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In a quiet moment yesterday I asked my Twitter network:

“what’s one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what’s stopping you from doing it now?)”

The answers were quite varied – everything from redesigns, to writing E-Books, to posting more regularly to SEO optimization, to monetization.

A number of people reflected that just being asked the question helped them to move forward with things that they’d been procrastinating with – so I thought I’d ask the question again here on the blog.

Of course there can be good reasons for putting things off – timing is important and you can’t do everything at once – but if you’re anything like me there are things that you know you probably should be doing that you’re simply procrastinating about.

For me one of the big procrastinations for me until mid last year was creating a product of my own. I’d always said I’d write an E-Book – but every time I sat down to do it I never got past the planning stage (I have notebooks with about 10 different plans that never eventuated).

Why didn’t I do it? Was it laziness…. or busyness….? If I’m honest about it I’m sure it’d be a bit of both of those things – however I suspect it was also partly fear that held me back.

Fear that it’d flop, fear that nobody would buy it, fear that people would critique me for selling something and not giving it away for free, fear that it wouldn’t be perfect, fear that perhaps I didn’t have it in me to create a product like I wanted….

Actually – saying I was too busy might sound a bit better – I sound very insecure!

In the end – I knew that if I didn’t create an E-Book that I’d be kicking myself later. The time came for me to draw a line in the sand and just do it. I don’t have any secret strategies for getting over the hump of getting myself into gear really.

I did tell a couple of others that I was doing it – I did set aside two days purely to put it together – I did engage the services of someone to help me design it – I did set myself a deadline.

All of that helped me get going but in the end it was a change of attitude that got me over the hump.

“what’s one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what’s stopping you from doing it now?)”

PS: one of the reasons I started ProBlogger.com was to help those of us who procrastinate to be accountable to others. A number of our members over there are setting themselves (and each other) challenges to help them keep moving forward.

For example Paul recently set a challenge for members to create a free report/e-book to give away (that link is only viewable by members). What’s exciting to me is that a number of members have actually got their reports ready and launched as a result of working together in this way rather than just tackling their list of things that they must do alone.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?

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What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?

I started blogging in 2002.

Since that time the question I’m most frequently asked by strangers at parties who hear what I do has changed 3 times.

• what’s a blog? (2002-2004)
• how do you make money blogging? (2005-2008)
• you still blog – doesn’t everyone Tweet these days? (2009-2010)

I wonder what’ll be next?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

My Most Frequently Asked Questions at Parties (since 2002)

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My Most Frequently Asked Questions at Parties (since 2002)

What are your biggest challenges going forward as a blogger into the new year?

In the coming weeks I’m planning on taking a day or two out to plan a roadmap for ProBlogger going into the new year. I already have a fair idea of where I’d like to go based upon a recent survey I did of newsletter subscriber – but I want to test some of the ideas I have against your feedback as the wider ProBlogger readership.

As you look at your blog and the year ahead:

• what is it that you feel is holding you back?
• What problems do you face?
• What questions do you have that you can’t get passed?
• What issues do you keep coming up against that just hold you back?

I’m not going to give you any suggested answers on this question as I don’t want to cloud or skew your answers in any way – but am keen to hear what you have to say.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Are Your Blogging Challenges in 2010?

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What Are Your Blogging Challenges in 2010?

“Tell us how you ‘really‘ get traffic to your blog?”

After presenting to a group of bloggers at an event recently I was surprised to be asked this question by someone in the audience.

I wasn’t surprised that people would want to know about how to get traffic to a blog – it’s something most bloggers want to know about – I was surprised to be asked it at THIS event because i’d just finished speaking for 30 minutes on the topic of ‘getting traffic to your blog‘.

After 30 minutes of sharing how I generate traffic to my blogs – I was asked to share what ‘really’ works. Hmmmm – was my presentation that bad… or was there something else going on here?

