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Ten Steps to Blogging Every Day

I’m always amazed — and irritated — at my colleagues who are blogging every day. I’ve tried that. I did it for a whole year once on my humor blog. By month four, I was regretting my choice. By month seven, I hated my blog. And by month 10, I longed for the sweet, sweet release of a sledgehammer to my monitor.

But I stuck it out. I made it the whole 12 months. And I saw a great increase in traffic. So much so that it is now about 80% less than what it once was, now that I’m publishing once a week. But I gained enough regular readers that publishing day (Friday) is the same level it was when I was doing the daily thing. That is, my regulars keep showing up and they keep reading. They just don’t keep coming back every day.

Yeah, you'll feel like this around the 9th month

But if you want to blog on a daily basis, here are the 10 steps I took to make sure I made it all 365 days. (And remember, “daily” means “every day,” including Sundays. Be sure to take that into account.)

  1. Write certain evergreen posts that can be used anytime. Plug those in when you just can’t write that day from sickness, vacation, other plans.
  2. Write all posts the day before. That gives you an extra 24 hours cushion for that time you missed a post.
  3. Be prepared to use videos and photos. YouTube is a veritable cornucopia of blogging topics. Do a quick search, embed the video (when it’s permitted of course), write a few sentences of commentary, and voila!
    • Do the same thing with photos.
    • Depending on your blog platform, you may be able to email your posts in. Snap an interesting picture with your smartphone, attach it to an email, tap in a few sentences, and email it to your blog. You can always go back in later and expand it and clean it up, but at least you have the beginnings of the post.
    • (Note: Most blog platforms publish the emailed content as soon as you send it, so that won’t work to save ideas for later. Use Evernote for that.)
  4. Carry around a notebook and write down ideas as you get them. Nothing is worse than an escaped idea. And if you can start sketching out notes at the same time, do it. Even go so far as to make an outline. Think about the outline on your way to and from work. Then, when you sit down at your computer, the thing is already written. You just need to type it out.
  5. Go for brevity. Remember, a blog post is not a 750 word column. A post can be 400, 300, even 200 words. You don’t want to make a regular habit of writing short pithy 100 word posts, but you can slip them in once in a while.
  6. Break up longer posts. Got a top 10 list of something? Turn it into two top fives. A couple months later, take each item from that top 10 list and expand on it for an additional post.
  7. Set a regularly scheduled topic for certain days of the week. For example, on my humor blog Sundays were always videos, Wednesdays were always reprints of old humor columns.
  8. Find other outlets in your industry that are about your chosen topic. Pull from them for inspiration. Since I wrote about some of the stuff that stupid people did, I got a lot of inspiration and ideas from Fark.com. (And let me just say, the British Town Councils are ripe for the picking for a satirical humorist.)
  9. Schedule your blogging time. Make it the same time every day. If you don’t, you’ll have to…
  10. …get up earlier or stay up later. This is like pro athlete training. You have to do it every day and you have to make sacrifices. That means missing sleep on one end of the day or the other, especially if you were screwing around and didn’t get it done when you should have. A few days like this, and you’ll learn to stay on schedule.

Your daily blogging goal will not succeed unless and until you commit to doing it. I don’t mean, “yeah, it sounds like a good idea,” but then it’s broken like a New Year’s resolution, by late morning on the second day. I mean, you absolutely say you’re going to do it, come hell or high water. (And then the theme to Rocky starts playing, and you find yourself dancing around at the top of your courthouse steps with a bunch of computer nerds yelling and cheering around you.)

When I made that commitment, it meant a lot of bleary-eyed posts that were written at 1:30 am and had to be polished up the following morning. It meant a lot of scrambling around to find new post ideas, and rehashing a lot of old topics. And sometimes it meant putting up some less-than-worthy posts and ideas just so I could keep going.

All in all, I’m glad I did it. I had a sense of accomplishment when I was done. It got me noticed by a lot of people, and got my name out to some new people. And I find myself being drawn back to it. This blog post marks the third business day in a row that I’ve written something on this particular blog, after being sporadic from time to time.

