In part one of using the practice or method of mind mapping for our blog expansion I covered a few beginning steps to always keep in the back of your head and the start of building your blog. We start by brainstorming and then organizing all the thoughts to reality. Now, in part two today I want to continue and tell you how I have used mind mapping for building my blogs and making smart mistakes. We’re getting into the “meat and potatoes” now. Are you prepared and ready?

If you have not read part one please do so to get the full benefit of part two.

Quick Review

1. Brainstorming + Organizing Thoughts

Brainstorming is where we dig deep into our passion, purpose, and start thinking about the intial workings of our expansion. This is where you grab a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or use some software such as MindNode for Mac users.

Organizing All Those Thoughts (Reality)

The time has come now to organize all of these thoughts or ideas you’ve brainstormed. Organize them in terms of reality and the true you.

Here is where you refer back to those beginning steps I previously talked about and these same steps are going to help you throughout the whole mind mapping process. Remember we are out to make smart mistakes while expanding your blog.

Continue to read part two (steps two and three).

Beginning the mind map practice is easy. You start with your blog name as the main node/block, then think of things such as the following to add to your mind map (sections):

• Post Categories
• Social Networking Communities
• Ways of Promotion
• Goals
• Products / How to Make Money

These are just a few things I’ve come up with but should surely be considered into being apart of your mind map and blog expansion. Remember to think about the obvious parts of your blog that should be apart of any expansion. After you have considered some of these and/or your own to your mind map the real fun and work begins for building your blog.

2. Breaking It All Apart

Now, we’re going to break the main sections of your mind map (figured about above) apart to make certain that you don’t kill your blog.

Analyze Your Sections

A basic mind map is put together by staring with your node (in this case your blog name). We then create sections from that which are the things you have previously defined to be apart of your blog for the expansion process. Well, from these sections begins the deep analyzation of how and where you want your blog to go.

Ask yourself, “where you want your blog to go”?

For instance, say you want to make money with your blog and to do so you want to create a product. Remember this product is just one of your several sections and focusing on this section is just as important as every other one (all working together).

Think about everything that you want in your product. What role does it play? How will it help and attract the community you have built and/or want? Will this product be one that is used to urge your community to promote your and your blog? Will this product be an introduction to another product you have in the works? All of these are a few questions that a “simple” product plays in expanding your blog. You just need to show it on your mind map.

Immediate Action

Now, that you have your sections all analyzed, it’s time for immediate action on them.

Trust me this could take some time and thought. But, its important and worth it as I wish I would have done this with my previous blogs.

In all sections think about the needed steps to reach whatever you have planned or visioned for each each. Then analyze and rank those steps to the importance and impact each one will make on building your blog for each section. These are the steps for immediate action. Don’t worry about the others right now. It’s time to build, get going, and start making those smart mistakes I’ve been talking about.

Think, Conquer, and Implement

It gets even more interesting. Break down those immediate action steps even further. What will it take for me to accomplish this today, tomorrow, and this week? Ask yourself this and keep pushing for more steps, analyzation, and deeper thoughts under each immediate action step you’ve decided on. We’ve got to conquer these steps that form the initial beginning of our blog in order to expand.

Last thing with all these steps is you can’t just leave them hanging in the thought process.

You need to implement them. If you don’t implement you won’t know your smart mistakes. Don’t want to expand or not?

3. Keep Looking Back to Keep Moving Forward

If you don’t implement you should not worry about reading the rest of this post. I strongly believe that making mistakes and building off them creates one of the best ways for success. I’ve personally experienced it (why I believe it), but I’m not at the point of success yet. We all are bound to make mistakes, but we are better if we can point them all out and go forward.

Know Your Mistakes

These mistakes could be the wrong steps you took for immediate action or what kind of sections you came up with for your blog. Read back through this post and think about the “what if” scenario and really anything could be a mistake. Everything is prone to a mistake, just know yours.

Build Off Your Mistakes

Knowing is half the battle. After knowing think about what happened and what you need to improve on or do differently. This is called building off your mistakes and you can’t build your blog without doing this.

How have you built off your mistakes? Any case studies?

Return to the Map and Keep Editing

Finally, return to the map you initially created. Use it as a historical but ongoing path of your blog’s development and expansion. Mark the mistakes and always be editing the map for a smart expansion for you and your blog.

Please know that this would be greatly helpful when used when starting your blog, but it can be implemented at anytime

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Mind Mapping for Blog Expansion & Making Smart Mistakes, Part 2

Are you drowning in a sea of bloggers who are blogging about the very same topic you are? Is your voice getting lost in the crowd? Are you tired of being non-existent among search engine results pages? If so, it’s time to get with the program and start “Cornering the Market!”

