Overall design of the blog

This is the most obvious thing in a blog. If the content that you put is going to make your blog grow and if you are attempting to attract a lot of people then the design of your blog must complement all the time. Simple design too might do the trick and there is no need for high end eye candy everywhere. Also, it is really important that your WordPress Blog theme highlights your content first. If you do this, your readers will get what they came for in the first place.

Comments

For me, the comment section is one of the only place to interact with your readers and I don’t understand why people put a lot of different plugins or features which crowd the comments place. For instance, there are some blogs who have messy comment fields and you don’t know where to begin. It can get very confusing.

Social sharing

Social media and social networking is seen everywhere these days; it is simply unavoidable and in one way, it is a good thing. You’d want people to engage with the content but you would also want to make people share it with others. Here too simplicity is the key. I go through a few blogs everyday and see a lot of mess in social sharing etiquette. There are sharing icons cloase to the blog, on a single post layer and also close to the comments! You need to choose wisely and you will be rewarded well.

Stick to your true voice and passion – A lot of people strain away from this particulary when they realize the opportunity to make more money. Money may come in the short term but you will regret it in the long term.

Offer authenticity and transparency – Blogging is more like a journal that other read because your readers know all your skills or talents that is related to what you are blogging about.

Start experimenting and have fun – You might suffer from writer’s block but this doesn’t mean that blogging is tiresome. Be careful with what you experiment because no one likes a messy laboratory.

Give your readers a feel of your style and voice – Reveal more about yourself to your community. Are you a calm writer? Or are you the kind who writes deep through the posts?

You are responsible for your creations – There is a code of conduct where in you are responsible for what you write and what comments you allow on the blog. You also have the power for accepting or declining.

Connect well with your audience – If you are not going to respond to some comments then make your people aware of that. Also, try to connect with people who have content that is similar to what you are writing.

Always learn and keep improving – The best phrase here is ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’. There is a lot to learn in the blogosphere and you will certainly improve as you assimilate all the concepts.

Know the basics – Some times we get carried away and forget the basics. The basics here include getting a good design for the blog, good quality, commenting that is not spam and getting gravatar.

Have something more? Let me know through the comments section below.

After you start of with commercializing your blog you will face horde of negative feedback and I faced them as well. But this should not derail you from your path as negative feedbacks really work in favor though they are negative. The visitors who come up with negative feedback are actually very supportive and their feedbacks are boon in disguise for improving your blog content.

The moment you go for monetizing your blog, the hurdle that a person faces is to find the preference of his readers. This trouble gets solved the money you get feedbacks. On the basis of the feedbacks received you can change the content or add categories that sit the preference of your readers.

Once the task of writing is over there is a need to look into the technicalities of the blog. If this is the process of your work, then I will ask you better change your process. Writing and technical aspect goes hand in hand. Hence, looking up for proper publishing software is must to make the functions of your blog acceptable for the visitors. Use a good web designer to make your blog look god and easily navigable. Just sticking on to the writing part will not do much good for your blog.

But certainly, the single most important thing you can do as a blogger is to find an idea or a category you will be good at exploiting to the fullest and being the best at. A niche can make or break your ambitions.

Finding your niche is only part of the story, you need to stay well ahead of the rest and earn respect as an accomplished expert in your niche.

Well, after you have chosen a good niche that you are comfortable with dealing with and are confident of making a success of, then comes the harder parts. You have to drive yourself to be the top guy in terms of knowledge in everything to do with your niche. This will mean staying up to date and ahead of your competitors.

You need to have a good idea of what is upcoming and set to be big in the topic you have chosen as your niche. There are several ways you can get ideas based on what is happening around the world.

Go to eBay, where you can look for the category th

at matches closest with your niche. You can check who the top sellers are in the niche, and then find out what items are being stocked, what items are selling and what are not as well as the latest items introduced.

Check out various blogs that deal with your niche. Use search engines to search for blogs. Register for forums and participate in discussions. You can even lurk and find out what the new things are being talked about. You can brand yourself as an accepted guru in these forums as well, which will make for increased traffic on your blog. Read about what is happening and being discussed around the world, cover countries such as Australia, United States, China, UK and more.

Check out best seller lists for books that have been released and are selling well in the NYT best sellers list.

There are many other ways you can stay up to date and ahead, but once you get into the habit, you will realize that you simply can not afford to be behind, because its your niche!

One of the best ways of worst things about using paid stuff for commercial applications is that the costs tend to pile up. At most times, the paid versions charge extremely high prices, in fact more than they are worth. Free, useful software and tools such as these are the very answer to the internet marketer’s prayers. So read on, and find out.

Email Marketing Service Provider

MailChimp is an Email Marketing Service that is capable of storing close to 500 contacts free of cost. Every penny counts when you are a beginner in the business. Go to the MailChimp website. The service is pretty good, as good as paid services such as Aweber.

