Month: June 2016

ProBlogger Event Speakers Share Their Experience

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

By Grove Galligan.

At this year’s 7th Annual ProBlogger Event, hundreds of bloggers will come together to network with each other and learn from over 30 speakers and subject matter experts.

What separates those attending from those presenting is…. not much.

Bloggers are speaking, and most of the speakers blog. The people up on stage have faced similar challenges to those listening to them and this makes their stories relatable.

Our speakers package up their experience and expertise for the benefit of those in the audience. Our attendees come away inspired and motivated by the actionable insights from people just like them.

When we asked this year’s line-up of PBEVENT speakers what was their biggest challenge in their online endeavours we also asked for their top tip to deal with it. We received some interesting responses with a few common themes, some you may recognise yourself.

Time Management

 

The only way I ensure I have time to do my blog and book writing is to schedule it into my calendar and make it non-negotiable.

If you only ever write ‘when inspiration strikes’ or ‘when you have time’ – it will never get done. I also remind myself frequently that ‘just because it works, that doesn’t mean you have to do it’.

There are so many things we could be doing to make our online endeavours more successful, and we can’t do them all. A few things done really, really well will always be more impactful than doing many things ‘ok’.

With three small kids I’ve become a ninja at nap time. Writing a to-do list the night before is the best way to make sure things keep moving forward.

Blogger-Speakers-1-768x384

Focus

For me, it’s staying focused.

I’m awful for being easily distracted, having too many ideas and not being sure what to concentrate on. In recent years, though, I’ve really accelerated my progress by doing just three things.

First, I do a big planning exercise at the start of the year, setting out goals for the year. I split the business challenges into categories, eg. Sales Funnel and Product Development. Then I set my long term yearly goals within those categories.

Next, I make a plan for the coming month – a set of tasks that move me towards those goals.

Finally, each week I break them down and set out my goals for the week, and I post them in my accountability group in slack. Those are things that can be achieved in half a day.

So, when I come in in the morning, I just look at my weekly accountability list, and I know exactly what I have to do. It keeps me on track and it’s the main reason I’ve grown the business more in the last year than in the 5 years before that!

The online space – while wonderful in many ways – can also be a massive echo chamber, and I’ve often found myself comparing what we’re doing in our business to what others are doing in theirs.

It’s not so much about external signs of ‘success’ but rather the constant question of whether I should be trying this new platform or that new promotional tool, buying this online course or that best-selling book.

It can become very overwhelming very quickly to keep chasing every new and shiny opportunity that comes our way, so I give myself time and space before making any decisions.

Having a clear picture of our goals is important, because it turns out that the vast majority of these “opportunities” are simply prettily packaged detours that take us further away from our destination. Understanding this is probably one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learnt over the past few years of working online.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with any of these offerings, but realising they’re not right for us right now is really liberating, because I can say no with complete confidence and, bonus: FOMO isn’t a thing I have to worry about anymore.

Trying to take in too much information from too many sources and ending up doing way too much learning and not enough action taking.

My top tip has been to unsubscribe from most of the newsletters I was getting into my inbox and sticking with 2 or 3 trusted sources.

Being online the distractions are endless.

It is easy to justify the time we spend on social media, reading blogs etc as “work”. To keep focused I set boundaries and set myself up for success by removing as many distractions as possible so I stay focused on the task at hand.

Don’t try and do everything all at once. Do one thing at a time and make sure it works, then move on to the next thing. Otherwise you simply end up with a catalogue of partially completed bits.

Working-With-Brands-Panel

Prioritisation

Scaling and prioritization are my biggest challenges with managing my personal brand content, social engagement, as well as business goals and being a Dad to three girls.  

I’ve always believe that identifying what I don’t know and then sharing that within my digital story allows me to surround myself with those who know what I don’t and learn from them while also together become a better team as a whole.  

I’ve also worked hard on celebrating small wins along the way while focusing on long term goals and strategies allowing me to prioritize what needs done by when it’s due and it’s impact on my long term goals.

My biggest challenges at the moment are taking on too much at once, and not blocking out the less important things to focus on the things that matter.

One of the reasons for that is that it’s hard to say no to opportunities that are in front of you today when you don’t know what’s going to land in your pipeline months down the line.

Over-commitment leads to fatigue and burn-out, and when you’re feeling exhausted it’s easy to fall back on the easy things that make you feel busy but aren’t moving you forward in your business.

Recognising your limits and keeping yourself in a healthy work-life balance is important. I won’t claim to be nailing that balance perfectly, but I’m getting there.

Hard Work (The Magic Formula)

Probably figuring out how to build a business around the content I create. The way I solved it was creating shitloads of content and starting shitloads of businesses until something stuck.

Getting attention in a noisy world. Top tip for dealing with it, is to work ridiculously hard to make all the content you put out the best out there.