Like many others out there, I thought I should blog about my passion. Which I certainly would encourage everyone to do. However, what do you do if your passion is a popular one? Are you up for the challenge of competing in a saturated market? In this post, I will explain why you may want to consider blogging about a topic somewhat “off the beaten path” in an effort to run a successful blog and perhaps even start making money.

See The Beaten Path and Avoid It

People tend to think alike

In my experience, I have found that most people tend to think alike. As a website developer, I’m often being presented with proposals for starting blogs, usually fashion, celebrity gossip, or finance. I think starting a blog is a great idea for many reasons, but my advice to these people is, “you had better be one heck of a salesman, writer, and personality.” Otherwise, be ready to hustle.

Me, I’m into the development of internet culture, application websites in particular, and how people are using them. A little over a year ago, I decided I was going to start my own blog about web culture. Nearly every day I myself read several popular blogs on the subject. Clearly there is a demand! How could I go wrong?

Then it occurred to me, the internet is flooded with bloggers and teams of bloggers like TechCrunch practically shoveling first-rate content at us on a daily basis! How was I supposed to compete with that level of content flow? So much for being the Web culture guru!

Recognize The Opportunity & Do Your Research

Eight months later, a friend approached me about developing a craft beer blog. He was an avid fan of craft beer, very knowledgeable, and seemed enthusiastic about starting the venture, so I told him I would consider it. Craft beer wasn’t exactly my passion, nor did I have what I felt was the required knowledge to be an authority on the subject. Nonetheless, I did some research on the beer industry and took a look around the Blogosphere to see what sites were covering craft beer.

I was pleased to discover that few beer bloggers appeared to possess the skills or resources I have as a website developer and video editor. Furthermore, it didn’t seem as though they fully understood many of the aspects of blogging that we discuss here at Blogussion, things like proper internet marketing strategies.

After doing my research, I felt the niche was ripe for the taking.

As I worked on the design of our blog, I continued to study other successful bloggers and learn the tricks of the trade. I decided our site would approach craft beer from a different angle. It would be more about entertainment than information, since many blogs were already covering that area of the industry. This turned out to be a good decision.

Enjoy The Success & Build On It

In what felt like no time (half a year to be exact), our traffic is doubling from month to month, our brand is becoming widely recognized within the beer community, and we are now in the process of developing advertising relationships. Not to mention, nearly half of our traffic is Google organic!

Of course building the blog and community has been and continues to be a lot of hard work. There is still lots to do if we are to be as big as I hope we can be, but in a relatively short amount of time we were able to start building what I see as a promising community of dedicated viewers, and I believe that’s because I (along with my partner) recognized a need and sought to fill it.

Look beyond the obvious

There are so many needs out there not being met. Unfortunately, most bloggers are supplying ones that already are. My advice is to look beyond the obvious. Why attempt to grow your blog on land that is already being tilled? I’m finding running a promising blog with an active and growing community to be exciting and a lot of fun. Who wants to run a blog where no one comments? Perhaps providing a useful resource for like-minded individuals was my passion!

If you see an opportunity, but don’t possess the knowledge on a subject, find someone who does and team up. Let your job be managing the blog and promoting it. That’s plenty. Take it from me.

What do you think?

Is “Cornering the Market” a valid approach to running a blog or should we stick to our passions no matter how popular or competitive they may be?

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Corner The Market: Become A Big Fish In A Small Pond

Inspiration and creativity can really be in short supply these days. The longer you blog, it seems, the less you have to blog about. Awesome ideas appear to be coming to you less and less. But none of this has to be the case.

What You’ve Heard

When people talk about inspiration, they generally refer you to a bunch of cool sites, blogs, Twitter users, and more. You see, when anyone hears the word “inspiration”, they think it means to flood your brain with as much freakin’ stuff as possible.

There are even sites now that claim to be the “best source for inspiration,” and their simple task is to overload your mind with hundreds of pages of great content.

“Great content” — wouldn’t that be awesome? Well of course it’s always nice to see fresh, creative, and interesting stuff relating to your passion.

But overloading your brain and stuffing it with as many awesome posts, pictures, quotes, or whatever from your niche is not what’s going to get you creative topics for your next post.

What You Need to Know

Inspiration doesn’t come from other’s content. It comes from you

Sure it’s true that looking at other content can inspire you to do better, but it can’t come up with the fresh, creative approaches you need.

That’s your job.

But there’s one simple way to let the flow of inspiration hit you:

Declutter Your Mind

It’s not that hard to do, but for something so simple, the results will greatly benefit you. Rather than stuffing yourself with other people’s great work, do the opposite — don’t think what other’s have done. Think of what you’re trying to do.

