Internet Marketing Simplified » Increase Web Traffic

Get People On the Bus Using Social Media

Jackie Lee — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:36:57 +0000

Last week I talked about how to get people on the bus using video. The whole concept of video seems to seriously freak people out ~ myself included for a while, but now that I’ve been doing it regularly for a little while it’s just become another thing I have to do during the day. But anyway… while I was reading the surveys the topic of how to use twitter came up… a lot.

I did a couple videos over the weekend that work together to create a nice twitter action plan. I know I’ve discussed how to use twitter in a previous post, but I thought I’d lay it out in some really simple steps here, and let you watch the videos.

Twitter Marketing Action Plan:

What you’ll need:

1. Twitter account
2. 5 to 10 commentluv blogs you enjoy reading
3. su.pr
4. twellow.com

Let’s get started:

1. Go to twellow.com and search for people who are your target market. This doesn’t mean they have to mention your exact blog topic, but they are people who would want to read your blog topic and get to know you better.

ex. ride on toys site ~ you could look for parents of toddlers ~ there’s plenty of them.

2. Follow 5 to 10 people from twellow.com (every day)

~ You can also just peruse your twitter stream and look for conversations that are going on. Stop by a person’s page if you don’t already follow them and check them out. If they seem interesting then follow them. (do this 5 to 10 times a day)

3. Interact with your followers.

When you follow people they will most likely check you out and then follow you back. Now is when the real relationshipping part comes in. You need to talk to these people. You want to provide them with some quality stuff.

have your blog posts automatically go to twitter (tweetmyblog plugin or tweetfeed.com will do this)
if you do video have your videos go directly to twitter (there’s a place on youtube to do this)
tweet links to seriously cool stuff
tweet fun stuff your market will be interested in

You can use the commentluv blogs and su.pr to provide tons of great content to your twitter account, and leverage your time with blog commenting. After you’ve commented on a blog (getting a link back to your site) use su.pr to share the blog post with your twitter readers.

Su.pr also has a tweet scheduling tool where you can schedule your tweets to post later, so you are spreading your tweets out over the day instead of all at once in a few minutes. This is nice because you get to reach more people over the day. Not everyone is on twitter at the same time as you.

While sending quality links and information is good, the way you really create relationships on twitter is by participating in the conversation and getting to know people ~ and letting them get to know you.

If you’re using tweetdeck ~ which is a desktop application you download to use twitter and facebook you can set up a whole column for people you really want to connect with. You do this by creating a list in your twitter account, and then adding that list to your tweetdeck. (If you’re interested in a step by step tutorial on how I actually do this let me know I’d be glad to show you).

Your twitterstream can get really busy when you get a lot of followers, but that’s what makes it fun. Scan through your timeline and read what people are doing ~ you don’t have to spend hours doing this ~ just take a glance and look for something interesting. When you find something you can reply to that person and make a comment. This will get you noticed by that person (provided they aren’t a movie star or blog star lol ~ most regular people welcome replies and to engage in conversation) and can start a conversation. The people you have actual conversations with are more likely to remember you, and you them. Last night I got into a great conversation with Catherine Caine (who is a blogger I follow) just by making a comment about her new header.

The other way to build a relationship with people on twitter is to retweet their messages. The more your retweet for other people, the more likely they are to retweet for you. It’s a very reciprocal game over there ~ you have to play with others and others will play with you.

This may sound like a lot but it can really be done in 30 minutes or so a day. Check out the twitter action plan for more succinct time table.

Here’s the videos:

How to Get More Traffic Using Twitter:

How to get more traffic with blog comments:

If you’ve got more questions about twitter or blog commenting let me know and I’ll do my best to answer. I’d love to hear what strategy you’re using to increase your traffic with twitter ~ leave me a comment and let me know.

How to Get People on Your Bus with Video

Jackie Lee — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:20:00 +0000

We talked recently about how to get more people on your bus. I’ve really been giving this a lot of thought for a couple reasons.

1. There are SO many ways to get traffic.

2. I’ve set up a challenge for myself and had to decide (really decide) what I was going to do.

As you know the most important thing for your bus tour is to get people on the bus. If you’ve got nobody on the bus there’s no people to buy your products and services.

I am really good about building relationships with the people on my bus… but I’ve definitely not focused on getting MORE people ON the bus.

That’s my challenge for the next 30 days.

I decided to set a goal to get 5 new subscribers every day. I know ~ not a huge number, and it’s probably not that much of a stretch for me but… (yeah I should have probably gone for 10 new people a day but…)

Now I had to decide HOW I’m going to reach that goal.