I sat down for a coffee with the person who asked me the question to dig a little deeper and as the conversation unfolded it became clear to me that the blogger was after a ’silver bullet’.

He wanted some secret method of generating traffic that would flood his blog with new readers, some new technique that most bloggers had not cottoned onto yet that would lift him above the rest and propel him to blogging super-stardom.

He told me that he’d tried all the normal tips on how to get traffic – some had worked and had found him new readers and others had not – but now he wanted something new. What advice could I give?

I decided to share my ‘real’ secret to big blogging traffic.

Identify What Works…. and Do it Again…. and Again….. Improving it Each Time

Here’s the thing – there’s no one technique that is going to bring every blog new traffic.

But if you try lots of different approaches and identify what does work – even if it only works a little – you’re on the way.

Find something that works for your blog, your niche, your demographic and then build upon that.

Here’s an example of how this worked for me:

• A couple of months after starting my photography site (a few years back now) I started a Group on Flickr which allowed readers to share their best shots – to show them off, get some critique on their work and see what others on the site were doing with their photography.
• Readers LOVED sharing their shots. We soon started a forum with a specific area for sharing of shots – (ingeniously called the ‘Share Your Shots‘ section).
• This section of the site became so popular that we expanded it and started a ‘Critique‘ area where people could not only share a shot but get feedback on it.
• This section was so popular that we started multiple critique areas – for different types of photography (eg: Landscape photography, Portrait photography etc).
• Also early in the life of the forum we started doing Weekly Assignments to let readers all go out and take shots on the same theme each week and then come back and share their best one.
• To this point all the sharing of shots happened in the forum – but I began to realize that not all of the blog readers visited the forum so on a whim one day I asked readers on the blog to share their best shot ever. We had 300 comments left – most with links to their favourite shot on Flickr or a photoblog.
• I continued to invite readers to occasionally share a favorite shot on the blog in comments – usually when we posted a tutorial on a specific type of photography. Each time I did this we had heaps of comments left.
• Earlier in the year I decided to give readers a ‘photographic challenge’ – to photograph something within 10 meters of them. People really responded to the idea of a challenge.
• As a result I decided to start ‘Weekend photography Challenges’ on the blog – similar to weekly assignments on the forum but for those who either didn’t become forum members or those who wanted two challenges a week. At first they were only every few weekends (the first was a Landscape one) but as readers responded so well to them we made them weekly.
• The challenges continued to become popular so we added a plugin to the blog that allowed people to share photos IN the posts (see this in action in our Pet Photography Challenge) – not everyone uses this feature but it increased participation a lot. We also improved the challenges by getting people to tag their photos on Flickr with a common tag and link to the challenges.

What started as a fairly simply idea (giving readers a place to share their shots – not even on my own site but using Flickr – evolved into multiple ideas that built upon that initial idea. Each time we evolved the idea we created buzz, reader engagement, traffic and site stickiness.

Keep in mind that this process has taken us over 3 years. The changes have been gradual, we’ve made mistakes along the way, but instead of spending all our time trying to find a ’silver bullet’ that we could just drop into the site to bring heaps of traffic – we improved something that showed promise in the early days.

A further example of this would be the site’s email newsletter list. In the early days when we first tried it I remember wondering if it was worth the effort of sending a weekly newsletter out to 100 people… but I saw some potential in it and each week it grew, each week I learned something new about improving the newsletters and each week it became more worth the effort. Today it drives hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site each week.

Some questions to help identify what is working (or what might work) with your readers and niche:

• What topics generate most comments on your blog?
• What topics generate most comments on other blogs in your niche?
• What other sites do your readers visit a lot? What activities are they doing there?
• What features are readers asking for?
• What was your biggest traffic day – what brought it about?
• Which of your posts seem to get Retweeted most on Twitter and passed around most on other social media sites?
• Which of your posts are getting linked to most from other blogs/sites?
• What other sites send you most traffic? How can you build relationships with these sites?

