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1.6.10 - 12 link building tactics

As 2007 turns into 2008 (yes, its more than a month away but you can’t fault me for preparing right now, can you?), it’s worth taking a hard look at our blogging and promotion strategies and how those will evolve in the future.

Today I’d like to cover 12 link building tactics that will be most effective in the coming year – like all such lists, there’s a good chance that I’ve left something out so if you have something to add, please let me know in the comments.

1- Linkbait Mainstream Media

Being picked up by the CNN, Fox News, BBC or the Guardian not only leads to plenty of traffic (the type that would crash your server) but also leads to other bloggers picking you up as a news source. Traffic, new readers, links from the blogosphere and links from highly trusted websites.

It’s not an easy target to achieve, but you can get there by doing the following:

  • Network like the energizer bunny – before you can be recognised as an authority in your niche you need to make yourself known to everyone who matters.
  • Establish a pattern for being the first – Quite often just being the first person to break the news can lead you to scoring dozens of links – and once you build a reputation for being first, you’ll have reporters and other bloggers turning to you to break the news. Position yourself so you can benefit from such opportunities.
  • Linking to top news sources often brings in residual traffic (tech bloggers linking to Techcrunch’s stories will confirm), and in several cases it also results in other bloggers picking you up as a secondary source on the issue.
  • All of this only works if you have something valuable to offer – whether it’s analysis, exclusive images or your own research. Just regurgitating the news isn’t going to be of as much help.

And if you haven’t already, read this article on how to attract attention from mainstream media.

2- Contests and Giveaways

I expect the tactic of contests and prize giveaways as a means to generate links to be abused beyond reason in the coming year. As things stand, it’s an easy way to build links and once your site builds some traction and a readership, it’s also a good way to reward your readers and attract new ones.

The key with such contests is to:

  • provide value to readers
  • break from tradition and do something more creative than an ‘article writing contest’
  • make a meaningful contribution to your blog
  • engage the community, not just your readers

To expand on that last point – I think it’s very important to give readers – many of whom will have blogs / be active participants elsewhere on the Net – something that they can do offsite, preferably on their own site or whichever forum they frequent the most.

3- Blogger’s / Site Owner’s Personal Brand

Let me illustrate this with a real-world example:

If John Doe and his buddies had started Search Engine Land and pumped it with timely news and top-notch SEO news and analysis, it would have been a sensational new entry into the SEO blogging A-list, after a few months of consistency of course.

On the other hand, with Danny Sullivan’s reputation, SEL was A-list before it launched – not to mention that Danny’s rep also brought in other star bloggers, which in turn fueled the growth of SEL. Newcomers in the industry wouldn’t be able to achieve this level of success so quickly (if at all).

How can you build your personal brand ? Quality, consistency, networking, and timing.

4- Cherry-Picking Bloggers

Jim Boykin wrote in May 2006 about cherry-picking links and while I think it’s still an excellent way to build links, the smarter way to do this going forward is to cherry pick bloggers in terms of building relationships.

By investing in relationships, you ensure that the next time you linkbait / launch a new site / do widgetbait, you’ll have a set of influential bloggers reading you and as a result you will get at least some coverage for that event. Once that happens a few times, promoting your site becomes that much easier as your network of friendly bloggers and site owners will be helping you along the way.

Surely that beats a one-time link-based investment?

5- Industrial Strength Linkbait
Linkbaiting, despite the proliferation of absolute crap in its name, is a valuable promotional and link building concept. While linkbaiting – especially industrial strength linkbaiting – will still continue strong in 2008, there will be an increasing trend towards more viral content and less dependence on traditional social media channels.

Expect that ‘industrial strength’ to be focused on creating quality instead of quantity, because as more and more people jump into the linkbaiting boat it’s getting harder and harder to promote your traditional linkbait. Either you’re already a celebrity, or you need to create something kickass.

An example of awesome linkbait.

6- Podcasting

Content is king, but alternative media – especially audio / visual media – is fast catching up in terms of attracting links. Of course, flame bait (the idiotic kind) doesn’t do you any favours, but then again I’m guessing Scoble knew that already?