How am I going to get people not only TO my blog but also get them to sign up for the blog 2 hours report.

1. I decided on working with video. I haven’t done much video. It is a goal I set at the beginning of the year, so I decided to go with that. It’s also really easy to leverage video and it does well in the search engines… so it had a lot going for it.

2. I also decided to add the lightbox sign up box to my site. I know it can seem intrusive and annoying, but let me tell you… already it’s vastly increased my opt in rate. I also have it set to only show up once when people stop by which is not quite as annoying. (If you see it more than once in a row, please let me know!)

Some exciting things about video:

I know I can get traffic from youtube. I know video ranks well in the search engines. What I didn’t know, until I really started digging into the world of video is just how many ways there are to leverage the 15 minutes it takes me to create a video.

When I started doing a little research on how to maximize my video presence I ran across this article from @buzzblogger, How to Get 1000′s of Views on Your Video.

There are some amazing suggestions on how to maximize my video efforts. AND it got really overwhelming. I mean when am I going to find time to do all this stuff??

I’m not.

I’m going to pick a few of the things she mentions and I’m going to do them. I’m going to do them regularly and consistently. I’m going to do what I can, and if I find I have more time I will add a couple other things.

My plan and how I’ve pulled together some of Kim’s suggestions are what I talked about in today’s video.

Here’s a quick outline of my video marketing plan:

1. Create video (5 to 10 minutes)
2. Edit video (15 minutes)
3. Upload video to youtube (10 to 15 minutes) I’m writing this post as it’s uploading.
4. Add new video to blog post at twittermoms (3 minute)
5. Add new video to blog post at mombloggers (3 minute)
6. Add video to video section of twittermoms (3 minutes
7. Connect with (add as friend) 5 new people at twittermoms and mombloggers (15 -20 minutes)
8. Interact/participate in 5 ways at both twittermoms and mombloggers (1 hour)

As you can see a lot of these activities only take a few minutes and could be fit into small time spaces throughout the day. It’s not like I have to sit down and do all of this in one sitting (although I will), but it’s something that can be done throughout the day when you have bits of time to work.

Here’s today’s video: (you can catch all the videos from my challenge at my youtube channel (don’t forget to subscribe!)

Day 2 of the 30 Day Video Challenge: How to Increase Web Traffic

Wide vs. Deep

I touch on the topic of wide vs. deep in the video. Going wide meaning you do a little of everything across the board ~ that’s what I’ve pretty much always done, a little of this for traffic, a little of that for traffic. On the other hand, going deep is finding one method and then figuring out all the ins and outs of it, the tricks that you would probably miss if you were only taking a passing glance at it.

Going deep for your traffic strategy is kind of like doing an authority site ~ you really dive in, and look at every aspect of the topic before you move on. I’ve never really tried it but I can feel it has a lot of potential. So this next 30 days will be a test.

I’ve marked down my subscriber number and we’ll check it at the end of the 30 days and see how I’ve done.

What about you?

What are you going to strive for in the next 30 days? What steps will you have to take to make it happen? Decide. Commit. Write it down. Keep it simple… a few things done consistently every day really add up!

Using Ning Communities to Build Traffic and Community

Jackie Lee — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:19:50 +0000

Last time we talked about using forums to build community. Today we’re going to talk about how to use ning communities. They are similar to forums, but have some big differences that if taken advantage of can really explode your reach.

What is a Ning community?

Ning is a huge site that allows people to start their own community without having to do any of the background stuff, like hosting, and programming, and all that stuff.

The rules are changing, but anyone used to be able to create a community there for free. It was a great tool to help build your own community ~ BUT ~ that’s not what we’re talking about today.

We’re going to look for communities within the Ning site that are in our niche, or where our market hangs out. I’m going to use twittermoms as my example throughout this post. It’s the Ning community I spend the most time in, although I could definitely spend more consistent time over there. Each ning community may be a little different, because there’s different templates you can use, and you can customize what you want to show up on your front page, but there are going to be some parts that are on most if not all the sites.

Let’s look at the really killer features of a Ning community:

Main Page:

The main page is where you’ll see what’s going on across the community. This is all MEMBER CREATED content. That’s important because as a member your content can easily make it to the front page ~ because the front page features NEW content. So each time you create new content, whether it’s a comment in a group or discussion, or a new blog post it shows up on the front page for everyone to see.

Twittermoms has over 25 THOUSAND members. So your front page content ~ even if it’s as simple as participating in a discussion or forum shows up for everyone coming to the front page. Talk about powerful.