Will I keep it up? I don’t know. Do I have enough to say that I can keep up the momentum? Definitely. Do I have the time? That’s a tough one. I have clients to take care of.

I do know that I’m skipping weekends.

Photo credit: Kit Oates (Flickr)

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Four Ways You Can Earn Money as a Blogger

So you’ve been blogging for several years, or at least several months, and you want to start seeing a little cash for your efforts. I was recently talking about making money with blogs on a blogging forum, and shared this answer. I thought it was worth expanding on and resharing here, since it’s a question I’m frequently asked when I give talks about blogging.

1) Sell ads.

Put a Google AdWords feed on your blog. As you write content, Google will examine your content and put up ads that seems to fit what you’ve written. Then, as people show up to read what you’ve written — presumably because they’re interested in the topic — they’re more likely to click an ad, because they’re interested in a product or service about that topic.

Upside: Very passive. You don’t have to do anything extra to your blog. Set the code, and then you’re done. Just get traffic and hope they click. However, you’re always in readership gain mode, which you should already be doing. But if you’re depending on this for your income, you need to focus on getting readers more frequently.

Downside:It feels a little slimy, if you don’t want to commercialize your site. It turns your blog into a billboard. And depending on the kind of blog you have, it may not work, or it may just clash with the theme and topic of your blog. If your blog is for your business, ads will probably not work. And why would you want to damage your credibility for the sake of a few bucks in Google Ad revenue?

2) Become an affiliate marketer.

This is where you open, say, an Amazon affiliate account and link to a few books that you really enjoy. When someone clicks a link that you provide (with your affiliate account embedded in the link), you make a little money if that person orders the book. The more people who buy your affiliate product, the more money you make. You could even become a book and product reviewer. Whenever you link to that book or product, you embed your affiliate link and see if you can get people to buy the product based on your review.

You can be one of two kinds of AMs — the sell everything everywhere kind, or the kind who wins a really big audience of loyal followers who will buy anything you suggest. The former kind are usually messing around with every type of affiliate product they can find, the latter are in constant network growth mode (see #1).

Upside: Better return than ad sales. Decent rate of return, especially as you load more products onto your affiliate site and get a bigger audience.

Downside: Affiliate marketing can be hard work, and often requires you to take on several products with several websites if you want to make a lot of money (if you want to be the first kind), or work your ass off to become a rockstar with thousands and thousands of groupies. You may also open yourself up to spam tactics if you want to be one of the big-dollar affiliate marketers.

3) Become a product or service reviewer.

I need to preface this by saying you should never, ever charge a company to review their product. That’s not ethical. You’re a citizen journalist, you have a media outlet. If you charge money, then you’re writing an advertisement, not a review. However, you are completely free to accept a product or service in exchange for reviewing it.

Let’s say you’re a parenting blogger, and you want to start reviewing products. You could review baby products, toddler toys, and children’s books. Or you could take a techy turn, and review technology products and services that might be of interest to other parenting bloggers (i.e. video cameras, blog platforms, blogging conferences), which in turn helps you become a better blogger and reach an even bigger audience.

Or you could become a family blogger, which opens up other avenues, like trying out new family-friendly restaurants or vacation spots. (I do some travel blogging for my state’s office of tourism, so I get to take some trips around Indiana once in a while, but my stories always have a family angle.)

Upside: Free stuff!

Downside: No money. You do this to earn perks and benefits that you might not otherwise get, which can stretch your family’s budget, but this is a tough way to earn a living. On the upside, it could lead to other opportunities later on. I know someone who started writing a travel blog, and is now a professional travel writer who gets flown to far-off locales and gets paid to describe his experience. You also have to disclose any kinds of financial gifts or payments you received, according to the FTC’s blogging rules.

4) Become a freelancer.

Professional Blog Service is a corporate blogging services company. We write regular blog posts for corporate clients who want to have a corporate web presence. We’re ghost writers, basically. And even though our company is an agency, I know several freelancers who are ghost bloggers on their own, without being an “official” agency. We’ve even (gladly, willingly) helped a couple of our freelancers get started and become our competition.

