10 Point Check List For Blog Promotion

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I call this the:

Blog Promotion Manifesto

Use this ten point blog promotion checklist to promote your pillar content on the internet.

You wrote a great post - Whats next?
In this episode you'll learn:

• How to drive traffic to the post
• How to get the post shared
• How to grow your network

#1: Choose a catchy "sharable" headline - What's a Shareable Headline? A shareable headline get attention? It also needs to be around 120 characters so that it fits easily into a retweet!

#2: Share the post on social networks, blogging communities and webmaster forums 
For Twitter use: JustRetweet and Viral Content Bee
For Facebook use: Social Buzz Club
Forums and Communities to join:

• Blog Engage 
• Triberr
• BizSugar 

#3: Add a link to the post in social networking profiles instead of your home page

#4. Blog Commenting - Leave "valuable" comments on CommentLuv enabled blogs. Here's some tips for leaving good comments that get approved:

• Offer good advice
• Share your take
• Ask a question

#5: Publish related content on your blog. Case studies are just one option!

#6: Guest Post on authority blogs that help build your Google "Author Rank". In order to do this, you must be sure the host blog provides you with an author bio box so you can get your Google Authorship!

#7: Reproduce your content as a video, presentation or podcast! Get creative - Check out the slides and video for this post below.

#8: Conduct interviews with bloggers who have expertise on the subject of your blog post.

#9: Build links to your post with content curation platforms like Scoop.it, Paper.li or Storify

#10: Send an email to your newsletter subscribers
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If you are new to blogging be sure to check out Blogging Tips 101 and to get free tips and resources to help you build a better blog and expand your audience! http://BasicBlogTips.com/email

The Blog Promotion Manifesto:
Your 10 Point Check List for Blog Post Promotion from Ileane Smith

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5 Reasons to Start Building Your Email List with AWeber

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AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing services around. 
My top five reasons for using AWeber to build an email list are: 

• WordPress integration through the free plugin
• Ad tracking keeps track of links that are clicked
• List segmentation based on various characteristics
• Facebook application allows for easy sign up
• Rapportive - an extension for Google Chrome that works inside of Gmail.

Take AWeber for a test drive 

If you have WordPress, you'll also need a great plugin like 

New to blogging? 

Then be sure to check out The Beginners Guide to Blogging Series and free tips and resources to help you build a better blog and expand your audience! 

Sign up for my newsletter here:
Ms. Ileane's Newsletter

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Time For Your Transformation from Blogger to Webmaster

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Ready to transform from being a blogger into being a Webmaster? 

I bet you’re wondering how you’re going to do that. 
First, let's take a look at where we started. In the episode titled Start Your Blogging Journey Today, we talked about how to decide on a blog topic and how to pick a domain name for your blog. Next we focused on the importance making connections and collaborations with other bloggers.
In this next phase of your blogging journey you are going to dig deeper and gain a better understanding of the traffic that is coming to your blog.

Enter Google Webmaster Tools 

If you haven’t submitted your blog to Google’s index yet, the best way to do that is by submitting a sitemap of your blog to Google Webmaster Tools. 
It might sound super geeky to do this but it’s really not all that technical. 
Most WordPress blog themes have this feature built in already or you can install a plugin like the XML Sitemap plugin.  

Once your site is included in Google’s index, you should also verify your site with Bing Webmaster Tools as well, so that your blog is included in their index also. 

Search Queries in  Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools will "teach" you several lessons about the performance of your site and help you evaluate how effective you are at attracting website visitors. 

Go to the Traffic section of the report, click on Search Queries, and you'll find the following columns of data:

Queries: Number of search terms people are looking for

Impressions: Number of times your site shows up in Google's search results or SERP

Clicks: Number of times people saw your site in search and click through (also known as TRAFFIC!) 

Google Webmaster Tools versus Google Analytics 

There is a clear distinction between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. 
Google Analytics - tells you about all the traffic you have coming to your blog. It tracks all of the traffic no matter what source it comes from. You can find out how many visitors come to your site from social media sites, links on other blogs, paid advertising promotions, other search engines, YouTube, etc. 

Analytics also tells you how long people stayed on the page, how many pages they visited and more. 

Webmaster Tools - provides details of your sites performance in Google’s index or in their search results pages. You can find the keywords or search terms that people are looking for that send traffic to your blog.  Connect Google Analytics to Webmaster tools

For more information about Google Analytics read Google Analytics Integrations: Centralizing Digital Marketing by Daniel Waisberg.