Members ~ you’ll also find a place to connect with other community members on the front page. On this site it’s on the sidebar ~ says “members” you can click the “view all” link and it will show all the members of the community. You can spend a few minutes each day looking at member’s profiles and adding a few friends. The more you connect and reach out in this type of community the better.

I believe Ning communities are much easier to create real relationships and friendships because they offer so many more ways to get to know people, and so many additional ways to interact.

Let’s look at them:

My page: When you join you’ll get to create your own page. On this page you have the ability to add content, let people know who you are, add an RSS feed from your blog, add blog posts, add videos ~ all amazing ways to connect.

You might be wondering how you’re going to create all this content on top of the other content you have to create. It’s not as hard as you might think. Repurpose your content! You can use articles you write for EZA or other article directories as blog posts ~ you can use any video you uploaded to youtube here as well.

Remember, each time you do this your content will show up on the front page of the site. At twitter moms you have the chance to get 25K member eyes on the page, as well as all the traffic that comes to the site via other avenues.

These are targeted eyes too ~ which matters. Once you become active in the community people will begin to look forward to seeing your new content and will be on the lookout for it ~ they will also start spreading the word about it too ~ they may tweet, or FB it. (which is very easy to do at twittermoms ~ since it’s moms who use twitter!)

I hope you are beginning to see the possibilities that come from this type of community.

While there’s no “signatures” in a Ning community if you have a unique image put up for your page, people will begin to notice your picture everywhere. If you participate in conversations people will start seeing you around and want to know more about you ~ now you’ve got an entire page for them to get to know you and like you, and you can send them wherever you want from your page. Very powerful.

Friend requests: It won’t take long and very little participation before you begin to get friend requests. When you’re logged in they’ll show up in a box on the right hand side of your page. You just click the “friends” link and it will take you to the request page. You can click on the people who have requested friendship and learn more about them.

Did you see how that worked? They asked you to be friends, and you looked at their page. If you do the same thing you will get the same results ~ not only will people accept your friend requests, but they will view your page when they do it (most of the time) and get to know you and what you’re doing in the process.

Groups and forums: If you go to the top navigation bar you’ll see a “community” link. This is where you’ll find where and what people are talking about. Twittermoms currently has 471 groups ~ some are small an relatively inactive, and some are big and have lots of activity. There are groups on everything from Book Clubs to Ebay selling, to breastfeeding, to decorating cakes. There are literally groups for just about everyone here. Pick a few and start participating. Each time you do, it will show up on the front page of the site, and people will start to recognize your avatar ~ and feel like they know you. Talk to people directly ~ and just like forums, don’t drop links, but converse with and help people out! For a while the twittermoms book club was very active and we were having live chats with authors every week or two. Lots of fun!

Discussion Forums are a little different. They are more like regular forums. They are one thread of a conversation about a specific topic. It’s also a great place to start a conversation, or ask a question you have. Some conversations will take off, and some won’t but again… every discussion post shows up on the front page of the site.

What Ning community should I join?

Twittermoms is pretty much the only community I’m really involved in anymore, because all of the things I’m involved in are covered in this one community. That may not be true for you, so you’ll need to find a different community.

You can go to Ning.com ~ there is a search box, top right hand corner where you can put in keywords/topics and see what’s out there. I suggest you look for communities that are active, and have at least 1000 members. You don’t want to be spending time participating and adding content if you don’t really have any audience within that community.

Remember… you don’t have to join a community that’s is exactly about your topic, but you want to join a community where your market hangs out. So let’s say you have an educational blog ~ you may want to join a homeschooling community, or even a community that revolves around healthier foods in school ~ you see your target market will be there as well. You don’t need to talk all about educating children, you can talk about food in schools, and when people come to your page they will see that you have great educational stuff on your blog, it’s a natural progression for them to move to your site.

Here’s some communities I’ve found on different topics.

Fitness: Bookieboo Very active, lots of challenges, and plenty of twitterchats as well.

Law of attraction: Powerful Intentions very active ~

Law of attraction/EFT: Boundless living ~ great regular challenges and active friendly community

Mom Bloggers: Blogamama

Squidoo ~ Rocketmoms ~ this is an invite only group ~ I can submit your name if you want to participate.

That’s about it, the Ning community can be a very powerful way to build brand you and build traffic to your site. The key is consistent participation. You’ll need to come up with some sort of a plan, so you spend quality time there, but don’t end up spending ALL your time there. This is a great promotional activity, but you need to keep steady with your content creation as well.

If you join any of the above communities, shoot me a friend request! If you have any questions or want to tell us about your Ning experience, please leave a comment below!

