How to Use Google+ Communities to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Matt Carter. Matt uses his experience as an Internet Marketer to show us How to Use Google+ Communities to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog. See How to Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

---

If you write for a blog regularly, chances are you’ve spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to send your posts out so they’re read by lots of different people.

You’ve probably spent a lot of time using social media as a means to spread your content out, but if you’re focusing solely on Facebook and Twitter, you might be forgetting an important place to find more blog readers: Google+.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

SEO and Social Media – Is this a Winning Strategy?

Guest Post - Our host is Ian Mason, Ian looks at Social Medaia and SEO as a strategy for Bloggers.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

A recent article published in The Guardian raises some notable issues related to the changing face of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry and the increasing weight given to social media promotions with start-ups and businesses.

Is SEO Irrelevant?

Click Here To View Full Post >>

Unexpected Blog Habits That Can Kill Your Traffic

Guest Post - Our host is Allan Watson, who points out some of the unseen mistakes you may be making that are affecting your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

As a blogger there is nothing more nerve-wracking than losing traffic except possibly not ever getting any in the first place, though it is possible that isn't actually worse. When you lose it, it means that you had it and then you did something wrong and usually we don't know what that is. It can kill your motivation, drain your muse, and make you wonder if maybe you should just give up.

The thing is, most of us have seen the articles and heard the common advice about gaining popularity and keeping your audience. If you haven't, or you need a recap, this post by Blogging Basics is a great one. You want to have personality, proofread, post consistently, use images, and make sure that what you are writing is something that your audience is going to want to read.

But what if you are covering all of the basics and you're still not getting traffic or you're losing it? Then something else is wrong and you might not know where to start looking. There are, however, some key elements to having a successful blog that you may be overlooking.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

5 Creative Ways To Gather Customer Testimonials

Guest Post - Our host for this post is Shanna Mallon, Shanna is looking at how bloggers can gather great testimonials online.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

You don’t have to be a salesperson to know the power of a good referral. Who hasn’t tried, bought, or done something because someone they trusted said it was a good idea? That’s why, when you’re a new blog or business, nothing is quite as powerful for bringing in new clients as gathering customer testimonials. But how do you get them?

Here are five creative ideas that go beyond surveys or traditional requests.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

Six Life Lessons Your Parents Taught You About Blogging

Guest Post - Our host is Gerrid Smith, who makes an interesting comparison between the lessons we learned as children and how we can use them as bloggers.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

It’s a very frustrating reality in life as we age when we realize that we are more like our parents than we think. The life lessons our parents taught us while growing up that we denied as truth seem to start flowing out of our mouths later in life to our own children, and we begin to take the advice as actual wisdom.

Some of these ideas and concepts can be applied to your blogs marketing approach as well! Let’s take a step back, look at our marketing techniques and make sure that we’re behaving the way our parents wanted us to:
Click Here To View Full Post >>

5 Massive Ways To Market Your Blog Content Effectively

Guest Post - Our host is Yasir Khan, who looks at the steps you can take after clicking publish to promote your content.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Blog content are the power source of any blog in the blogosphere. If you take a look at the top blogs online, they aren’t topping the search engines for their main keywords just because they overly did SEO little too well, but it’s because they invested a huge amount of their time writing up and publishing epic posts whose value cannot be matched to any similar post out there.

Having said that, it’s imperative to have content that adds value on one’s blog, not only that, it’s also important to know how to market it in other for the search engines to know that the contents are of high value.

So how exactly do you market your blog content in other for it to go viral ? Which talisman is currently working at the moment?

Below are 5 sure ways which you can use to market your blog contents like a professional-
Click Here To View Full Post >>

My Experiences And Tips From Setting Up A New Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Matthew Barby, Matt has some tips for setting up a new blog from content to SEO.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

I took a little time out recently to recharge my batteries and explore a bit of the world by venturing across to East Asia. During my time out there I thought it would be a great idea for me (and a few friends) to set up a travel blog that would share some of our travel experiences and offer a useful resource for fellow travellers.

Due to the fact that this project was purely focused around pleasure, I didn’t put too much work in at the start but I soon realised that there was a good potential to make a bit of cash that could supplement my travel costs. With this in mind I decided to use my background in SEO to bring in some good levels of traffic to the website. Six months on and my blog traffic is growing exponentially month-on-month – I decided that it would only be fair to share some of my strategies with the community so that they can also benefit from this.

The content Strategy

Click Here To View Full Post >>

5 Creative Ways To Get To Know Your Blogging Audience In Real Life

Many of us think that we know who we are writing to, but do we really? The problem with identifying and understanding our blog audience is that we resort to dated techniques that don't help us understand who they really are. Sure, our audience might be made up of 25-35 year old females, but who is that, anyway? What keeps them up at night? What makes them happy? How can we, as bloggers, motive them to read and share what we have to say?