On Screen Video Capturing – Camstudio

If you are making a tutorial on something related to IM or simply making use of videos for promotions, CamStudio is a free open source tool which you can use to record what is happening on you screen. The mouse cursor and type are also recorded, along with audio. CamStudio is a very useful tool, and is free of cost.

Plagiarism Checker

Every one knows what duplicate content will do to your rankings. It is important to check your articles before submitting them for any copied content. CopyScape is the software most people use, and it has a per page charge. However, there are a number of free alternatives to CopyScape that are getting extremely good reviews, in fact, I have checked a few out, and they look pretty good.

Actually using only one tool for checking for duplicated content is not what I consider wise. Use more than one, in fact use three to four.

Plagium is a great piece of free software that wins over CopyScape for functionality and results. DupeFree is another. PlagiarismDetect is a site primarily designed with college students in mind so that they can check their theses and papers for plagiarized content. This is not to say you, as a copy writer can not use it. Article checker.com is another great site.  However, make sure you read reviews about the checker, lest the various rumors about these stealing content be true.

Graphic Editing Software – GIMP

Making professional looking web pages is of the utmost importance. However Adobe Photoshop is extremely expensive if you are a starter. Also, it has too many advanced features that are not very useful. GIMP is a freeware that is the answer to your prayers. It has a ton of useful features that will do the job for most of us. There are bundled tutorials as well along with the documentation.

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
I’m sorry, but I had to open with this one. It’s my favorite, I still remember how this cracked me up when I first read it. Even in this digital age it is still apt for not just marketers, but also bloggers. Don’t talk down to your customers or readers; they are someone you should value and cherish. And if you can do this, it will take you a long way. And now, since we live in such serious times…

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

Some of the best posts I’ve written on here have been a bit light-hearted and funny (or as funny as I could make it). It very often is the craziest and funniest things that resonate with your readers/customers. Don’t underestimate the power of humor.

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.”
Another class quotation, and in essence this is something that Donald Trump also said in his autobiography whose name I don’t remember now. Of course, your expectations should be realistic as often as possible but that’s no reason to think small. Aim higher and try to do things you never thought you could, and who knows…you might surprise yourself with what you can get done.

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.”

All of the grammar Nazi’s can go take a long walk of a short pier. Sometimes, being grammatically correct is important, but the importance of communicating lies in getting the message across any way you have to. Write your blog posts or ads as if you were talking directly to the person in question. Even if it’s not the best English, it doesn’t matter. Always be relevant to your audience.

“If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. But don’t let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else.”

Truer words were never spoken. It is annoying and extremely heart-wrenching to see your idea or thought process being hijacked by someone else. The key to being relevant is to constantly offer unique content and information, perhaps put a different spin on things. Nothing good ever came by copying someone else’s work.

Be humorous

Wit is the symptom of intelligence, and everyone likes a witty person. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t like to be entertained and regaled with a few jokes? Heck, The Onion has spun a whole business model out of it. Of course, they’re damn good at what they do, but nonetheless, the point remains; humor is a great way to go about getting traffic to your website.

Be a storyteller

I don’t know about you, but I love a good story. For example, I love turning to Reddit where occasionally real stories from real people surface. And most of them are pretty damn good. Tell someone a story that affects him and he’ll remember it well. The words that you tell someone might fade away with time, but with stories you leave someone with images in their mind’s eye, and that is something people will never forget.

Empathize with me

Sitting back in this easy chair and thinking “I know exactly what you’re talking about” creates a connection with the digital fortress staring back at me. As human beings, we are all very social animals and we look for connections where sometimes there are none. Thus, when we find something we can identify we end up clinging to it for dear life. The same is true with websites we identify with, and it’s what makes us return to it time and time again.

Make a prediction

It doesn’t matter if you’re not Nostradamus, just make a prediction and you’ll find that the hits just keep rolling in. Take the Superbowl that just went by; if you had made a prediction that one of the two teams would have lost for whatever reason, you would have got hits if your article was good enough or had a unique angle. Throw in some humor and you’ll have a winner.

Clarify a concept

I like being a know it all, but I don’t know it all. I like to be informed, I like to know about things. For example, I want to manage my money better, but I don’t know nearly enough about it. Talking to me about money concepts and investments will help me, and I’ll repay you by revisiting your website. It’s a win-win situation!

Show me something I need to see

I absolutely love cars, and I don’t know of a red blooded male who doesn’t. and so when I stumbled upon a story that talked about how a Ferrari Mondial was abandoned without much love in Dubai, it appealed deeply to me and I clicked through to the relevant web page. I had never been to that site before, but the story just pulled me into its world. Stuff relevant to you can do that to you.