7- Niche SEO

It stands to reason that someone who has prior experience in an industry will have more contacts and better inside knowledge than a newcomer. If you’re an SEO consultant, this is something you can use to your advantage. If you’re a site owner, learn to leverage your contacts and knowledge of what works (such as what type of content gets links) to differentiate yourself from your competition (and protect yourself against newcomers).

8- Prior Footholds in the Industry

If you’re launching a new website, having an established one in the same (or related) niche is a big bonus. On the other hand, buying an old site can also give the same sort of legitimacy.

Expect to see more and more consolidation happen in 2008 – and if you’re already established in a niche, branch out now rather than latter.

9- Offline Marketing

Offline marketing is a key ingredient for any online business and by 2008 you’ll see this as being one of the main factors differentiating between businesses going to the top, fast and businesses going nowhere, fast.

How are you expanding your promotion offline? Do you attend conferences in your niche? Are you (or your business) referenced in print media? Do you get published in print media?

Despite the importance of the Internet print media is still top gun when it comes to ‘making it’ and that’s one of the areas you should be focusing on next year.

10- Old School SEO

In case you’re wondering, all of it still works – smart site architecture, getting the right links at launch time, topical content, balanced internal linking, relevant link building, cherry picking links – all of that still works, so don’t marginalise it. However, knowing SEO basics isn’t enough to give you an edge in itself – you need to take advantage of all the different link building opportunities available to you.

11- Widgetbait

I’ll let Nick Wilson tell the story here:

The linkbait landscape of 2007 is different than two years ago, requiring some rethink and reassessment of strategies. Linkbait is the smart move everyone needs to be doing. However, the linkbait of 2005 may not cut it with today’s more desensitized audiences. The smart linkbaiters will pursue the holy grail of widgetbait.

and…

The holy grail of linkbaiting in 2007 will be the widget.

In late 2005 and early 2006, I came up with a linkbaiting concept to put my previous company, Performancing, on the social media map. That idea was the Performancing Blog Editor Firefox extension that has achieved nearly half a million downloads on Mozilla alone.

It was a high risk, high reward strategy that not only worked but worked so well that it went beyond mere “linkbait” and is about to become a standalone brand in its own right.

Widgetbaiting is a high-risk link building strategy because you have to spend a lot of time and money in developing it / having it developed, and that’s still no guarantee of whether it will be successful or not. On the other hand, when it IS successful, the results are often spectacular well-worth the effort.

12- Predictive SEO

While this is a strategy that has been used successfully for some time now, predicting search queries and traffic is going to be another one of those tactics you’ll have success using in 2008.

In David P’s recent research on ranking factors in Google, one of the things he didn’t mention was all things being equal, a page on a highly-trusted website would rank higher than a page on a newer, less-trusted website. Call it trust and authority, call it Google’s bias towards old sites, the bottom line is that well-established websites and blogs find it easier to rank high for 3-4 keyword search terms. I’ve personally used this strategy with a lot of success at Soccerlens – and as the old saying goes, the rich keep getting richer so if your site doesn’t have any T&A at the moment you should get busy getting it.

Also See: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Link Builders

Which link building tactic do you think will be most effective in 2008?

This article was written on 10 Nov 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Blogging on the move

If you’re a problogger and you travel more than once every 3 months, you need some sort of ‘living on the road’ solution to keep you plugging in and functioning (work-wise, of course). It may be a romantic (and healthy) notion that you should ditch all things work and Net when taking a break, but that’s for those rare once or twice an year vacations.

If, like, me, you’re on the road for a week a month (even car accidents don’t stop me anymore), you don’t only need the right setup (read gadgets and software) but also the right routine – simply put, nothing fracks up your work like an uncertain, unplanned work schedule.

The Tools

If you’re expecting a Internet Tablet / Pocket PC a la Nick and Chris, you’ll be disappointed. I’m packing the Nokia E61i which is light-weight but remarkably effective for blogging on the move (I was sold after this comparison, although to be honest the iPhone and W950 aren’t serious competitors to the E61i).

Thanks to cheap (but annoyingly slow) cellular data plans here, Internet access is rarely a problem. Combine that with the E61i’s WiFi capabilities, you’ve got a working laptop replacement for your travels.

