Archives for August 2009

I Could Use Your Help

By Christian

I’m a big believer in asking for what you want. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. And making the assumption that people will do what you want just because you’re such a great person is an erroneous thing to do. So to follow through on that, I want to make sure I’ve asked for what I want to happen here on Next Level Blogger!

Please link this site up on your blog, social media profile or anywhere you feel others would benefit from it.
Please use the widgets I supply at the bottom of each post to bookmark posts you like on Delicious, Stumble, etc, to share them with others.
Please comment the posts to share your thoughts. Interaction is one of my main goals!
Please subscribe by email if you find the content valuable.
Please contact me with ideas, thoughts or criticism. I welcome your input 100%!

I promise this isn’t something I’m going to hammer on. I won’t post stuff like this very often. It’s necessary to ask for what I want though, and I hope you do the same 🙂

By sharing this site with your friends, partners and coworkers, you are helping more than you may realize! One of the biggest challenges of course is getting the word out. It’s true there are a thousand things any webmaster can do to do well in the search engines and get good traffic. The fact is that this site is very well-optimized already and is getting an increase in traffic pretty consistently, but NO site does well ultimately without a solid community to back it up.

My goal is not to dominate Google. My goal is to build a strong community of people who find this content helpful and who are willing to help me improve it, so it remains something that is truly valuable to us all. Whether Next Level ultimately gets 500k visitors a month or 50k visitors a month is inconsequential to me. My focus is on individual people, not stats.

I hope you’ll help me out! And I hope you’ll tell me what I can do to help YOU out! Now let’s go kill the rest of ’09 and make it a huge year 🙂

5 Books I Recommend About Business Blogging

By Christian

If you’re like me, reading is a huge way to get new creativity flowing, keep up on changing technologies and expose yourself to new ideas. I find the books I read to be invaluable, as I apply almost everything I read to my business in one way or another.

Here is a recommendation on some reading material to help you with your business blogging. Of course this is not master list. It’s my top 5 at the moment. These are affiliate links, except for #3 which is a free pdf download. Therefore, you can easily click through and check out full details on all these books right now, and if you purchase them you will be supporting Next Level Blogger. It’s a win-win-win if you think about it 😉

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly – In depth explanations about why business blogging is essential, the different technologies you can use and how. How to promote your blog, how to make money with your blog and a lot more. Tons of resources to find more information.
ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income – This is probably the ultimate book about blogging in my opinion. Anyone interested in blogging as a business or as a means of promoting an existing business is well-served to read this one a few times. Also if you’re not familiar with the author Darren Rowse’s blog Problogger, you better get over there and subscribe. It’s pretty much mandatory.
uuuEbook: Unique, Useful and Updated. Three Secrets to Web Traffic – This is another no-brainer. It’s a free pdf download from Seth Godin. One of the biggest concerns any blogger has is how to get traffic to their blog. This short, concise ebook says it all. Follow these precepts, and your blog will be a success, period.
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers – A very insightful read that covers “Blogging’s Six Pillars”. It teaches you to use your blog effectively by showing you how blogging differs from other traditional media. Most new bloggers tend to treat their blog as a traditional form of marketing, which can cause you to spin your wheels for a long time. Worse, you can do more damage to your brand than good if you use your blog poorly. Like any powerful tool, it can produce either great results or do significant damage, and it all depends on how you wield it.
No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog – One of the biggest challenges most new bloggers face is not knowing what to write about. The prospect of having to continuously fill your blog up with new content can seem daunting, until you’ve read a book like this. I’ve mentioned on Next Level many times already that you have MORE than enough to talk about, and this book will help you unlock all of it. Before you know it, you can have more content than you could ever possibly write for your blog 🙂

All these books echo the ideas I attempt to express here on this blog, and these authors are all certainly in tune with how to use this blogging medium to it’s maximum potential. I encourage you to check them out!