PBEVENT-Subject-Matter-Experts-768x384

Making Money

My biggest challenge was working out the best way to make my blog profitable – and then sticking with the approach that I chose to take.

There are so many different ideas out there that it is easy to keep switching tactics and to not give any one approach enough time and energy to see if it will actually work.

My top tip for dealing with that is to have patience. Educate yourself, decide on a strategy and then stick with it until you have given it enough time to know whether it has worked or not.

Like any small business, offline or online, the biggest challenge is creating and sustaining a consistent cash flow. And like any small business, this is better achieved by creating multiple income streams.

So my top tip is that as you build your community, continue to create new income streams for your online platform – don’t rely on just one avenue for making money.

We also asked our speakers to cut to the chase and tell us what would be at the top of their ‘to-do’ list if they were just starting out today in the online world.

Build Community

Focus on building a community of people who rally behind a common passion or purpose that aligns with your business goals and personal passions.  

Doing this allows you focus on the people and the mission more so than vanity metrics or silo’d networks.  Networks and platforms will come and go but if you build a community they’ll follow you where you go.

Build a community. Unique visitors are one thing, but people that read your blog, trust you and respect your opinion are much more than unique visitors. They will be your advocates and the ones that buy your products if you choose to sell them.

It takes time to build this and it is worth the investment.

9757870912_fccf7fe022_z

Network

Start building relationships with other content creators and influencers, probably in person.

Besides the planning and goals work that I described above, the top thing on my to-do list would be to get out there and start meeting people.

A huge factor in our growth since the start of 2015 has been the people I’ve met. I moved to a new city around that time, and so I had to make the effort to get out there and meet some new people. People who are supportive, creative and honest when I need it.

It’s easy, when you’re running a mostly online business, to hide behind your keyboard, and think that’s enough. But, the growth that I’ve experienced thanks to my network has been enormous, and it’s only going to get bigger over time.

Get out there, find events, talk to people, make friends, and you’ll grow as a result.

Find some like-minded people at a similar stage of business and form a mastermind group to support each other. The mastermind group I’ve been a part of for the past year has been invaluable.

Getting to know other bloggers. It doesn’t matter how great your blog is, if you’re not an active part of the wider blogging community it’s going to be very hard for your blog to grow and for you to reach the people your words can help.

Test The Market

Find out what people want and see if they will buy it.

Start a Facebook page and invest some money to get your idea out there to test the waters.  

If you can’t get your specific audience interested on Facebook through targeted promotions, then I would find a new idea.

Ship a product.

So many things go into shipping a product that help your business as a whole. Product creation means tapping into audience needs, focussing on a high level of quality and value, and growing a fan-base that trusts you enough to pay for what you’re offering.

All of those things make you a better blogger.

Credit: Mick Russell

Credit: Mick Russell

Content

The top of my to-do list would be the same as it was when I realised that blogging was a thing and I changed the way I wrote my blog posts. Content is EVERYTHING.

Your voice, the way you write your content, the way you reach out and connect with your community – even if it’s small – that is the number one thing you need to focus on.

This applies at the beginning and every day on your blogging and online journey. Nail the community factor and you’ll have an engaged audience which will want to buy-in to anything that you might be selling – your own products or someone else’s.

If I was starting out today I would be incorporating more video.

Video has been the fastest way that I’ve grown my business and now with the addition of FB live – I’d be going crazy on it!

Be Yourself

Be yourself.

Don’t spend valuable time trying to be someone else, or even a version of yourself that you think others will like.

Instead, spend that time practicing how to write as yourself. So really – be yourself, and practice in public.

So there you have it. A small taste of the wisdom you can expect to be shared at ProBlogger Event 2016 in September on the Gold Coast.

If you haven’t bought your PBEVENT ticket yet, get in before July 1 and save $100 before the full rate kicks in. 

We hope to see you there!

The post ProBlogger Event Speakers Share Their Experience appeared first on ProBlogger.

9 Reasons I Hate Your Blog

By Jerry Low.

1

Does your website have a high bounce rate? What is it about your blog that makes them want to press the back button?

The truth is that if your bounce rate is high, then there is something that is causing people to discredit your blog and leave quickly. Bounce rate, at least by Google’s standards, is measured in single page visits and how much time visitors spend on a landing page.

However, there are so many different things that play into whether your bounce rate works for you or not. A lot depends on the goal you’ve set for your website and whether or not you are meeting those goals.

I thought a lot about this and realized that there are many negative factors that could kill your success in blogging. And, like it or not – to succeed, there is a set of rules that bloggers need to follow. Some of those rules will impact bounce rate and some will not. But, the bottom line is that there are some things that will cause a visitor to stay on your site and some that will drive him away.

