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LinkedIn Expands Its Blogging Tool To English Speaking Users Outside The US

by onkar
written by onkar
7923280978_e06c9d5532_b
LinkedIn’s publishing platform, previously only accessible to US users, has now been rolled out to more than 130 million English-speaking users outside of the United States.

The company announced the expansion of its publishing tool yesterday, which now brings the total amount of people that could potentially publish content on LinkedIn to 230 million.

With this change, LinkedIn is encouraging its users to treat the social network more like a blog — the company wants users to publish longer posts with photos and headlines versus just a simple status update, or a link to an article published elsewhere.

LinkedIn’s publishing platform has evolved quite a bit since it was first introduced. Initially only a select group of hand picked “influencers” were invited to publish on the network, then it was rolled out to US users, and now it has expanded worldwide to english-speaking users.

A full rollout to non-English speaking users is not in the company’s short term plans, instead LinkedIn is going to wait and see how users outside the US engage with the service so it’s known what to expect when the service eventually rolls out in other languages.

Despite being rolled out to more users over the past year, the service is still struggling to gain a strong user base. Since LinkedIn publishing was rolled out to all users in February 2014, there have been 1 million posts published. That means only one percent of people who were able to publish something on LinkedIn actually did so.

Will this expanded rollout encourage more users to come on board? Time will tell, but it’s a step in the right direction at least.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

7 Ways to Make Blogging More Complicated Than It Needs to Be

by onkar
written by onkar

equation

Far from its origins as a digital mode of journaling, blogging (derived from the phrase “web log”) has gained new status as a powerful content marketing tool for improving SEO and connecting with customers.

But unfortunately, what started out as a simple process of chronicling daily thoughts has become a complicated marketing endeavor worthy of its own committed teams and resources.

The problem?  Putting so much emphasis on business blogging as a promotional strategy has turned it into a complicated morass that frustrates well-intentioned website owners.  If left unchecked, this frustration can lead to the termination of blogging altogether – robbing the website of a host of powerful benefits.

If you find yourself feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the business blogging process, it could be that you’re making things more complicated than they need to be.  Check out the following blogging mistakes to see if your company is suffering from this common problem:

Try to cover too much in every post

Take this rule to heart: one post, one idea.

One of the easiest ways to make blogging more complicated than it needs to be is to try to throw everything you know about a given subject into a single post.  If you find yourself taking an excessive number of tangents every time you sit down to write a post, you’re likely falling into this trap!

To prevent this situation from coming to pass, assign every blog post a theme and stick to it religiously.  As an example, this article only covers the ways to overly complicate the blogging process.  It doesn’t discuss why business blogging is important, what good posts look like or how to create a company blog, as all of these topics can and will be covered in other articles.  Instead, it provides information on a singular subject that can be easily understood and implemented by its readers – which should be the goal of every single blog post your company creates.

Expect every post to go viral

On occasion, you may have a blog post “go viral” and send huge streams of new visitors your way.  But while there are plenty of techniques you can use to increase your chances of social success, be aware that implementing them all takes time (and that following these popular recommendations won’t guarantee that your articles go viral).

Although occasionally attempting to develop the types of content that audiences like to share (for example, long list posts or funny video blogs) can lead to increased website traffic, trying to meet these standards on every blog post you write is a recipe for disaster.  Spice up your blog with this type of content, but don’t let the pursuit of viral success prevent you from regularly publishing good quality content.

Bring too many people to the blogging table

If you’ve seen the movie “Office Space” (or worked in a similar situation), you know how challenging it can be to have too many bosses.  But really, this over-managed scenario doesn’t just occur in corporate conference rooms – it’s a major problem for companies that require too many team members to sign off on each and every blog post.

While it’s tempting to think that getting more people involved in your company’s blogging process will lead to better results, bringing too many people to the table is a quick way to overcomplicate the project.  Limit the number of decision-makers involved and you’ll immediately free up your blogging team to focus on content creation – not consensus building.

Engage in excessive editing

Here’s the thing…  Blog posts don’t have to be perfect.  While you certainly don’t want to release something that’s full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors under your company’s name, the reality is that web writing tends to be informal by nature.  For this reason, there’s much more leeway than in other forms of professional writing, as your followers aren’t expecting your posts to be in compliance with every arcane law of grammar ever dictated.

In most situations, a single round of revision is usually sufficient to whittle an initial draft down into a cohesive, “correct enough” post.  While your specific situation may vary, be careful of trapping every post for your company’s blog in so many rounds of corrections that final drafts are difficult to come by.

Attempt to measure too many metrics

For every blog post you release, there are a hundred different metrics that could be tracked – including everything from social shares to bounce rate and more.  But while some of this information can be useful, spending more time tracking metrics than you do on actually writing great posts isn’t an efficient use of your time.

Instead, a far better approach is to determine the specific goals your company has for your blog posts and to measure only the metrics that are associated with these objectives.  If, for example, you’re writing blog articles with the sole purpose of increasing sales, measure the number of blog visitors who go on to result in conversions – not the number of times each post is retweeted on Twitter.

Write posts that are too long

According to interesting research compiled by Neil Patel of KISSMetrics, posts that are greater than 1,500 words on average receive roughly 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook “Likes” than shorter posts.

But does that mean that every post you write needs to follow this long form format?

Absolutely not!  Writing 10,000+ word posts like the New Yorker (the web’s leader in long form content) takes time, energy and commitment – all of which detract from your other business objectives and limit the number of blog posts you can create.  So while it’s a good idea to spice up your content with the occasional long article, trying to meet these high standards on every post complicates the blogging process and can prevent you from connecting regularly with your readers.

Try to post to your blog too often

In a perfect world, all businesses would have the resources needed to run well-researched, high-quality long form blog post every day.  But we don’t live in that world!

Trying to do more with your blog than you have the resources to support (whether in terms of post length, format or publishing frequency) is a quick way to burn out your team and lose your readers due to infrequent updates.  Is it a good idea to post to your blog every day?  Absolutely – unless posting every day isn’t sustainable for your current team.

It’s far better to create an editorial calendar that you can stick with comfortably.  If you can’t post every day, post once or twice a week.  As long as your content quality remains high, readers will continue to come back again and again to connect with your business.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

Your Definitive Guide to Reputation Management Blogging: How Often & How Long

by onkar
written by onkar
Your Guide to Reputation Management Blogging | SEJ

Remember the good old days of the internet? You know, the times when you could just stuff a ton of keywords into a blog post and sit back smirking, knowing that you’d kill the SERP almost immediately?

Those days are long gone, and we can thank creatures like pandas and hummingbirds for that.

But that doesn’t mean blogging, as a whole, is dead. In fact, it’s a vital part of a reputation management strategy. Each post you write has the potential to bump something nasty that’s written about you or your company.

But you will need to amend your strategies if you’ve been leaning on the techniques that worked during the Ye Olde Internet days. So here’s my plan.

Let’s consider a fictional company that’s been writing blog posts in order to combat an attack about customer service. How should this company blog? We’ll take it step by step.

A reputation management blogging schedule

Step 1: Pick the Right Topic

Reputation management blogs tend to be keyword driven. You look for the terms that attackers use, and you try to make those terms your own. Writing like this is a lot like working on a puzzle. You have something to cram in there, and cram it you will.