Of course there’s a laptop in the mix as well (a Dell Inspiron 6400 running XP, no exploding batteries though), but when I’m traveling I tend to work light and instead of carrying the laptop, I rely on other people have computers with working Internet connections and carry a Kingston 2GB USB drive packed with portable apps.

You can literally take a whole week off and work from your smartphone and your usb drive – talk about traveling light, eh? There’s a second phone (Nokia 6233) that I use for regular voice calls and old-fashioned networking. Both phones work as decent cameras and there’s the customary iPod nano (with the 6233 an able music backup) to help me stay focused.

The Methods

This is where it gets more interesting. It’s almost impossible for me to work on a regular schedule at home; traveling makes it that much harder. As I discussed earlier this week in my piece on time management, it’s ultra-important to reduce unnecessary activities and especially remove distractions when you’re doing heavy lifting (work that requires a lot of concentration.

Obviously you’re not going to get much done if all you do is read feeds and emails, especially when you have less time in the first place. The big secret – it’s not so much a secret as a changing your mindset, which is not easy to do – is to delegate your blog management. In fact, here are 3 easy strategies you can use to lessen your blogging / working load:

  • Outsource – either temporarily or permanently
  • Arrange for guest bloggers
  • Write articles in advance and set them to publish in the future – this doesn’t work so well for newsy niches, so you might have to hire and train people you can rely on.

It’s imperative that you set aside time every day to work – usually I find that it’s a lot easier find plenty of spare time late afternoon / early evening as opposed to morning, but that’s probably a side-effect of my night-time routine – your mileage may vary. In any case, one big block of work time is easier to manage while traveling, and while working / blogging off your SmartPhone / PDA / Blackberry means you’re usually ‘offline’, it helps if you can find some space to yourself as well. And if you’re not used to working in such surroundings, the music always helps.

What’s Your Secret?

How do you manage the demands of working on the move?

This article was originally written on 9 Nov 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Optimizing for search users vs Optimizing for search engines

While reading Stoney deGeyeter’s article – 10 Useless SEO Worries (his booboo on PageRank apart, I agree with the fellow on everything else) – I couldn’t help but notice this gem:

Is it smart to work on getting your site ranked on MSN, Yahoo, and Ask? Sure, absolutely. But never at the expense of your Google rankings. Never. While different algorithms are employed, they all tend to run off the same basic premise: a good site will rank well, regardless of the algorithm used to evaluate it.
Don’t think that you need to optimize a page for each search engine. It doesn’t work that way. Just do good optimization and all engines will rate you accordingly.

Stoney’s argument is rock-solid and financially sound, even though the thought of being partial to Google amounts to Google-worshipping and therefore leaves a bad taste in the mouths of some people.

Rebecca from SEOmoz talks about ‘whether you should optimize your site for each individual search engine or not’ (Rebecca says no, of course she’s right…). I’ll this a bit further and say that you should:

Optimize for search users, not search engines.

As Stoney and Rebecca say, it’s important to adhere to basic SEO principles that will allow your website to be picked up and index by search engines. And of course, you need to understand how search engines rank websites, because without that knowledge you’ll interpret fluctuations in your search rankings as magic. Good if you’re interested in delusions, but not helpful in marketing your business.

Beyond the understanding bit though, it’s not about optimizing for specific search engines, it’s about optimizing for search users.

So…What Do Search Users Want?

In the absence of hard research at hand’s reach, I’ll posit a good-enough answer:

Search users want search engines to read their minds and automatically serve up what they need, even if the searcher himself doesn’t know exactly what that is.

Search engines perform this task – clumsily but with increasing adeptness – by using a variety of methods: personalised search, trust and authority (T & A), vertical search, geotargeting, etc (insert fancy term for time and date based SERPs customisation). It pays to understand each of these methods but what if you could understand this as part of a simpler, more unified theory of reaching your customers?

Think of search users as a subset of your potential customer base. There are multiple methods of reaching your target audience – offline marketing, viral emails, search, newletters, social media, online video – with all these options, it’s a safe bet that if you’re only focusing on search, you’re missing out on a significant portion of your potential audience (and thus moolah-spinning opportunities). If search can be classified as just one part of your marketing, we can easily use a more unified and simpler theory of marketing that will help us increase search referrals while improving our chances of … say … bringing in traffic from offline media as well.