How to Make Sure Your Email Gets Delivered

By Christian

Here is another Fantastically Simple set of rules for all of us bloggers and internet marketers to follow. It’s one thing to build a powerful and targeted email list. It’s essential if you want to make money online, and if you’re going to go through the trouble of building a list, you might as well make sure you’re your subscribers actually RECEIVE your email, wouldn’t you agree?

There is something to know here: nothing you do can guarantee 100% deliverability. Some of your email is going to get blocked, but what’s odd to me is that most business owners don’t even bother to address this directly. As it turns out, most of us assume that all of our email is getting through. Well here’s a hard fact of life: IT’S NOT! Some of your email is getting blocked by spam filters…yes that’s right, YOU are getting blocked as a spammer, even if what you’re sending is not spam! Even if you’re only sending to legitimate subscribers, some of your messages are not getting through. And here is why: technology is not perfect. Plus, not everyone knows how to use their machines very well. They may have their spam filter set too high and not even know it.

Regardless, there are steps you can take to make sure as much of your email is received as possible. This is simple stuff. Some of it you will have heard before, but I guarantee most of you will learn at least one thing from this list that you’re not doing. I will admit that I even have not yet implemented 100% of this, but soon will be.

As I said, most of us do not address these things at all and just assume our messages are being delivered. Even though nothing GUARANTEE your email is delivered to every single recipient, taking these steps will take you almost no time at all, and they will improve your results.

Don’t be surprised if your response rate goes up after implementing all of these steps! It really does help your business when your customers actually receive what you’re sending them!

Ways to Make Sure Your Email Gets Delivered

Don’t spam. I hate to start off with such an obvious one, but the fact is that many of you still think that renting opt-in email lists is not spamming. It is. Sorry, but the only way to email legitimately is to build your own list from scratch. Yes, it’s slower, but it’s also the only way to do it. The list of 100,000 “opt-in” email subscribers you rented may have opted in for something, but they didn’t opt in for YOUR email list…how could they have? Rented lists are spam lists. Of course the brokers don’t call them as such, but that’s what it is. Build a legit list of your own, and you’ll have taken the biggest and most important step toward getting huge results from your email campaign.
Get whitelisted. When someone subscribes, ask them point blank…”please add this domain to your safelist”. Even go so far as to provide simple instructions on how to do this. This will ensure (for those that follow through on it) that email from you will be given free passage into their inbox. Getting whitelisted (or safelisted, whatever you want to call it) is the only way to fly 🙂
Don’t use ALL CAPS IN YOUR SUBJECT LINE. This makes spam filters happy. They get excited and eat your message up, so your recipient never receives it.
Don’t use massive amounts of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It attracts attention, just as you wish it will…it attracts attention from spam filters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t talk about sex! Use of certain words sets of most spam filters. Words like “sex”, “viagra”, you get the idea. This is an example of spam filters not being so smart, of course there are many completely legitimate uses for these words, but the fact is that tons of spam contains certain words, and spam filters are updated to catch as much of it as possible. Also avoid the words “free”, “make money” or any other overtly sales-oriented language. It’s not fair, I know, but it’s a fact. Using the word “free”, for example, will not necessarily get your message blocked, but it will be noticed, and if you have a number of things like this, your message scores higher on the spam rating, and if you get enough of these points, out the window it goes.
Label your message appropriately. Is your outgoing email a newsletter? Use the word “newsletter” or “weekly news” in your subject line. Other options: “monthly newsletter”, “News from …name of your site…”
Use Aweber. I have to be honest, I’m in the process of setting up with Aweber but have not made the switch yet. I have just started this blog, and I don’t want to wait until I have thousands of subscribers before I switch over. Aweber is certainly not the only autoresponder out there, but they are pretty much the king of autoresponders. Can using Aweber really improve your delivery? Yes, it can. Do you have whitelist agreements with internet service providers? Aweber does. They maintain your lists for you and make sure everything is done by the book. This means playing by their rules. I’m not one for jumping through hoops, but I’m also committed to getting the best results. That’s why I’m moving my email delivery to Aweber. I highly recommend them. They also offer a ton of other features to make your email marketing more effective, but as far as ensuring deliverability, Aweber is really a great asset to have on board.
Bottom line: if you want to be treated as legit, separate yourself from spammers as much as possible. We’ve all seen our share of spam. We know what it looks like it. Take steps to avoid looking like it. For example, don’t use a subject line like ://///FREE Viaaagrrrraaaaaaa****. Seriously, do you think that’s gonna get through, you sly dog you?