But as Quicksprout so eloquently puts it, successful web content isn’t about smashing in one specific term. It’s about substance. What is the underlying message you’re trying to convey? How are you trying to help or persuade or win over your readers?

Writing like this means thinking about people, not numbers. You’ll put yourself in the seat of the person who will read your blog, not the computer system that will serve up your blog.

How to Do It

Our fictional blogger needs to serve up posts that contain keywords about customer service. But those posts need to inform or entertain or educate. The blogger could consider:

  • An entry about the concept of customer service through the ages
  • A listicle about companies that assist with customer service complaints
  • An introduction and infographic based on a customer service survey conducted by the company
  • A research-driven analysis of how customers define good service

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill blog entries about great customer service at XYZ company. They’re in-depth ideas, spurred on by a keyword, and taken to the next level.

Step 2: Cover That Topic Completely

There are tons of articles out there about how long blog posts should be. The team at Buffer suggests, for example, that the ideal post length is about 1,600 words. While Medium says the best posts can be consumed in about seven minutes (which might be a handy little figure for people working up posts that include videos and infographics with few words).

These benchmarks can be helpful to consider, as they make it clear that short entries just won’t get the job done. But it’s important to remember we’re not striving for length. We’re looking for engagement.

I could easily make this post climb to the 3,000-word mark if I crammed in a ton of extraneous information about other blogs I’ve written or places I’ve gone in order to learn about blogging or the computer setup I’m using right now in order to write this blog entry. In theory, all of these little add-ons relate to the topic I’m writing about. But how much would they tell you about writing for reputation management purposes? Nothing at all.

An ideal blog will be just long enough to cover the topic completely, leaving a reader with no unanswered questions about that topic. And it won’t contain extra information that adds nothing to the knowledge profile.

How to Do It

Our fictional blogger will need to:

  1. Fully research the topic. What are the underlying metrics? What do others say about the issue? What do readers say in the comments section of other published blogs on that topic?
  2. Outline the topic. What are the key points? What’s a must-know takeaway?
  3. Write to the outline.
  4. Edit for consistency.
  5. Reread 24 hours later, before publishing, in order to determine that the above steps are complete.

Note that there are no steps in here about word count or reading time. Instead, the emphasis is on good writing, done well.

Connect for reputation management success

Step 3: Aspire to Engage and Connect

The easy, slacker way to fill up a blog with content is to scrape it from another place or create gateway pages that contain duplicate content with just one or two keywords of difference. As Google makes clear, this content is considered thin. It doesn’t add value for a reader, and it doesn’t make for interesting or compelling consumption. It’s blogging for an algorithm, not a person.

A truly compelling post contains an opinion or research or analysis or all three of these things. It’s different from any other content floating around out there. It really does provide value.

How to Do It

Our fictional blogger will be on the lookout for extensive copy/paste techniques. If those writing fingers start to itch to steal content from somewhere else, or if the writer’s brain can’t come up with something new to say, there’s no reason to keep on blogging. Taking a walk, chatting with a friend,  or nap can break the block and return the writer to productivity.

Tools like Copyscape can also be a vital part of the editing process. If the writer finds the content is almost entirely present in another place on the web, it’s time to head back in for revisions.

Step 4: Repeat ONLY When You Can Recreate

How often should you blog? An in-depth analysis from Hubspot suggests  businesses should blog early and often. Companies that publish more than 11 posts per month get a lot more traffic than those that publish less frequently.

But here’s the thing: With thin Google penalties very much in play, it makes sense to blog only when you can do so in a robust and comprehensive manner. You’ll need to make sure your blogs are spot on, every time, in order to reach and convince your potential readers. In my opinion, writing well once in a while is much better than writing poorly every day.

Moz backs me up on this. The company is emphasizing what Rand Fishkin calls 10x content, or content that is so amazing that it’s worth the wait, and that means Moz may not publish every day. If the content isn’t quite up to par, it doesn’t go out the door. And in an experiment to test traffic, there was no huge dip on days in which there was no new content.

If Moz can do it, so can you.

How to Do It

Our fictional blogger might set a calendar in which the blog is updated once per week, with data that’s truly epic and amazing and written over the course of an entire week. If that schedule works and the writer has more to say, an additional day could be added.

Getting Started

If you’ve been blogging every day, filling up your pages with thin content inspired by reputation management keywords, just stop. Use this plan instead. You’ll probably spend the same amount of time, but you’ll get much better results in return. And isn’t that what we all want?

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

After Guest Blogging…What’s Left for “Safe” Link Building?

by onkar
written by onkar
safe-link-building-tactics

As link building tactics get shot down by the Big G, online marketers are left wondering what’s left.  Guest blogging has been devalued, alongside every other known scalable method to build links, including comments, forums, article marketing, and directories.  These almost sound like dirty words in today’s marketing environment, but years ago, they were the way to rank.  So what now? What can you do to get your site to rank?

Everyone is now touting the benefit of Content Marketing as the only safe tactic left.  But what happens when EVERYONE starts doing it?  Mark Shaeffer from BusinessesGrow coined a term called Content Shock.  There’s simply too much content being produced.  So is content marketing a sustainable model for every businesses wanting to improve their presence in Google organic?

Safe Link Building Strategies

Let’s start by changing the paradigm.  “Link building” is over, done, kaput.   Any of the known methods used to build links are now on Google’s radar to penalize.  They really, really, really don’t want anyone “Building” links.  They want everyone Building content that THEY can monetize on.  Think about it.  All those great long tail articles that you are creating will help improve relevancy which in turn helps them improve their bottom line.  If link building is out, what can you do?

penguin safe link building, alternatives to guest blogging

 

Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

Forget Link Building, think Link Earning

The concept of link earning is one we’ve all heard about, but have difficulty turning into a scalable methodology.  Great content can’t assure links.  But great content CAN be the foundation for which you implement other methods to EARN links.  The best way to achieve this is using integrated online marketing.

How to Use Integrated Content Marketing to Earn Links & Social Signals

Before you think links you HAVE to think content.  Content Marketing is the foundation for an integrated marketing strategy.  Your social, paid, and organic promotions depend on highly authoritative, quality content.

Once you’ve created amazing resources, get your content in front of people with Social Media.  Create community by building an engaged audience ready to share and like your content.

Amplify your content using paid social channels as well as Direct Outreach to increase the visibility of your content.  Marty Weintraub, who coined “Paid Organic Amplifcation” has been teaching marketers how to amplify content using Facebook for years.

The combination of content, social media, and paid social leads to visibility which in turn links to those Coveted Links and Social Signals that help you rank organically.

Continued Psychographic, Semantic, Persona and Keyword Research will drive the content creation strategy which in turn will bring in more users from different stages of the sales funnel.

The Goal:  

Build high quality content assets that can be placed in front of a socially engaged and psychographically targeted audience which then shares and links to your content – naturally.  No byline, no manufactured links profiles…just genuine shares and attribution to great content.

Scaling Link Earning

Once you have great content, how do you guarantee visibility for this content?

Let’s start by discussing some of the different types of content that can have traction in this over-saturated environment.

