Blogging Archives - Content Trends

How to Instantly Find Excellent Blog Post Ideas

February 13, 2014 by Gazalla Gaya

So you are sitting down to write your blog post and you realize that you don’t have a clue what you are going to write about. Does this sound familiar? Don’t worry – you are not alone. Every writer faces writer’s block, a common hazard of the writing trade. .

Instead of tearing your hair, here are some simple ways to get loads of ideas and be up and writing your next blog post in no time at all.

#1. Tools that help you instantly get ideas

Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a tool that would look up the internet and advise you what to write about? Well, now you can, thanks to Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator. Simply type in 3 terms related to your blog and wham! You get a few ideas with some great headlines already created and ready to go.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest will give you a ton of blog post ideas in no time at all. You simply type in a keyword and it goes down the entire gamut of A-Z along with that keyword.

As an example, I put in my seed term, SEO. Just by looking at SEO+a, SEO+b. I got these ideas:

SEO tools
SEO audits
SEO best practices
Difference between SEO and SEM
SEO basics

Ubersuggest, giving me ideas for the term, SEO

#2. Feedly

Last year Google did away with Google Reader, a blog post subscription service. Feedly.com is a great alternative. I subscribe to almost 100 blogs via Feedly. Of-course the key is to use the feeds that you subscribe to, only as a resource guide. When you write, you want to give a fresh perspective to a topic that is getting a lot of buzz in your community. It’s not a good idea to duplicate content but is always good to put on your thinking cap and come up with a fresh perspective on these topics.

#3. What’s trending on Twitter

Twitter is the place to find out the pulse of the internet. You’re sure to find a topic for your niche here. You can monitor conversations on Twitter through many different tools. I like to use Hootsuite. I create various streams for the topics that I’m actively monitoring. Putting in hashtags is the recommended technique for following topics. I’ve searches set up for #contentstrategy and #contentmarketing.

Topsy is another great site to instantly see what’s trending on Twitter.

#4. LinkedIn groups

I’ve always found excellent ideas when sifting through various Linked-In groups. Most industry professionals (who are my niche audience) post thoughtful questions and the discussions that follow are a learning experience. The questions that get a lot of feedback and engagement are good bets for post ideas.

#5. Google+ communities

I have to admit that I’m becoming a fan of Google+ Communities. They provide an easy way to read and listen in to discussions in your fields of interest. People are very engaged in the right communities and I’ve often learned about trending news first in these communities.

#6. What’s trending websites

These websites keep up with the latest trends or topics of interest and measure how they fare over a time period. They easily allow you to stay current and on top of the latest trends. Some examples of trending websites:

BuzzFeed

Buzzfeed has experienced incredible growth over the past 2 years. As of April 2012, it’s ranked as the third most influential blog of all time on Technorati. The site is a viral news aggregator. It uses various algorithms to find viral content around the web. Buzzfeed then presents the best, most shared articles the web has ever seen.

Viral Video Chart

Viral Video Chart has tracked over 300 billion video streams since its launch in 2006. You can apply different filters on Viral Video Chart to rank videos according to time periods or number of shares. By default, the viral video chart lists the top 20 viral videos for the past 7 days, but you can also customize your search query according to different time frames.

The other sites that are great for checking out what’s trending are:

#7. Q & A sites

Quora and Yahoo answers are good resources for finding out what is foremost on peoples’ minds.

A quick search on Quora for social media questions gave me these ideas to blog about:

The next big social app
How to build a sustainable business on Pinterest
Social media strategy when pitching for a new account
Klout’s competitors and how good they are
How to share a private twitter list with others

Quora

#8. Google Analytics

One of the best ways I know to instantly get an idea for a post is to look back at my site Analytics and review the posts that were the most popular over a set time frame. I can then create a related post around that topic. It also makes sense to create more posts around a topic that your audience favors.
Previously, it was so much easier to get content ideas by looking at the keywords that people were typing in to get to your site. Nowadays, with Google not displaying the keywords and “keyword not provided”, the best alternative is to look at your popular posts.

