This guest post is by Mei of CCFoodTravel.
Not too long ago—in the middle of this year to be precise—I got an email stating that I was one of ten special bloggers chosen to participate in the Queensland ProBlogger event. I was over the moon, to say the least! In the coming week I prepared myself and my gear for this immersion in the great Australian outdoors, as well as for the blogging workshop with Darren of ProBlogger…
Little did I realise that at the event I would make such cool friends from all over the world, in the form of the other nine bloggers—some of them have even guest posted for me now! I also learned that blogger collaboration is indeed a huge aspect of reaching out to people—something that is yet untapped by my blog. Here are six other handy tips I picked up from the ProBlogger workshop.
- Have a system in place: Blog as often as you can, or in a way that suits your lifestyle. Tweet, Facebook, Stumble and employ other social media to help, but mainly do what works for you. Try to keep your blogging activities to a similar time each day of the week. If you know what time your USA market segment wakes up, for example, then try to schedule your tweets for the highest traffic periods of the day.
- Re-appraise past posts: It’s good to go back and re-write old posts and make them better, especially those that draw a lot of interest—your top hit posts. You should link those posts to other posts on your blog that you feel are even better. This keeps the readers engaged with your blog and makes your blog sticky.
- Test, try, and tweak: We should always strive to improve our existing strategies. Do not be afraid to test out new ideas. Once you have found something that works, keep tweaking it till you can no longer get any better results out of it. Once we implement these new ideas, we should continue to evaluate, assess, and to tweak until we get the desired outcome.
- Try to sell your own product: I met many inspiring ladies at this ProBlogger workshop, and they ultimately sold their own products on the blog. I would like to try this out for my blog, but am still “testing, trying, and tweaking” till I find the one!
- Plan to monetize: Create a professional-looking media kit and promote yourself in a professional manner. Advertisers are investing their time and money in you, so don’t be afraid to make yourself sound as good as you truly are. Adding testimonials and media mentions helps! And create an at-a-glance rate card that will help you to be more efficient in replying to emails!
- Blogger collaboration: Make friends, exchange business cards, and learn what makes the other bloggers’ blogs so special. And ask for guest posts and give give them out generously too, when you’re asked for them. That’s the best way to reach the untapped audience!
Have you used any of these strategies on your blog? I’d love to hear your top tips for blogging success in the comments.
Mei and her husband Jo, are avid travelers, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For some delicious food porn and adventure travels, check out CCFoodTravel. In our spare time we also write for our fitness and health blog, Cikipedia. Alternatively check out our extreme sports/adventure blog, WHOAAdventures. Follow Mei on Twitter.
Congratulations on being chosen!
I recently starting going back and updating/adding video to past videos. Since I use the plugin Tweet Old Post I thought people discovering an article might want to know what’s up today. It’ll be fun to see if this makes a difference in traffic.
Thanks for your tips!!!
Kimberly
Hi Kim, thanks for your comment:) And yes, I feel privileged to be chosen:) Tweet Old Posts is great if you have tons of old posts – like a blog that’s been around for 3 years plus let’s say, and have a lot of hidden, buried “goodies” that you want to remind people of. You add new followers everyday, so many people might not have read these gems. But if it’s a relatively new blog, you might be repeating your posts tweets too often. I used it when I travel. People tend to suss out if you’re not tweeting your own posts and sometimes, it’s a bummer when they want to interact with you, and you’re not there:) Cheers!
The point that resonates with me, isn’t even one of the listed items. It was in the paragraph before. Blogger collaboration. I’m thinking hard on that topic and trying to decide how to approach that. But I’ve been hearing that suggestion from numerous places and I really need to do that. Thanks for the other tips as well!
Hi Steve! I find that twitter and FB are great places for blogger collaboration, aside from events and meetings. And depending on your goals, increase traffic, or SEO ranking, or to reach a different audience, you should pick a blog (to collaborate with) that is relavant to your own, and your goals. Of course, some bloggers just have terrific personalities and you might want to tap into that winning formulae.
Dearest Mei,
Congrats for being selected as one of only ten bloggers. That makes you stand out head and shoulders amidst us, beginners…
Being true to yourself and using authentic material, not taken elsewhere from the Internet, in my opinion does pay off in the long end. Being passionate about certain things does spill over and people will figure out what value you are providing. You are right about posting at a certain time, readers are looking for it already and expect some new and fresh reading.