What Really Matters

For starters, you need to understand what matters to them. I have been an advocate for completing basic audience profiles. The goal of these profiles is to get a sense of how your audience thinks, rather than just who your audience is. In these profiles, you will identify a few key things:

• What is their name?
• What do they do?
• What keeps them up at night? (i.e. What are they worried about?)
• What motivates them to read your stuff?
• What do they need most from you? How can you help them?

The goal is to complete several profiles and then use them as you write new posts. As you write, you should be talking directly to one of your audience members. You should have them specifically in mind. When we write TO someone rather than simple FOR someone we can do a much better job of relating to them on a human level. But, sometimes even this exercise isn't enough.Click Here To View Full Post >>

Ride The Reddit Wave: How to Maximize Traffic To Your Blog From Reddit

What is Reddit? If you’ve seen the front page filled with hysterical gifs and shared life-exposed memes to your friends, then you’ve Reddit. Not only have you read it, but also maybe used it to generate buzz for your brand or product or even as simple as having the quote of the day at your office.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, you may be saying: I haven’t Reddit.

Well, similar to most social media sites, with Reddit you create a profile, join a community, and start sharing. However, unlike sites like Twitter and Facebook, where content and descriptive text is presented to you in real time news feed, Reddit is focused on presenting you with the highest rated content. This community is unique in that it is a self-monitoring social network, where your upvotes are translated into “karma”, the headline is the hook, and the content is the punch line. “Trolls” beware: there is a downvote as well. In this democracy style platform, you want to get as many upvotes as possible.

How do you use it?

Click Here To View Full Post >>

6 Essential Tips For Bloggers To Increase Your Email CTR

When it comes to email marketing, there are two crucial numbers to keep track of - your open rate and your CTR or click-through rate. While your first task is to get people to actually open your email, your CTR is what really determines your results. It doesn't help you if people read your email only to delete it. If you want people to take action on your offers, you must find ways to increase your CTR.

Tip 1: Create Urgency or Scarcity

Click Here To View Full Post >>

DIY or Die: Good Blogging Based on Punk Rock Ethics

Before the late 1970s, it was nearly impossible for independent musicians to tour and release albums without major label backing. Punk came along and changed all of that in a few different ways. Kids saw that they could, in fact, play music without looking like rock stars or playing like virtuosos. Punk bands also set up concrete DIY models for releasing their own records and setting up their own tours that anyone could follow. The major labels were cut out entirely, and it actually became a case of “you can do this if they put the work in.”

The Internet, in that way, is in those exciting golden years. The infrastructure has been set up and there are several credible models available for reference. There are a staggering amount of resources available to independent bloggers so they can, in fact, do it themselves. That might seem obvious, but it also becomes a valuable thinking point when you start to incorporate the ethics of DIY, independent music into blogging.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

The Blogging Game: When Blogging Resembles Hunting

Blogging has been compared to so many everyday activity's but did you know blogging in many ways is like hunting ? Of course you didn't know that but that's exactly what you are about to find out starting with The Hunt.

The Hunt

Getting Internet users to visit your blog is like sitting at the edge of a clearing in the woods, waiting for the arrival of your target.He comes eventually, stepping on the twigs, shifting, bowing his head for a drink on a little pool of water.

When you finally have a clear view on the target, you quietly and patiently aim your gun, lowering it in an angle, not breathing, careful not to produce even the littlest sound that might startle the creature.

And bam! You missed the deer just near the ear.

Off he runs out of the clearing and beyond the thick woods. He leaves behind not even a cloud of dust, gone as if he had never been in the clearing at the first place.You just stand there, your chest hurting from the recoil.

You are the huntsman, the web developer. The clearing is your site. The gun, your web host provider. The bullet your SEO schemes.The deer, the Internet user.

What happened? How did the deer escape ?
Click Here To View Full Post >>

10 Steps To Targeting Your Blog Readership

You want your readership to grow, and seeing numbers increase is a great sign. That doesn't mean your readership is "everyone." Your content writing needs to be targeted to a specific niche, and these 10 steps will help you find the right readers for your great content.

1. Who would want to read your content?

Click Here To View Full Post >>

How To Use Facebook To Boost Blog Traffic And Sales

Guest Post - Our host is Alicia, here she looks into using Facebook to help your blogs traffic and sales.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Is investing time and money on Facebook really going to help increase your traffic and sales?

Or is Facebook as a social media marketing leader overrated?

I’m sure these were some of the questions that had come across your mind before, regardless of whether you have used Facebook as a social media marketing platform or not.