Vanity Bait & Round-up Articles

Have you been emailed a question by bloggers as part of a round-up where your answer gets aggregated with that of other influencers? These posts tend to be extensive, chock-full of knowledge, and a genuine resource.  And guess what happens when it’s published? You email the influencers who are published in the content piece and announce that the content is live.  What will 9 out of 10 people do? Share it socially – why not show off this mention? So you generated content and social signals with a little bit of high-end, targeted outreach.

Interviews

Influencers have to promote themselves, too and generally love to share their knowledge.  Build connections with high-profile industry influencers and ask them if they’re willing to be interviewed.  Google Hangouts are a great way to create video content that is highly shareable.  I recently interviewed Jesse Wojdylo on a Hangout, and his share of our interview generated some nice social activity for us both.

Surveys

Using SurveyMonkey to create surveys can generate a plethora of content pieces that contain both statistical data as well as many other potential content pieces.  Instead of just regurgitating what everyone else is talking about, why not get some actual HARD data that you can turn into blog posts, infographics, white papers and case studies?

Infographics

I know this is an old practice that has been abused, but there’s still massive value in creating infograhics.  People love visual content, and infographics are a great way to convey a message without boring people with a lot of text.  People’s attention span just keeps getting shorter, so engage them with gorgeous visuals that are also informative.  Combining infographics with direct outreach, even offering to write custom intros for those infographics, can generate great results for earned links.

Amplify your content with paid social ads

Now that you’ve created all these content pieces, how can you guarantee eyeballs?  Place that content in front of the people who are most likely to share and link to it.  Using Facebook ads is the most precise method due to the highly advanced targeting capabilities.  In a groundbreaking post dating back to 2012, Marty Weintraub outlines a precise method to amplify content using Facebook. You can use other social promotions channels as well, including Twitter, Reddit, and Stumbleupon.

And Pretty Please…don’t Forget Google Plus

Even though this isn’t a link building tactic, you really can’t ignore Google Plus.  Google has stated that they WILL be using social signals in the future, and the only signals that they fully control are those from their own social platform.  We’re already seeing more Plus pages ranking in Google, and the trend will only continue.  In the same way you use links to build authority, now you have to build connections to build social authority, which is in turn connected to your site and persona as you publish across the web.

Direct Outreach is a Crucial Component

Even when you place content in front of people, the most effective way to generate links and mentions is via direct outreach.  This outreach is what leads to the connections made for interviews and round-up posts.  When promoting an infographic, finding people who have shared contextual infographics and telling them about yours WILL lead to links.  Perhaps they didn’t see your post on Facebook promoting your infographic, but if you reach out to them via email, Facebook, or Twitter then its possible they’ll share the infographic. Direct outreach is the jelly in a PB&J sandwich – you really can’t practice Link Earning without outreach.

Don’t forget to Track!

Before you start your integrated marketing campaign, make sure you have clear goals with associated Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).  Tracking these KPI’s will help you identify what content pieces are working best, movement in both social and organic results, and of course conversions.  It’ll help drive the content creation strategy.

Guest Blogging is NOT Dead

Who am I to contradict Google’s head of web spam?  What I will say, from someone who spends 80% of her time doing link audits, analyzing link profiles, and doing competitive analysis – is that most of the links that Matt has pronounced as “dead” are really NOT.  What’s dead is “Footprint  Link Building”.  If ALL of your links are guest posts, then yes, this will cause your site to be penalized.  If you have money terms in your anchor, Penguin will likely catch you at one point or another.  If too many of your link ratios create a footprint, then your link building is not safe and will lead to manual or algorithmic penalties.  If I believed guest posting was dead, I wouldn’t be writing here, would I?  SEJ is a valuable site and most of us who deeply understand the industry will continue to share our voice and ideas through this and other high-quality industry sites.

As many have said before, use high quality guest posting as a small part of your internet marketing campaign and you won’t have any problems.  Just make sure to vary your link profile and use many different types of link earning sources and you’ll stay safe from Google’s dangerous animals.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

How to Use Guest Blogging for Lead Generation

by onkar
written by onkar
guest blogging for lead generation

Back in April, I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal that explained how to optimize a website to rank for multiple locations. Having worked for a company with over 45 independently owned locations across the country, I figured multi-location SEO would be a solid topic to write about because it was something that I was familiar with and it seemed like a topic many business owners would find useful.

But I never imagined this article would turn out to be such a great referral source. Not only did this one article generate a handful of clients, but it also helped me double my monthly revenue as a consultant.

multi-location SEO for global and local businesses

This is a prime example of how guest blogging can help generate leads. From an SEO standpoint, the primary objective of a guest post has typically been to get a link back to your site. For a while, this was an effective way to build up your backlink profile. The strategy itself was pretty straight-forward: Find an authoritative site within your industry and offer them an article that is relevant to their target audience in exchange for a link.

Soon SEOs came to realize the link was all that really mattered, and content quality was essentially irrelevant in terms of the organic ranking benefit. Over the years, guest blogging (among other spammy SEO tactics) led to a massive influx of low quality content.

It all came crashing down (or so it seemed) in January of 2014, when Matt Cutts published a blog post that confirmed what many SEOs had been theorizing for many years—guest blogging is dead.

However, despite the dramatic headline, guest blogging hasn’t died–it’s just not the circus it once was.

When Matt Cutts said that guest blogging was dead, he was specifically referring to the use of guest blogging as a link building strategy. This makes a lot of sense, considering links were the main motivation behind most guest posts.

Going Beyond Link Building

But guest posting has a variety of benefits outside of just building links. Don’t worry, I’m not about to bore you with a long list you’ve probably seen countless times. Instead, I want to talk about how you can optimize your guest post outreach strategy to increase ROI and generate quality leads for your business.

Similar to how lead scoring helps tighten conversion funnels by pre-qualifying prospects, businesses can analyze topics and content styles in which their audience is most likely to engage. Typically, higher engagement leads to more conversions, which means reduced marketing costs and a higher ROI.

But when most people think of guest posting, they tend to focus solely on the link metrics, such as domain authority, linking root domains, etc. Although this data might tell us how likely a site is to rank well in search results, they don’t really tell us much about the website’s audience.

When you’re building links, relevancy usually means the site aligns with a specific industry or topic. But, when you shift your focus to lead generation, things get a little more complicated. The lesson to be learned: Relevancy is relative to your objective.

Here are a few considerations to help establish relevancy for effective lead generation:

Establish Yourself as an Authority

Would you consider yourself an authority in your industry?

In the good ‘ole days of guest blogging, the author bio was a prime place to include a link back to your website. But now that you’re going after more than just links, you can use your author bio –and even the post itself– to help establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry.

In the article I mentioned above, I never disclosed that I own an SEO consulting agency, nor did I include any links to my website within the article itself. But since my author bio mentioned I offer consulting services and included a link to my website, I received nearly 20 inquiries, of which approximately half converted into real clients. I found this interesting because even though I pretty much spelled everything out for them in terms of the strategy, they still wanted me to handle the implementation.

Since I used the company I worked for as an example, I was able to provide proof that what I was saying in the article really works. By establishing this sense of authority, businesses felt a lot more confident that I could help them, which made the conversion process a whole lot easier.

If you can establish trust with a potential client before the initial point of contact, then that’s half the battle right there.