Monitoring Keywords That Send You Traffic

In the traffic report you can click on any column heading to sort by that item. For example, select the "Click" column and you'll see the top post on your blog that is getting "organic" traffic.  

Hopefully you will find that you are getting traffic based on something you want to get traffic for. Use this information to develop more content on the that topic. Go into more detail about the topic or approach it from a different point of view and be sure to interlink the new post with the old one to boost your rankings even higher. 

On the other hand, you might find that you're getting organic traffic for terms that is relevant to blog's topic but you don't have enough expertise to do a follow up post, see if you can get someone to do a guest post. 

CASE STUDY: In the podcast I joked about a post on my other blog Basic Blog Tips about The Benefit of Having an iPhone. That particular post ranked on page one of Google and sent tons of traffic to my blog. The problem was that I couldn't do a follow-up post myself because I don't have an iPhone. As fate would have it, turns out that one of my guest authors, Ahmed Raza has lots of expertise and knowledge in the area of mobile marketing. He wrote a follow up post called Ten Smartest iPhone Apps for Bloggers and now that post is getting all of the organic traffic from people searching for tips about using the iPhone. This is the ideal situation for me because Ahmed's post is much more relevant to my audience and the type of visitors that I want to attract - bloggers. These visitors will tend to stay on the blog and look at other articles versus traffic from the older post, who were people just looking for information about using iPhones. 

This is just one example of how you can use your new found "webmaster" skills to increase traffic and more importantly send the right signals to Google so they can send targeted traffic and potential clients and customers to your blog. 

I'd like to hear from you. Have you submitted your sitemap to Google? Did you connect your Analytics to your Google Webmaster account yet? 

Be sure to check out Google's Webmaster Academy.

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The Three C's of Your Blogging Success

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Blogging Success means different things to everyone but for me a successful blogger has these three qualities. 

The 3 C’s of Your Bogging Success

Now that you have set up your blog, lets move on to the step of growing a successful blog.  These tips are rules to follow throughout your journey of your blogging career.

The three C’s of Your Bogging Success are Connections, Collaborations, and Confidence. 

Connections

The easiest way to make connections is to join Blogging Communities such as Blog Engage, Website Babel,  Blokube, Biz Sugar, and The Social Buzz Club.  Joining these communities you can share your stories, learn, comment and interact with other bloggers

Collaborations

Once you make connections in blogging communities it will be easier to collaborate with bloggers who share similar interests with you.

Build you path to blogging success.  You cannot do it on your own. 

Confidence

Once you collaborate you will start to build your confidence.  Now that you are putting out good work and valuable content you will start to build confidence.  Your confidence will now show through your work making you a better blogger.

Are you surprised that I didn't include "content" as one of the three c's? 
That was done intentionally and if you want to know more about my feelings on the subject, check out this interview I did with SmallBizTrends. 

Here's a snippet from the article:

"And while the primary focus of the community was initially blogging, as social media rose in popularity, Smith began offering more tutorials and blog posts to help small business owners navigate the worlds of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + and more.  Smith practices what she preaches about social media, with active profiles on all the major sites. She recognizes the importance of maintaining profiles on multiple social sites, though she does have her favorites..."

Resources mentioned:

Blog Engage

Social Buzz Club 

Start Your Blogging Journey Today

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Start Your Blogging Journey Today

In this episode of the Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast, I want share my thoughts on getting started with a blog. I often get questions from bloggers who don’t know where to start with their blogging. 

First you need to establish a goal or objective for your blog. Here are a few examples: 

• You want you voice to be heard 
• You want to help people 
• You have a business, or product or service 
• You want to support a cause or charity 
• You not sure what you want but you’re experimenting 

The Story of How I Got Started Blogging

I share the story of how I started blogging by accident when I thought I was subscribing to my daughter’s blog, but I ended up signing up for my own by mistake. 

When visitors come to your blog for the very first time, can the take one look and know exactly what your blog is about? Does your blog title and tagline send the correct message about your content. What should you name your blog? 

Don’t worry if you’re not sure about “focus” in the beginning stages of your blog. 

You have a lot of skills to master in the early days of blogging. Once you build up your blogging skills, you can decide on your topic like I did with Basic Blog Tips. 

Next make sure that the title and tagline of your blog appears “above the fold” so that it is the first thing people see when they land on the page. Add a picture of yourself to the sidebar (I cover some do’s and don’ts) and provide more detailed information on your “About Page”. 

Remember to have fun. 

Happy blogging!

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