Content is king! You already know that’s true, but is it everything? Could you keep on pumping out great content and still build an audience of loyal readers?
Perhaps you could build up an audience of readers…but would they be loyal? And would they buy from you?
My belief is that your readers want more from you than just hard-hitting, practical content. They want connection, personality, passion, consistency, authority, design, fame and, most importantly, trust.
Are you giving those things to them? If not, you may be limiting the growth of your blog. [click to continue…]
You can’t go very far without running into Drew Houston’s company Dropbox. It is considered one of the hottest tech companies and its rise since 2006 can teach you a lot about marketing and business.
Let’s take a look at six lessons you can learn from the rise of Dropbox. [click to continue…]
In early December 2011 I wrote a quick-and-dirty guide to modern-day link baiting. In case you missed it, here’s a snapshot:
- Infographics – perhaps one of the most popular forms of link bait, inforgraphics turn complex data into meaningful stories using graphics.
- Egobait – the concept behind this form of link bait is simple…appeal to someone’s ego. Think Ad Age’s Power 150.
- Interviews – doing interviews with other bloggers and you’re going to get links, traffic and a growing audience.
- Micro sites – creating a micro site around an idea can go viral like The University of Victoria’s The Anything Project.
- Drawings – a good drawing can go viral and attract links and traffic to your site. Hugh MacLeod and FAKE GRIMLOCK are good examples.
- Videos – Jib Jab’s Elf Yourself or Rhett and Link’s FAIL Caption videos went viral, attracting links and driving traffic.
- Quizzes – Mingle’s The Blog Verbosity Test and The Moon Survival Challenge spread across the web as people shared and linked to each.
- Stories – If all else fails, then you can simply fall back on an old-time favorite…the story.
Now that you are up to speed on link bait, let’s look at ten more ways you can build links to your site…giving a jolt your linking building campaign. [click to continue…]
If you’ve been around the SEO world for any amount of time, then you are probably pretty familiar with the basics of SEO. You know to do good keyword research and you have to do on-page optimization.
Sometimes, though, that on-page optimization can go to a deeper level than just making sure your meta tags are filled out… and you can go to that deeper level without having to be a veteran SEO.
Here’s how: [click to continue…]
According to Seth Godin, the secret of marketing is: the first ten.
So who are the ten? These are your early customers, the ten people who will listen, read or buy whatever you are selling.
If they don’t love it, you need a new product. Which means you will have to start over. But if they love it, your idea will spread. Your business will grow… probably not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.
So now that you understand the concept of “10″, here is how you can apply it to blogging: [click to continue…]
Look over my shoulder while I share: 