Building Relationships and Community with Forums

Jackie Lee — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:24:05 +0000

We’ve been talking for the last couple months about getting traffic to your site. It’s more than that though, we’re talking about building a community, building a “tribe” if you will, of raving fans who love your site, love you and look forward to your new blog posts and want to come hang out with you on your site.

We’ve learned that creating this type of site rests heavily on creating relationships. Building backlinks is important ~ it helps with Google ranking so you get free traffic from Google, but building your community starts with building relationships.

Today we’re going to talk about an excellent way to go about building relationships and your readership.

Forums

I’m sure everyone is familiar with regular forums. There are forums on every given topic ~ I mean really. If you Google your topic + forum I bet you will find something. If you can’t find a forum directly related to your niche I’m sure you can find a forum where your market hangs out.

ex. ride on toys.

You may not be able to find an entire forum based on ride on toys ~ however, I KNOW you can find forums about kids, about toddlers, about parenting ~ all places your target market would be.

Start with finding a forum.

A few things to check out before you join.

1. Is it an active forum? You can tell this by looking at the forum board, see if there are a lot of members (often noted at the bottom of the page ~ this many people online ~ most people online ever). Also note if there are a lot of topics. Check if those topics have replies.

If no one is hanging out in the forum you’re not going to find anyone to connect with.

Don’t take this to mean that you have to find the BIGGEST forum you possibly can. That’s not necessarily true. Finding an active forum ~ a community is much more important than the size. If you find a forum with 1000 really active members who are friendly and helpful ~ you’ll probably be better off than finding a forum with 1 million members, none of whom really know one another.

Sign up for membership

You will have to join the forum to be able to participate. There will be a join button somewhere. Click it, and fill in the form presented. Think about your username ~ this can be used to build the brand of you. You can use your real name, or if you’ve used a name across your other social networking outlets you might want to stick with the same name. People will begin to recognize you all around the web. Aka: momtohanna When I started social networking the name JackieLee was not available everywhere so I made the decision to be momtohanna ~ now I use that username wherever I go online now.

Once you’ve signed up you will most likely have to click a link in a confirmation email before you can participate, so watch for that email.

Add a picture.

This is another great way to brand yourself online. Add the SAME picture wherever you go. People will begin to recognize the picture and will automatically feel like they already know you. This is powerful. If you keep changing your picture people, even people who “know” you will feel like they don’t know you because they won’t recognize the picture.

This is very true ~ unless they’ve met you in person a new picture may not translate into being “you”. So pick an image you like and stick with it!

Add your profile

This is where you get to tell a little or a lot about yourself. Fill in as much as you feel comfortable. The more you share the better people can get to know you. The more you share the more chances for common ground you’ll have with others.

Remember to put your website in your profile. There will usually be a space for it. It may say website or homepage or something similar. You will probably just need to use the url.

You may also find you can use some html in some of the writing areas. If you can ~ use html to create a keyword anchor text link back to your site. Just make sure it flows in the comments you’re supposed to be making in that area. It will probably look like an “about” section or something similar. So tell your story and when you get to the part about what you do, add a link to your site.

Add a signature

In a regular forum the signature is going to be your best way to get traffic to your site. A signature is a short statement you create. When you post to the forum by starting a thread or participating in a conversation your signature will show up under your comment. Here’s an example of my signature.

Yes, I see I used Jackie Lee there lol ~ I guess I’m doing both ~ not very consistent. I do use the same image everywhere though so that kind of ties it together.

While most places use html code you’ll find that most forums use BBCcode. It’s a little different and can be a little confusing so here’s the code you’ll need to create a keyword anchor text link in a signature.

[URL="http://yourlinkhere.com"]Your keywords here[/URL].

This will look like a regular clickable link when created in a signature, just like the one above.

Participate

Now that you’ve got your profile and your sig file set up it’s time to get involved. Before you start participating in a new forum however, I suggest you take some time to read around. Read some conversations. Look at who’s participating all the time. Look at how they are interacting. See who the “players” are in this forum.

After you’ve taken some time to get to know the “feel” of the place, go ahead and jump in the conversation. Answer a question, comment on a response. Participate.

Do NOT say ~ hey I answer that question on my blog, here’s the link.

NO NO NO.

That will not make you any friends in the forum, and could well get you kicked out. Don’t worry about your website. Your signature is dong the work for you now, you never have to mention your site. EVER. Just meet people, answer questions, converse, get to know people, make friends. The more you naturally participate the more people will get to know you and like you and want to know more about you. They will click on your signature link, they will click on your profile link. They’ll check you out. If they like you and find you interesting they’ll follow you to your site.