Your mind is like a computer — the more you data you put in, the more crowded it gets in there and the more you have to process.

Clearing out that unneeded clutter will free you from the burden that’s been stopping you all along.

If you’re having trouble getting started, here are some tips:

1. Get a fresh, juicy topic

Every blog post you write should be so fresh, juicy, and full of zest that everyone can taste it. It should be something no one has read or even thought of before.

It should make people subscribe to your blog right when they see it.

It has to be awesome.

To think of something this great, try to explore your niche as normal. Then whatever comes to mind while you’re exploring, write it down. Then find topics to branch off of that main thought.

For example, I blog about Walt Disney World. So whenever I visit the Parks (which is often), I don’t even look for new topics. I simply have a blast like I normally would — and when an interesting thought hits me, I write it down and use it (and as many other ideas that can come out of it) for blog topics.

2. Don’t write with crappy programs

Once you have a good idea, it’s important to keep your writing process simple. Crappy programs include the most common two for bloggers — Microsoft Word and WordPress.

You might be surprised, but using these programs (and others very similar) could actually hinder you from writing awesome, fluent content.

Right now, I’m writing this post in the WordPress Dashboard — and trust me, it’s painful. I am constantly being distracted by so many options: Categories, Post Tags, SEO Details, Post Image, Javascript, My Profile, etc.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that WordPress and Microsoft Word (with it’s thousands of options and other stuff) isn’t the best, most ideal writing environment.

For Windows users (like me), I recommend Q10. It’s full screen, simple, and easy with hardly any visible options.

For awesome* Mac users unlike myself, I stumbled across Ommwriter — which from the video looks so awesome it makes me want to go buy a Mac.

Both of these programs are fully functional — however they are so simple you’ll be able to pump out an incredible post in half the time as usual.

3. Physically Declutter, too

Finally, and surprisingly enough, when you declutter the area around you — like your desk, the table, or the whole room — it can really help you in terms of efficiency and quality.

Whether you do it for your brainstorming process or your writing process or both, it will help. On a similar note, rearranging your desk (but also keeping it very clear) might give you a different feel on what you’re working on.

Let’s wrap this up

A Quick Review: I think that stuffing your mind with other people’s content is not the way to get inspired.

You must clear your mind from everyone else’s mess and focus on your thoughts and your ideas. Declutter your mind, your writing, and your workspace. And you’re off.

But first, I’d like to hear your thoughts. Does clogging your brain with inspiring content actually help you to write inspiring content? Are you tired of the word inspire? Let’s discuss!

*Not all Mac users are awesome, believe it or not.

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Finding Creativity & Inspiration from Nothing

When it comes time to expand our blogs we need to take many things into consideration and use caution along the way. We can do this while in the process of expanding our blogs through mind mapping in the beginning stages. This practice surely does not eliminate any mistakes for building our blog, but instead smart mistakes will be made. I’ve learned to mind map the expansion of my blogs instead of just “going with the flow”. Here’s how to get started and expand your blog better.

There are many ways we can build our blog. Yes, we can just “go with the flow”. Yes, we can just expand however way or into area we want. We have so many options, opportunities, and methods of expanding our blogs, but we can just hope right into what comes to our minds initially, or what we even see for an idea initially.

We can forget our purpose when thinking about the future

I know when I want to expand a blog I get so much energy in this process that I tend to lose focus or regret how or what I’ve done in a very short time. I’ve personally been through many blogs since I first began in 2008 and all of them went under due to it not being my true passion and because I did not make smart mistakes while expanding. They were just mistakes.

Smart mistakes are ones that lead you down a path that turned out bad, but after the fact they helped you out while looking at the bigger picture.

Here’s how I’ve transformed my blog expansion and building strategy.

Beginning Steps

Having That Passion

First you must have that passion everyone talks about. Without this you will find yourself not wanting to really expand because you don’t have the drive to know how.

Establishing Your Tagline

One of the most overlooked items on a blog is the tagline

A simple tagline can say a lot about your blog. For example Blogussion’s tagline is “Next Generation Blogging”. What does that tell you as a visitor or reader here? This reaction or thought should be figured out and acts as a good foundation for your blog.

Purpose and Mission

What are you and your blog about? How will your passion and tagline go out and be that blog out to kill the competition? With no defined purpose and mission there is really no business model so you really can’t continue on.

Define Your Community

Who are you striving to attract, please, or change? You need to figure out and define your community so when things come up or ideas come to mind you are able to quickly analyze each and see which ones fit with your community and which ones don’t.

Your established community might change overtime, but you can’t change the established community overtime. If you are, then you need to go back through these beginning steps.

With the beginning but crucial steps out of the way, let’s begin mind mapping our blogs.