Choose the Right Topic

Most websites worth their salt aren’t interested in publishing topics that have been covered extensively in the past. To give you an idea, Search Engine Journal turns away 10-15 potential contributors for every one they accept.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of sites desperate for content who will publish anything you throw at them–especially if you’re covering a trending topic that’s relevant to their industry. But if you’re targeting an authoritative site, most editors are looking for new topics and a fresh perspective. They are looking for something that adds value for their readers.

Just be careful not to bite off more than you can chew. Targeting topics is a lot like targeting keywords. By covering too many topics within the same article, you’re diluting the value of each topic. Try to choose topics that are specific enough for you to cover thoroughly. This helps establish credibility.

For instance, if I wrote a general overview of local search, it would have been difficult to really delve into all of the nitty-gritty details and as a result the post wouldn’t offer much insight. But when I concentrate on only one facet of local search, like I did on multi-location SEO, I’m able to sharpen my focus so I can provide a more comprehensive overview, which gives me a better opportunity to offer something of value.

There are exceptions, like this super in-depth, beginners guide to link building by Paddy Moogan. However, unless you can commit to something of that magnitude, I’d recommend sticking with something you can cover in less than 2,000 words.

Choose the Right Site

After you choose a topic, it’s time to figure out where your guest post will be published.

When you begin vetting sites for lead generation, you should look beyond domain authority and industry relevance. How large of a social following do they have? How engaged are their followers? Are there a lot of social shares for posts by other guest authors?

Although this type of analysis may seem pretty straightforward, it can become very tedious. When I was contemplating which site would be a good fit the multi-location SEO article, I had several sites in mind and to be honest, SEJ was not my first choice. But after some digging, I came to the conclusion that based on the total number of shares and community engagement for local SEO-related articles, SEJ seemed to offer the best value.

Remember, social sharing gives you exponential reach–especially with a website that averages over 600,000 monthly visitors. The authoritative domain also provided an added SEO benefit. You may not be chasing links, but a site’s authority can mean higher search visibility for your content. If you search “multi-location SEO” in Google, my article is the first result you see. It would be a lot more difficult for me to rank for a term like this if the content resided on my own domain, which has only a fraction of the authority.

multi-location seo by brandon seymour

Choosing the right site means more views, more shares, more links, more search visibility, and of course, a greater potential for leads.

Define Your Qualifying Factors

Any business owner who uses lead generation knows some leads are more qualified than others. That’s why it helps to have some conditions you can target.

In my case, the multi-location aspect was a pretty good qualifying factor itself. If a business has multiple locations or if they’re looking to expand their territory, that’s usually an indicator that they have the budget for SEO.

For most businesses, price is one of the most common pain points when it comes to closing a sale. In this case, I’ve eliminated this deterrent by choosing a topic that only applies to businesses that meet specific standards. This type of filtering also works great if you’re trying to target specific regions.

If you’re a business with multiple locations, then why not offer content to some of the sites that cater to your individual local markets? If you’re using a scattershot approach to generate leads from guest posts, you’re just spinning your wheels.

Putting it All Together

Guest blogging isn’t dead. It just takes a lot more time and effort to do it right. So don’t nail the coffin lid shut just yet. If you’re abiding by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, there really isn’t much difference between guest posts and any other type of authored content. As long as you continue to produce engaging, quality content, guest blogging is still a great strategy for branding, exposure, and increasing your businesses reach.

I think as content marketing continues to evolve, a lot more businesses will begin optimizing their guest post strategy for lead generation and customer acquisition. Who knows, if you approach guest blogging the right way, you might get even that coveted link after all. I know I said this isn’t about link building, but a legitimate backlink from a reputable site is a nice bonus.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Guest Blogging Defined by the Smartest Marketers: 10 Best Guest Blogging Quotes

by onkar
written by onkar

Guest blogging has been a hot topic for a couple of years now. It’s one of the most efficient ways to build relationships with bloggers through great content…but only if done right.

In the huge amount of “how-to-guest-post” articles, it’s not easy to find really good tips that would encourage you to stop, think and start doing it properly.

Here are my favorite gems:

1. Leo Widrich: Focus on The Long-Term Benefits of Guestposting

One thing that people tend to forget: Guest blogging is hard to scale and it only makes sense when it’s a long-term project. Every bit counts, every tiny connection you build along the way. Don’t expect fast results and be sure to value each contact you manage to find while guest blogging… at the end of the day, you never know!

guest blogging leo widrichThe amazing thing about guest posting really is the amount of people you will meet through it. This means either in the comments of your posts or simply the relationship with the person owning the blog.

It will allow you to hit these people up more easily with exclusive product updates in the future to feature your service. Or you get referred to other, bigger blogs where you are able to do a new write-up.

2. Don Sturgill: Write a Guest Post ONLY if You Have Something Worth Saying

Guest blogging has been abused lately but does low-quality guest blogging actually make sense?

Nope, it’s just a waste of time!

Don Sturgill…one thing got missed in the rush to become bona-fide guest bloggers: if you take worthless content and move it from worthless sites to sites that aren’t (yet) deemed worthless, nothing changes in the long-term. The search engine robots will sniff you out … eventually…

Take this pledge: From this day forward, I (insert name) will do my best to write or speak only those words that have a reasonable chance of benefiting the planet and its people. Amen.

3. Neil Patel: Do Your Homework Promoting EACH of Your Guest Posts

The guest author’s work is not done once the blog owner hits “Publish”. You are missing a lot unless you make the most of promoting your guest post with your network while engaging with your host blogger’s network. That’s how you build your portfolio, promote your brand, and grow your network.

Guest blogging Neil PatelIf your post gets a lot of traffic, social shares and comments, the blog owner will most likely accept guest posts from you again.

Plus, you can use that post as a reference when pitching other blogs…

Respond to comments – to get the maximum engagement out of the post, you need to encourage comments…

 

4. Mitch Monsen: A Guest Post is Just the Beginning of a Mutually Beneficial Relationship

A published guest post is not your ultimate aim: You should maintain your relationships with bloggers who you built contacts with.

Mitch Monsen guest bloggingYour relationship with these blogs and bloggers doesn’t end once you’ve got a guest post published; you’ve just developed some exceptional business contacts!

Keep in touch with them and offer to write another guest post for them after some time has passed

5. Nathan Barry: Create a “Blanket Effect”

“Blanket” is a good way to describe it. I personally call it #beeverywhere illusion but I think Nathan’s term is better!

guest blogging Nathan BarryMy goal with guest posts is to create a blanket effect. Meaning that someone in my target market should see several tweets, read a couple of guest posts I’d written, and see my post on Hacker News.

The idea being that they may not pay attention the first or second time, but after seeing my book mentioned several times within a couple hours they will click through and be more interested.

6. Tommy Walker: Think about [Guest Blogging] Like Your Favorite Long Running TV Show.

I love this analogy: Don’t expect being famous after one guest post at Mashable. Think about this as “guest starring” in a popular show: One appearance won’t do much for you unless you did absolutely AWESOME:

Tommy Walker guest bloggingOn TV an actor might guest star for one or two episodes, but over the course of 100 or 200 episodes, one or two performances won’t make a huge difference…

With [guest posting], you should absolutely try your hardest to write something where people demand you come back.