Now if they like you and find you interesting depends on… you guessed it. How you interact in the forum.

This is a great way to meet people, it’s a great way to build brand you AND it’s not going to be for everyone. I suggest you find a forum or two and test them out. Test them to see if you like hanging out in the forum, if you like the people, if you enjoy the time spent, and if it sends you traffic.

This, like any other “traffic tactic” takes consistent effort. You can’t just go to the forum one day for 30 minutes and then go back a month later. People will not remember you. You’ll need to make it a regular part of your promotional time if you choose to use this technique.

You may find you don’t like forums ~ that’s ok. Good to know. Then don’t choose this method. If you do find you like hanging out in forums, meeting new people this is the perfect type of thing to do in the evening while you’re watching TV. It’s something that doesn’t take your complete concentration, so have fun with it, and play with it while you’re doing something else that doesn’t take your complete attention (like watching TV).

I will also add, this is NOT the MOST effective use of your time, so don’t get SUCKED in and spend all your time in forums and not create new content on your blog. Content creation then promotion.

Also… if all you do is read the forum it doesn’t count at all. If all you do is read all you are doing is wasting time. This strategy is ONLY beneficial when you participate.

If you have any questions about finding or using forums feel free to ask in the comments section. On Friday we’re going to talk about Ning communities. While they are a little different than forums, they can be a powerful way to build brand you and your traffic… more about that on Friday.

5 Easy Ways to Link for Trackbacks

Jackie Lee — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:02:45 +0000

1. Differing Opinions:

In any niche there is always going to be a difference of opinions on one topic or another ~ do nofollow links really count, do ride on toys really have benefits, should you use pop boxes in your garden, should a school lunch have 3 carbs in it? Anything you talk about you’re going to find differing opinions. Use that to your advantage. Write a post on the subject, give your opinion on the topic, and then find other posts that have different opinions than you. Link to those posts in your post to give your readers a wider view of the issue.

2. Back up your point:

Take a stand in a post. Once you’ve taken your stand find other people in the blogosphere that agree with your stance and link to them from within your post. You have some backup for your stance, and your readers get to read more reasons why you know what you’re talking about.

3. Link Roundup:

Link to your favorite posts of the week. Gives you a quick and easy post and introduces your readers to blogs/authors they may not already know. (link roundups are often done on Fridays)

4. Other people’s comments:

You may notice a comment on someone else’s blog that gives you a good idea for a post. Use it. Tell everyone where your idea came from and link to the post so they can see the post that inspired you.

5. Other people’s posts:

You may read a blog post that you agree or disagree with, use that post as a jumping off point for your own post. Tell people in your post what you thought of the original post, and your unique thoughts about the topic. Make sure you share with your readers a link to the story that inspired your story.

There you have it, 5 ways to include links back to another post. Each of these links will provide you the opportunity to create a trackback on the post you’ve linked to.

What other creative ways can you think of to link to another blogger in your post? I’d love to hear how you’re using linking to other blogs in your posts.

How to Trackback and Why You Should

Jackie Lee — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:42:35 +0000

You may not be asking how to trackback and that may be because you don’t know the potential in using trackbacks… yet. However, this week we’re going to be focusing on trackbacks. What they are, how you get them and why you would even want to think about them!

What is a trackback?

Trackbacks and pingbacks, from what I can tell, are about the same thing. It’s wordpress software’s way of notifying another site that you mentioned them over at your site.

Each time you link to another site from your site (if it’s a wordpress site) they will receive a trackback ping. It’s a little note that tells them you mentioned them. These little notes are pretty cool for a couple reasons.

1. Traffic: They let someone know you’ve been talking about them. When someone talks about me, I like to know what they said so I go and check it out. Which means: Traffic. Yeah, only one person (the other blog owner) BUT if they like your content they may keep coming back to see what you have to say. If they continue to like what you have to say they may very well tell their readers that they like what you say, and then even more traffic. And we like that.

2. Links: When the blog owner gets the trackback ping (message you’re linking to them) they have the option to publish that message in the comments area of their blog. These trackbacks and pingbacks are actually published ABOVE regular comments. The pingback uses the title of your post as the comment. If you’ve used your keywords well in the title (AS YOU SHOULD) you will have a perfect keyword anchor text link pointing back to your site. You will probably also get some traffic from the pingback when people scroll down after reading the post to comment. (just as you do when you leave comments ~ but you’ve gotten to use keywords for the anchor test instead of your name.)