1. Brainstorming + Organizing Thoughts

Brainstorming is where we dig deep into our passion, purpose, and start thinking about the intial workings of our expansion. This is where you grab a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or use some software such as MindNode for Mac users.

I personally use MindNode and the iPod Touch version to do my mind mapping that can also be used when writing each of your posts to keep you on guard with your purpose and tagline.

Where to Begin in the Brainstorming Process

• Where do you want your blog to expand?
• Think about the most ultimate state of your blog
• Figure out all the ways you are going to make money
• Come up with strategic yet creative marketing strategies
• Ways to go beyond the competition
• How to further define you and your passion

All of these are just some thoughts and questions to think about while beginning your brainstorming process. Be sure you are recording all of these thoughts. Please don’t limit yourself to what I have quickly came up with.

The above video is of Darren Rowse talking about a brainstorming activity.

Organizing All Those Thoughts (Reality)

The time has come now to organize all of these thoughts or ideas you’ve brainstormed. Organize them in terms of reality and the true you.

Here is where you refer back to those beginning steps I previously talked about and these same steps are going to help you throughout the whole mind mapping process. Remember we are out to make smart mistakes while expanding your blog.

We’re not done. We’re are really just getting prepared for the real action. This is part one of two and part two we will start breaking everything apart, looking at analyzing our immediate action, and implementation of the thoughts.

With this only being part one, what are you looking forward to in part two and what have you learned thus far?

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Mind Mapping for Blog Expansion & Making Smart Mistakes, Part 1

What makes your established community, committed readers, or frequent visitors leave some sort of response to your blog? It’s because of our quality content, our inviting community, or that we interact with our readers. It’s not because we simply ask for their comments or thoughts. Why not? This gets our community to respond, but it’s not really an urge. Here’s how we can change this.

Please know and understand that I’m trying to allow for you (as a blogger) not to always worry about getting responses on your blog.

What “Urge” I’m Talking About

Surely we bloggers or site owners can tell people to leave a comment, their input, or participate in some discussion. We can still do this by all means, but what if we could do more by asking less?

A community response does not just have to be a comment left on the blog. Remember that

This is what I’m calling the “urge” .

If we can create some sort or type of urge within our frequent, new, or dedicated visitors/readers we’ll get this response naturally. So, I’ve thought about how I could instill some urge in my future community for my blog, instead of just always asking, “what do you think?”

Content Transparency

On our blogs we all talk about a certain topic or niche. Many if not all posts we write and publish for our readers/visitors are to help them to do what will benefit them. Well, many of these posts originate from what we have personally found out or personally believe.

Stand by your content at all times

What if we aren’t doing what we tell others? Questions arise.

Whatever we are telling or talking about in our blogs to our community we all need to be transparent within our own blog (in and out). Now, I know many things we say on our blogs are to help others and since the blogosphere is so huge and diverse they might not actually be for us as the blogger. What we do need to do as the blogger is stand by what we have said, offer reason, and insure the content we produce is of great quality to you and the community.

Remember content is king, but its not pristine with any transparency by us.

Gaining Knowledge or Thought

While having a conversation with a few different people who rarely visit blogs, I gained some useful information on why they would even leave a response on a blog.

The reasons centered around them wanting to leave a response were:

• Adding their own twist because they are passionate about that certain subject
• Providing a case study or story
• Pointing out why they could be missing something again because they are passionate about the subject

These reasons are people that rarely visit a blog and might rarely know who the blogger actually is. Think about it. They probably did a Google Search and found your blog/article.

Building that Influence

Influence is defined as “the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others”.

We know that many bloggers are talking about the importance to have this influence for you and your community. They are right. Specifically, this importance comes down to your community having the urge to leave their response.

Think about the blogs we visit and seem to always offer our response. We might personally know them. Chances are though that we know of them. And we leave our response because we look up to them, take their content to heart, and want to show our continued support or gratitude.

If we all strive to build this influence that urges us to leave our response, this could just all have a trickle down effect. You being influential, other seeing that, your community urges to respond. The cycle goes on.

What’s Your Attraction / Drive?

I’ve highlighted how we can all instill this “urge” for community response by being:

• Being transparent with our own content
• Offering the purpose to gain knowledge or thought
• Building your own personal influence

With all of this taken into consideration we must all know what our attraction and drive is for each of our communities.

If we don’t know this then we can’t effectively instill this urge I’ve been talking about. Yes, this will be you trying to really figure out your passion. It will also be you striving to really stand out in your niche, area of interest, and the blogosphere.

I still want you to know that none and I mean none of this can be done if your content or even design for your blog is not of great quality in your own eyes.