Good writers can earn anywhere from $500 – $1,000 per month for a single client. Get 4 – 5 clients, and you’re earning a decent salary. You can work from anywhere, work your own hours, and get to hone your writing skills constantly.

Upside: This is going to be the best, most consistent way you’re going to make money as a blogger. You’re not building readership and are not in reader generation mode. You just write. However, it’s a real job with real responsibilities and work hours. You don’t get to take a “I don’t feel like doing anything today” day.

Downside:It’s hard work. It’s also not on your own blog. No one will ever know what you’re doing, because you’re a ghost, and you’re supposed to keep your involvement quiet. You will also do a lot of writing, which can cause burnout. There are days I’m so tired of writing that I slam my laptop lid down a little harder than necessary and just sit in front of the TV. And if you love writing, you may start to not love it if you’re not careful.

Bloggers, how do you make money doing what you do? Are you a full-time blogger? Or are you just earning a little extra cash on the side? Any methods or ideas you’d be willing to share? And newbie bloggers, are there any questions you have?

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds (Flickr)

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Dear Executives, Social Media Does Not Render Your Employees Stupid

Social media does not make people stupid. It does not make them irresponsible, lazy, or unproductive. Social media will make you money, however, if you do it right.

I talk to a lot of business owners and executives who worry that if they start using social media to market their business, their employees’ productivity will plummet.

I’ve had meetings in the last two days with two different business owners. One has embraced Facebook and blogging fully, the other is worried that Facebook will hamper his employees’ ability to get work done.

The first employer urges his employees to do stuff on social media. Almost requires it. His Facebook page gets dozens of visits a day, which is awesome because they sell such a niche product, the customer base for the entire country can be measured in the thousands.

The other employer says — and rightly so — that they have so much administrative work to do around the office, he doesn’t want their Facebook efforts to distract them from getting their admin work done.

The first employer wants to know how he can do more social media marketing. The second employer wants to know the bare minimum he can get by with.

As Doug Karr says, asking what the minimum you can get by with on social media is like asking how slowly you can drive a race car.

Social Media Marketing is Not About Playing

ZOMG! Facebook lets me play with kittehs!!

We as employers trust our employees. We trust them to answer the phones and be pleasant to everyone who calls in. We trust them to make travel to other states and make sales calls and presentations. We trust them to take payments from customers and put our money in the bank. We trust them to buy products from other companies. And we even trust them to use computers without standing over them, watching them type every email.

So what is it about social media that scares the bejeezus out of every employer and makes them think that the second they allow Facebook onto their computers, their entire workforce is going to turn into a bunch of 13-year-old girls jacked up on Red Bull and the most recent Justin Bieber sighting?

If you trust these people enough to do business in your name, collect and spend your money, and talk to your customers, then you need to trust them enough to continue to do these things while Facebook is unblocked on their computers.

If you don’t trust them, that’s your fault. If you don’t trust your employees to not screw around, you’re the problem, not Facebook. You hired the wrong people, and that’s a management issue.

Hire people who will get their work done, and make your expectations for social media usage clear from the outset. These are people who can help your company be more profitable, so why not take advantage of that?

Social Media Marketing is About Making Money

The whole reason for a business to be on social media is to make money. Period. It’s not to play Farmville on Facebook. It’s not to pin the latest novelty cake on Pinterest. It’s not to take photos of a rusted out piece of farm equipment on Instagram. It’s to find people who would be interested in buying your products or services.

Every business owner and manager is always looking for a way to make more money and be more profitable. The problem is, many of them are hampered by doing the things that don’t make them money. Doing payroll. Filing claims. Managing inventory. Filling and shipping product orders.

The problem is, payroll, paperwork, inventory, and shipping don’t make you money. Marketing makes you money. Finding new customers makes your money. If you’re a business owner, and you’re spending your valuable time doing payroll, paperwork, inventory, and shipping, instead of generating revenue, outsource them.

Hire a bookkeeping firm to manage payroll. Hire a virtual assistant to file your claims. Hire a $10 hour college student to count inventory and stick orders in boxes. The less of this non-revenue generating work you can do, the better.

