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100 Awesome Blog Tips Articles to Take Your Blogging to the Next Level

By Christian

recommended-blog-tips-articles — These recommended articles will give you all the blog tips you need to get your blog off to a powerful start 🙂

These are articles I’ve read recently that I found particularly valuable. They are all from blogs I read regularly. As someone who writes a blog, I know it is also essential to read a lot of blogs. I get questions from professionals and business owners about how to get started blogging, and this is always one of the first things I say: read blogs!

This is the number one way to learn what works, what doesn’t and what YOU want to write about. I recommend anyone interested in blogging should spend a month or so just reading other blogs. Subscribe, comment, spend some real time. Do this specifically in the space you want to occupy. For example, if you want to write a blog about real estate in your particular market area, search people up and find out who’s already active in your niche. Subscribe to their blog, comment them, read plenty of articles. Take note of the design of their sites. Who is hosting these sites? What things do you like, dislike, and what can you improve upon?

Spend time reading, paying attention first

Spending time reading and interacting on other blogs will help you develop your own blogging voice, and your own blogging voice is one of the most essential elements to any successful blog. For my own personal space, I obviously read a lot about blogging itself. Throughout my research I’ve accumulated a lot of awesome blog tips I’ve been wanting to share with you. I wanted to take one post and really link up a lot of my favorite fellow bloggers, and share with you some of the best blog tips I’ve come across that I think will motivate, educate and/or inspire you.

Blog tips, education, motivation

Some of these are great, educational posts. Some are motivational, and some are great resources to help you get started and be successful with blogging and social networking for your business. This list will direct you to some really solid ideas about how to get great results from your blogging and social networking. It’s guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing! Take time, do the work. Get started right now! And don’t forget to let me know how these articles have helped you!

Quick Start to Internet Marketing

By Christian

Many people out there are looking for a quick start to internet marketing. I understand. Most people in my network are business people, and we are the kind of people who want to get things rolling quickly. You know being online and marketing yourself with blogging, internet marketing and social networking is essential, but you don’t know the best way to go about it, and you have a million questions.

This massive access to information causes what’s called “paralysis by analysis”. In other words, we’re so fixated on learning what we need to do, we fail to act. This is death for business. You need to act, but you don’t want to screw things up. So here is a quick start to internet marketing checklist that will give you what you need to get started. It contains a little philosophy and a few specific actions that will get you off and running. There is a lot of value in knowing you’re starting off on the right foot, so I hope this helps. If you have any questions, let me know by commenting or contact me!