Believe it or not, wondering about what search users want is exactly the trap you shouldn’t be getting stuck in. The more efficient way of doing this to think about your audience at large, what they want and figure out the best way to deliver that. At the same time, it’s important to figure out how to reach as much of your target audience as possible – and search users are just a subset of that audience.

If you can figure out what your audience wants, you already have a good idea of what search users in your niche want. Then it’s down to a) structuring that information properly on your website and b) promoting the hell out of it. If you can get people (i.e. your target audience) talking about your website online (where talking means discussing in blogs, forums, etc), and if you can keep that conversation going AND growing, your work is pretty much done.

To quantify this in real terms, let’s take a seo blog. You pay good money to hire a writer to write about the latest seo tactics (with a twist – no self-respecting seo blogger goes in the industry without a hook / angle anymore) and let’s also suppose that you succeed in getting many blogs talking about your site. Conversation equals links (and note that these links are from sites within your niche). Eventually, the conversation reaches a tipping point, where everyone seems to be talking about you, from top to bottom, helping you to reach a big, big part of your audience.

How do you think your search rankings are going to look at this point (assuming you’re doing this in a less competitive niche than SEO, I’d say quite good)? Is this a result of optimizing for a particular search engine, or even optimizing for search users? Yes and no. Yes because the strategies you’ve used cover both search engines and search users.

No because you’re not working on optimizing for either per se – you’re just marketing your website using methods that work through a variety of mediums.

If the question comes up, think of optimizing for search users, not search engines. But if you really want to be successful online, focus on your audience and your marketing strategies as a whole.

Also Read: Are Search Engines Evil?

This article was originally written on 2 Nov 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Poaching writers and blog network ethics

One of the big plusses of the Internet is the ability to hire people from across the globe and have them work for you remotely. As a blog (and blog network) owner, I tend to take it for granted that I can, at any point in time, contact any of my bloggers and get them to write something on a particular topic without leaving the comfort of my office (or indeed, home).

The downside is that in the absence of any physical connections (they don’t come to the office to work for you every day), it’s a lot easier for other blog owners and blog networks to approach them. I’m not saying that it makes it easier for bloggers to leave – not at all, loyalty extends beyond borders and physical proximity – but with the access there’s a much greater chance of:

  • You not finding out about the exchange until its too late.
  • The poacher finding out the details of the arrangement from your writer and offering them a better package, perhaps something you can’t offer at the time.

Recently, a blog owner in my network forwarded an email conversation he’d had with a major retailer in our niche. They were interested in having him come on-board as one of their columnists. He’s saying no, but when you start discussing pay packages and everything the only thing a blog owner / network owner can count on is loyalty.

Which brings us to the question for the day: What do you do to keep your employees / network members loyal to you / the network?

This article was originally written on 24 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Ten simple rules for online success

This article was inspired by an offhand rant in an IM session with David – thank you for listening mate.

Over the weekend I was looking at my own life (you know, the usual introspective Sundays) when I was – to put it mildly – interrupted by another whining session from someone who has been seeking success all their life and hasn’t achieved it. It made me angry at the time (hence the rant) but after a while I figured that for most people, going from failure to success was a process that they just couldn’t get started on.

I’ve tried to catalog that process here. It all starts with a plea to …

10. Stop Whining.

The world is a tough place, we get it. We ALL GET IT. You’re not doing yourself any favors by focusing on the bad stuff. In fact, you’re just polluting the world and bringing down the energy of the people unfortunate enough to be in hearing distance at the time (or as the case may be, to read what you write). The faster you get over your self-importance and start working on making things better (you know, real shit, like working on that linkbait that you can’t crack, or those blog posts that you don’t have the time for, or outsourcing that theme you just don’t know how to code), the faster you’ll get to where you want to be.

The fastest way to stop focusing on what’s wrong and start working on improving your current condition is to…

9. Channel Your Energies

Suppose that you’re shafted in a project you’re working on – the person who’s hired you collects the work and makes off without paying you. Understandably, you’re angry. But how would you deal with this anger? Venting is good (and necessary), but there is a difference between using that anger to achieve something positive and letting that anger eat you up inside.