But if that doesn’t happen, the next best thing you can do after your post has gone live is to leverage the experience for repeat post opportunities, and expand your network.

7. Michael Martinez: The Guest Post Should *Benefit* the Host Blog

One important fact about guest blogging people keep missing: It should benefit both the parties. You are not paying the publisher anything, so he / she should have a good reason to welcome you in their community!

Michael Martinez guest bloggingNo company should be accepting guest posts for its blog where the articles don’t provide value for the company and yet they pass value back to the bloggers through links…

It’s all about the brand, baby. You create a value proposition that helps you stand out from the crowd and in doing so the crowd will remember you. And if they remember you they will search for you.

8. Craig Fifield: Guest Post to Build Your Brand

This one is Gold coming from an SEO pioneer like Craig. Stop thinking about “obvious” benefits and focus on SEO benefits the come from you building your brand power and trust:

Craig Fifield…the SEO benefit for guest blogging isn’t from the obvious bio links, it’s from everything else that comes from being known

…don’t worry about getting famous. Worry about providing a useful post to the audience of the blog.

9. Pratik Dholakiya: Turn Guest Posting on its Head (on Reverse Guest Blogging)

While the article is not exactly about guest blogging, the concept still holds true. Stop thinking about guest blogging as simply a source of free content. That’s getting old!

Think about guest blogging as the way to attract “micro-celebrities” to your site. Think about their reputation and trust they bring with them!

Pratik Dholakiya guest blogging…Just how do you find the rightmicrocelebrity, use them in theright way, and for the right reasons…

It’s time to reverse our thinking on guest posts. There’s no doubt that posting on somebody else’s blog can be a good way to get exposure, but you can do a lot for your reputation and credibility by hiring people who already haveexposure to post on your blog.

Why 9?

I know 10 quotes would make it a better list, but those 9 were so perfect that I didn’t want to find another one just for the sake of making it 10!

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

LinkedIn’s Blogging Platform Is Now Open To Users, Not Just Influencers

by onkar
written by onkar
linkedin publishing

Ryan Roslansky of LinkedIn announced yesterday their publishing platform, which had previously only been available to LinkedIn “influencers”, is now available to regular users. When a LinkedIn user publishes a piece of original content it them becomes a part of that user’s professional profile and immediately shared with their network.

If you enjoy content posted by other users who are not in your network, Roslansky says you will be able to follow them and receive future updates. Of course, users who aren’t in your network will be able to follow you on LinkedIn as well, which allows everyone the opportunity to build an entirely new audience.

The LinkedIn Influencer program started in the fall of 2012 with its prime focus being on having industry thought leaders share their expertise. According to Roslansky, the average Influencer post drives more than 31,000 views and receives more than 250 likes and 80 comments. Top LinkedIn Influencers relevant to Digital Marketing include Mark Cuban, Guy Kawasaki, Mark Hurd &Joe Pulizzi.

As of yesterday, 25,000 members will have the ability to publish content on LinkedIn. If you’re one of them, you will get an email that looks something like this:

The invitation will vary according to what topic LinkedIn believes you are influential about. They will be expanding the capability to all members in multiple languages over the next few weeks and months.

LinkedIn is clearly taking their publishing platform seriously and making every effort to ensure the content published is useful and relevant to users. WithinLinkedIn’s Publishing Plaftorm Help Center you’ll find a set of rights and responsibilities stating posts will be removed if they are not deemed beneficial to the community:

LinkedIn discourages and may disable posts that self-servingly advertise a service, business, political cause or other organization or cause that does not benefit the broader LinkedIn community.

Stealing, or “sharing”, others’ content is also strongly discouraged:

Most content on the internet belong to someone, and unless you have clear permission from the owner to share it, you shouldn’t include it in your posts.

However, you can republish your own content on LinkedIn that you have personally published elsewhere, and any content you publish on LinkedIn remains your own. They certainly have all the makings of a great publishing platform, the only questions left are: will anyone actually use it, will anyone engage with the content, and how valuable will it be to your content marketing strategy in the long run?

Will you be publishing content on LinkedIn now that you have the option to do so? Let me know your thoughts on this new blogging platform.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

LinkedIn Crosses 1 Million Publishers On Its Blogging Platform

by onkar
written by onkar
shutterstock_193524572

There are now over 1 million unique publishers on LinkedIn’s blogging platform, a milestone the company celebrated with a post on its own blog.

Three years ago the platform launched with only 150 hand-picked influencers eligible to publish on it. Now LinkedIn publishing is open to all English speaking members, and is said to soon be available in every language.

Here are some notable accomplishments to date:

  • Over 1 million unique publishers publish more than 130,000 posts a week.
  • Around 45% of readers consist of those at the top of their industries, including managers, VPs, and CEOs.
  • Top content-demanding industries tech, financial services and higher education.
  • The average post now reaches professionals in 21 industries and 9 countries.

LinkedIn describes its most successful publishers as being not only those who create their own content, but also read and engage with the content of other members.

In its post, the company presents two case studies of business owners generating new business through publishing and engaging with content on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s fledgling publishing platform is clearly gaining traction with its members. However, considering that there are over 130 million English speaking members eligible to publish on the platform, its still only being used by around 7% of its potential user base.

Although 1 million publishers after 3 years is certainly notable.

If you were on the fence about publishing on LinkedIn because you weren’t sure if there was any engagement on the platform, at least you know its growing and finding its audience.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

Blogging 101: Traffic Generation for Blogs on a Budget

by onkar
written by onkar
blogging101-traffic-generation-blogs-on-budget

Running a blog often sounds very appealing. You’ll have a place to share your thoughts, build a community, and also generate some much-needed cash. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well, the reality is it’s not as easy to achieve this as a lot of people make out. I hear the same old things time after time: “Just create awesome content” or “Build a social media following so that you can drive traffic back to your blog.”

It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? That’s because it is obvious.

Who in their right mind would start a blog with the intention of producing crap content and completely neglecting social media? Morons, that’s who.

The reality is you could be producing the most awesome content in the world, but if nobody gets their eyeballs on it then it all goes to waste.

I’ve been blogging for a fair amount of time now and have learnt a lot of tough lessons along the way. During my early days of blogging, the thing that I really craved was advice on how to generate traffic without having to spend a fortune doing it. Most bloggers don’t blog full-time, at least not at the beginning, so they don’t have thousands (or even hundreds) of pounds (or dollars) to be spending every month to get things off the ground.

Within this post, I’m going to show you some ways that you can generate traffic to your blog without breaking the bank. I’m going to mention some paid tools, but nothing that will cost you a fortune!

To kick things off, let’s look at driving traffic through from the search engines, and in particular finding some low-hanging fruit.

Long Tail Keyword Research

One of the first personal blogs that I set up was my travel blog. This became my testing ground for new link building methods and I was really keen on making a big impact within the search engines (all within a tiny budget – i.e. under $50 a month).

During the early stages of my campaign, I made some rookie mistakes on the keywords that I was going after and it really set me back. I decided that I wanted to rank for search terms like travel blog and cash in on huge amounts of traffic to the homepage. I spent massive amounts of time and resources in doing so, and I actually managed to reach the bottom half of page 1 for around 2 weeks. This then died down because I was going up against some of the big boys in the industry that were literally spending over 100x more than me.