If you have site search, then in these days of keyword not provided, you are ahead of the game. You can see the search terms that people typed in once they entered your site. These search terms will again help you in creating content that your audience would like to find on your site.

#9. Poll Your Audience

This may not fall under an instant technique but is very powerful. The simplest way to find out what your audience wants is to poll them. There are a number of easy tools such as Polldaddy, which allow you to create a poll in under 5 minutes.

Your turn

Where do you find blog post ideas? I’d love to know. We’ll all benefit from the info. Please share them in the comments below. Thanks.

7 Blog Metrics You Need to Measure Your Success

October 21, 2013 by Gazalla Gaya

Are you creating blog content that engages your audience? Knowledge is everything, and knowing your blog metrics will help you to create blog content that resonates with your audience. Your metrics will inform you of all the content-related changes you need to make and you can use these insights to tailor content based on the needs of your audience.

The main objective of business blogging is to increase engagement and interaction. Your blog’s content is easy to measure, as each user interaction is valuable and can count as a success metric.
These insights will help you to adjust your content strategies and create more powerful content in these ways:

You can use your top content as a model for creating new content. Once you track which blog posts garnered the most interaction in the form of shares, comments, views you can create more content around these topics. Since I cover the entire spectrum of digital marketing, it’s always interesting for me to see if my posts on content marketing, blogging, SEO or social media gain the most traction.
If you are a business owner, your conversions will tell you which content is the most successful at convincing and converting your prospects to loyal customers.

Here are the 7 essential metrics to understand how your content is faring with your audience.

#1. Google Analytics

The Behavior section of Google Analytics will give you access to a thorough analysis of your site’s content.

The page views tab allows you to see the top pages on your site based on the number of views. If a blog post is very popular, it makes sense to create more posts around that topic.
The bounce rate will help you to adjust your content depending upon the percentage. If certain posts have a bounce rate of 80% you know that you are creating content that is either not resonating with your audience or that you are optimizing your blog post for the wrong search terms. Either way, your audience is leaving minus any engagement. On the other hand if you have a bounce rate of less than 50%, you are doing a great job and should continue to do whatever it is that you are doing so far.
If you have site search, then in these days of keyword not provided, you are ahead of the game. You can see the search terms that people typed in once they entered your site. These search terms will again help you in creating content that your audience would like to find on your site.
I like the Content Experiments section of Google Analytics. It’s a great way to optimize your website by testing different versions of a landing page to see which versions converts the best.
The landing pages tab allows you to get a breakdown of your top landing pages. You can fine-tune the copy of those pages that are not doing so well so that they become better converting pages with stronger calls to action.
I attended a Google+ hangout with Avinash Kaushik in which he talked about the Engagement tab being the most meaningful tab under Behavior in the Audience section. The engagement tab allows you to see the number of seconds that visitors spend on your site. Of-course, you can count them as an engaged audience if they spend a longer time on each page.

#2. Page Authority

Just as your domain authority is a great metric to understand the trustworthiness of your site by search engines, each page has a page authority. If you have the Google or Chrome extension for the Moz bar you can easily at a glance know the domain authority and page authority of every site that you visit. The page authority takes into account how long your site has been up, the number of links that page has collected and also the total number of pages of your site.

#3. Number of Quality Backlinks through Open Site Explorer

Each link that you get from another site counts as a “vote” for your site in the democracy of the web and the more links that you get, the more popular that piece of content is. The importance that search engines gave to links resulted in link-spamming and other black-hat techniques. Google began to clamp down heavily on link-spammers last year, with its Penguin update. Today, the links that count are from high-authority sites.

Open Site Explorer is a useful link analysis tool. It does a thorough analysis of the number and authority of external links that your post has collected. It’s also a good indicator of the success of your content. If a given page has a lot of engagement and page views, it will automatically have a lot of links.