Could you set in place practices that ensure that you get paid for 100% of your projects? Is there some way you can get back at the person who’s wronged you (religion allows for revenge, in case you’re objecting) without spending too much time / energy (publicly cataloging this incident on your blog / website / forum you frequent)?

At every junction of your life you’re presented by choices – and (as I venture dangerously into feel-good mumbo-jumbo) you’ve got a responsibility to yourself to make the right choices – the ones that help you move your life forward and take you towards your goals.

If something evokes a strong emotional reaction, find an outlet, get the initial and strongest reaction out of your system and then channel your remaining emotions into something constructive. To do this, you have to…

8. Focus

It’s easy to tell yourself that you must focus on a particular task, in practice its virtually impossible to do so if you have problems with paying attention. There’s no big secret to razor-sharp focus – barring genetic pre-dispositions and childhood habits, the best you can do to help yourself focus is to:

  • catalog distractions and ruthlessly eliminate them.
  • setup a stable daily routine for your work – forming stable work habits are the best way to get (and stay) focused on your work.

The biggest obstacle to focused effort is your resistance to doing tasks / work that you’re not interested in (and in contrast, the easiest way to build focus is to work on something you enjoy). This leads us to the next two steps…

7. Find Yourself and Your Target

When it comes to success (and making money), it’s important to know what you want. To figure that out, you need to know what your strengths are (fields of work as well as type of work) and what impassions you. While your interests will evolve with time, getting your bearings right at the start makes it easier to make course corrections in the future.

Once you know what you want, you have to figure out what to do.

Let’s say you’re struggling to provide a comfortable living for yourself, and your aim is to earn at least $5k / month. Knowing what you want at this point is not enough – you need to choose projects (and therefore develop habits) that bring you to that total. In other words, if you cannot achieve a goal in your current circumstances then you need to change them, step out of your comfort zone and in short cause radical change in your life in order to get to where you want to be.

The most common excuse (see #10 on how to deal with such excuses) I’ve heard (and given a few times myself) is that stepping out of the comfort zone is difficult, and there are risks involved with it. A different version of this is the worst excuse known to man (because it is self-deceptive and only manages to keep you stuck in the same place for a longer period of time):

“I’m working on it, and I’ve got it all figured out – it’ll take me this long (insert fashionably long period, more than 6 months) to achieve this target (something that this person could achieve in less than 3 months if they changed the rules and made a genuine effort to step out and take a risk).”

Yes, take risks … but calculated risks, backed by knowing exactly what you want and knowing how to get there (points 6 to 3 will help).

6. Sacrifice / Self-Discipline

So now you know what to do. The problem is, you probably don’t have the time to get it done (sound familiar?). When we talked about ‘Focus’ (#8), the key ideas were to eliminate distractions and build habits that help you focus more.

Eliminating distractions means sacrificing things that you may enjoy ‘now’ but are not helping you achieve your goals – such as talking to your friend on the phone at 10am in the morning, or browsing Amazon for Dilbert books at 10:30am. Switching your phone off (having an assistant or using a second number that’s only for emergencies works better), avoiding checking your email like the plague (twice a day, max – otherwise you’ll spend your day looking at email piling up) and staying offline (unplug your DSL / cable modem and hide it if you have to) when you’re working are just a few of the sacrifices you’ll need to make, and this requires self-discipline.

It’s not rocket science – by establishing a regular routine (and thus making it easy for you to develop habits), you can eliminate distractions to a large extent. The problem comes when you have a variable routine (like me) – in that case, at least ensure that you work for the same amount of time, at the same hours, each day.

5. Consistent Effort

It may seem moronically obvious to hear this, but you need to work hard consistently on a project in order for it to be successful (insert suitable plant growing analogy here). While you don’t have to wait a century to get something done, you also can’t build Rome in a day (or something to that effect).