Be inspirational

Everyone can do with a bit of inspiration every now and again, and websites that offer something resembling chicken soup for the soul will always have visitors surfing to their shores. I’m not just talking about spitting out cheesy quotes either; make a story of it, or simply relate it to an example in you life. It makes the moment so much more visceral, gripping and real.

But what if niche marketing doesn’t particularly inspire you? What if you don’t have a niche to speak of? And just how do you make a niche work for you, instead of having to work hard for it? For starters, your niche gives you a particular target and makes you focus on it as best as you can. Think of a thoroughbred at the races; putting a pair of blinkers on it makes the steed gives it all while galloping away towards the finish line with nothing but one prime directive in mind. That’s what niche marketing does for you. It chops away all of the deadwood and makes you do only one thing, but do it exceptionally well.

Just like a leggy supermodel on the cover of a magazine or a photo of a supercar adorning a cover tells you what is in store inside, your niche purpose tells your readers what to expect from you. And what is niche marketing for blogs, but simply the effort taken to tailor your blogs to your readers needs? Use the titles of your posts, the headers of your blog, the SEO keywords and the posts itself (of course!) to tell your readers what to expect. When someone lands on your page, they are there either because they have come directly while searching expressly for something or because a search engine has directed them there. Within a few seconds, if they don’t feel that they will get what they want, they will surf away (clicks fingers) just like that. And that’s something your blog can’t afford.

Here’s a quick question then; what if you have nothing to focus on, what if your blog is all over the place? What do you do then? If that is the case, localize your content. Make your content aimed at people living somewhere. People always (yes, always) turn to the internet for information on local happenings, news or information. So why not give the people what they want and localize your content? Your blog might be a great place, but without giving someone a reason to come on over, you will forever be walking down the road to nowhere. The chances are that if someone is talking about something, they will be searching for it on Google. And that opportunity is there for you to grab. Step up to the plate and knock it out of the park, hombre. This game’s there to be won.

That’s what separates A-list bloggers and businesses from the decent ones. You can spot those that go the extra mile and use those few special branding strategies to mesmerize their audience. It’s why these showmen achieve the success they do. Don’t be the opening act for the rock star and don’t hang up those boots and guitars. You can be the best showman there is and be amongst the dominant players in your niche. What is showmanship, after all, except the expression of an idea or message in flamboyant and entertaining terms to a wide audience? All it boils down to is the development of a style that sets you apart from everyone else, something distinctive and unique.

Take Lady Gaga for instance (no, it wasn’t her concert that I went to. I don’t even like her that much). Born as Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga is such a wonderful name for a showman though, don’t you think?), she is a gifted songwriter, vocalist and pianist. Just search for videos of her early years on Youtube if you don’t believe me. But she knew she had to be different to get noticed and make it big, and so Lady Gaga was born. Now that’s what I’m talking about. For years, there was no one in the pop or rock industry with that kind of pull or charisma. Queen is the last band I can think of in that regards, and it’s no surprise that Lady Gaga draws a lot of  her inspiration from a band that included one of the ultimate showmen in Freddie Mercury.

And Gaga achieved this while having near total mastery over her craft. Don’t mistake showmanship for gimmicks; showmen are the real deal and they know almost everything (or everything) there is to know about their trade. Where they excel however is in showcasing their talents where others don’t. I have no doubt there are more talented musicians than Gaga out there. But they will never be as successful as Gaga so long as they focus solely on their craft. They need to rebrand themselves, use branding strategies that set them apart. Only them will they have the audiences eating out of their hands. And the same rule applies to you as well.

The mind and brain function is a potent weapon for marketers and bloggers alike. Using it, capturing it and controlling it will help you immensely. Some feel that they constantly need to reinvent their schedule to appeal to their audience. That is not true in the slightest. The thing is, once your prospects are used to something you shouldn’t take it away from them. People don’t like change, especially if they like it and it resonates with them. Change it and you’ll undo all the good work done so far.

But what’s more important is you risk confusing them and their minds, and brain function will struggle to fully interpret different messages. The brain doesn’t want to remember everything, it is selective in its choices. But if something is repeated relentlessly, it will remember it since it figures it is important. This is also true for messages that are emotion heavy and consistently delivered. It’s why you remember your wife nagging you so clearly while you don’t remember where you kept that damn remote/key/pair of socks. Emotional context can be everything for brain function.

Advertisers know this and that’s why we remember advertising slogans dating back to our childhood more than we remember our fourth grade teacher’s name. It’s also why our first crush or love is remembered so vividly since details of him/her are played over so often in our heads. That’s the power of repetition, and that’s the power of harnessing brain function. Get a message and stick to it; the minds of your prospects will thank you for it and retain your message better.