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Instill the Urge for Community Response

If you’re a blogger, it isn’t hard to figure out what you visitors came to your website for: content. And as a webmaster, it’s your job to give your visitors what they’re looking for. There are many ways to do this, especially under the world’s best and most expandable blogging platform, WordPress.

Why is Giving Important?

Giving your visitors more gives your visitors a reason to stay on and come back to your website later. If you’re blogging for income, this means more ad-clicks, more affiliate sales, and most importantly, more subscribers. You easily can appear to have tons of content on your website to both users and content-hungry search engines, which you actually already do, but the visitor doesn’t usually see this. All of these benefits without writing a single word of extra content. Internet browsers are constantly looking for and sharing content.

By using the techniques outlined below, you can lead them to your content using nothing more than your own blog.

Use “Related” Plugins

The WordPress plugins that tell visitors which content on your website  they’d likely find interesting are amazing. These addons use special algorithms to know what your visitors are looking for with accuracy. But these plugins don’t stop at helping visitors find new content. They also help search engines find and index more of it and, using internal linking, they add to your website’s link popularity.

How?

These kind of plugins create networks of links in seconds for every page of content you write. Content links to more content. This is an internal linking wonderland, and internal linking does pass PageRank. There is no reason, especially if you use WordPress, to implement a “Related Posts/Content” to your blog, preferably after each post.

Use “Popular Content” Widgets

As we already know, it is very important to give your visitors more content. A good way to do this is to highlight the best parts of your website. And in blogging, that is your content. But more specifically, which content? Your most popular content. Your most popular content is content that your readers have signaled to you to be the best on your website by commenting and sharing.

But why is it important to make this content even more popular?

Don’t overdue what’s popular, just make them aware

You know because it’s popular that this content is good and well-liked. If a visitor gets pulled into an article like this, they may feel inclined to share, read more, or even subscribe to your blog and buy a product. Many people disagree and say that you shouldn’t work on making your popular content more popular, but rather do the same for your unpopular content. Although this is true in a way, it is false in many more ways. Still, do not overdo this, your popular content should only be featured on a widget on your sidebar or footer, and nothing more.

Use “Random Content” Plugins

A new nearly-unlimited source of new con­tent

The major flaw of the “Popular Content” plugins is that they only show a top few of your posts, and they don’t change too much. Random content plugins fix all of this. They show your user a few posts on your blog, picked at random — when you refresh your browser, a few new posts will be shown. This creates an effective solution for easily giving your readers a new nearly-unlimited source of new content right from your sidebar. Plus, these plugins are easy to set up and you can get them running in seconds, whilst popular content plugins may take a few days to setup as they gather post traffic data.

Have an Internal Structure, and Not Just Within Your Posts

Another way to give your visitors more of your content is to make it easier for them to read it.

The problem with most blogs is a lack of internal structure. This mistake has the power to anchor a website’s search engine rankings. But by internal structure, I don’t mean the structure of your content — that’s a completely different post. I mean how your website as a whole is structured. With blogging systems evolving quickly, it is becoming easier and easier to forget about this.

So what should you do about this?

Simply structure your site in an easy to understand way. Make sure that a visitor can easily find what they’re looking for, and be sure to use categories and tags effectively. Also add nofollow links to archives and categories within your blog sidebar/footer. This minimizes what the user has to go through to get more from your blog, and therefore increases your conversion rates, whether they are for RSS or ad clicks.

“3 Clicks Rule”

One related rule I try to follow myself is the “3 Clicks Rule”. The rule states that no page should be more than 3 (link) clicks from your homepage. This makes sure that no page on your website is too weak in terms of link popularity and that each page can be reached with little effort from the visitor. A great way to implement this on your website is to use a Sitemap and link to it within your footer so each page is only 2 clicks away from any other page.

First Sights

Always give your readers more

Your blog is a home to tons of quality content. But what does the visitor see? Only the first page of your posts. It’s important to put some of your blog (sidebar/footer) to use giving visitors more content. The tips above are some great methods you can use to help visitors get more from your website. They also provide a way for you to build your active community  - the more content a reader sees, the more comments they make. Finally, giving your users more also gives search engines more to index and builds the link popularity of all of your posts automatically.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this article, be sure to retweet and share! It won’t promote itself!

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

How To Give Your Visitors More

Twitter is a tool that is becoming more and more widely used by bloggers, journalists, businesses, and the general public. It’s free to use, easy to get started, simple, but still highly underestimated and used. Let’s look at how we can use the best of Twitter for having conversations and gathering information all in real time.