The unfortunate thing is, most people are divided into two categories. They’re either bloody impatient, or they’re stuck in the pattern on wanting to do everything by themselves. Neither approach will succeed. You need some patience (consistency is more like it), and more importantly, you need to leverage…

4. Other People’s Resources

By yourself, you can only expand to a certain point (self-cloning is out of the question, at least for now). With the help of others, there is no limit to what you can do (although self-cloning would still be out of the question).

Outsource. Hire. Give yourself more time to do the important stuff by getting others to do the unimportant stuff. This form of leverage usually costs money, but the time you free up can allow you to earn a lot more – allowing you to be better off than when you were doing everything yourself.

If you haven’t done this yet, stop everything a read this article.

3. Always Improve

Most people will read this article, bookmark it and then forget about it. Some will apply one thing from it, and then forget the rest.

Truth be told, improving one time is almost as useless as not improving at all. If you take one step forward and then step, you haven’t really gone anywhere. The real benefits will come when you’ve taken several steps forward, one after the other, in a short period of time. You don’t change your life with a single step – it takes a journey (even a short one) to move past old comfort zones and establish yourself at a higher level of success.

And whatever you do, don’t settle for being good enough.

2. Share

Sharing your knowledge, your expertise, your experiences – sharing what you know – is one of the fastest ways to improve your own understanding of how things work. And (to take the cynical route) even if you think you’re successful enough, the network benefits you receive from helping others ensure that sharing is perhaps the best way to achieve #4 (leveraging other people’s resources).

1. Act Now

Do you still think that there’s any ’secret’ recipe to success? Everything I’ve said here is common sense – find out what you want, do whatever it takes to get it, even if it means giving up on smaller dreams and getting help from the world around you. It’s not magic, there’s no mystery, the keys are right in front of you.

All you have to do is take action and get started. What are you waiting for?

This article was originally written on 23 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Blogs and leveraging the search tail

We’ve already established that bloggers need SEO, and that it’s not PageRank or some other silly metric that you should be running after, it’s search referral volume.

Here’s a plug-n-play strategy for attracting (and profiting from) search engine traffic to your blog:

  1. Build a website that is trusted by the search engines in that niche.
    You need links from authoritative blogs in your niche, deep links from authoritative blogs from other niches, quality directory links (dmoz, botw, yahoo plus 3-5 top niche directories). In addition, if you’re smart with your blogging, you can linkbait the hell out of your niche in your quest to build trust into your blog.

  2. Track popular trends / news in your niche.
    This isn’t hard to do if you have a pulse on the latest news in your niche. Find upcoming events, breaking news, seasonal trends, etc, and prepare for them in advance. If you’re covering a news-related niche, this becomes very easy, otherwise you need to work hard on cracking the search tail in your niche.

  3. Be one of the first to write an article on fresh trends and news (thus focusing on 3-5 word phrases) – and taking advantage of Google’s super-fast indexing, you can be on in the top 5 results for queries within 24 hours.
    Easier said than done, but in most cases the best edge you can find is to be first with the news.

  4. Convert that traffic by giving them an incentive to return to your blog / bookmark it.
    With news items, you can improve your chances of attracting comments, links or rss subscriptions. With resource sites, you can work on rss subs and social media votes.

  5. Alternatively, you could monetize this traffic using CPM ads, AdSense or any affiliate program.

Of course, this isn’t completely plug-n-play – you’ll have to adapt your methods for each niche and type of site (‘news’ sites will work differently from ‘resource’ sites, which in turn will work differently from ‘community’ sites). However, if you want to dominate the SERPS for your niche AND you think you should milk Google for what it’s worth while building a strong, independent brand, then this is the first step.

This article was originally written on 17 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - News blogging vs ‘Real’ journalism

The default approach bloggers use when ‘reporting news’ is to follow the same pattern as journalists do in their newspaper columns.

Sara Christensen, from Pajama Professional, puts it best:

Breaking news on your blog is great, but that doesn’t mean your posts have to sound like news. If readers want news, they will head to CNN.com. They are at your blog because they want your original viewpoint. The fastest way to lose readers is to start regurgitating news content in a really boring fashion.

For my news blog, I often get contributions from writers who try extremely hard to copy the style of reporting shown on BBC / Times / Guardian. That’s not why readers are coming to my blog, and chances are, that’s not why readers are going towards blogs in the first place.