Once again, the rules of success in blogging and internet marketing are Fantastically Simple. A few extra steps here and there make all the difference!

Top Myths About Business Blogging

By Christian

Writing a business blog is a great way to promote your products or services. There’s no doubt about it. There are a large number of professionals and business owners from all different fields who are entering the blogging world, and understandably…they want to get results!

A big part of getting good results from your blog is simply writing consistently and creating content that is valuable to your readers over time. Truth be told, it’s not rocket science. Building a successful blog can give your business some very significant results. It just takes work. Like anything you build from scratch…it starts off very small and builds up over time. Eventually it will truly become a force to be reckoned with. It just takes time and diligence.

One of the biggest reasons many blogs are not successful is not because making them work is all that difficult. The reason is because most blog authors simply don’t stick with it and do the necessary work to get the results they want.

One thing that can help you stick with it over time is simply having a realistic perspective on what to expect when you launch your blog. I’ve come across a ton of misconceptions over time, and these seem to me to be the most prevalent. I hope that reviewing these Myths About Business Blogging will help readers know a bit more about what to expect.

Myths About Business Blogging

You can always make money from advertising. This really isn’t true. Unless by “money” you mean a few bucks a month. You need a lot of traffic to make any meaningful amount of money from advertising. A LOT of traffic. Most adveristing methods will pay out somewhere in the range of $1-3 per thousand visitors. I’ve tweaked Adsense modules to average $5 per thousand visitors, so if you’re getting 50,000 visitors per month…you’re making $250. If your blog is getting 50,000 visitors a month, you’re not going to be excited about $250 🙂
Blogging is easy. Blogging is simple, not easy. Many people approach blogging, unfortunately, with a traditional media mindset. In other words, they want to set something up and watch it grow, but they don’t want to tend to it much. The fact is that blogging is simple, and it doesn’t have to take all your time. But if you want significant results, you need to work on it a bit every day. It is that consistent effort and hustle that will make the difference. Think of all the millions of other websites out there. You have to stand out. The process is simple, but it requires consistent effort over time.
I can automate this sucker! We’ve all heard this before, and there are more tools out there now than ever before. Search engines and humans alike reward original and valuable content. Trust me, I’ve explored em all…automation is definitely doable. I could show you tools that will fill your blog up with awesome articles every day without you having to lift a finger. You will have an awesome looking blog that takes almost no time at all…and it will never go anywhere, because at the end of the day there are no short cuts. Tread lightly with any sales copy that claims to be able to make your blog or blog marketing automatic. Nothing replaces diligence and hard work.
This sounds like too much work. I don’t really need a business blog. One of the biggest mistakes is to assume that because you’ve not had a blog before, you don’t need one now. Your customers are online…you need to be here. Yes, it will take work, and you’ll have to learn some new things. But the alternative is not being here…where your customers are. The alternative is losing business more and more. There are no good alternatives to having a good blog for your business. You need one.
I should be able to have a thousand visitors a day or so within a few months…or any other completely arbitrary number you’ve pulled out of the air. Everyone wants a lot of traffic. It’s only natural. But the fact is that not every niche is a high traffic niche. That’s first off. Second of all, if you’re running a blog for a small business, especially a very small business like a home based operation, you likely don’t NEED a lot of traffic to meet your goals. Don’t get wrapped up in arbitrary numbers. Yes, Yahoo! gets 300 million visitors a month or so…you don’t need that much. I’ve had more than one very profitable site that gets less than 3,000 a month. It’s not always about high traffic. As more and more people get involved in internet marketing, and as it becomes essentially mandatory for all small businesses to have a strong internet presence, it’s less about volume and much more about high quality and creating value for your readers.