Open Site Explorer examining the number and domain authority of my backlinks

#4. Social Media

The number of times that your content is shared on social media is also a pretty good indicator of the success of your content. I’ve had some pages that are shared 3 times more on social media than other pages. This insight allows me to create more of the content my audience seems to want to share. Since I cater to a diverse audience of digital marketers, if I see that a post on SEO is performing better than a post on blogging, then I know that my audience would like to see more posts on SEO.

Social media sharing will help your SEO efforts as well. Currently, search engines are using social media shares as an important factor in ranking blog posts. Google authorship is also an important SEO factor and author rank is loosely determined by the number of +1’s that you receive.

#5. Comments and Engagement

Nothing spells engagement more than feedback in the form of comments. Comments and feedback, for me are one of the most useful success metrics. They tell me that the content I’ve written resonates with my audience. Most users passively read and few are called upon to take the time and leave a comment. It’s also a fun metric as I love interacting with my readers.

#6. Email Open Rates

How many subscribers opened your email? It they are anything like me, then they are subscribed to a number of blogs and newsletters. I only open an email that I subscribe to if I feel that the information is so valuable that I need to read it.

A 2012 study indicates that email open rates average 19%, higher or lower depending upon the industry you are in. If you have a high open rate for a particular post you know that you have an engaged audience.

Aweber, showing me the email-open-rate of one of my posts

#7. Tools such as SEM Rush

Tools such as SEM rush do a good job of explaining the top positions that each site is ranking for.

Which metrics do you look at to understand audience engagement? Please share in the comments below. Thanks.

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Promote Your Blog with these 3 Twitter Tools

July 31, 2012 by Gazalla Gaya

This post is one of a series of posts on blog marketing.

The twitter tools that we will look at today will help you to promote your blog with the simple concept of social shares. These twitter tools help connect you to other bloggers who retweet and share your content. Social signals and social sharing are great ways to market your blog for these reasons:

Google has started using social proof and sharing on social media as an important indicator in the ranking of articles. In fact, a study conducted recently confirmed that retweets affect rankings.
When other bloggers share your posts via Twitter and other social sharing sites, you gain instant access to a very wide network which allows you to increase and broaden your reach.
Since you reach a wider network, you will automatically increase traffic to your blog.
A great side benefit of using these twitter tools is that you establish a rapport and connection with other bloggers who share the same interests. The results are amazing, in terms of feedback that you receive, comments on your blog etc… You also invariably connect with them on various social media sites.
Since other bloggers who share your content will visit your site and read your posts you could land some tremendous guest posting opportunities.

Let’s look at 3 Twitter tools that are rapidly going mainstream and are helping small and big bloggers reach new markets everyday.

3 Twitter Tools that Increase Traffic

Triberr

Triberr allows you to increase traffic to your blog with the concept of “tribes”. Tribe members retweet and share your content within their networks which amplifies your reach. For example, if you join a tribe that has 6 members and each member has 1,000 followers, your potential reach is 6,000 people.
Once you join Triberr you can either lead your own tribe or join (be invited to join) a tribe. The tribe members will promote your posts on their networks. Your posts are fed into Triberr via your RSS feed. The RSS feeds will allow it to automatically appear on your tribe mates’ tribal Stream. Triberr allows you to enter up to 3 RSS Feeds at a time. However, each tribe can only have one blog feed assigned to it.

Triberr initally started last year as a by invitation only app. and tribe members only had the option of retweeting. Now, of-course Triberr is open to the public and you also have the option of sharing content on several other social media sites such as Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon and Reditt.

I use Triberr and love the interaction and rapport that I’ve established with other bloggers in my niche. It’s also given me guest posting opportunities and from time to time, a tribe member will stop by and comment on my posts. It’s great to receive that kind of feedback.