Spend the newly found time pursuing new customers. Spend it on Facebook, Twitter, or writing your blog. It doesn’t take long to bring in a couple choice clients to recover the costs of having a part-time employee handle the grunt work that’s actually losing you money. Have them handle more of your non-revenue workload, and find a couple more. You can grow just by having someone else do the heavy lifting for you.

But it starts with letting go of the fear that your employees are going to be struck stupid the second you allow Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn on your company computers.

Photo credit: bjornlifoto (Flickr)

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Three Ghost Blogging Concerns We Hear From Clients

Some people have issues with ghost blogging. We’ve got clients who use it on a regular basis, and love it. Other times, we have run into some people who can’t wrap their brains around it. They’re not sure they want to do it, and they have trouble accepting our help. These people tend to fall into one of three categories.

  • They don’t think they have a high-enough position to need a ghost writer. They don’t think they’re that important to “deserve” it. They think their company needs to be bigger, or they need to have a more prestigious position. I saw this a lot when I was doing speechwriting for a Congressional candidate in 2004. It’s not a matter of prestige, it’s a matter of having the time to do it.
    • Okay, that's kind of creepy.
  • They feel they need to “earn” the words by doing the work themselves. These people have a very strong do-it-yourself ethic, and think that they should be able to and know how to do every aspect of their business. They don’t want someone to do the things they should be capable of doing themselves, and they feel like they’re slacking when they don’t. But a lot of people can’t write quickly or efficiently — they take a couple hours to write a single blog post. That’s a problem when their time is worth $250 an hour, like a defense attorney. Why spend $500 of your billable time, three times a week, when you could hire someone to do the ghost blogging for you?
  • They think writing is so easy that anyone can do it. “After all,” they reason, “I learned how to write in school, so I can just take the skills I learned 20 – 30 years ago, right?” This is like saying, “I know how to work a table saw, so I ought to be able to make my own custom cabinets. Look, we all learned how to communicate via the written word, but that doesn’t make you a writer. A professional ghost blogger has been trained on how to write tight, concise copy that will inform, entertain, or persuade. While some people are able to do this without training, those people are few and far between. Don’t risk turning off your audience with less-than-professional writing that rambles on, is filled with errors, or just plain doesn’t make sense. (Not so surprisingly, these are the same people who demand that every position in their company has experience in their industry, including the accountant, the IT person, and even human resources staff.)

Ghost blogging is one of those services that companies need to maintain an online presence, but don’t have the time or resources to do it. It’s for the people who are too busy to write on a regular basis, no matter what “level” you are in your career. It’s for the people who struggle with writing, or are basically too expensive to do anything that doesn’t directly result in bottom line revenue for their company or firm.

Photo credit: starfish325 (Flickr)

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Use Communication Theory to Boost Search Engine Optimization

The persuasion theory behind celebrity endorsements is the same theory behind Google’s new social media search.

It’s called Balance Theory, and when you understand the essence of it, you start to understand why Google is putting so much stock into Google+. And how Google+ can enhance your own search experience.

Balance Theory and Celebrity Endorsements

Without getting into all the scientific language we used when I was in graduate school, balance theory basically says this:

  • I like Celebrity A.
  • Celebrity A likes Product B.
  • That means I should like (and buy) Product B as well.

(Fellow philosophy majors will also recognize this as the 2 premises/1 conclusion logical construction.)

In other words, I like Eminem. Eminem likes Chrysler. Therefore, I should also like Chrysler. (The danger is that if I don’t like Celebrity A, I’ll purposely not like Product B just to restore that balance. It’s why a lot of sponsors drop celebrities who get into trouble.)

This is what marketers are counting on when they put a celebrity’s name and face on a product or company. It’s why Eminem is schlepping Chrysler on the Super Bowl. It’s why Reebok is clamoring for contracts with the NFL. It’s why Nike puts famous basketball players on its shoes.

This is the same basic idea that goes into Google’s personalized “My World” search results. If you’ve used Google lately, you’ve noticed that a lot of your friends are appearing in those results. That’s because Google is relying on Balance Theory to help improve your search results. (Maybe not intentionally, but that’s what’s at play here.)

