it is difficult to narrow the field. Thanks for the great information.
I love the list, very helpful and particularly like the part about not underestimating your own expertise. It can be easy to that sometimes.
Thanks.
Good post Nathan. It’s always great seeing what people have learnt from their experiences. In my opinion the best way to learn is by doing and learning from that. Thanks for sharing :)
I would really love to see some actual numbers in regards to a good design/bad design. Like if someone did some A/B testing and showed everyone the results. I believe good design is essential to gaining more potential prospects but it would be really interesting to see some real numbers based on 2 pages that were the exactly the same skeleton wise, but had different designs.
On the commenting – I’m conducting my own commenting challenge this month. I am noticing the results already – mainly in actually connecting with other bloggers not so much getting added traffic, but that is also working too. I’ve also noticed if you comment on someones blog there is a good chance they will comment on your blog as well.
Let’s keep the discussion going!
All 10 points are QUALITY. Nice job :) Bookmarked.
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com
Recently I have been working on “narrowing my niche,” and I am finally noticing some consistency and loyalty in my audience. Very crucial advice!
Great post!!!! A plan is probably one of the most important things in any business. It is a great tool for us to be able to use and see how we are progressing against it. As you mentioned, in the early stages, it may not seem like you are not getting anywhere, and this is where the plan is very important because within that plan, you need a way to measure your small successes.
I really like this post. This is some good stuff to know and think about. I just started a baseball blog. Its about all the latest SF Giants Rumors. Its hard to let all the giants fans out there know about the site. I have been trying to get traffic. I have found some ways for that by twitter and comments on other blogs. If anyone wants to take a look and give me feedback. Hit the contact us on the site and send me an email. :)
King of Cali
http://www.sfgiantsbaseball.net
Great post! Really useful for a beginner blogger like me. Yes, I do try to find my niche audience with my blog. Hopefully the result will be seen soon enough.
This is exactly what I needed to hear right now.
Great post, i’ll share this for sure.
I will bookmark your blog and have my children check.
Thanks.
Thanks Nathan
I think a good design is absolutely crucial. If you are serious about blogging and have a long term vision – it is worth scraping together funds for a good design.
It also helps to cement your commitment to the long term success of the blog when you have some skin in the game.
Regards
Sean
Hem… i guilty in design. I planned a step by step design for my blog but after step two i stop because other thing attract me. I think i need go back to my first plan.
A good design and usability of website help in the overall user experience.
Your visitor would love to go back to a site that is simple but usable. A WordPress blgo site is the norm these days because of its simplicity.
Hiring the services of a professional web designer/developer will help you in the long run.
If you are employed full time, I would recommend Contributing to a group blog with like-minded people rather than going solo on your own blog. Of course, you may want to blog solo for a while to establish a bit of a track record that, in fact, makes you a worthwhile Contributor to a group blog with like-minded people. That is certainly understandable.
I just started blogging last month and your advice in this article is very helpful. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. Going forward I will keep your tips in mind.