Twitter is an experimental tool. It’s your experimental tool

Why is Twitter so underestimated and used? Why do I even say this? Let’s look at the different groups of people that use it that I previously mentioned. We bloggers mainly have used it to connect and socialize with other bloggers and make people aware of our own content. Link love! Journalists or news agencies simply publish their feed. Lots of link love! Businesses are slowly utilizing it to talk to their customers and competition. Finally, the general public is gathering information from the top Twitter accounts, news agencies, and just having conversations with their other friends that actually have Twitter.

After looking at the most dominate forms of using Twitter we can agree that it’s mostly used for spreading links, gathering links, connecting with people, and socializing with people by very many approaches.

Who are you?

In order to use a tool that has the potential to help out people in so many ways, we have to know who we actually are.

Simply put, “who are you?”

But knowing that this is far from simple, what do you feel defines you? I ask, because this question can also be “what is your passion”, and in order to use something like Twitter should establish this first.

For instance, if you are into knowing the latest news and staying updated you will use the best of Twitter than if you were someone who gets their information by talking with people and holding conversations. Or for that matter you could be both. You just have to know who you are.

Twitter is used both for conversations and information and I’ll be looking at the same four features of Twitter to help both out.

Conversations

Conversations are that social connection we have and can hold with one another. We all know that social media has increased this opportunity and frequency. Twitter is certainly a tool to take advantage and utilize for your benefit all while conversing.

Lists

You’ve heard of having groups. Well lists are just like groups and allow you to have conversations with people related to a certain topic, interest, or belief, etc. Many times when you have many followers or people you want to follow you forget who all would talk about what/who. Lists help you out with this potential dilemma. Oh, and if you wish to make a list private, meaning a group just for your use like the “connect” list I have (shown to the right) for people I want to connect with more.
It’s up to you.

Replying

Casual talk is on the rise. Just start a reply. It’s simple as that

Replying is when we decide to talk back, respond, or offer additional input to whatever they have tweeted out.
Say you see someone discussing or talking about a certain thing that interests you, you have the opportunity to respond to them at anytime with extreme ease. Think of it has a geeky (but the next) way of emailing or contacting someone and just to have a very casual talk.

Casual talk has a new meaning and new home, called Twitter. All you have to do is reply to them and all of your followers can see you actually conversing with people. Transparency is at an all time high.

Search

So many are unaware of how to start conversations with people using Twitter if they don’t really know who is all on that would be of interest to them.

Easy solution. Use search.twitter.com and search for a keyword that would be of interest to you to start a casual conversation with that person related to that keyword happy tweet. This is again how people can find you too (keep that in mind). You just never know when someone on Twitter might talk with you.

Third-Party Clients

Third-Party clients are things that allow you to use the basic functions of Twitter, but add more ease and function. Some examples are Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Tweetie, and Brizzly.

All of the ways to use Twitter for conversations I have already stated can all be more ease of use to you and strive for more conversations with people on Twitter through these third-party clients.

Conversations are for starters, but we can get more. Actual beneficial information.

Information

All of the above features I went though (all four) you can use to help you obtain useful and beneficial information for yourself, your followers, and even your blog community.

Let’s go through them quickly:

• Lists: Use lists to categorize the type of information you are in need or want of. i.e. Social Media, Blogging Tips, World News, Gadgets, etc.
• Replying: Respond to people related to each of the lists you have made to gain more information or ask any questions you may have about what they have published, reported, wrote, or commented on.
• Search: Looking for something. Think of this as a real-time Google Search, but keep the search entry short.
• Third-Party Clients:Gain and retain the most information at your finger tips. Here is where you have to dig into each specific client to see which one better suits your needs.

I’ve looked at four features of Twitter for conversations that also help with gathering information, but recognize how you can begin to start using Twitter in different ways.

Yes, there is so many ways to use Twitter. You just have to find the best ways that fit your way of connecting, holding conversations, or finding information. Remember Twitter is your experimental tool .
The video from Chris Brogan (to the right) even has more ways to use the best of Twitter.

I’m sure that you all have your one twitter tip. Well, how are you using Twitter to benefit you the best?

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Utilizing Twitter for Conversations and Information

A few weeks ago, I launched a newsletter here that really has had a big impact on the blog today. It is another community of readers that is growing pretty strongly here, and the effect this has all had on the blog is really quite big. I want to try to encourage you to start a newsletter on your own blog as well.

First of all, your newsletter has to do with emails, meaning you send content out to anyone who subscribes with their email address. You can send out as much or as little content as you want, and doing this over time will grow your email list to a larger and larger audience.

A newsletter is for everyone. Anyone can do it, regardless of the niche you’re in. That’s what’s so great about them, as long as you can offer great content on a consistent basis, you can have a great newsletter. Maybe you’ll make money too, but that’s for another post.

The great thing about your newsletter is that it gets better every time you send out new content. So, one week you decide to send out an email to a list of 550 people, and from that time to the next week, your list will have a chance to grow into a bigger audience.