Here’s what they’re doing with it:

  • I like Douglas Karr.
  • Douglas Karr has talked about corporate blogging.
  • That means I should check out what Douglas has said about corporate blogging.

And if I like what Google has shown me, I’ll continue to use Google.

These are the PERSONAL results for "corporate blogging." But that is not really Jason Falls in the 2nd picture from the left.

How Can You Use Balance Theory in Search Engine Optimization?

If you’re building your personal brand, or you’re doing social media marketing for your company, the best way to use Balance Theory for your search engine optimization is to use Google+, and develop relationships with key decision makers at the companies you want to do business with.

  • Connect with the decision makers at the companies you’re trying to reach.
  • Write blog posts about the key areas and problems they’re dealing with at their company. You can find that out just by paying attention to their conversations on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.
  • Continue to share important articles with them related to those same areas and problems. (This is all part of that “be a valuable resource” stuff we’ve talked about before.)

Then, as these people search for those particular keywords, your blog posts and your articles will rise to the top of their search engine results page. End result? “Hmm, this person seems to know an awful lot about this topic. I wonder what else they can help me with?”

However, this is not a reason to connect with everyone you can find on Google+ or to spam the bejeezus out of them with all kinds of articles and blog posts. You do that, and you’ll most certainly be blocked and ignored by everyone you’re trying to reach. Just write about what you want to write about at an acceptable pace, and connect with a reasonable number of people on a level that doesn’t seem creepy, desperate, or spammy.

With a little effort and just by following some common sense, you can use the Balance Theory — something usually only used by marketers with millions to spend — to start winning higher search engine rankings on your chosen keywords.

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Who Should Rule, Content or Marketing?

Over on his blog, Nashville writer Jeff Goins questions whether content is really king.

Well, actually, no he doesn’t. he said content is not king anymore. It’s a “fat, dethroned monarch, dis-empowered of his royal ability to influence.”

Janus, the two-faced Roman god, should represent content marketing.

Marketing — or as Jeff calls it, “relationships” — are the true king. Without relationships, without marketing, it doesn’t matter how awesome your writing is.

I used to be terrible at this. I thought all I had to do was be a good writer. But I was wrong.

I was scared. And lazy. I didn’t want to have to actually meet people. I just wanted to write.

But that’s not how the world works. So why would I think for one minute the Web would work that way? Yes, even in real life, it’s not just what you know that matters, but also who you know.

And even in business, the best way to promote an idea, product, or service is relationship. We all know this, because in this day of media saturation, we don’t buy what the ads tell us to buy. We buy what our friends recommend.

If I have to give an edge to either of them, I still side with content. Because hidden content can accidentally be discovered one day. I might write a post that gets picked up by search engines, and I could start being found for that topic.

But I could optimize and promote the bejeezus out of something really awful, and a lot of people could see it, but what do you think would happen if everyone showed up and saw — and said — how awful it was?

Still, it’s not a question of whether content or marketing is king.

Content Marketing Rules

This does not have to be an either/or proposition. You shouldn’t have to choose one over the other. And no, this is not one of those “why can’t everyone just get along” cop-outs that I detest. This is like arguing about whether peanut butter or jelly is more important on a PBJ.

Content and marketing have a symbiotic relationship. One cannot exist without the other. You can have great content, but if your marketing sucks, no one will see your stuff. And you can have great marketing, but if your writing sucks, no one will care.

There has to be a happy medium here. Or at the very least, we have to recognize that Content/Marketing is a two-faced king, like Janus, the Roman god of beginnings. You can’t have good marketing and lousy content, and you can’t have lousy marketing and good content. Without one, the other will die.

Content without good marketing is a private diary. Marketing without good content is spam.

I think once writers realize they need to market, we’ll see a bigger explosion in books and ebooks. And once marketers realize that content is not some throwaway afterthought, they’ll start seeing an explosion in sales and profits.

And if you want to learn how to do both, you can buy Branding Yourself or No Bullshit Social Media to see how.

(See what I did there?)

Photo credit: mscolly (Flickr)