How to Organize Your Blogging Efforts for Better Results” plus 1 more

How to Organize Your Blogging Efforts for Better Results

Posted: 10 Dec 2013 09:00 PM PST

Bloggers, all over the word, want to do much more than just writing blog posts. You would ideally like to monetize your efforts, make money through advertising, sell digital products, write books, and launch webinars. They are all excellent ways to make money but before you think of that, there's work to be done.

Firefighting is what most bloggers end up with, however, on a day-to-day basis.

Typically, you write up a quick blog post just to keep up with the schedule. You spend half a day on social media checking for mentions. You don't notice how time passes as you respond to comments and interact with your social networks.

That's improvisation, not management.

If all you do is publish blog posts when you can, promote your blog whenever you find time, and reply to comments at your convenience, you are said to be pursuing a hobby.

Blogging, even as a hobby, demands more than just the "once-in-a-while, when-I-get-some-time" approach. Blogging requires you to stay organized, plan your work ahead, and commit.

Whether blogging is a hobby, a profession, a career, or a means to promote your business, it's a full-time endeavor. Not all aspects of blogging are glamorous. The burden of small tasks is often too heavy for individuals and not everyone can get everything right. Organization, be it for business or for blogging, needs resources. Here are a few ways to organize your blogging efforts for better and more predictable results:

You'll need a serious plan

Even doing "nothing" needs a plan. There could be countless points of debate on whether you should plan or not.

We all know that taking action is meeting success halfway down the aisle. But you can't shoot in the dark. You can't possibly create something meaningful out of chaos.

I do recommended taking a methodical approach – the least you can do is pull a business plan sample off a good site and you'll get an idea for what goes into something like "planning." While your blogging plan doesn't have to be as deep as one for business, you can take a few lessons on how to identify your target audience, how to reach out to this specific audience, and how to create content to keep this target audience engaged.

I repeat: you need a plan – a very good, actionable, and realistic one at that.

You'll need more than just you

As your blog grows, begins to attract readers, and gets busier by the day, there'll be a time for more posts. You'll need other freelance bloggers or even guest posts on a regular basis to bring that whiff of freshness to your blog once in a while.

Work hard on your blogging and promote it enough to attract guest bloggers who'll only begin to approach you (or entertain your pleas) when you have sizable traffic. Meanwhile, leverage your efforts in content development with a team of writers. If necessary, work on a model where you have professional freelance bloggers develop content for you.

If possible, use virtual assistants to help you with odd tasks, regular maintenance, and do blog backups on a periodic basis. You can turn a blind eye to the mundane if you're on the high road to success.

Invest in the right tools

Next to people, technology is a good way to leverage your efforts. Using tools, apps and software can help you setup an efficient workflow, cut your time down considerable, and even automate or semi-automate your tasks that are mandatory for blogging.

To start with, you can use a project collaboration software or app to work with your team of freelancers, web developers, designers, and admin assistants. You could setup automated systems for monetizing your site and use plenty of other tools to automatically backup your computer, check for points on your site for optimization, etc. If you are big on social media (you should be), you could use tools like HootSuite, Buffer, Nimble CRM, and IFTTT to help organize, manage, schedule, and even trigger automatic updates.

What kind of technology are you currently using?

Forget free advertising, go for paid

The popular advice out there is to try the free stuff before you spend on advertising. I think that you'd be wasting plenty of time and putting in an inordinate amount of effort for nothing.

Your time has value (whether you know it or not). Save that time. Think and act like a business.

Marketers are chasing customers with rapidly changing mindsets, as is apparent from a recent New York Times article. Advertising is a time-tested way of probing, evaluating and steering customer attitudes.

That's not to say you need a large budget for advertising spend. Most of the self-service ad platforms (including Google AdWords and ads on social media) allow you to start advertising with any budget. Most bloggers forget that by choosing not to spend on paid methods of advertising, they choose to put in time or effort which is sometimes more expensive than the money allocated for advertising.

When you have to do everything yourself, there's no leverage. You are trading your time for dollars (which won't even come until a few years go by). Online advertising gives you reach and leverage. You can even set up an automated process for advertising if you do it right. Stop following the popular advice for doing everything free. Blogging is a business and you should treat it as such.

Do more than just blogging

Blogging, by itself, can only get you so much. If you need more, you should look at other ways of leveraging your blog. If you've been blogging long enough and if you managed to rack up enough credibility, you could launch and sell ebooks. If you slightly more ambitious, self-publishing is a great option for you to stretch your publishing efforts further (and this also allows for a recurring stream of income).

Use your blog to actually write a physical book. Launch information products, webinars, and even host events that capitalize on the credibility that your blogging has earned you.

Your blog is a window of opportunity. It's a self-branding platform on top of which you could so much more.

How organized are your blogging efforts? What do you to streamline your workflows? What kind of technology (apps or tools) do you use to make your blogging efforts easier and more manageable?

The post How to Organize Your Blogging Efforts for Better Results appeared first on Weblogbetter - Blog Tips.

How Google’s Design Is Dictated by Dollars

Posted: 10 Dec 2013 04:31 PM PST

Organic SEO has become a major marketing niche, helped along by Google’s constant tinkering with search algorithms as it struggles to maintain its market dominance.

Recent changes have seen Google shift from keyword-based search to semantic search, location-based search, and personalized search results. Understanding how Google’s search algorithms work has always been an exercise in extreme reverse engineering, but the work is essential for companies whose products and services live and die by the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

There is an inherent conflict between organic search and paid advertisement for Google. After all, the company makes its money from ads but maintains its dominance through its outstanding organic search algorithms. The drive to bank ever higher earnings is, however, forcing Google to make some major changes in its design. Some of those changes are aimed at increasing the number of paid ads returned on a SERP.

One thing that has changed is “brand focus.” Google’s algorithm is now able to evaluate how “brand-focused” a search is and return links specific for that brand. Along with having more brand links, Google has also reduced the overall number of results on a SERP.

The net effect is that organic search is somewhat diminished if brand focus is strong enough. Whereas as paid ads historically have made up 6% of search results, Google is looking to at least double that number. For SEO professionals, this change is substantial as it shifts emphasis away from organic results.

Understanding this and other changes is made easier when the information is presented in a clean, graphical format.

How Google's Design is Dictated by Dollars [Infographic] by Virtual Hosting