This list could go on and on – really it is about looking for points of life on your site (even small ones) where there’s some kind of energy or positive outcome happening – and then repeating them in some way – looking for opportunities to build upon and improve what you previously did.

Got any examples to share of where you’ve done this on your own blog?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

My REAL Secret to Growing Traffic to a Blog

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My REAL Secret to Growing Traffic to a Blog

Over the coming weeks I have lined up to record audio interviews with a number of bloggers who have been making a living from their blogging and related activities. The first 3 are:

• Leo Babauta – from Zen Habits
  

I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for Thanksgiving.

First, because it’s an excuse for me to bake for three days. (If you need a last-minute recipe for the world’s best chocolate cream pie, I’ve got you covered.)

And second, because it reminds me to quit grumbling and start noticing all of the amazing stuff I’ve got in my life.

Here’s my list of 10 things I would humbly recommend you add to your own “gratitude list” this year. They’ve done great things for my business and I think they’ll do great things for yours.

1. The crummy economy

I know, this seems weird. I’m not discounting the very serious and significant problems this has created for millions of people. One of whom might well be you.

But in cracking open the existing systems and shaking them like an ant farm, the horrible economy has also created some amazing opportunities.

If you think of the big companies as dinosaurs who’ve just been hit between the eyes with a gigantic meteor, remember that you’re the smart, agile, adaptable monkey who’s going to inherit the earth.

Frankly, the economy is going to suck for awhile no matter how you feel about it. So you might as well look for the angles that can benefit you.

2. The social web

Brian’s not a fan of this term, since of course everything about the web has always been social. It was built by humans, after all.

But there’s no question that a revolution in communication technology lets you be social with more people, more easily, over incredible geographic and cultural distances, with less friction than ever before.

Which means you can get the word out about what you do for hardly any money, with no special technical ability, to tens of thousands or even millions of people.

And that’s just cool.

3. The quality of free information

Stewart Brand didn’t just say “information wants to be free.” He also said, “information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable.”

What this boils down to is that a lot of smart people have put together great tips, techniques, and help for you to do just about anything. Very often, they start by selling that information at a hefty price tag, to those for whom it’s most valuable.

Then some time goes by, they keep developing their stuff, and they “move the free line” by giving away tremendously valuable information for free.

Yes, the free goodies take time to sift through. Yes, there’s a whole lot of junk.

But if you’re bootstrapping your project, you can spend a little more time and energy and find the answers you want.

Because the current ethos is “give away incredibly valuable stuff for free to build trust and rapport,” you can benefit from that.

You have to choose wisely, of course. Don’t spend your time watching or reading anything from people you don’t respect or relate to. But if you stick with the people your gut tells you are right for you, you can learn amazing things without spending a dime.

4. The quality of paid information

Because there’s so much excellent free material out there, it means that for people who are creating paid information products (membership sites, ebooks, home study courses, etc.), their stuff has to be top notch.

So when you find yourself crossing that line where you’ve got some spare money but not much spare time, you have increasingly excellent opportunities to educate yourself online.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re learning to fly fish, climb the corporate ladder, design gardens, potty train your kid, be a happier person, or even (yes) market your business online, there are terrific resources that will teach you to do that for a very reasonable fee. And you can access these courses from virtually anywhere on earth.

5. Twitter search

Companies have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in VC funding to build tools that “listen in” to the conversations buzzing around the Internet.

That’s fine, but you can do an amazing job of this for free by signing up for a Twitter account.

Too many people think Twitter is mostly about telling people what kind of sandwich they’re having for lunch today. But for smart business people, Twitter is mostly about listening.

Search Twitter for the kinds of phrases your customers tend to talk about. Maybe it’s low-carb dessert recipes or finding a karate school for their kids.

You’ll find out what they’re saying, what kind of language they use to talk about it, what bugs them and what delights them.