There are certain guidelines that will help you get the most of Triberr:

Before you join a tribe, look up the twitter handles of the tribe members. Visit their sites and get a feel for the type and quality of their content. This is an important step, as you will know if you feel comfortable endorsing their content.
Always join a tribe that is related to your niche. That way you will not be spamming your followers by tweeting irrelevant stuff. For example: If you are a mystery writer there are several mystery writer tribes. Joining one will give you access to promote other other tribe members’ posts and they to promote yours.
Initially, Triberr had only an automated option for tweets. Now, all shares are in manual mode so you can tweet only relevant content. If you feel that a post is not up to quality, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t tweet it. Manual mode is great because you can now share stuff that you like and that is relevant to your followers.
When approving posts, do them in batches so that you don’t offend any followers by posting too many at one time. Otherwise, you run the risk of annoying your existing, organic followers. It will also look like spam.
Always read the posts for quality assurance, before sharing across your networks, until you are comfortable with the people in your tribe that constantly produce excellent content.
Allow certain days for your natural organic reactions and shares to continue. I like to use Triberr on 2-3 days of the week and on other days I like to curate content from my followers. Otherwise, it will stop you from reading your own Twitter feed. Your natural, organic interactions will disappear. Don’t forget to have your natural organic responses and tweeting other fellow tweeps’ posts.

Justretweet.com

Justretweet.com is a great way to increase traffic by reaching people who are not in your network and operates on the concept of “credits”. You earn credits for tweeting others’ content and following other people on Twitter. You can dispense these credits by offering them to others who retweet your content. You can set the minimum number of twitter followers. You also have the option to buy credits. For example, If I earned 300 credits, I could dispense 180 of them, by offering 30 credits to each blogger that retweets my post and set a total limit of 180 credits (ie. 6 retweets).

Ms. Ileane of basicblogtips and Gail Gardner of Growmpap, both famous bloggers with established blogs have recommended and used justretweet.com.

I’ve used justretweet.com in the past and have had good luck with it. The only thing again that I’ve had to watch out for is getting quality content that is relevant to my niche, to share with my network. Sometimes, I’ve had to wade through several tweets before finding something that is tweet worthy and worth sharing with my followers.

Easyretweet.com

I’ve just used easyretweet.com before writing this post and found it to be similar to justretweet.com. You earn credits by following and retweeting others’ content. You also have an option to earn credits by viewing other blogs. You dispense these credits to others for retweeting your content, following you or visiting your blog.

Since social media has eliminated costs and increased exposure, blog marketing today is cheaper and also more efficient in reaching more readers every day. Social media sites such as Twitter have opened the floodgates to both novice and professionals to use the tools they have to offer.

Do you agree with these methods of blog promotion? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.

How to Earn an Income from Your Blog : Interview with David Risley

June 24, 2012 by Gazalla Gaya

[frame type=”left” width=”200″ height=”200″
src=”https://contenttrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/headshot_200_200.jpg”]Last week, I had the opportunity to interview David Risley. He gave a presentation at Blog World titled, “Blog Monetization Options: What are ALL the ways to make money with a blog?”. I enjoyed his presentation and was engaged from the the get go especially when he started his presentation by stating that blogs don’t make money, but businesses do.

David makes his living full-time as a highly successful internet entrepreneur. He describes himself as a father, husband, entrepreneur, blogger, author, speaker and consultant. After he graduated, David did not want to be stuck in a traditional 9-5 job. He started a site called PCmechanic.com back in 1998. The site was very successful and he was soon generating a six-figure income. He started helping others create online businesses with the help of his courses and ebooks.

Many internet marketers sell the internet lifestyle as laid-back and easy. They paint visions of sitting on the beach, sipping a cool drink and chilling. What impressed me about David is that he goes against creating that stereotypical image to tell you that creating a full-time income as a blogger is not easy and takes a lot of work. “Just as you cannot run right out and start an offline business overnight and make money right away… you probably shouldn’t be thinking you can do it online.”

Here are the excerpts from the interview:

“My advice, first and foremost, is to know what VFP (Valuable Final Product) you’re shooting for. In other words, what are you trying to help people accomplish?”

[dropcap1]
Q.
[/dropcap1]
I heard the concept of creating a Valuable Final Product (VFP) at your conference session and loved it. Let’s say, your VFP is a service/your expertise. What is the best way to market your services online if you are not a famous name but have the experience? How do you attract attention and build authority?