It wasn’t the best use of my time, and to be honest, the reward wasn’t great. Most users that came through from this kind of search term bounced from the site and didn’t look at my articles, which is what I really wanted.

It was time for a change.

I shifted my focus away from short-tail, highly competitive keywords and moved to finding some low-hanging fruit in the form of longer, more specific search queries. The result? Just check out this snapshot of my Google Analytics from last year (it’s search traffic only):

Organic search traffic to my travel blog

This made me stand up and take notice. I’d increased traffic from search by over 450% – not bad. What’s more, the visitors were staying on the site because the content was directly relevant to the query they were searching for.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s great, Matt, but I’m not an SEO expert and don’t really know where to start with keyword research.”

Don’t worry, I’m hearing ya!

This is where I’ll suggest a tool. The tool in question is Keyword Eye and it costs £9.99 per month (~$16) for the Pro package, but there’s also a free version.

The reason why I’m suggesting this tool is because it uses data from SEMrush, an awesome tool that costs a significantly larger amount (the top package is $149.50 per month).

The Process

The thing with Keyword Eye is that it’s really simple to use. It has a ton of advanced features, but the main feature I want to talk about is the Question Finder feature.

Question finder feature within Keyword Eye

In a nutshell, the tool allows you to plug-in a general topic and it will gather a number of informational queries related to it. In the example above, I’ve searched for blogging. This has returned a long list of questions that people regularly search for related to blogging, along with the search volume and competition scores. This is perfect for finding some opportunities.

There’s a post on the Keyword Eye blog that goes into a little more detail about this feature – you give it a read here.

My approach, on a basic level, is to pull off a list of broad topics that are related to your niche and then plug them into the Question Finder. From here you can start creating content focused around them to drive through organic search traffic over time.

This is exactly what I did with my travel blog and the results were a dramatic and sustained growth in traffic. Here’s a small snapshot of my Webmaster Tools from the past couple of weeks:

Melted Stories search queries

As you can see, the vast majority of these search terms that are bringing through traffic to the blog are very specific, long-tail queries.

Extra Reading: I recorded a full review and tutorial of Keyword Eye last year that goes into some of the other features of the tool. One thing to note is that there’s been a TON of new features added, but this should give you an insight into what else it can do.

Social Media Scheduling

I can’t stress the importance of growing a social media following enough. For bloggers, it’s a hugely powerful resource to have when you’re looking to build traffic to your content.

Having said that, it’s not always easy when you’ve got a minimal budget at your disposal. This is where you have to make the most out of what you’ve got by being smart with your social sharing.

I’m not going to go into the details of choosing the right social channel to pursue because there are tons of articles out there that you can read which directly focus on this (if you’re interested, check out this, this or this).

Instead, I’m going to show you how you can take the pain out of engaging with your social media following, whilst also getting maximum exposure. This is where I call in some help from Buffer.

If you haven’t heard of Buffer before then you need to go and try it out. There’s a free version (which will be more than enough for a blogger) and a paid version ($10 a month).

In short, Buffer allows you to schedule in your social media posts across a range of different platforms so that they go out at the peak times of activity for your followers (here’s more details).

Rand's Whiteboard Friday image

The above image is from Rand Fishkin’s recent Whiteboard Friday on Moz. In the bottom-right corner of the image, Rand has drawn up the optimal posting schedule for your blog content across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Tumblr.

For those struggling to read it, I’ve mocked up this image:

Social Media Publishing Schedule

Using this as a guideline, I ensure that whenever I publish any new blog post it gets scheduled through Buffer across each of my social networks. I can then measure the impact of each post and refine it to squeeze the most value out of every piece of content.

Buffer Schedule

Taking automation a step further, I’m able to schedule in some related content to post out to my social media followers by linking Buffer up to Feedly(my RSS reader).

I’ve done this with the help of IFTTT, a free tool that synchronizes a whole host of different tools together. Again, I’m not going to go into the full details of IFTTT because that’s a whole post in itself. Instead, go over and check outMatthew Woodward’s full tutorial.

All you need is the recipe that I created, which is here. Using this recipe, IFTTT will add any articles that you Save for Later on Feedly directly to your Buffer queue. This saves me so much time when I’m on the move.

Smart Facebook Advertising

So, I’ve discussed how to optimize your social shares for maximum exposure. Now it’s time to look at reaching a wider audience through paid advertising.

I know I mentioned we’d be sticking to a budget and I meant it. I’m not talking about spending a fortune here; I’m talking about spending small amounts that deliver big results.

Does that sound better?

I thought so.

Just to set the scene a little, I’m going to introduce you to my latest personal project – my pescetarian food blog. The truth behind this project is simple… Ilove food. Also, along with my lovely partner Laura, I don’t eat meat (I know, how hipster of me… sigh).

We decided that we wanted to create a blog for other dinner-party nightmares like us and start sharing some of our own recipes; hence the creation of our blog.

Anyway…

I knew that Facebook was going to be a huge channel for us (along with Pinterest), so I used the food blog as a testing ground for some new approaches to Facebook advertising. All of this for under £80 per month (this is the max budget for me at the moment, but you could easily do half of this and see great results).

The blog is coming into its third month of being live and so far our Facebook page (at the time of writing) has 2,364 likes. Not bad for under three months.

Pescetarian Kitchen Facebook page

What’s more, the engagement on each of our posts is awesome. Just look at the most recent post I published yesterday:

Facebook post

It’s been liked 159 times, shared 22 times and has had 4 comments (this is all within 24 hours). The rest of our posts tell a similar story.

On top of the post engagement, Facebook has been a huge traffic generator for us, sending over 1,000 unique visitors to the blog within the first two months, and this seems to be growing rapidly day-by-day.

In the past 30 days we’ve hit just under 5,000 unique visitors and this has largely been fueled by our social campaigns (spending under £80 per month in total).

So here’s how…

Facebook have recently launched an awesome new feature where you can install a tracking code onto your website to identify if any of your visitors have an associated Facebook account. If they do, they’ll be added directly into a custom audience profile that you can display ads to.

The great thing is that they’ve already engaged with your content. This dramatically improves click-through rates, which has a direct effect on your cost per click.

Here’s a snap shot from my campaign that is focused solely around getting website visitors to like the Pescetarian Kitchen Facebook page:

Facebook ad stats

Now, bear in mind that this is just a simple page like advert and there’s no sponsored posts being promoted. At a price of £0.09 per page like (from anengaged user), I’m able to grow my following at a rapid pace.

 

Other Paid Advertising Platforms

Facebook isn’t the only platform that you can utilise for advertising on a small budget. Most major social networks now have a paid advertising option, but StumbleUpon and Reddit are two that I’m particularly fond of.

StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery platform gives you the unique advantage of being able to deliver your content directly to users without actually requiring them to click on an ad. This makes it perfect for traffic generation, and it’s even better when you consider you can pay as little as $0.10 per visit, but you need to ensure your content is right for the platform first or you’ll end up with a huge bounce rate.

To do this, I’ve been practicing a technique that I learned from Ross Hudgensof Siege Media. In this post, Ross suggests spending no more than $15-20 dollars to measure the feedback that users within StumbleUpon are giving. If the ratio of visits to Thumbs Up (a StumbleUpon metric) is low then it’s no longer worth pursuing the ad campaign.