These are staggeringly useful things to know when you’re trying to market a product or service. And you can get it by spending maybe 6 or 7 minutes a day, for free.

6. Connections with incredible people

Whatever it is you like to blog or write about, there are amazingly cool people who like to blog and write about that, too.

They’re posting wonderful articles and interesting perspectives and asking fascinating questions. And you can get to know them just by writing about their stuff (with a link, of course), posting reasonably intelligent comments on their blog, and following them on Twitter.

The smart, funny, snarky, interesting, kind, and entirely wonderful people I’ve met by blogging have blown me away. And I’m always finding new folks. (That was true before I started writing for a “big blog,” by the way. In fact, it’s how I started writing for a big blog.)

7. Aweber

Aweber (www.aweber.com) is my email newsletter management tool. They do a great job getting mail into in-boxes (mostly because they hate spammers even worse than you do). They have useful tools, a fantastic how-to blog, an easy-to-understand interface, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

A great email autoresponder sequence is my single favorite marketing tool (above a blog, even), and Aweber is the tool I think is best for the job.

8. Backpack

37Signals is another company I think is terrific, and I would be toast without their Backpack product.

Backpack keeps everything I do in one spot. Half-written blog posts, GTD lists, my calendar, reference notes for client projects, wild-hair ideas for new ventures, gardening plans, checklists for things I’m building, even backups of the million ebooks and audio education products I buy.

For me, they have the exact right combination of flexibility and simplicity, at an excellent price. If it doesn’t fit into my Backpack, I can probably live without it.

9. My copywriting library

A lot of those “secrets of the internet money-getting zillionaires” came from books you can buy for $12 on Amazon.

You can’t make money unless you can persuade someone to pay attention to what you’ve got, and then build a case for its value. That’s copywriting. (It’s even copywriting if you’re doing it with video.)

Classics like Scientific Advertising and Tested Advertising Methods are joined by newer giants like Robert Cialdini’s Influence and Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, and a handful of great web-based references like Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets.

Learning to write great persuasive copy is mostly a matter of studying the techniques (which don’t change much, because human nature doesn’t change) and then trying them out. There’s no “push button” service that will magically do it for you. But the truth is, it’s well within your ability. You just have to get out there and start trying it.

10. The Third Tribe

This was an idea that bubbled up on Copyblogger back in February, after we were asked the question “Whose side are you on?”

Brian and I talked about this question quite a bit, and realized that we definitely weren’t on the strict yellow-highlighter-squeeze-page side. But we weren’t on the “blog for 20 years before you dare to ask anyone for the sale” side either.

So we made up a third side.

Actually, it had been there all along, going back four years to when Brian first created this blog. But once you have a label, you find that you start to articulate what you’re doing more clearly.

That led directly to the brand-new Copyblogger email newsletter, which kicks off with a 20-part course on how to be an ethical, non-sleazy, relationship-based kumbaya blogger and still make a very nice living. If that sounds like something that would interest you, you can learn more about the newsletter here.

What’s on your list?

What are you grateful for this year? What do you think other readers would be grateful for if they knew more about it? Let us know in the comments.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

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10 Things to Be Grateful For

Last Friday I was in Atlanta, where I gave a talk on social media marketing at Dan Kennedy’s InfoSUMMIT conference.

I’m something of a fish out of water at a Glazer-Kennedy event. For example, unlike at Blogworld, I’m the only person in a room of 800 who has pink hair.

I wasn’t sure they’d be too receptive to what I had to say, but they surprised me.

They were warm, welcoming, and extremely interested in my no-shortcuts, no-magic-beans answers to their questions about how to use social media for marketing and business.

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the “Professor of Harsh Reality,” I thought I’d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.

Harsh Reality #1: No one is reading your blog

As far as anyone can figure, there are about 200 million blogs around the world. Technorati tells us there are about 900,000 blog posts made every 24 hours.