Trust me, you can do some serious damage with your small business blog over time. ROI is difficult to measure if not impossible, which is another hurdle we need to get over as business owners. We’re used to getting a fixed or predictable result with each marketing piece we put out. Blogging is marketing, but it’s more like networking. You’re contacting and communicating with your readers and customers through the use of this medium. This work, when you do it well, leads to more business coming your way.

As a business owner, you don’t demand a specific ROI from a social event in order for you to attend. You understand that getting out there and shaking hands, meeting people and talking about what you do is essential. You do it because it’s a good, necessary business practice. Blogging, likewise, is a necessary business practice.

How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?

By Christian

Clearly, I talk to a lot of people about using a blog to market their business. One of the most common concerns expressed by business owners is that it will take too much time. It’s not too much of a secret that blogging can be a very, very powerful tool in your marketing plan. Here are some reasons why:

It’s highly cost efficient.
It enables you to reach a huge number of people effectively, personally and quickly.
It gives you the power to reach NEW customers that you would not have reached otherwise.
It makes possible NEW revenue streams that you may not have ever considered before.
It puts a powerful publishing tools at your fingertips…you can promote your business 24/7, as often as you want, and the cost doesn’t increase the more you use it.
A well-designed and maintained blog will establish you as an expert in your field, building credibility and trust with your audience, an invaluable asset to your business.

These are just a few ways that a blog is a highly recommended marketing tool for your business. So it’s easy enough for me to argue, can you afford NOT to have a blog? And that really should be enough. However, it’s reasonable to consider the time issue, because no tool is going to work for you if you don’t use it. In other words, a blog doesn’t write itself, and if you don’t do it, it’s not going to do you much good.

So, How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?

Here’s the bottom line: you get out what you put in. The fact is that most highly successful blogs with an immense amount of traffic, making big money from advertising, etc…are powered by individuals (or even teams of individuals) who put a LOT of collective time and energy into the site.

Do you even WANT a high traffic blog…one that is considered to be highly successful by traditional standards? It’s an important question. Here’s why: I’ve argued from the beginning of this blog that high traffic is only one of many ways to make money with your blog. It’s very possible that promoting your blog doesn’t have to be a big deal at all. It’s very possible, in other words, for you to have a very successful business, make a lot of money and have a blog at the center of it all…powering a lot of your sales, without it having to be a very big time commitment.

It’s very important to have accurate expectations however. If you do not work your blog every day, build your community every day…if you do not moderate comments and respond to inquiries aggressively and promptly, and if you do not do these basics every day over time, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to have a blog that gets 100k visitors a month.

What Are Your Goals?

When considering how much time you want to commit to blogging, it’s important to consider what results you want to get from your blog. You can probably tell at this point that there’s not going to be a hard and fast rule about how much time it takes to be successful blogging. Simply, you need to do as much as is necessary to reach your goals. So what are your goals?

Do you want to have 100k+ visitors a month and make several thousand a month in advertising revenues? If so, you’re going to need to work it full time, period. Blogging is going to have to be your full time job. It doesn’t mean you cannot start part time and build up to that point, but to acheive that type of traffic, it’s going to require a concerted effort on your part.

Do you want your blog to simply serve as a powerful and convenient way for you to interact with your customers? Do you want to build a good, targeted list of customers over time and use your blog as a way of gaining market share, getting new customers and building your brand? All of this can be accomplished over time with only a part time effort. Let me be clear, it will still require a consistent effort over time. But it hardly needs to be something that consumes all of your time.

I believe most professionals and business owners fall into this latter category. Blogging can be an absolutely impressive and powerful way to extend your business and market your products or services. And it doesn’t need to take a lot of time.

What About You?

What are your goals? Do you have a blog already? How much time do you spend using your blog to market your business?