It’s worth taking a full look through the post Ross wrote because it offers some seriously valuable insight.

One thing I also love about this is that any visits through to your blog will be added into your custom audience profile on Facebook (granted you’ve set up the tracking code) and you can start marketing to them there as well.

Reddit Advertising

Like StumbleUpon, Reddit offers an incredibly cost-effective way to drive through traffic to your content. I’ve run campaigns from as little as $20 through Reddit and still had good success.

The key here is targeting.

You get the option within Reddit’s advertising platform to only display ads within a specific subreddit. Considering there’s a subreddit for pretty much anything, you’ll be able to hit a really targeted bunch of people.

One great campaign that I read about a few years ago was with Duck Duck Go (here’s the link). They managed to bring in 20,700 visits from just $650 – crazy! The platform has moved on a lot since then, but there’s still huge potential to bring in cheap traffic.

Niche-Relevant Communities

Within nearly every niche there are a whole host of community websites where you can share your content to drive traffic to your blog. I’ve just talked about advertising through Reddit, but even without advertising, Reddit is a seriously powerful traffic generator.

A quick tip that I’ve found with Reddit is to look for subreddits that have minimal activity within them but an ok level of subscribers (you usually find this with really specific topics).

I found this within the pescetarian subreddit. As a result of  a lack of content being submitted, the posts that receive a few upvotes will stay in the hot list for a long time. In the screenshot below you’ll see three links through to my food blog that have been there for over two months!

Dominating the subreddit

This has generated just under 950 unique visitors in the past two months. Oh, and did I mention that Reddit links are dofollow? So that means I’m getting a ton of link authority passed through to my blog that will have a direct effect on my search rankings.

As well as Reddit, there are a number of sharing sites that you can upload your content to in order to bring in traffic for free. Here are a few of them categorised by niche:

  • Foodgawker (food)
  • Hacker News (tech)
  • CafeMom (parenting)
  • BlogHer (women)
  • Professional Travel Bloggers Association (travel)
  • Inbound.org (marketing)

These are just a small few, but with a quick Google search, or by asking fellow bloggers, you can uncover loads of smaller communities relevant to your niche.

My advice for engaging within these communities is to spend at least a week or so simply observing. See how frequently content is shared, who is submitting it and what types of content seem to perform well. This will give you some sense of what works and what doesn’t – and it also saves you looking like a complete noob!

Competitions

Running giveaways on your blog is a great way to drive traffic through to both your website and your social media accounts. I wrote an enormous guide onrunning online competitions on my own blog a few months ago that you may find useful for this (it’s around 6,000 words long, so you’ve been warned!).

The main challenge with running a competition is actually sourcing a prize. This could cost a significant amount to buy in, which if you’re like me, you don’t fancy doing.

Luckily for you, there’s another way…

PR companies.

If there’s one thing that PR companies love, it’s supplying bloggers with free products from their clients.

Now if only there was a way to get in touch with a load of PR companies to see if they want to give you some products for your giveaway… oh wait, of course there is! They come in the form of journalist enquiry services.

My weapon of choice is ResponseSource (completely free to send requests through), but there are tons out there, for example Gorkana and HARO.

Simply put in a request and you should have a load of responses from companies within an hour or so – win!

Building Your Email List

If there’s one thing that I can’t stress enough, it’s the importance of building your list of email subscribers. These people are the most valuable assets that you have within your blog.

They’ve signaled that they like your content so much that they want you to inform them whenever any new content is published. These are up there with your most engaged visitors.

Within my digital marketing blog (I know, I have too many blogs), my biggest traffic source comes from my newsletter subscribers. Every time I presspublish, I can almost guarantee around 400 unique visits from that alone. More importantly, these are the people who will share and engage with my content to help it reach a wider audience.

At the beginning, building your list of email subscribers is slow. This takes time to develop, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you don’t want to look back at traffic spikes from a few months ago and wish that you’d set up newsletter capture forms – that’s a real killer.

So, with that in mind, here are a few easy ways (without having to do any coding on your website) that you can capture email data:

  • Create a free account on an email marketing platform. I use MailChimp.
  • Add a tool like ManyContacts to your blog to enable newsletter subscriptions forms to appear across your blog with clear calls to action.
  • Use the Subscribe to Download plugin for WordPress to offer PDF downloads of your content in exchange for signing up to your newsletter.
  • Set up Twitter lead generation forms to get people to sign up for your newsletter directly within Twitter. Read this amazing guide from Dana Tanon how to do this for free.
  • Use Rafflecopter within your blog competitions to link directly to MailChimp and add any new entrants to your mailing list.
  • Allow anyone who comments on your blog to sign up directly to the newsletter with a simple tick-box. This WordPress plugin will do just that.

These are just a few ideas, but I’d encourage you to experiment with this. Just remember to stay in regular contact with your subscribers and always split test your campaigns to ensure that you’re getting the best possible results moving forward.

TL;DR

  • Focus on more specific, long-tail search queries to target within your search campaign.
  • Schedule your content sharing across social media to ensure you’re getting the optimal reach.
  • Utilize paid social advertising platforms on a small-scale to for great results.
  • Participate in niche communities and Reddit subreddits to cash in on some quality blog traffic.
  • Run online competitions to increase your blog’s exposure, build its social following, and increase your mailing list.
  • Ensure your blog has a good level of call-to-action around email capture.
  • Don’t think that you need to spend a fortune to get results. Sometimes, less is more!

The author has no affiliation with any of the resources listed.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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Blogging

Five Underrated Blogging Communities to Supercharge Your Blog

by onkar
written by onkar
blog readership

When you mention blogging communities, are you hearing the same old networks again and again?

It is time to move on! If you want to build your blog readership and get new eyes on your content, the blogging communities listed below are just a few alternative options. While a few have been around for a bit, their capabilities and features have changed so significantly that bloggers can’t afford to ignore them.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

Here are five underrated blogging communities where smart bloggers can share content, build relationships, and supercharge their blog:

Medium

Medium is an up-and-coming blogging community created by Twitter co-founder, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone. If you are looking for an additional way to connect your writing to other writers, like-minded industry professionals, and readers, Medium is a great blogging community.

Since its launch in 2012, Medium has become a go-to destination to share content (even previously published content) and build a new network of fans and followers.

medium

One of the benefits Medium offers to potential readers is the rating of posts in terms of minutes. Each post of the site comes with a label, “X minute read” letting readers know how big a commitment they’re making by clicking a headline. If you’re a short-form writer, this might be your new destination for quick tips.

Getting started is easy; just head over to the site and sign up using either Facebook or Twitter authentication. Then, dive into their writing interface.

Benefits:

  • The startup and growth know-how of visionaries like Evan Williams and Biz Stone are sure to keep Medium relevant and growing.
  • Top 100 feature allows you to quickly see what content is resonating and learn while you build your Medium audience.
  • If you are a colloquial blogger and less business-y, this is the place to share that style.
  • Beautiful contributor profiles allow readers to follow you and get all your updates.
  • Contributor profile allows link to your website.