The world is not waiting breathlessly to hear what you have to say about losing weight with acai berries, making big money as an affiliate marketer, or how to join your Secrets of the Breakthrough Millionaire Insider Guru Mastermind Platinum Club.

Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won’t cut it. There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can.)

If you don’t have a great answer to the question “Why should anyone read your blog?” you’re going to be pretty unhappy with your results. That’s why we spend so much time teaching you how to produce better, smarter, more effective content.

Harsh Reality #2: You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away

It’s very natural to expect to get paid for what you do. And you should have a business model that leads to exactly that.

But first, you’ve got some dues to pay.

Commenter Corree Silvera mentioned her favorite Brian Clark quote from this year’s Blogworld Expo:

Don’t sacrifice a lot of money later for a little money now.

The answer to the question in Harsh Reality #1, “why should anyone read your blog?” is that you’re going to give away some of your best, most valuable, most life-improving material away for free, within a well-defined content marketing plan.

Just remember Sean d’Souza’s bikini concept. You can give 90% of it away, but there will always be people who will happily pay to see that last 10%.

Harsh Reality #3: It will eat your life (if you let it)

Social media marketing would be pretty easy if we never had to eat, sleep, shower, or hang out with our kids.

But if doing those things is important to you, you’re going to have to set some boundaries.

Know what you want to do with social media, keep yourself focused, and set a timer if you have to. The tools are amazing, but so is their power to distract you from what you’re trying to accomplish.

Harsh Reality #4: Social media hates selling

Is there anything more pitiful than that guy who gets on Twitter and won’t shut up about how he can put you in a condo today with no money down despite your lousy credit rating? Even the spammers are blocking this dude.

It’s really hard to sell products and services in social media, mostly because this audience hates salespeople worse than they hate Microsoft. You may be able to get some limited success out of it, but more likely you’ll be banned, blocked, shunned, and abused.

Instead of promoting a product or service, promote fantastic content. Promote a great special report or an amazingly valuable email course. Promote wonderful stuff that you’re giving away.

Use excellent free stuff to build authority and trust. Then you have the right to make an offer and possibly do some business. Not before.

Harsh Reality #5: What they say is a million times more important than what you say

Your marketing might be beautifully executed. You might have a special report that goes more viral than H1N1, a great-looking blog that hits Digg twice a day, and an email marketing sequence that copywriting genius Gene Schwartz would have been proud to write.

If your reputation sucks, none of it matters.

People with lousy products, crummy business practices, and shady backgrounds get found out. And word spreads with frightening speed.

Treat people right, because if you don’t, you will be exposed. And it will not be pretty.

Harsh Reality #6: A blog is not a marketing plan

Blogs are cool, but a single useful tool isn’t the same thing as a solid business and marketing plan.

Blogs are just one way to get your best content out there, and they work best when you pair them up with email autoresponders, special reports, Twitter, and any of a dozen other powerful tools.

Just hanging out and being cool isn’t enough. If you’re in social media to do business, you have to develop a strategy for taking mildly interested strangers and turning them into raving fans . . . and customers.

Harsh Reality #7: You don’t get to opt out

Businesses that think they can ignore all this “Twitter stupidity” tend to get painfully rude awakenings.

The conversation will happen with or without you. You definitely don’t need to respond to every chucklehead with a Facebook account (and you shouldn’t), but you need to keep your ear to the ground, and you need a clue.

OK, enough about harsh reality already! If you want our best advice about what to do to create a great online business, subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It’s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff. And of course we will never, ever spam you or share your information with anyone.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

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The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing

I crashed my car.

Having congratulated myself on my driving skills, I started to weigh up whether it would be cheaper to go through the insurance or just buy a door off the internets. Regardless of what we were saying yesterday, I didn’t bother Twittering about it or asking my Facebook friends for advice – I went to Google.