[dropcap1]
A.
[/dropcap1]You most definitely do NOT need a famous name in order to offer or market a service online. It starts with clearly identifying the outcome that your clients want, and all that that entails. That will nail down your VFP for you.
As far as marketing yourself online, then you go down the ways that many have already talked about:

Blogging about your topic
Going to communities that talk about your topic and get involved
Putting free offers out there to help prospects (in exchange for an email address, of course), etc.
Also, I should add… don’t limit yourself to online only. Attend conferences and meetup groups. Many times, offline promo that brings people to your website can work out very well.

[dropcap1]
Q.
[/dropcap1] You’ve said, “I believe many “professional bloggers” out there who teach blogging are leading people astray by focusing too much on the mechanics of blogging – and not enough on building real businesses.” If you had to start over again, what are the mistakes that you have learned from and would do different in building your online business?
[dropcap1]
A.
[/dropcap1]

I would definitely have started my email list earlier. It is SUPER important.
I would align around an outcome, or VFP. Blog Marketing Academy had one from the get-go. My tech site did not, and the markets where the people are trying to accomplish something are always much better from a business standpoint.
Lastly, once you have a VFP in mind, start thinking about product/service offers in the beginning. Because, any business has to have an offer. Otherwise, no customers. And no money. If you want to make money, you have to provide something valuable to an audience in need of that offer. Simply writing and blogging isn’t going to do it.

[dropcap1]
Q.
[/dropcap1]Of all the options you discussed, affiliate marketing is an option that many bloggers consider. I’ve seen famous bloggers like Patt Flynn, Brankica Underwood and Anna Hoffman make a success out of it. Especially if you have a niche site and are selling to that niche.
What is your advice, warning, top things to avoid to people who are new and just getting started with affiliate marketing?
[dropcap1]
A.
[/dropcap1]

My advice, first and foremost, is to know what VFP you’re shooting for. In other words, what are you trying to help people accomplish? And make very sure that the things you promote will help people get there. Don’t promote unrelated things just because it has a commission attached to it.
I’ve seen many bloggers promote internet marketing stuff on blogs which have nothing to do with marketing. What happens is that they’re interested in the topic and see IMers making money with these things… and they want to partake in it. So, next thing you know, you have promotions for something like Aweber on a blog about knitting (or something equally disrelated). Just don’t do that. Complete misalignment.
Also, don’t litter up a blog with affiliate banner ads. Conversion rates are horrible. You’re much better off promoting affiliate programs through the use of truly helpful blog posts where the product is a natural extension of the topic.
Also, make sure you’re building an email list, because list promotions always work FAR better than blog promotions.

[dropcap1]
Q.
[/dropcap1]
You are a father, husband, entrepreneur, blogger, guest poster, author. (I’ve bet I’ve missed a few:))
What are your favorite time management techniques? How do you also find the time for social media, commenting, engaging and building relationships?

[dropcap1]
A.
[/dropcap1]Honestly, probably the biggest tip I could provide here is the good ol’ 80/20 rule. 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. When you realize this, you begin to look at the things you do with your time with a critical eye.

You mention social media, commenting, engaging, etc. Truth be told, these things almost always fall in the “waste of time” category. Now, don’t get me wrong… they ARE useful. But, they usually fall in the 80% of effort that brings 20% of results category. Lots of time spent doing that stuff, yet it isn’t NEARLY as good a use of my time as working on building my list, finishing an ebook, making a video, helping my existing customers, etc.

So, the keyword here is leverage. Try to spend your time on the things which ACTUALLY bring you results, not just the fashionable stuff everybody says you have to do (like Twitter, for example).

I have a course called Time Master Formula where I go a lot more in-depth into this whole topic of time management.
[dropcap1]
Q.
[/dropcap1]
Who did you start Blog Marketing Academy for?
Also, Do you have any books or courses that would guide the beginner blogger along this field?

