Making Good Blogs, Great. Awesome, actionable tips to make your blog posts more sharable, likable, linkable and memorable. Contents: 1. Topic Inspiration 2. Anatomy of an Awesome Post 3. Promoting your Blog 4. Assessing Guest Blog Opportunities 5. Guest Blogging Bargaining Chips 6. #ProTips
Whether building up your own blog audience or guest posting this slideshow features lots of cool take-away tips that you can easily implement today. Learn how to find blogging inspiration, promoting your posts for maximum exposure, landing the best guest blog spots and more.
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Making Good Blogs, Great.Awesome, actionable tips to make your blog posts more
sharable, likable, linkable and memorable.
Contents:1. Topic Inspiration2. Anatomy of an Awesome Post3. Promoting your Blog4. Assessing Guest Blog Opportunities5. Guest Blogging Bargaining Chips6. #ProTips
Why?Whether writing blogs for yourself or as
guest content for links, creating masterpieces are worth the extra effort...
• Future-proof (unaffected by search engine updates)• More engagement, comments, links and shares• Improve brand/author credibility & reputation• Justification to exist (content is created for a purpose, not
just adding to the noise)• More interest from outreach to blog owners [guest
blogging]
Topic Inspiration for BlogsDeciding what to talk about is hard. Use the
following resources to find inspiration...• Twitter (and Topsy.com) – search #hashtags, monitor
thought leader/influencer posts, trending topics• Yahoo Answers, Answers.com, Quora and industry forums• YouTube• Google Trends & News – Jump on time-sensitive topics and
try and pre-empt growing areas of interest• Competitor Blogs – Which posts get the most engagement?• WordTracker’s Keyword Question Tool• Portent’s Content Idea Generator
Promoting Your Blog PostsExposing your new content is arguably as
important as creating it. Consider the following promotion tactics for new posts...
• Post your latest articles on your social media networks• Answer relevant open questions on forums and link to
your article• Comment on other related blogs and link to your article• Bookmark within relevant categories on StumbleUpon,
Reddit, Technorati etc.• Send to your mailing list or include a link within
newsletters
Promoting Your Blog PostsContinued...• Add a link in your email signature• Alert real-world contacts such as friends, co-workers,
suppliers etc (online and offline)• Outreach to thought leaders and influencers in your niche• Consider paid advertising • Utilise share buttons with a compelling call-to-action• Ask for a link within your content• Create the HTML for readers to copy+paste into their own
sites (Tynt automatically adds your URL when readers copy+paste excerpts of your content)
Assessing Guest Blog OpportunitiesJust because a blog looks good, doesn’t mean
it will benefit your link profile or build brand awareness. Look a little deeper...
• Audience engagement – Do previous posts attract comments? How frequent? How legitimate?
• Social engagement – Does the blog owner have a solid and outspoken following? Are they an influencer in their niche?
• Quality of existing content – Is the blog owner proud of their blog? Do they accept any old rubbish?
• How do page authority and back link profiles of a sample of historic posts look?
Assessing Guest Blog OpportunitiesContinued...• Ownership – Does the blog owner internally link to guest blogs
in their content? Do they share posts on their social media profiles?
• Owner credibility– Do they have a positive reputation in the industry?– Do they consistently write for anyone else?– What social media platforms are they active on?– Do they have a clear passion for their blog/niche?
Bargaining ChipsBloggers may try to charge you to guest post.
Here’s what you can do to sweeten the deal without handing over cash...
• Submit pre-written meta data (remove any extra work)• Offer to promote & share their blog on your social media
channels• Offer to reciprocate a guest blog opportunity• Offer to write a second blog on their chosen topic• Offer exclusive content (or free sample products)[#Tip: Avoid bloggers who charge – they often care more about the
money than quality of content and accept rubbish]
#ProTipsVisit rickeliason.com/blogging for more tips on
optimising and promoting your blog like these...
1. Use more than one resource for your research – don’t simply regurgitate what is already out there
2. If you embed videos in your blog be sure to upload a XML video sitemap to get rich snippets
3. When guest blogging, link to previous posts the owner has written within your blog where relevant – flatter them
4. Links posted on Google+ get instantly crawled – do this for guest blogs to get your content indexed quickly