Quick Start to Internet Marketing

Make the decision that your focus is going to be building a real business…or extending your existing business. Do not allow your sole focus to be making money. If your focus is on building a real business, creating a good reputation and brand and creating value for others, it’s hard to screw things up. It’s when we decide to focus solely on making money that we start doing crappy, spammy things that we will regret later…and that will not do us any good. This is the first step, and it’s easy. Just decide that your focus is going to be on creating value for your customers, not just selling stuff. With that, you have already cleared half the hurdles. Believe it or not, it really is that simple!
Start a blog. Don’t over think it. Don’t dwell on it for more than five minutes. Pick a platform, and fire it up. If you want my specific advise, I recommend using WordPress, and I recommend having a professional set it up for you. I can do it for you, or you can have any number of other professionals do it for you. WordPress can easily be search engine optimized, and it is highly extensible. Some of the most successful blogs on the internet use WordPress, and for good reason. That said, it’s more important to have a blog than it is to make absolutely certain that every detail is perfect. Your blog will serve as the hub of everything you do to market yourself online. It is your home. You need a place to hang your hat. You need a blog.
Post to your blog regularly. The more you blog, the more you will learn. The most important thing is to get started. I could write for 10,000 words easily right now about how to do this. And if you want to solve any specific marketing issues sooner rather than later, I recommend using my consulting services to jump start your efforts. That said, this is not rocket science, and if you put in the effort you will learn everything you need to know simply by doing it. You get out what you put in. Again, if you’re focusing on creating value for your customers, your blog will be on target.
Get on Facebook and Twitter. Are there other social networks? Heck yes there are. Is there value in checking them out and learning about them? Heck yes. But this is a quick start to internet marketing guide, right? So let’s keep it simple. The fact is that Facebook is huge, and Twitter is massively important and an indispensable tool. You can do a lot of damage with just these two. Just as with blogging, use them regularly. An inactive profile is worthless to you. Just like if you leave your house unattended…it will deteriorate over time, this is true for your internet property as well. You have to maintain it for it to grow and remain valuable. Use your social networking profiles for being social and meeting people. Sure, link out to your blog posts and such, but keep the content you produce 99% social. Believe it or not, people know you sell widgets even if you don’t tell em. It’s linked up on your page, see? So they know already. You don’t have to tell them every five minutes. Meet people and concentrate on getting to know and learning from others with similar interests. After doing this for a while, you will start to get these mysterious messages in your inbox. They will be coming from people who have visited your site and are interested in what you’re selling, and you’ll wonder where all this magical activity is coming from. Some of it’s coming from Twitter, believe it or not. And it will have all happened without you having to hard sell anyone. This stuff works really well, if you work it. Let it take time. It’s fun anyway, so why turn it into hard work?
Let it take some time. Like I mentioned in the previous step, this stuff doesn’t happen instantly. One thing about internet marketing is that people often expect immediate results. I’m not sure why that is. It must come from a misconception about what’s happening. When you give someone a business card at a social event, do you expect them to buy something from you right there on the spot? No. You meet 28 people that night, and 9 of them call you back over the next few weeks. You build it from there. This is how it works. Social networking has become confused with being this new phenomenon, and we think it’s complicated. It’s not. Social networking is people with common interests hanging out, talking. This has been going on for ages. It’s how business is done. And building a business takes time.
Read and learn. Study what you’re doing. Read other blogs. Look at other websites, especially within the same field as you’re working. Apply the CASE principle of success I’ve described in a previous post. Never stop this. Learning and stealing ideas from your competitors is another age old business principle that is not ever going to go away. Use it to your advantage.
Don’t quit. Be consistent. As I say so many times, things take time. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Of course I don’t consider this quick start to internet marketing checklist an ultra-comprehensive tool. After all, it’s a quick start checklist! However, I would love your input. Do you have anything you’d add?

In upcoming posts, I will be posting some of my top resources. Articles and tools I’ve used to learn this business. It’s only fair for me to share all my secrets with you, seeing as how everything I’ve learned about internet marketing is online…imagine that 🙂

How to Really Screw up Your Business With Social Networking

By Christian

As spamming continues to grow on Twitter and other social networks (I’ve been noticing it a lot this past few weeks more than ever), I’m compelled to mention again how easy it is to do more damage to your brand than good when using social networking tools.

Twitter and Facebook are great networking tools, but they’re being treated more and more like get rich quick platforms…as if such a thing really existed. I’m seeing a lot of ads for programs on “How to Use Twitter to Make $10k a month Starting NOW”…and other B.S. like this.

Does anyone actually subscribe to this mentality? I’m taking care not to mention any users or companies specifically. You’re not going to catch me bad mouthing anyone, but you and I both have seen this activity. Here’s the thing:

I think most of these users are more concerned with making money than anything else. They’re not worried about damaging their brand, because they’re not even trying to build a brand. They’re not even TRYING to build a business. They just want to make a few bucks.

I think this kind of shortsightedness is a shame. But the more I see this kind of activity, the more I think this is true. I hope the readers of this blog can see further down the road. Building a real business is NOT that big a deal! Anyone can do it. I hope you can see the truth…spamming out affiliate links and offering no value to your contacts is not a way to build a business. And ironically, it’s also not a good way to even make a few bucks!

When was the last time YOU clicked on a blind link in a piece of spam email you received? When was the last time YOU bought a product through an affiliate link that someone blasted out through an auto-DM on Twitter?

Sensible people don’t buy things this way. It’s just not how it works. If you’re building a real business that you want to be profitable and sustainable, this is the absolute last type of activity you should be involved with.