Why would I want to link to other people from my blog?

I hope this question is self explanatory ~ but ~ just in case. We’ve been talking about building relationships with other people in your niche, other blog owners. These relationships can be a great way to find places to guest post, find partners to work with, and find people who love your stuff and want to promote your posts because they love it.

What better way to get to people’s hearts (and get their attention) than mentioning them, recommending them on your blog, to your readers? There is, in my estimation, not a better way to jump start a relationship than with trackbacks.

Who do I link to?

You may notice on Friday I offered some links to posts that were related to the topic of the week. That’s exactly how you do it. You find someone else who is talking about a subject you’re talking about, preferably in a way other than you are covering it, and then link to them. It’s great to link to the specific post. You don’t have to use keywords you think the post is about, but what a great way to say hello ~ a nice keyword anchor text, in content link? I’d say hello, and probably thank you. Especially if it was a quality post about something I’m passionate about. What blogger doesn’t want people to send them more traffic? No one, I don’t care who you are or how much traffic you get, new traffic from new sources is always welcome.

If you’ve picked up Dave’s networking book (if not, why not? It’s fantastic and free) I suggest you use this method to start getting on the radar of the people you’ve chosen in those worksheets. This is a great way to start getting on the radar screen of those people. It may not work for the A lister blogs, but their support people? Absolutely.

Publishing Trackbacks on your own site.

Should you or shouldn’t you? There are people who will use this technique JUST to get links. They’ll write crappy content or worse yet, they’ll scrape your RSS feed and use YOUR content. That’s called trackback spam and you’ll get pingbacks on all of this stuff. Every time someone links to YOU you will get a pingback. Whether you decide to publish pingbacks on your site is completely up to you.

I do publish trackbacks from REAL content on REAL sites. I will NOT publish trackbacks from people that write content of no value or use MY content to fill their site. I will not give them the link. However, I’m happy to help people out who are using this technique as a way to connect and provide quality information to their readers.

Where do I see these pingbacks?

Mine come to my email, since I have it set up in wordpress for all comments to come to me so I can see them. Pingbacks and trackbacks are treated just like comments in wordpress. So if you’ve got it set up that way you’ll see them come through your email. I usually take a quick look to make sure the content isn’t mine, and then approve them. I also leave a comment on the post if the inclination strikes me. A “thank you” for linking to me is always appreciated by other bloggers, and can help get conversation going/flowing on their site as well.

So that’s about it for how to trackback. On Wednesday we’re going to be talking about writing posts to get trackback links, so stay tuned. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section.

Guest Posting ~ What Others are Saying

Jackie Lee — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:56:02 +0000

Guest Posting is the new article marketing. Yeah, it’s really that important. Instead of posting an article on a huge directory mixed in with thousands of other articles on your topic and about a million other topics you get to post an article to an eager crowd looking for the information you’re offering. Please don’t let whatever excuse you’re using for not guest posting get in your way. You don’t have to start with the biggest blog in your niche. You can start small and move up as you gain confidence.

It’s not just me who thinks this. Here’s some great information on guest posting from some of my favorite blogs.

9 Ways to Become an Exceptional Guest Poster

How NOT to Get Your Guest Post Published

How to Guest Post to Promote Your Blog

10 Proven Steps to Snag a Guest Post

Fantastic 6 Part Series on Guest Posting from Men with Pens

Still a little nervous about approaching people for a guest post?

Here’s an entire community where people are asking to do or to receive guest posts. It’s free. Sign up. Take a look around ~ answer a request for a guest post and get to writing!!

Guest Blogging Community

I hope you’ll take the leap and do a guest post on someone’s blog. The benefits FAR outweigh the risks. When you do, please stop back by and tell us so we can check out your guest post!! (and give you some link love!)

What You Need to Know Before Writing Your Guest Post

Jackie Lee — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:09:45 +0000

Once you’ve landed your guest posting gig there are a few things you’ll need to know before you send your post to the blog owner. These little details will make you a great guest poster who is more likely to be invited back again. You want to make sure you make it as easy as possible for the blog owner ~ since this is suppose to make their life easier.

Topic?

What topic do they want you to write about? Now I suggest you have a few things in mind you’d like to write about ~ or a couple topics you’re confident in writing about. Ask them about your topics, find out if they would like you to write about that, or tell them that you’re strong in a specific area or topic, is there something you’d like me to write related to that topic?

Don’t just go in and ask… “So what do you want me to write about?”. That’s not easy. If I have to come up with blog post ideas for you, I might as well come up with them for myself.