If you want your readers to stick around, to become a part of the community, and most of all, if you want your blog to stand out and actually build a fan base, you need to infuse your blog (and blogging) with:

  • An original viewpoint (no regurgitated news, ever)
  • A personality

More from Sara’s article:

The thing to remember is, popular blogs become popular because of the blogger. A good blogger shows personality even when he/she is writing about an impersonal topic. Regular readers start to feel like they know the blogger personally. Once this happens, readers form attachments and loyalties that are achievable only in a venue like blogging that highlights a writer’s personality.

Don’t make the same mistake that 99% of the other ‘news’ bloggers are making. If you’re hiring people to write for your news blog, make sure they read Sara’s article and learn that the success of the blog depends on your writing style and content – if you’re going to go down the ’safe’ (bland) route of traditional reporting, you’ll miss out on creating a community and on building a strong, loyal readership.

This article was originally written on 12 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Let’s talk about branding

2007 has been the year of consolidation and building brands – and with that we’re seeing more and more people understanding that to build a successful business you need to move away from ‘push’ marketing and work more on positioning your product / service and attracting attention by building a powerful brand.

In this article on building brands, Ryan talks about first setting big goals for your blogs and then working hard on building the brands to match those goals. It’s easy to say this (dream big, then work your ass off to achieve those dreams), but how do you go about doing it?

Pick Goals Worthy Of You

95% of the people in this world think the other way around – they look at their own circumstances and then allow them to shape their goals. If you follow this route, your goals will be limited to where you are at present and will in fact trap you into the same place, not allowing you to grow and prosper beyond a certain point.

Shed the mental shackles, silence that dissenting voice in your head and go as high as you can go. At worst you’ll fail, but let me tell you one thing – working hard for something impossible and failing will get you much farther than working within your means for something that is within your reach.

Marketing = Branding

If you are promoting yourself, then remember that everything you do in a public setting is marketing – the way you talk to clients / prospects / press / employees / competitors / colleagues, the way you interact online through your blog / comments / forums, the quality of your work, your attention (or lack thereof) to detail, your ability to keep your word – everything you do is marketing.

If you are promoting your blog / your business, then everything – from your customer service to your blog design to the error message your readers get if they enter the wrong URL – is marketing.

Branding is often defined as an organisation’s representation of what it stands for – I’d like to flip this around. Branding is what your customers – your target audience – think you stand for. A strong brand is one that is consistent, focused and easily identified. Your brand is how your readers, your clients identify you. Your brand is what prospective clients will base their buying decisions on. Your brand determines how people talk about you in your niche (or if you’re big enough, outside it).

Marketing = Branding. When you’re promoting your blog (or your company), you’re essentially building an identity in the minds of your target audience. That process is branding.

3 Simple Steps to Strengthen Your Brand Right Now

Brand-building is often thought of as a difficult exercise that somehow involves lots of brainstorming and boardroom meetings. It can be as easy as following three simple steps:

  1. Narrow Your Focus: Being a jack of all trades is a great trait to have, but if you want to build an enduring brand you must carve your name out as being the master of one trade. Whether it’s your blog or your consulting service, narrow your focus to one niche (or sub-niche) and dominate it (like candy).
  2. Be Consistent: What message do you want your brand to convey to your readers? Whatever it is, you need to integrate those ideas in every action related to your business. If ‘quality’ is part of your brand’s message, it doesn’t help if your blog has broken links, uses the default WordPress theme and you regularly make spelling and grammar mistakes. You’d be surprised at how small things like the words you use and how you conduct yourself in the everyday tasks of your business works towards building / destroying your brand.
  3. Be a Leader: Once you’re the first name on everyone’s mind when they think about a particular subject, your work is mostly done. Work hard on being the leader in your niche – narrow your niche down if necessary to make it happen.

Brands may start out small, but their power and reach is only limited by your goals and how you apply the laws of branding (simply put, the more you dilute your brand through ‘widening’ your scope, the more you hurt it).

How are you building your blog’s brand? And since it’s increasingly relevant in the online world, what about your personal brand?

