Happy news! Successful Blogging has been listed one of the Top 10 Blogs About Blogging by the A-List Blogging Team. It’s fantastic recognition for our community here thanks to all the readers who nominated me or left a comment on one of the posts here. Comments and engagement are so important.
One of the other bloggers on the Top 10 Blogs About Blogging list is Glen Allsopp who I’ve previously dubbed the SEO Boy Wonder. Or something like that. He is young, smart and totally clued up about SEO or search engine optimization amongst other things which is why I recommend his book Cloud Living for SEO help.
His latest blog post The Future of Blogging runs to 12,000 words. That’s a long read but I took notes on my brand new iPhone 4S using Siri to dictate what I was saying and transcribe it so I can share them with you.
There are a lot of smart ideas and tips in his post many of which won’t be right for you but some which might. I’ve also added a bonus blogging tip of my own at the end.
1. Change your homepage so the most popular posts are always visible.
Check! I’ve done this – see my Top Tips box in the right hand column.
2. Be controversial the most controversial opinion pieces always get more comments and more traffic.
This scares me but Barbara Hammond wrote about how we can get over that here.
3. Stay on top of trends and write about them fast.
I need to improve on this. I stay on top of trends but it takes me a while to think about them, write about it and publish.
4. Consider reprinting old information when you want to write about the same topic again but from a new angle use the information from an old article and then add to it.
Big newspapers do this. I’m not sure I’d repeat content verbatim but I could adapt and change information in old posts to add interest to new posts.
5. Consider splitting content over many separate pages in order to get more page views.
I find it annoying when big sites like The Huffington Post do this so I won’t be doing it. I want to make reading easier and faster for my readers, not harder and slower.
6. There’s no such thing as critical mass even if you’ve got a massive traffic coming to your blog it can still decrease if your content goes down.
7. Use celebrities and popular TV shows all movies in your blog posts people love it.
I wrote about marketing guru Seth Godin here but if you can share Lady Gaga’s Guide to Ruling the Universe or something similar it should be popular. At least with Lady Gaga fans like me.
8. If you have a really great post with a crappy headline consider rewriting and make sure the new headline is banging.
9. A lot of people are only looking to fill tiny gaps in their day.
So some very short blog posts or simple stand alone images will work well for them.
10. Doubling your content will help double your readers.
11. You can easily create posters by putting up an image in these remain very popular.
Is this a repeat of number 10? Maybe but it’s worth emphasizing. Many travel bloggers find their image only posts are some of the most popular.
12. It’s not just about blog traffic it’s about turning that traffic into money.
Goals. Goals. Goals. Remember what your blogging goals are.
13. If there’s a big news story either agree with it and expand disagree make a prediction or interview someone related.
14. Show more blog posts on your homepage as long as it doesn’t make your site load more slowly.
15. Fast loading sites are crucial.
People won’t wait to read your blog and Google prefers fast loading blogs.
16. Use provocative headlines.
17. There are thousands of people who want to read your content. They just haven’t found your blog yet.
How can you help them find it?
18. Focus on people, not search engine optimisation or gimmicky ways to get people to visit your blog.
19. It’s easier to keep loyal readers that you’ve already got than find new readers.
So make sure you please your existing readers and make them want to spread the word about you.
20. Even if you only have small numbers of subscribers you can still use your email mailing list split test headline.
For example you can email 10% of your list one headline and the other 10% another headline then you can see which headline gets the most opens and clicks before sending it to the remaining 80% of your readers.
20. Dedicate your homepage to collecting emails.
You might want to check out Glenn’s optinskin in in to do this. See examples on sites by Ramit Sethi, Neil Patel and Timothy Sykes. It’s been on my to do list for a while now.
21. Social Proof
Try adding testimonials to your about page sidebar to convince more people to subscribe or use social proof such as the number of followers who have on twitter or your subscribers.
I wrote about this on Copyblogger here. It’s so important.
22. Blogging makes your thoughts more concrete.
It can be a list of notes to yourself.
23. Get an iPhone 4S
This is my tip. Siri is proving super handy and I’m loving being able to dictate notes for blog posts into it.
Glen’s 12,000 word blog post took about one hour to read including the note taking and I’ve spent about an hour preparing this post. My new iPhone 4S is a definite time saver and an exciting new tool for bloggers.
Thank you to Glen for sharing his tips (you can read his whole post here), to Siri for making note taking easy and helping me condense 12,00 words into 1,000, and to you for reading all of this. Any spelling mistakes are Siris. I’ve corrected many but let me know if you spot any more. Siri is good but not perfect.
What blogging tip will you action first? Or maybe you have a question or idea of your own? Leave a comment, we’d love to hear from you.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for precising Glen’s excellent article, Annabel, and also for adding your take on it … and some extra tips. I read Glen’s 12,000 words a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t take notes the first time, so you’ve really helped me there
Now for some action – ohhhh!
Hi Johanna,
Siri helped me do it:) I’ve been experimenting with some of these ideas already. Hope you manage to get on to it soon!
Hi Annabel,
Thanks for summarising Glen’s post. He writes lots of brilliant content but sometimes you just don’t have an hour to read through it.
I definitely need to improve on number three and try 20.
Cheers, Caylie
Hi Caylie,
You’re welcome:) I like taking notes so happy to share them.
Oh man, I was having a hard time getting through that article. Thanks so much for the tips and the summary
Hi Corey,
You’re welcome:)
Honoured that you put this together, thank you Annabel. Great to see that your site is still going strong
Just a heads up – and it’s really not a biggie – but there are two ‘L’s in my surname
Hi Glen,
Ha, I knew that! Sacking the proof reader and updating now;)
So much good stuff here. I think I need to consider social proof. Thanks for the condensation, Annabel!
Hi Sandra,
It’s easily done:)
Great Post Annabel, I love point 3, 4, and 10.
BTW, Glen did a great Job on that post, I took my Time to read it Twice
Hi Joseph,
He did and good on you:)
Excellent tips! It’s always a work in progress, isn’t it? I suppose that’s a good thing. No one wants to become stagnant.
Thanks for the shout out!
b
Hi Barbara,
Yes, they are always in progress, never finished:)
This is so great Annabel. Very generous, again. I especially like 7. and 9.
7. Use movies, tv shows etc – I discovered this for myself – as a reader and a blogger.
9. Very short posts (ala Seth) or stand-alone images can be fine – this is a great tip I was beginning to notice. And it takes the pressure off.
Thank you for summarizing! Even abbreviated, this is a treasure trove of strategies.
I’ve been working on #2 (controversy) and #3 (trending topics) lately. Apparently I needed another reminder on the trendy stuff because when I read the tip above, I realized that I’ve fallen down on the job again! Oh shwell. Another day, another blog post =)
Congrats on being honored as a Top 10 blog!
Thanks for sharing this, I found some good food for thought in it and have even found a new way of using Siri – I can now record all those thoughts I have while driving!
Hi, you have some great tips there that I will try & implement on my site.
thanks you Joanne
I’m going to experiment by breaking up a few of the next diy posts I write into multiple posts.
Normally I write very long, pillar pages that rank pretty quickly for their keyword. But they take forever to write! It might be a nice change of pace to try it this other way.
Love your site, Annabel, it’s the most helpful one I’ve found.
Thank!
The points are short, but very powerful. this will help a lot people. thanks for sharing
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