Sincerely,
Mariette’s Back to Basics
Hi Mariette:) Aw shucks.. thanks for the kind words. I agree that passion shines through the blog and makes a difference. When I first started blogging, people used to tell me things like – oh you blog too often. You’re gonna run out of steam. But 5 years down the line, I’m still blogging .. and have never lost the joy of it. I think you just need to love it. Otherwise don’t do it. And yes, tweeting for the US market is incredibly important and for me , that’s around the time people sleep in Malaysia, believe it or not;) You can schedule your important tweets though.
I publish posts regularly and use Social Medias to promote them. And I am recieving quality traffic since last 2-3 weeks. Alexa rank is also increasing.
And thanks for these tips. Surely going to use them.
Thanks Rabin! Happy to know they help! Keep up the good blog.
Congratulation for the good work! I also agree with Robin with usage of Social Media to promote my blogs; I think it isn’t boring through the feedback you will get with you gaining as much traffic as you could imagine! I really love the tips above, thanks for sharing they are very educating and inspiring indeed, keep up the great job!
Cheers Shelby!
I have been blogging for sometime now and l must confess l have never experienced traffic, l have done all l can but to no avail. Your tips are real good and l am going to apply them, they are my real last and l just hope they will yield positive results.
Hi Carmen, don’t give up hope. If you have a good blog with good content, employing social media could help increase traffic. You can install simple widgets such as digg digg to help. It’s easy.
Congrats on your good work. #4 is a nice one. That way you can easily market your products to anyone who stops by to take a look at the blog post.
I agree. Am still working on this one Tabetha:) Any tips? LOL. It’s a food and travel blog! :D
Work on your blog headlines
People will never read your blog posts if the headline is more fizzle than sizzle.
Even people who’ve subscribed to your blog by RSS feed or email will read the headline first to decide if they want to read the whole post. If your blog headline doesn’t immediately seem to help with their problem or arouse their curiosity they’ll never read on.
To make sure your blog posts get read learn how to write hypnotic headlines that people can’t resist clicking on.
Your blog headlines should immediately tell people what the blog post is about and give them a reason to read it so compelling, newspaper style blog headlines are what you need.
Actually I write my headlines more for SEO purposes. Sometimes they sound boring but the search engines love em. Pick them up in no time. I tend to write my “Shock them Headlines” later in the post.
Having a plan of monetization is really an important step, because without it we are left without a path to follow. Even if you change the path, you do not get totally disoriented :)
Hugs, Arlindo Armando
I agree! Hugs back! LOL
I want to create an ebook for my blog to generate some income but didn’t found any useful information on that.Tried google search but still… Good tips, i am implementing a few already.
Hmmm, maybe I should consider creating one too :) Thanks Ali!
Hi Mei!
Great tips and I could not agree with you any more about the system in place and I believe if you do it with consistency you can achieve your goals but only thing that matters most is the patience and consistency. I see lots of people who started out their blogs but could not keep them.
Thanks for sharing valuable tips :-)
Awesome Ayaz. It makes me happy to read and hear from others, that I am on the right track too. We all need a little help sometimes. There are some days you hit a wall and don’t feel like you have anything to say or blog. Keeping a community of writers/bloggers near you who can encourage you really helps. I only surround myself with positive folk!
I am also agreed with Ayaz on the point of patience…I myself left two blogs with some readerbase already… Getting patience is much difficult but if one sticks, and have good content can get fame and readership. I read somewhere “the best content policy is to create such an amzaing content that produce an ever deeper hunger for more content”
I have used one of the strategy from these six and that is Re-appraising the past posts. That is what I’ve been doing lately on my blog and works perfect.
Thanks for the tips Mei, I’ll also try to sell my own product.
Hey Mei,
Thanks for the wonderful tips! I can see how you make a great guest writer, as you took a simple article and made it easy to read. I’m still in the beginning stages of blogging, but do agree with everything you said! I will be learning more from you. I also live very close to you, as I move to the Philippines last year. If you happen to come this way hit me up, and I’ll buy you coffee =D
Ultimately one needs to focus on a long term content strategy as that is the best way to achieve success online whether you run a regular business website or a blog. Having a consistent publishing schedule certainly helps.
Totally agree. For example, Travel tips on Tuesdays, and Food porn on Fridays.. works for my blog:)
Hi there, I’m really much grateful for your insightful post. I’ve learnt a lot from it.
Thanks Cudjoe!
bloggers meetup organized in india by indiblogger is very useful for blogger collaboration…yes it is a good info
Yeah, but it’s what happens after, that’s important. Need to fan the flames and keep the relationships going.. especially with those whom you had a connection with.
Mei,
Congrats on being chosen – that’s so exciting!
I would love to put together a media kit, but I don’t know the first thing about them. Do you have an example or do you know where to find an example?
Thanks,
Jenny