Why Medium Might be For You:

  • Platform: Very user-friendly interface (like a modern-day Blogspot – but 10x better) that is ideal for beginner bloggers looking to expand their reach. With Medium, you also can follow blogs, as well as be followed, so it serves as a news source as well.  Medium is also a powerful place to post pieces you might feel are off-topic for your blog, but are important messages you want to share, growing your audience in new ways.
  • Target audience: Wide.
  • Compensation: None except the awesome addition of new people who follow you, who love your writing, and can easily find your website, bringing new readers to your world.

StackStreet

Do you regularly write about topics that would be of interest to millennials? If so, you definitely want to bring your blogging talents over to StackStreet. Unlike Medium, however, this is a by-application-only blogging community. You’ll be asked to complete a painfully short application and from there, the ball is rolling.

stackstreet

The upside to StackStreet is that, while in its beginning stages, they do offer “top contributors” (assuming they mean those with a large number of page views) who will be eligible for paid opportunities in the future. Not too shabby if you’re already writing.

Benefits:

  • Clean interface
  • Focused audience
  • Curated contributors (application-only process)
  • Ability to take your existing blog content and hone for a millennial-focused readership
  • Beautiful contributor profiles rich with social media links to build your audience

Why StackStreet Might be For You:

  • Platform: Brand new. How often do you get the chance to get in on the ground floor of a new site targeting a specific audience you crave to reach?
  • Target audience: Narrow, but meaningful. Millennials are targeted to spend $200 billion annually by 2017.
  • Compensation: Potential to earn as a top performer with additional editorial opportunities.

Triberr

Not only does Triberr give you the chance to connect your blog with new readers, it gives you an endless stream of new content created by other savvy influencers like yourself to share with your audience. Once you create a free profile, it’s easy to begin the search for Tribes or like-minded bloggers with whom you can connect and begin sharing content.

triberr

Here, you can peruse a wide variety of exiting tribes, see how many members they have, and their reach (how widely their posts are shared).

When getting started, you can easily find Tribes by using the drop-down category function:

triberr-drop-down

The basic membership on Triberr is free and they also offer premium options starting at $8.50 per month. These premium accounts allow you to unlock more site features. Compare the paid plans here and see what makes sense for your audience growing goals.

Benefits:

  • Direct link with your blog’s RSS feed to import new posts
  • Home Page Stream that shows all of your Tribes’ content so you can quickly connect, share, and build relationships
  • Ability for users to view your posts and share directly to Twitter from Triberr
  • Ability to quickly identify those who share your posts most frequently
  • You can create, be invited to join, or ask to join Tribes (groups of bloggers) for deeper connections, and a more personalized Home Page Stream
  • A crazy rich overview video explaining the site’s key blogger benefits
  • Wild tutorials designed to get you up and running on Triberr in no time

Why Triberr Might be For You:

  • Platform: Best for socially inclined bloggers who enjoy joining conversations.
  • Target audience: Wide. Ability to reach bloggers both inside and beyond your area of influence who love your content.
  • Compensation: If you sell products, imagine the benefits increased blog traffic and subscribers can bring to your bottom line. There are also options for bloggers to connect with brands and become paid brand influencers.

Google+ Communities

Yeah, you keep hearing people talk about Google+, but you’re not sold. Maybe their communities feature will finally sell you. If you are not using it to share your blog posts and connect with new influencers, the joke’s on you.

Head over to your Google+ home page and click the drop down. From there, you can access the Google+ Communities section.

google-communities

From here, you’ll be brought to the Communities home page where you can immediately see recommended communities and search for other niches where you want to build your audience.

This will bring you inside a world of people sharing content on similar subjects and access to a dedicated space to share your own content. Community members can directly +1 your post (which will update the social sharing buttons on your blog) and increase traffic to your blog from new members who are joining the Community daily.

People do not understand the power of G+ communities.

As an example, our social team recently posted an article on our iPhone card reader site about password security. Then, to give the article some love, we submitted it to the “Tech, Security & Social Networks” Google+ community. This community has over 69,770 members.

So, how did our post go (result highlighted in green)?

google plus

8,500+ views, and some decent “ripple effect” with the social shares, too:

google-ripples

The power of Google+ communities can be astronomical. Make it a part of your blogging syndication routine.

Benefits:

  • Ability for Community members to +1 and share your blog posts directly from your posts within the Community.
  • Rich Google+ profile for content creators and lets fans connect with you easily by sharing your blog URL and various social media profile links.
  • Ability to quickly find sharable content for your network from posts by other Community members and build relationships.
  • Offers a simple help section to assist bloggers in building or joining a community.

Why Google+ Communities Might be For You:

  • Platform: Not often used but highly powerful. If you’re a blogger with visual content, Communities and G+ in general allow for a beautiful sharing of your visual content. G+ users are most often platform devotees and active users.
  • Target audience: Wide, yet communities bring focus. G+ is still the wild, wild, west of the social networks, but bloggers can tone down the noise and turn up the meaningful relationships quickly by joining or creating communities that focus on their niche and blog areas of interest.
  • Compensation: It’s Google. No compensation, but you’ll enjoy the inflow of +1s and the ability for people to quickly comment on and share your fresh blog posts within the Community.

LinkedIn Groups

If you’re writing about anything in any industry, odds are there’s a LinkedIn Group for that topic. Simply visit LinkedIn Groups and start some keyword targeted searches for groups that focus on your areas of expertise. However, you might find the results overwhelming. I recently published a “How to Start a Blog” guide for newbies, so I went to LinkedIn Groups and searched “blogging” – and found over 886 groups:

linkedin-groups-blogging

 

Then, I found some active blogging groups (highlighted in green), asked to join, shared some valuable insight in the forum, then shared my post.

Just in those 2 groups alone, (8,000 + 2,000) “bloggers” are exposed to my blogging guide.

You can also take advantage of LinkedIn’s newer publishing platform to share your best blog posts. Posts that are well received can be reviewed by LinkedIn editors and then widely circulated through LinkedIn Pulse for wider visibility. LinkedIn even has a handy guide to help you get more information on their new publishing options to grow your readership and visibility.

As a note, if you see the pencil icon on your status update box , you’re already approved as a LinkedIn Publisher. They’re not currently accepting new applications, but are soon rolling the Publishing feature out to all members.

linkedin-search-bar

Benefits:

  • LinkedIn’s home page stream puts your shared blog content in front of fellow professionals.
  • It is a respected social platform that allows bloggers to share blog content and create content.
  • A better quality of leads coming to your site through your blog post shares, as you’re sharing with industry professionals, not just casual hobbyists or fans.

Why LinkedIn Groups Might be For You:

  • Platform: Longstanding, but growing richer by the month. If you thought LinkedIn was stodgy, think again.
  • Target audience: Professionals. While skill levels on LinkedIn range from green to seasoned industry professionals, this social network assures that you’ll find a readership for content from 101-level to expert industry niche.
  • Compensation: None. But LinkedIn Groups offer the chance for conversations on posts you share and to build new connections both for your blog and your professional network. It’s a “one-two punch” content platform, as you may find new guest blogging opportunities through your new relationships as well.

Recap

Bloggers – remember hitting the publish button is just the beginning. With all the outlets out there, get in the habit of sharing your content in these powerful communities every time a new piece goes live.

In doing so, you’ll become a better brand, establish credibility in tight communities, and your content will be seen by thousands of additional people.

[“source-searchenginejournal”]

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