Is the ROI really worth the effort we put into Facebook?
Click Here To View Full Post >>

Things That Go Bump On Your Blog - What Bloggers Can Learn From Horror Films

It’s the season of ghosts and general spookfulness. The time of year for us all to check for monsters under the bed and wonder what’s out there in the woodshed. But whilst we’re wondering whether or not to go and check what that noise is down in the dark cellar (it’s just a mouse - don’t go down there) is there anything bloggers can learn from the season of the witch?

I’m going to look at some horror films to see what inspiration we can take from their perennial popularity.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

How To Successfully Use Giveaways To Build Social Proof

I'm a huge believer in doing blog giveaways (hence I've done at least 5, giving away a total of $1200). Not only is it nice to give something back to the readers, doing a blog giveaway can really benefit your blog! Here's how:

Giveaways aren't for building long-term blog readership or traffic.

Before I get on with the rest of my post about how giveaways are great for building social proof, I'd like to say something first. Many bloggers host giveaways, hoping that by doing so, they can increase their blog readership. In reality, that doesn't happen: people aren't going to keep coming back to your blog just because you hosted a giveaway. True, out of 100 giveaway participants you might get 2 or 3 people who find your blog interesting and keep coming back everyday, but the majority of giveaway participants are what I call "the professionals" - people who scour sweepstakes forums for giveaways to take part in and won't come back a second time.

So what are giveaways great for?

For Building Social Proof

Social proof is exactly what it sounds like - proof from social sites that your blog has followers. In other words, social proof is what I like to call, your "numbers". These include the number of Facebook fans you have, the number of Twitter followers, the number of RSS subscribers, etc. So what's so value about having the right "numbers" (a lot of fans, followers, subscribers)?

Social proof is valuable in 2 ways:

1) Social proof encourages visitors on your website to "Like" or "Follow" you, creating a positive snowball effect. Let's look at 2 examples. Tom went to Site A, and saw that the site had a grand total of 17 RSS subscribers. What does this tell Tom? That the site isn't very popular! Thus, Tom might not want to come back to the site, thinking that something must be wrong with it (since it only has 17 RSS subscribers). Now Tom went to Site B, and saw that the site had 319 RSS subscribers. What does this tell Tom? That the site is pretty popular, and probably for a good reason! Thus, Tom is more likely to come back to Site B every day and "Like" or "Follow" it. Now if there are 100 guys like Tom coming to Site B, that really creates a positive snowball effect that drastically boosts up Site B's social numbers and traffic.

2) Now this is the big one. Having the right "numbers" gets you PRIVATE ADVERTISERS (drum roll please). Many sites who have good traffic just can't get PRIVATE ADVERTISERS because their Facebook Fans, RSS subscribers, or Twitter followers are too few. To an advertiser, having, for example, 300 Facebook fans shows that your site is popular and deserves their attention. For example, I hosted a $500 Giveaway on my blog, which resulted in me gaining an additional (approximately) 100 RSS subscribers, 150 Facebook fans, and 130 Twitter followers. A few days after the giveaway was over, I started getting emails from private advertisers left and right.

Now that you see how powerful giveaways can be and how the social proof gained from giveaways can help your blog, here's how to successfully host a giveaway.

What kind of prizes to give out:

Last year, I was in Beijing, and at the subway station I noticed 2 very different advertisement styles. One company bought every third ad space at the metro station (the long corridors where subway riders walk by every day). Another company bought 3 ad spaces (one next to the other), skipped 9 ad spaces, and bought another 3 ad spaces one next to the other. I remember thinking that day I'd rather be the second company than the first. Why? Because by heavily bombarding viewers at one moment by putting 3 ads next to each other, the second company is creating a lasting impression on viewers that the first company's way of advertising can't.

So what does this have to do with hosting giveaways?

It's better to host 1 giveaway for $300 than it is to host 10 giveaways giving away $30 each. Through extensive testing via giveaways on A Young Investor and my other sites, I've noticed that the total number of giveaway participants in a big giveaway exceeds that of all the small giveaways combined.

I've found that cash giveaways tend to be the most popular among all giveaways (for obvious reasons, because if you're giving away a specific product, people who don't like that product most likely won't participate in that giveaway). Would you have $500 or an iPad? Obviously $500, because with that money, you can either buy an iPad or something else.

So when hosting a giveaway, make sure you're giving away cash and make sure it's for a large sum of money (remember, it's better to host 1 giveaway of $300 than 10 giveaways of $30 each).