[dropcap1]
A.
[/dropcap1]People with blogs who are looking to make effective marketing vehicles out of it. Bloggers who want to build a real online business.

You bet. 🙂

If one is first starting out and just trying to get their bearings on the whole “how the hell do you make money on the Internet” thing, then I have a 3-day course called 3DayMoney.com.

There is also a free 30-day video course I have called the 30 Day Blog Transformation Challenge.

For my other stuff, check out my Products page. 🙂

What about you? Have you found a way to create an income with your blog? Please share with us in the comments below. Please also, share this article on all your social networks. Thanks:)

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Blog World, New York, 2012: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

June 10, 2012 by Gazalla Gaya

The Good

This year’s Blog World and New media Expo (or New Media Expo, NMX as the conference is now officially known as with the name change on June 6th, 2012) was simply the best place to network and meet other bloggers who came from all over the world and country to be part of the event. I met small business owners and new media consultants from London, Guatemala, California, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Texas and Pennsylvania to name only a few places. Some of the best discussions I had were around lunch, meeting up with other bloggers and attending the networking parties and events.

Since the virtual ticket gives you access to all the sessions, Blog World is essentially a great place to network and meet the crème de la crème of the blogging world. In the 3 day conference, I either spotted or interacted with celebrity bloggers such as Michael Seltzner, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, Rich Brooks and Dino Dogan.

My key takeaways from this event were that in order to build a blog that matters, it’s essential to know who your audience is and what they want and you can then create the products and content. Many bloggers do this backwards. Also, if you are serious about blogging for your business, it’s important to know the problems that your customers face and this will enable you to deliver products that sell themselves.

The Bad

Overall, I had a good experience especially since I treated this less as an educational event and more as an opportunity to network and meet other bloggers.

Here are the top opportunities for improvement:

There seemed to be an overall disconnect with the type of audience and the sessions. Most of the people I interacted with were new media professionals, small businesses and professional bloggers. Many presentations were for beginner bloggers. They came up short on sharing original ideas and tricks of the trade but contained info. that you could easily google and read about.
The Q & A were usually tackled at the end of each session, time permitting. It would be simply great to have the Q & A be the focal point for the presenters so that the presentations directly related to the questions people (who had traveled from far and wide) had.
It’s downright essential to have wi-fi for an event such as Blog World. Several bloggers like to live blog during the conference and there are several others who tweet the highlights of the event to their followers. However, the Blog World wi-fi did not work and the Jacob Javits wi-fi was pay as you use.
Jacob Javits Center although in the heart of Manhattan was still not the most convenient location. There were no yellow cabs waiting outside and the closest subway stop for me was Penn Station which was at least 10 blocks away. Buses were few and far between.
I know that the event was in New York which is an expensive city but expect to spend at least $15 on lunch in any of the food places within Jacob Javits just for the convenience of not having to leave in between sessions.

The Ugly

Well, there has to be an ugly side to everything and during one of the keynote sessions, a woman started parading around topless to a speechless audience.
I overhead a conversation about the lack luster venue and that it reminded them of a prison! Since the sessions, were held at the basement level there were no windows which lead to a grim and dull setting.

Lessons learned for the next time…

The virtual ticket holds value. I often had to choose between presentations and having a virtual ticket would have eliminated the confusion.
The 3 day pass allows you to move freely from room to room, so if you do not feel a session is providing value do not hesitate to walk over to the next one. I did that twice and was happy with the outcome both times.
Since Blog World is the best place to network, It’s always a good idea to take more business cards than you think you need as I exhausted my stock on the second day.
Know the twitter handles of all the presenters to get an idea on how good the presentation will be.
My 17 inch laptop weighed a ton and was bulky to carry around especially since there was no wi-fi for the three days that I was there. A notebook works just as well or better yet it’s time to invest in a tablet for better portability and less shoulder damage:)

What are your thoughts? Please share them in the comments section below. Also, please share this article generously on all your networks. Thanks.