This article was originally written on 17 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - When serving your readers can sabotage your blog

Serve your readers.

Or so goes the popular blogging mantra. In theory, you should always keep the reader first in your mind, because just like the consumer is always right, your blog is nothing if it doesn’t serve the desires of your much-valued readers.

In practice, there’s such a thing as bending over backwards too far to accommodate your readers at the expense of compromising the objectives of your blog – which, in case you haven’t taking Blogging 101, is a big NO-NO.

For example, let’s take the case of Hugh Macleod’s excellent blog, Gaping Void. I, like many others, hit that blog up only for his artwork. Not to be rude, but I’m not interested in the projects Hugh is working on, or what’s going on in his personal life (I would if we were friends, but that hasn’t happened yet).

Now if a lot of readers were to ask Hugh to setup a category / tag / special feed for just his comic posts, would that be a bad idea from a “be user-friendly” perspective? I mean, if there is a significant portion of your readers who are coming only for the comics and emailing you (like I’ve emailed Hugh 3-4 times before I realised why it would be bad for his blog) to setup something separate, wouldn’t it make sense to serve their needs better?

The thing is, Gaping Void is not just about comics drawn on the back of business cards, despite the tag-line. Over the years it has morphed into something more – if I were to venture an uninformed guess, it’s a public forum for Hugh to discuss his views on a variety of issues, most of them tied together with the common thread of marketing / the Internet. You might not care about what Hugh thinks, but that’s what his blog is for.

Who should compromise here? In my view it’s the readers who should bite the bullet and learn to skim the blog for cartoons (it’s surprisingly easy to skim over text and look just for the pictures) – for Hugh, a lot of these readers will also end up reading what he writes, and this way his views and his projects get more eyeballs than they would if he siphoned the comic-only readers off to a special feed / section of the site.

Serve your readers, but not at the expense of sabotaging the reason why you blog in the first place.

This article was originally written on 11 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - The other side of blogger credibility

If you want to be known as an expert in your niche, one of the best ways to build your credibility is to get published in popular media – whether that’s offline or online.

It is credibility through association – books and newspapers are generally associated with expertise, authority, research and knowledge, so if you end up writing a book or a column in a newspaper, you can establish your own credibility by virtue of association (this applies to industry-leading blogs too, by the way – why do you think guest blogging is so hot?)

Today I want you to look at it from a different angle – how getting published in a major newspaper or leading website / blog in your niche is NO guarantee that you’re any good at what you do.

These days self-publishing is easier than ever. Anyone can put together 50 pages and call it a book – slap it next to your profile on your blog, spin some hype and you’re on your way to being an expert.

And you’d be surprised at how much journalists usually know compared to the general population – usually it’s a lot of spin coupled with access to more news / gossip / rumours than the ordinary man on the street. Once you mash together opinion with half-truths, hype and metaphors you have the makings of a genius column.

As indicators of expertise, publishing a book and writing a newspaper (or blog) column are superficial signs – highly effective at manipulating mass perception on a subtle and subconscious level but not enough on their own to demonstrate expertise.

Earlier this week I got an article submission from an unknown blogger. It was an average article, and while we’ve published ‘average’ and sometimes below average pieces on that blog before, I chose to turn this one down because I wanted to stick to quality. In my reply, I told the author that the article was not ‘good enough’ to go up on the site. Perhaps a bit harsh, but that was the truth at the time.

The next day I get an angry email from an acquaintance, another blogger in the same niche and a friend of the first author. I was summarily presented with the original author’s ‘accomplishments’ and their status as an expert (thanks to them being a regular columnist for a leading news site).

The incident struck a chord with me because sometimes people – good writers – get to a point where they are too full of themselves to consider that their work is crap. I’ve been there, and I know how angry one feels at being ‘turned down’, but the reality is that if you’re not delivering what your audience wants and if you keep relying on your reputation rather than the quality of your work, you’re going nowhere, fast.

When it comes to trusting a blogger and estimating their expertise, don’t use their reputation or the fact that they wrote at so and so blog as a definitive criteria (although it does help to weed out the trash) – make sure that you read what they write without any bias and then decide if they are any good.

This article was written on 11 Oct 2007 for Performancing.com.

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