I did a guest post a while back on a copywriting blog. I mentioned that I do a lot of work on Squidoo. The blog owner wasn’t familiar with Squidoo and asked if I could write a piece on how to grow your copy writing business using Squidoo. So that’s what I did. It was a win/win. She got new information for her readers, and I got to write about something I feel comfortable writing about.

Length?

In this same article I received an email from her that stated she had edited a little of my article because it was running over her word limit. Which is fine. I didn’t ask how long it should/could be, and I should have. She did ask for some revisions and additions that made it a little longer than it had been originally.

However, this is an important point. Whether you like to write short, sweet, to the point articles or you tend to run on at they keyboard like I do, make sure you know the length the blog owner is expecting. Depending on the blog it could be a minimum or a maximum word limit or both.

Format?

What format does the blog owner want you to send the post in? Make sure you know ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than trying to open a document that doesn’t open. Worse yet, getting a document that you have to completely reformat before you can post it. That’s not easy for the blog owner and we’re doing everything we can to make it easy.

Here’s some formats I’ve been asked to submit:

PDF
word doc
text doc
in an email

There are plenty of options, so make sure you ask what the owner’s preference is. I personally would never request a post in word format due to the additional code that is often embedded in word. (which makes the post look all kinds of funky)

When?

This is a two parter. Make sure you know when they need to have the post. Make sure you deliver your post on time if not before the date they need it. Also make sure you have a good idea of when the post will be posted. You want to be able to promote the post yourself, as well as go and respond to comments people make on your post.

Links?

Make sure you know how many and where links are allowed in the post? Can you put links in the text itself or only in your resource box? Will they be linking to their own articles within your article text? Find out this stuff ahead of time to avoid hassles.

What next?

If you can see the absolute benefit of guest posting you might want to think about taking this whole thing to the next level. You can grow your site exponentially by doing a guest blog tour, which means doing a bunch of guest posts in a short amount of time. This takes planning and a little bit of hutspah but it can make a drastic difference in your blog traffic.

Nicole Dean did a Rock n Roll style Blog Tour last summer, and has put her experiences in an amazing DIY blog tour ebook. It is very helpful, has plenty of great information as well as worksheets and all kinds of good stuff to keep you organized and on track. An excellent resource if you plan to make guest blogging one of your main promotion tactics. (And you definitely should. It’s the biggest bang for your buck.)

If you have any questions or other tips for writing guest posts feel free to leave them in the comments section!

How to Become a Guest Blogger

Jackie Lee — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:09:17 +0000

Last week we talked about submitting your content to high profile sites. This week we’re going to discuss one of THE very best ways to get targeted traffic to your site.

Become a guest blogger.

The benefits of guest blogging are pretty similar to the high profile content sites. You get to put yourself in front of a well established community. You have a blog owner ~ who wants to get traffic to HIS site, so he’ll promote your post on his site, which brings traffic to your sites as well. You also get at least one excellent anchor text link in content, which rocks.

So How do you become a guest blogger?

Well, I gotta tell you, it can be pretty intimidating “walking” up to people you don’t know and asking them to publish your content.

That’s why I NEVER do that.

I never ask to guest post on blogs where I don’t know the blog owner. It’s intimidating, and I imagine there would be way too much rejection for me to keep doing it regularly.

How do I get guest posting opportunities then?

I network. I get to know people. I let people get to know me. THEN I ask them if I can get a guest post. It may seem tricky, with so many people online, to get to know people, but all the people online actually make it easier. I bet there is someone you know ~ who knows the person who owns the blog you want to post on.

It may be tough to get to know an A list blogger ~ but you can get to know his/her friends ~ and then it’s just as good as knowing them yourself.

This is what happened to me with my guest post at Then Life Happens. My friend Frank Dickinson was a contributor there, and introduced me to Darren. Of course I filled out all the paperwork to become a contributor, but by the time Darren got my paperwork I wasn’t just a nameless face with who knows what kind of writing ability. I was a recommended, trusted resource.

I want you to create that for yourself too!

It really doesn’t have to be that hard. There are so many places you can get to know people and network with people. I love using forums ~ mostly Lynn’s Elite forum ~ but any friendly, on blog topic forum will do. You’ll have to really talk to people, answer their questions, help them out, but it is very doable.

I really got the “big picture” of this networking thing when I read Dave Navarro’s free report 7 Steps to Networking Your Way to A Listers Fast. Dave lays out a killer step by step plan to network your way into the places you want to be. Whether it’s for a guest post or whatever. I highly recommend you grab the book and create a networking plan for yourself.