If people would stop looking for fast money and start actually getting to work, there would be a lot less crap out there. That’s for sure. And they would also learn that making REAL money is not all that difficult.

Have you seen this spamming activity or is it just me?

Do you subscribe to the idea that simply blasting out affiliate links is a way to make money?

20 Ways to Instill Trust and Make More Money

By Christian

As I mentioned in my last post, trust is a hot commodity. It’s essential to instill trust with your readers if you want to get good business results from your blogging, social networking and internet marketing. So how do you instill trust?

The methods we use to market products and services these days are changing rapidly, and if you’re reading this blog you’re obviously aware of these changes and are taking steps to learn. Kudos. But it’s important…absolutely essential…to understand one simple fact.

The way people buy things is changing, but the REASONS people buy things haven’t changed at all.

In other words, people may be searching for information differently, they may be hyper-connected and using new resources to find out what they want to know, but deep down they still need the same things. People want to avoid pain and increase pleasure. They have the same hot buttons: greed, envy, love, etc. And they also need to trust you if they want to buy from you.

Here are things you can do to instill trust:

Create quality content, specifically written for your target audience.
Respond to your comments. Be thoughtful.
Respond to your email. Take time to be helpful.
Be everywhere. The more your audience sees you “out there”, the more your credibility increases.
Offer a guarantee for everything you sell. Take all risk upon yourself, leave only value for your customers.
Honor your guarantee. It should be just as easy to get a refund as it is to place an order.
Don’t spam people.
Leave thoughtful comments on other blogs. Use comments on other blogs as a conversational tool, not a promotional tool. People know comment spam when they see it. If you think real customers are going to click through your comment spam on other blogs and buying things from you, you’re deluding yourself!
Be honest.
Be consistent.
Make your products and services targeted. In other words, don’t just produce what you want. Confirm there is a need first. Targeted product creation instills trust, because it speaks directly to your customer. They will really feel like you really know them.
Don’t post blind, stupid links on Twitter or in your social networking status. Would YOU click on a link that says “hey check this out! crappyaffiliatelink.tinyurl.com”? I’m not against affiliate marketing of course. Not at all. I’m just saying, blindly blasting out affiliate links, hoping some of them will stick is NOT the way to build trust.
Before you post anything, anywhere, ask yourself “Is my goal to create value for my customers, or am I just trying to sell something?”
Be around for a while. There’s really no getting around this. The longer you are around, the more credibility you’ll build and the more your reputation will proceed you. This is a key element of trust, and it takes time.
Make your site easy to navigate.
Be an active member of other forums or a guest author on other properties that are valued and trusted by your target audience. This is another element of “being everywhere”, from #4.
Avoid overzealous claims in your sales copy, even if they’re true.
Don’t ignore complaints, and don’t be rude…seriously, someone who has taken the time to complain or leave a stupid, hateful comment on your blog is EXACTLY who you want to interact with. They care enough to let you know…99% of the time, it’s a simple issue you can resolve immediately with very little effort, and when you do this, you come off like a hero. If you choose to attack back, you will be justified in doing so, and you will also lose at least one customer forever. You can choose between using such an event as an opportunity to grow trust in your brand, or you can choose to come off looking like a jerk. Your choice!
Testimonials. This is a classic. It works, and it will ALWAYS work. Show people proof that your product or service has produced favorable results for others. Produce a system for getting testimonials from your buyers today!
Be good. This one might sound like a cop out, but I think it might be the most important one of all. Being good requires constant hard work, networking, staying on top of things and really putting your honest, full effort into your business…every day. These are all things the “gurus” claim they can teach you to skip. Learn all you can from the gurus, but then go out and bust your ass implementing what you’ve learned. Don’t skip the hard stuff, because doing what your competition is not willing to do…that’s exactly what will turn the tables in your favor. Can you make money online by doing very little? Yes, you can make chump change that way. Of course, if you’re in it for chump change, you’re reading the wrong blog 🙂

Of course, I don’t consider this to be a masterfully comprehensive list, but it’s a few things I consider to be absolutely crucial for instilling trust with your buyers.

Do you have any to add? Let me know what you think!