9 Reasons I Hate Your Blog

You’re probably thinking that “hate” is a big word, but it does reflect part of my feelings. Perhaps “turned off” is the more appropriate term here. And, here are 9 reasons why your blog would turn me off and cause me to bounce away.

1. You do more than one popup

Popups work. I get it.

I use it at times myself, too. In fact, the day I turned on a site-wide popup form on WHSR, our newsletter subscription rate surged more than 400%.

The key here is to not add too many popups. Excessive popups disrupt the reading experience and are seriously annoying.

I have seen bloggers who forgot to turn off their old popups when making new ones. This causes overlapping popups on a single page. It’s horrific and it underlines the importance of always testing your site whenever you do an update.

Based on InsightOne Study, 70% of Americans get most annoyed when popups are irrelevant and would even go ahead and block a site because of such annoying intrusions.

At the same time, however, as proven by my experiment, popups can greatly increase your subscription rates.

There are valid reasons for using popups, so if you choose to do so, you’ll want to keep these three tips in mind:

Tip#1: Use popups in moderation

I lost all my respects to one very popular marketing blog when I saw a Hello Bar, full screen welcome gate, and an exit popup, in one page.

Again, don’t overuse popups. One per page is about all I can take.

Tip #2: Make popups smarter

There are tools that allow you to show popups at a specific time, such as when a visitor is leaving your website or has scrolled down to a certain level on your page. Use these functions to minimize the damage popups can cause to blog user experience.

Caption: Real life sample: Subscription popup at Social Triggers – the signup form only pops when there's an exit intention (cursor going up).

Real life sample: Subscription popup at Social Triggers – the signup form only pops when there’s an exit intention (cursor going up).

Tip #3: Only use well-designed and –written popups

If you must interrupt my reading in the middle of the article with a popup, at least do it in a way that is entertaining and visually pleasing.

And the best written popup award goes to… WaitButWhy.

And the best written popup award goes to… WaitButWhy.

2. Copycat

You also irritate me, a lot, when I recognize a piece of stolen content on your blog.

Copying people’s content is not only unethical, but illegal. There are copyright laws in place that protect people’s written and creative work and violating them can get your site shut down.

However, let’s say you don’t outright copy, but you use your own words and copy the same article making it very similar.

On top of that, you can hurt Google ranking for both your site and the site from which you copied the content. Not cool at all.

I assume people copy other people’s content because they can’t write well or simply don’t have enough time to write.

Simple Solutions:

Step #1- Read and take notes frequently

I believe you should take notes anywhere, anytime. In my opinion, it’s the #1 success habit in blogging.

When inspiration strikes or when you find something useful during your daily reading, jot down your thoughts or a note on the information.

I use Evernote to collect and manage my ideas. You can do the same with something else or with the same program, but the key is to take notes regularly so you don’t lose a brilliant idea.

Step #2 – Pass your ideas / studies / researches to a ghost writer

The key in this is to not outsource everything to the ghost writers. Instead, you should spend more time studying and researching the topic you want to write about. Offer some detailed notes.

Then, hand off the writing of the words and editing to professionals.

3. You call yourself expert when you are not

It bothers me a lot if you try to act like an expert and you’re not.

This can become clear very quickly to readers because if you don’t know much about the topic it is going to show. Someone might ask a question in the comments and you’ll have no clue how to answer it.

Faking as someone you are not sucks on many different levels. Just be honest. If you need to know more about a topic you love and want to write about, and then study that topic until you know it inside and out.

Calling yourself a guru while giving nothing but common knowledge advice on your blog irritates me. I don’t visit your site to learn something I already know – that everyone already knows.

Instead of trying to present yourself as the authority over something you know little about, write about what you do know or can easily learn and learn well.

4. Advertisements everywhere

Advertisements make for a spammy, ugly blog. Some bloggers put ads everywhere you can imagine. They might place an ad between paragraphs, inside popups, in the header, on sidebars, or even sugarcoat an ad as “other relevant resources” at the bottom of a post.

The truth is that, yes, there is tons of money to be made with these kinds of strategies.

Scott DeLong, founder of ViralNova, sold his site for $100 million. His site was similar to BuzzFeed and was chock full of advertising. His success (though big part of it depends on how he grew his site traffic, not jamming ads to his site) has sparked ambitious bloggers to build a similar site/blog and maximize the number of ads they can squeeze onto one page.

I counted 27 ads in one recent post at Viral Nova

I counted 27 ads in one recent post at Viral Nova

Their goal is simply to repeat his success.

Stuffing advertisements everywhere might bring in some extra cash, but it doesn’t bring any value to the readers and honestly, it sucks.

In the long-term, sites like this won’t be successful.

It’s proven that Google finds content mills, advertising mills, and similar sites and tightens up their algorithms to prevent those who come along behind from succeeding.