While Dave lays out a very organized and methodical plan for networking, here’s a quick brain dump of places and ways you can network.

Twitter **
Facebook
Blog comments
Forums ~ especially if the A lister in your sites has one of their own!
Blogs of friends of people you want to guest post for
twitter with people who help the person you want to guest post for
have friends introduce you
Send the person candy

Let’s do an example, just so you can REALLY see the difference this networking is going to make.

Option 1.

Here’s an email I received recently. (I took out the site domain for privacy reasons)

Dear,
I want to make 1 guest post in your site: [deleted by me], if you permit me. The post contains 300 words above and totally unique as it is written by my content writers. In return, I will place your link in one finance sites.

Please contact me at erica(@)

mydebtconsolidationprogram(.)com soon.

Kind Regards,

Erica Smith
Affiliate Manager
E-mail: [Deleted by me]

Other than the deletion of her email address, and my site address, this is the exact email I got. Doesn’t really make me want to reply lol.

Option 2.

What if I got a tweet from someone I know on twitter? I may not know them “personally” but I’ve tweeted with them, conversed with them, I recognize them and feel comfortable with them. The tweet said, “Hey I’d like to talk to you about doing a guest post on your blog, can we talk?”

Do you think I would respond to the tweet? Hell, yeah I would. Do you think I might actually let the person guest post on my blog. Probably, if the post was on topic and helpful to my readership.

Even though the request may be the same… coming from someone you know it’s much more likely to be accepted.

So grab Dave’s networking ebook and get out there and get to know people!!

Writing a Compelling Resource Box

Jackie Lee — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:56:50 +0000

Now that you’re getting your articles up on some high profile site you need to be able to take advantage of the traffic those sites see. The best way to take advantage of the traffic possibilities is to create a compelling resource box (sometimes known as author’s box)

Right up front I’ll admit, I’m not the best resource box writer in the world. However, I do have some tips you can use to play around and see what you come up with.

The tips I would share regarding articles posted to article directories are a little different than the resource box you want to write for a high profile content site. While in article directories your main objective is to just get the click to your site, in a high profile content post you want to also begin to build trust and relationship.

Yes… in a little tiny resource box.

So you want to tell them a little about yourself, so they can connect with you, but you STILL want to make sure there’s something in it for them to get them to click through.

Here’s my resource box from my recent guest post about Making It Mandatory

Jackie Lee is a full time work at home mom who, in between raising a preschooler, chickens, and her own groceries, helps people who are ready to help themselves figure out the steps to really make money online. If you’d like to know more about the book that inspired her ‘aha’ moments you can read more on her Internet Marketing Strategy blog.

Here I’ve told a little about myself, so people can get a feel for who I am, what I do and if they will connect with me on some level.

I also wanted to send them directly to my review of What’s Holding You Back.

I was asked to create an author’s box for this site that would be my default. I don’t want to use the part about learning more about the book ~ because that won’t make sense on any other post. Here’s more of what I was thinking for my main author’s box.

Jackie Lee is a full time work at home mom who, in between raising a preschooler, chickens, and her own groceries, helps people who are ready to help themselves figure out the steps to really make money online. If you’re ready for something more and have a couple hours a day, grab the FREE 2 Hour Blueprint and get started creating your internet marketing success story.

Let’s break down what I’ve done here:

1. Introduced myself.

2. Given some information (in just a few words) that really describes who I am.

3. Gave information on who I’m talking to, and who I want to work with.

4. Gave a call to action ~ with some specifics.

5. Pointed them to a squeeze page to get them on my list.

6. Pointed them to a post on my blog to get them there. It’s a post that has links to a lot of other places as well. It also is a post that allows new people to see it IS possible to do this and get excited about the process.

So there’s my author’s box for that site. It’s a pretty good one and I would probably use this for all of my high profile content sites ~ of course if space allows and 2 links are allowed.

Should you send people to your squeeze page or to your blog?

If at all possible I would say send them to both. It can be pretty easy to get wrapped up in the content and everything else going on in the sidebars and not sign up to your list.

A person on your list is long term more valuable than someone who just stops by your blog. However, if they don’t sign up for your list, and you’ve sent them to a squeeze page, you’ve pretty much lost them forever. At least on your blog they can look around, get some information, realize how awesome you are, and then sign up for your list.

So if you can ONLY send them to one place, I’d send them to the blog ~ if I can have two links, definitely link to both.

I’d love to brainstorm with you about your resource boxes ~ so feel free to ask questions in the comment section. You can also start a discussion over at the facebook fanpage, and we can work on it together.