So that list of 550 may be a list of 580 the next week, 600 the next week and so on. This growing number of subscribers is how we see results on our blog.

After growing my own email list on this blog and sending out a few newsletter (plus a 10 day course written on my blog), I have noticed a few things different about the blog.

1. More Content, More (Deep) Traffic

I see my newsletter as an opportunity to give this new community of email readers some great content, as well as send some traffic back to the blog. Keep in mind, with a newsletter anyone who reads it will not be sent to your blog unless you send them there by linking to it.

If you caught a glimpse of what a newsletter here looks like, you will see that I link back to Blogussion quite a few times in the content area and other elements. This sends traffic back to the actual blog, and can convert those email subscribers into commentators, RSS subscribers, and maybe some will buy my product.

I have found that when you write content in a newsletter, any interlinking you do back to old posts will get clicked quite a bit, so long as you create some convincing anchor text.

2. A New Audience

An email list is basically a list full of people who have visited your blog and just happen to sign-up to get emails. Some are first-time visitors, and some can be your loyal fans. Either way, since you are speaking to them over a different medium of communication, I find that you are speaking to a whole new audience.

So, I figure if I have a new audience I want to try to speak to them in a whole other way. Yes, I will still be posting the most insightful content as possible in my newsletter, but I also want to try some new things too. Maybe some actual monetization strategies, since I don’t do it here.

A newsletter opens up a lot of opportunities, but none as important as what’s next.

3. Branding Opportunities

With this “new audience,” you have that chance to do new things; to do something different and build up this new audience in a different way than you do your blog. Not everyone who views your newsletter views your blog, so what should you do?

I personally think you should try to convert as many of your email subscribers into regular readers of your blog as you can. One great way to do that is by branding your newsletter. You can get a custom design for it, or just do something as simple as putting a logo at the top.

Get your site’s name up there, get a link to it and if you write a great enough newsletter, expect to see some of those newsletter subscribers at your blog in no time (maybe you’ll recognize their email address in a comment, I don’t know).

My Opinion on Newsletters

I think creating a mailing list for your blog is something you need to do today. With a service like Aweber, doing it is easy and managing it couldn’t be simpler.

As great as newsletters are, they also require a lot of work. Maybe you want to send out an “x day ecourse” like I did, or maybe you just want to send out content once a week. it doesn’t matter what you decide to do, but how you do it.

You can’t really expect to see positive results (increase in blog traffic, making money, etc.) if you just half-ass your newsletter. Instead, you will just be creating more work for yourself, and as always: getting nothing in return.

So while I believe newsletters are for every blog, I don’t think they’re for every blogger. Getting actual content up onto your blog is more important than getting it to your newsletter, so if you don’t think you can manage the two then I suggest you just don’t get into newsletters at all.

What’s Your Take?
Newsletters can be big for you, but they can also be a bust. So far, it has worked out for me and I hope to make it an even larger part of my blog in the near future. If you run a newsletter, what are some of the things you have noticed change in your blog as a result?

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

The Immediate Benefits of Having a Newsletter & Why You Need One Now

There you are, staring blankly at the computer screen, not really caring about the words scrolling in front of you. It’s another weekday morning and all you can think about is how to fake it through the day. Ever been there? Yeah, me too. And let me tell you, it’s no way to go through life.

Take a look at everyone you know who’s wildly successful in their life. Be it in their work, family life, hobbies, whatever – anyone who you would consider a success at something. Do they enjoy what it is they’re doing?

Chances are, Yes, they Do

The best salespeople love to sell. They spend countless hours digesting all the different tricks and tips and best practices they can. The result? It becomes easy for them to close the deal.

It looks easy to the casual observer, especially since we don’t see the time put into it. But the true investment can come in many different forms. Sure, it may be time and money spent on their appearance, their style and even their social skills, but it all combines to enhance one important thing: selling.

Most of us non-sales people would take a look at the high-powered broker and think, “Man, if I could just close one big deal like that, I’d be able to take the rest of the year off.”

You know why the best salesmen don’t? Because they enjoy what they do. They enjoy the chase, the sell and ultimately the success that comes with their honed skill.

How Does this Apply to us, Online?

Here’s how – that passion is their secret weapon. It’s the true key to their success, and it’s the weapon that you can use to become successful yourself. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it first and foremost because they enjoy it. It’s their passion. That passion is the real driving force behind their success.

Take a look at the topics you’ve covered over the last couple of weeks. How much fun did you have writing about them? How interested are you in reading them?

These questions may seem trivial or even dumb to the accomplished writer or blogger, but they’re really at the root of success. If you don’t enjoy writing about a topic, your writing will inevitably suffer.