Search Google.co.uk for “toyota corolla rear door” and this is what you get…

Anyway, Matt Cutts mentioned this in a Webmaster Central video (see below to watch him not quite answering the question), but really I think Google needs to sort out what the purpose of Google.co.uk is. If it isn’t going to give results weighted to the UK in the first place then I don’t quite get it.

It’s not often a problem, but when it is, it always seems to be some kind of vertical you’d think would be an obvious thing to skew to the UK – like car parts in this instance. More importantly, if anyone wants to flog me a rear passenger side door for a 2003 Corolla….

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Google UK Results Still Showing Irrelevant US Sites

The other day, we published a headline that failed.

It happens to everyone, even those of us who consider headline writing to be a primary skill.

In this post, I’ll show you one way to avoid a headline fail when using one of the more powerful headline formats.

I’m talking about the “question” headline.

How to Effectively Use a Question Headline

As I said, the question headline is very powerful. When used properly, it creates an almost irresistible draw to prospective readers, no matter how busy they are.

Occasionally I’ll hear someone say that a journalism professor or writing coach told them never to use a question – whether in the headline or otherwise. This is terrible advice, because it’s only half correct.

The true rule is that you should never use a question that the prospective reader can answer with a yes or no. If you ask that type of question, you’ve just failed… because you gave people a reason not to read your content.

The proper way to use a question headline is to ask a question that your readers can’t answer. In that sense, your question (like all good headlines) becomes a compelling promise to the reader that they’re about to discover something they didn’t know before, if only they keep reading.

Let’s look at examples of the right way and the wrong way to use a question, thanks to my own headline fail from earlier in the week.

How We Screwed Up a Question Headline

You know a lot of different people contribute to Copyblogger. And it’s probably no surprise that we assist with editing content from our guests in order to make it as engaging as possible.

One thing we do more often than not is tweak or rewrite the post titles (headlines). This works out to everyone’s benefit, since the stronger the headline, the more traffic to the post and more exposure to that specific writer.

So a couple days ago, we ran a post about backing up your claims with proof by Sherice Jacob. It’s a really solid post, so if you didn’t read it, you really should.

The original title of the post didn’t work as well as we thought it should, so Sonia rewrote it. After that, Sonia queues the post in WordPress for my final approval and publishing.

I look at the headline, read the post, and think, “This looks good.” The headline had a provocative edge to it, which should have helped the post spread rather nicely.

Except it didn’t.

An easy way to gauge the response to a post in real-time is on Twitter. The number of retweets and clicks on the link (via bit.ly) will give you a general picture of how well a piece of content is doing relative to how things usually go day-to-day.

It quickly became clear that Sherice’s post was under-performing, and I couldn’t figure out why. And then it hit me.

A Failed Question Headline (And the Fix)

Here is the headline we published:

Are Your Readers Calling You a Liar?

Do you see the problem?

Taken literally, the answer to this question for most people is simply “no.” As ornery as blog comments can get, it’s likely most people have never been flat-out called a liar by a reader.

But because the content of the post makes it clear that you might not know if people are doubting whether or not you’re telling the truth, the headline wasn’t even a good match for the post. The real killer, however, was the ability to answer the question with a “no.”

Total headline fail.

Later in the day after discussing it with Sonia, we changed the post title to this:

Do Your Readers Secretly Think You’re a Liar?

Do you see why this is much better?

The question can’t be answered, because you have no way of knowing what your readers are thinking unless they tell you. And the use of the word “secretly” adds an additional compelling element that makes it clear we’re talking about something your readers aren’t telling you.

Learn from My Mistake

Even though the title was changed, most of the damage had been done. The email had already gone out, the post had been tweeted, and I have no idea if the title ever updated freshly in feed readers.

So it’s important to look for potential headline fails before you hit publish. Which is what I usually do, but everyone has off days.

And hey… it gave me something to write about for today. Hopefully you find some value in learning from my fail.

Because from now on, I’m covering up all my mistakes.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

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One Big Way to Avoid a Headline Fail