In fact, Facebook has already cracked down on the use of viral headlines like those used on sites like ViralNova and BuzzFeed and is showing them less on user pages. This means that traffic has fallen dramatically for sites that relied on social media for the majority of their traffic.

There are better, long term monetization strategies. From choosing a sustainable, profitable niche to creating and selling a product and organizing events, bloggers should utilize smarter strategies instead of baiting for ad clicks all day long. Readers are wising up to this tactic, too, and may resent click bait strategies.

5. I can’t read it on my phone

Nothing annoys me more than a site that isn’t mobile responsive. I connect to the Internet and read a lot on my phone. If your blog is not optimized for mobile, high chances are I will just skip your blog and go read somewhere else.

Worldwide, as of 2015, nearly 53% of people could access the Internet online. Like it or not, optimizing for mobile users is no longer an option in web UX design.

We have close to 140,000 unique visitors at WHSR and more than 45% are visiting us via a mobile device. More and more people are reading on their phones. 55% of all Oyster’s activity is now happening on phone. 54% of the 1.65 billion monthly active users access Facebook only on mobile (see report, page 7).

894 million mobile-only MAUs on Facebook

894 million mobile-only MAUs on Facebook.

And if that’s not enough, Google announced Mobilegedddon in mid-2015. That essentially means that sites that aren’t mobile friendly are likely to lose out in organic search rankings.

6. I can’t scan your posts quickly before I start reading

I will probably hate your blog if I can’t scan your posts before reading. I want to know in a nutshell what your post is about so I know if it will cover the topics I need to know or not.

Descriptive headlines are vitally important. H2 and H3 headers make for easier reading and help readers quickly understand what your post covers.

You also want your article to be easy to scan. Adding bullet points, short paragraphs and tight writing all go a long way toward increasing readability. Where appropriate, infographics and diagrams can also add a lot of value to an article.

7. The things you are blogging about aren’t worth blogging about

Stop blogging incessantly about your gym session, your cat, the cupcake you just ate, and your mundane daily activities at home. I don’t care and chances are that no one else cares about these things.

We all do them.

They aren’t exciting or unique.

The time I spend on your blog is valuable to me. I don’t have a lot of time to waste. Tell me something interesting, or useful. Make me laugh, impress me, most importantly, help me learn and grow better as a person or at something.

Before you spend time writing about something on your blog, make sure you understand what other articles on that topic are available and try to add some extra value or a unique twist to your article on that topic. If you don’t have anything to add, then that might not be the best topic to write about.

8. Autoplay video/audio

I hate it every time when a video loads automatically on the Fantasy Premier League homepage. They are Premier League officials, hosting the world’s most popular fantasy sports game. Since I’ve been playing two mini leagues with my buddies for years, I put up with it. Some site visitors won’t.

I’m also not fine with your blog if it loads a video or audio automatically instead of giving me a choice in the matter. I enjoy silent browsing. I am not going to find the “stop” button when your blog auto plays your theme song, I will simply go for the “close tab” button.

I dislike video plays without me pressing the “play” key.  If you must auto play a video, at least start it with the sound off.

Keep in mind, too, that not everyone has high speed Internet. While most people do, there are some rural users who might even still be on dial up. By automatically starting a video or audio, you essentially freeze the computers of your audience without high speed capacity.

9. Your page made me wait for more than five seconds

Generally speaking, any website that shows a blank page for more than five seconds are bad. Studies have proven repeatedly that page abandonment rate goes up with your site load time increases.

Almost 50% of Internet users expect a website to load in two seconds or less, and if it doesn’t load in three seconds, they will likely abandon that site.

If I am expecting to read a blog post, which typically would consist only of text and images, I expect to be served fast. Any blog page that takes longer than a few seconds to load is unacceptable.

There are a number of ways to improve your site load time:

Ditch the big image slider that takes forever to load

Host your blog on a faster server

Minimize HTTP redirects and pack your CSS and jQuery scripts together to reduce page roundtrip times

To dig in further, I suggest make use of free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Bitcatcha, and Pingdom to pin point the culprit that’s dragging your site speed.

Bottom line –

Even if you are currently running a blog that I would hate for all 9 reasons listed above, you can easily rectify these issues. Even minor tweaks can improve your bounce rate and offer you reader a more usable experience.

Take the time to visit your own blog as though you are a first time visitor. Pay attention to how fast the page loads (clear your cache first, so you get an authentic reading on this), pay attention to popups and if they interrupt your reading, and think about anything that might annoy your visitor.

With a little intuitiveness about what readers really want, your site will quickly become an authority that readers turn to time and time again for information and entertainment.

Jerry Low is the founder of Web Hosting Secret Revealed (WHSR). You can find more blogging tips like this article in his ebook and bi-weekly newsletter service.

The post 9 Reasons I Hate Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.