Where Content is King, the Apathetic Blog is Quickly Ignored

Not only will your writing suffer if you don’t care about your topic, but you’ll also find it more and more difficult to get yourself to sit down and churn out content. Writers block is much more prevalent in the unenthusiastic writers.

It’s simple to understand why. If you don’t have a passion for your topic, you’ll continually find other things to do rather than write. Sure, you’ll make yourself feel better by calling them “priorities” and saying they’re much more important tasks anyway. But people always find time for their passion – always!

If you’re passionate about something, you have no problem putting in the time and energy needed to excel. And it doesn’t just apply to writing or selling.

If you absolutely love playing poker, then you have no problem staying up all night long playing hand after hand online, or reading about new and different strategies. It’s fun for you. That’s why you do it, that’s why you spend time and money getting good at it, and that’s why ultimately you can be successful at it.

Are you passionate about what you’re doing?
If you’re a blogger, are you flat-out in love with your topic? Have you stayed awake all night engulfing yourself in every aspect of it? Have you sought out new info, sources, experts – really anything and everything related to it? If you haven’t, then maybe it’s time to figure out just what exactly it is you’re passionate about.

At the end of the day, all the various writing tips and tricks are great things to have at your disposal. Marketing your blog and promoting your content via social media is a wonderful tactic. But the real weapon that you have is that passion. That’s what will drive your success, or ultimately be the reason for your failure.

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

Let Your Passion Be Your Secret Weapon

One of the most important things you can do after you have published your post is reply to the readers who have graciously left a comment on what you wrote. Unfortunately, it’s also something that many people don’t do, or do well enough. Maybe it’s because they get a lot of comments, and maybe they just don’t care. But let me tell you, it’s crucial you keep up with your readers the best you can.

Replying to comments is one of the greatest ways to build a community on your blog. It encourages more discussion, and it gives you a chance to get to know your readers, and for your readers to get to know you.

But over time as your blog grows, it becomes harder to keep up with all the readers who comment on your articles. So, you are going from replying to a small handful of comments to dozens and dozens every time. How can you keep up?

I do my best to keep up with any comment I get on my posts. I mean, it’s the least I can do. Sometimes I miss a few, and sometimes I don’t do a great job of keeping conversation flowing. But, I do try my best. And you should to, regardless of blog size.

I have been thinking about more ways to better keep up with replying to the comments I get here. I would usually wait a a day or two after the post has been published and then reply to them, but that’s just not smart! By that time, the discussion has always died out.

The purpose of replying to comments is not just so you look like a nice blogger, but so you keep conversation flowing and readers interested. So, I looked at my approach to doing it and decided I was all wrong.

I want to share with you some of my new strategies for replying to blog comments, and I hope you can take a look at them and figure out how to implement them into your own flow.

1. Schedule it With Similar Activities

I have been trying to make replying to comments one of the first things I do when I get ready for work. Since I schedule all of my posts to publish while I’m asleep, I wake up to new comments everyday.

Once I get ready to work, I decide to reply to comments when I reply to emails I also receive overnight. Grouping these two activities together really makes it easier since they’re so similar.

But go crazy with it. Reply to comments when you respond to tweets on Twitter, or when you’re reading others’ blogs and commenting there.

2. Have Fun!

Don’t make replying to comments a chore, make them enjoyable. As a blogger, you probably don’t get as much interaction with other people anyway (I kid, I kid), so use this time to get social and talk to your dedicated readers!

But the moment you start making it feel like you’re actually doing work instead of having fun, the less you will actually want to do it. So don’t force yourself to do it, just make it as enjoyable as possible!

3. Encourage Reader-to-Reader Interaction

A lazy way to take care of your comments is to get readers to reply to them for you! You still will want to get involved in discussions (and this may actually get you involved more than ever), but it’s still nice to see how strong of a community you will have.

4. Use Your Smart Phone

This is something I can’t believe I never thought of doing before. For many popular smart phone models like the iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and probably many others, you can find an application that will allow you to connect to your blog and manage some things.

Even if there’s no official application for your phone, you can still login to your blog through your phone’s browser and reply that way.

I am starting to do this with my BlackBerry and I find it very efficient since I get an alert every time I get a new comment and I can just reply to it once I see it.

How do You Manage Comments?

Maybe you have a blog that gets a few comments, or maybe you get dozens a post. I want to know, how do you keep up with them all? Even with the tips I suggested, it can still be tough to keep up with all of your blog comments.

So I want to know what you do, because I know I could still be better at it myself!

Bloggin Discussion, Tips & Tricks Copyright 2009 Blogussion. All Rights Reserved.

How to Make Replying to Comments Easier & More Enjoyable