How to get sponsors:

Now I understand not every has enough money to host a large giveaway (neither do I). Thanks in large part to the sale of my previous sites, I was able to give away a few hundred dollars out of my own pocket. But eventually, I had to get sponsors to help pay for my giveaways. For my $300 Cash Giveaway - Elections Style, I was able to get 1 sole sponsor who provided most of the funds for the giveaway. So how did I do it?

Contact websites related to your blog's niche. Since my blog is about investing, I Google searched "investment brokers" and contacted all the investment brokers to see if they'd like to sponsor my giveaway. In return, YOU MUST make sure that the sponsor gets something valuable. Since my site has never had any advertisers before and has quite a lot of investors who read it, a few potential sponsors emailed me back. Eventually, I let them bid up the price, and the winner got a link (nofollow) back to their site and a banner ad on the giveaway page. Try this method, and I'm sure it will work for you. Even if you don't have a lot of traffic, potential-sponsors will likely want to sponsor you because they know that giveaways get a LOT OF TRAFFIC.

How to promote giveaway:

In general, I tweet about my giveaways and post them on my Facebook fanpage. I also make a giveaway entry option as "Tweet About This Giveaway". Thus, a snowball effect is created, where giveaway participants tweet about my giveaways, drawing in even more giveaway participants.

But by far, the best way to promote a giveaway is to submit it to sweepstakes directories. By far. Without submissions to giveaway directories, my giveaways would only have had 20% of the participants that they did have.

How long should the giveaway last ?

Through extensive testing, I've found that 2 weeks for a giveaway is the best lenght. Any longer, and participants won't want to participate because they don't like waiting that long. Any shorter, and you're not maximizing the full potential of the giveaway. I like to start giveaways on a Saturday and end them on a Sunday. The reason for this is that the first and last 2 days of a giveaway are usually the days that get the most participants. By starting on Saturday, the first 2 days are Saturday and Sunday, days when most people are off work and have time to participate in my giveaway. By ending on a Sunday, the last 2 days are Saturday and Sunday, days when most people are off work and have time to participate in my giveaway. For example, an ideal giveaway would start on Saturday, September 15 and end on Sunday, September 30.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

Three Common Attributes Of Successful Blogs

Guest Post - Our host is Doug Glaston, In this post Doug looks at some successful blogs and how they got there.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

If you're on Spice Up Your Blog, then your interested enough to learn more about what you can do to make your blog better. The Internet is loaded with perhaps tens of thousands of blogs that deliver articles and content for a specific audience. Many are great, some of them are not really that intriguing. Maybe yours has gotten a lot of talk and shares within a small community, which is great.

But then you have to look at the blogs that really get a lot of attention; the blogs that speak to a large audience and are able to sustain themselves on the basis of its popularity. What kind of blogs am I talking about? I'm aiming pretty high, but think about the work of Mashable, Engadget, Perez Hilton; the big guns of the blogosphere.

The wrong thing to think is: “I'll never get to where they are. They've been in the game for a much longer time and their resources are way beyond mine.” Sure, they have a lot to back them up, but it wasn't always like that. The reason why these blogs are as widespread as they are is because they speak in a way the few can.

Whether you're starting up or are still trying to break into the scene, there are plenty of considerations to be made that might turn some more heads. Every popular blog does things differently, but there are some universal characteristics as well.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog From StumbleUpon

Stumble Upon is one of the most famous social bookmarking websites on the web, along with Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Buzzfeed. It's very easy and fun to use. You just select the categories you usually enjoy viewing ( marketing, photography, humor, psychology,sports, games, etc.) and then automatically StumbleUpon generates a page you might like each time you click Stumble. Whenever you click the like button on a page you stumble, then that page will gain more chances to be viewed by other StumbleUpon users. Consequently, getting your page stumbled and liked by several users will dramatically increase your pageviews. That's how StumbleUpon works, in general.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

15 Top Tips Bloggers Can Use For A More Engaging Blog

If you've been managing your blog for some time, chances are you're looking for some ways to improve it. Whether it comes to content development, credibility or reader engagement, the opportunities for improvement are endless. To help you along your way, here are 15 great ways any blog owner can improve his or her publication.
Click Here To View Full Post >>

The Problem With Following Bloggers, Gurus And Magic Fairies

There is no blueprint to making money online. If you've spent any time researching how to build an online business than you already know this.

However, what you do have access to are all the make money online blogs, ran by guys who've already made their thousands or millions of dollars online. They figured it all out, and now share it so that you can repeat their success. So while it may not be a step-for-step blueprint, it's really the next best thing.

That said, there are so many bloggers, gurus and magic money fairies posting their tips online that reading and following all of these blogs and their advice can actually be counterproductive, even prevent you from succeeding. If you're not careful, that is. Here are 5 examples to show you what I mean.
Click Here To View Full Post >>