Summary: Consider these three tips for better blogger relations before getting your company caught up in a negative blog storm (or missing out altogether).

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Is your company reaching out to bloggers to spread the word or take part in larger conversations on the Web? If so, how are your blogger relations efforts going? Chances are that there’s room for improvement. Here are three simple things you can do to pursue even better  blogger relations for your business:

1. Stick to Your Market – Look beyond bloggers with generic “influence” and instead focus on bloggers who have direct influence over your existing target market. Building relationships with bloggers takes time, and you should invest it wisely. Be selective. Remember that blogger relations is about more than simply pitching bloggers about your next product launch. (Check out the two small-scale examples of authors exercising excellent targeting and blogger outreach I recently highlighted at All Book Marketing.)
2. Target Brand Advocates – Search for bloggers who are not only relevant to your company, products, or services, but who are already talking about you! On the surface you may think it’s best to start off targeting bloggers not yet writing about you, in order to increase the numbers. However, those who already promote your company (like happy customers leaving great reviews) run less of a risk. Remember, bloggers don’t generally have an editor to answer to. They’ll share their opinions whether you like it or not – and if you annoy a blogger by pitching them something irrelevant or something they simply don’t care for, you may get coverage albeit not what you were hoping for. Also, your brand advocates (or fans) are the most likely bloggers to want to hear from you–in fact, they may be completely tickled that you even took the time to look at their blog. These are people that want to build a relationship with you. At the very least, this is a good place to start.
3. Give Them What They Want – Bloggers are about more than getting free stuff. In fact, there’s a large segment of the blogging community that strongly looks down on anything that could be construed as trying to “buy” bloggers or their attention. Solely taking that approach is another risky move that could lead to negative coverage. Instead, think about what’s often important to bloggers. For example, many niche bloggers work hard to build and maintain an image as an authority in their field. Allowing them to break a small news story is extremely appealing to them (it can give them a traffic boost in addition to more credibility). Having respected members of their industry participating on their blogs is another way they can achieve that goal–consider offering to do an interview or write a guest post for them, or if you enjoy the blog enough to read it regularly comment publicly as often as you can (and as often as you have something of value to add to the post). These things allow you to not only initiate a relationship with relevant bloggers, but directly engage with their readers.

Before jumping head-first into a blogger relations campaign, do what you’d do when preparing to launch any marketing, PR, or advertising campaign–think about who you’re ultimately targeting. Understand what the blogger’s readers want, and then work with bloggers in your industry to give them that. The best thing you can do to ensure a good blogger relations campaign is help bloggers give their readers what they want–then everyone’s happy.

Summary: Do you struggle when trying to come up with the perfect blog post headlines? These blog headline templates (originally published at Jentrepreneur.com) will set you in the right direction.

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The headline of a blog post is often the most important part of that blog post for a few reasons:

1. A catchy headline can entice people to click and read.

2. A good blog headline can incite discussion.

3. A clever blog headline is essential to using blog posts as linkbait; attracting natural links to your blog posts.

Yet many bloggers struggle to write compelling blog headlines. In an effort to simplify the process, I’ve put together a list of 11 easy to use blog headline templates (as well as showing them used in a few samples). Feel free to use them and alter them when crafting your own blog post headlines. (more…)

Summary: Are you the type of blogger who likes to “play it safe,” or do you jump into the fray when hot topics come up in your industry? This post, originally published at Jentrepreneur.com, explores why I love controversial blog posts, and think blogs would be sad little places without them.

Some bloggers shy away from controversy, while others fully embrace it. I tend to be one to embrace controversy, because I believe in blunt honesty and speaking my mind. Some people find that being vocal about their opinions on their blog can be difficult for them. Here are a few reasons some bloggers may choose to take the “safe route”:

1. They’re afraid that their readers won’t come back if they don’t like a more controversial blog post.

2. They’re afraid of nasty comments and flames being left on their blog.

3. They don’t want to be the center of attention if their controversial blog post ignites a viral debate.

4. They’re afraid of alienating fellow bloggers that they’ve built a network with.

5. They’re afraid of the potential of losing advertisers (especially if they monetize their blog with private ad sales).

I won’t say that those concerns aren’t legitimate. But if you want to be successful in blogging (just as if you want to be successful in any other kind of business), you have to be willing to take risks if you want to reap the greatest rewards. Controversial posts aren’t a bad thing, as long as you handle them as objectively as possible and as professionally as possible (and that doesn’t mean you have to be “nice”). Here are some of the benefits of writing controversial blog posts:

1. They can bring in a lot of traffic, including repeat traffic from new readers who share your opinions or like your style.

2. Controversial blog posts often work well as pieces of link bait. They have a natural viral quality about them… if people hate what you say, they’ll link to you when they bitch about you on their own blog; if they love what you say, they’ll link to you to show support against all the naysayers. I know “link bait” has become a dirty little word in some circles, but as long as your posts honestly reflect what you believe, it doesn’t matter what you call them – we’re not talking about sensationalist headlines, gossip, or BS posts solely for links here.

3. They give you an idea of which other bloggers in your niche or industry share your concerns, opinions, and values, and can serve as a springboard into a networking opportunity with like-minded folks. They also give you an idea of people with different values and opinions, letting you know who to talk to for a constructive argument to hear opposing points.

4. Even if people get utterly pissed off with what you have to say in a controversial blog post, as long as you’re careful from a legal standpoint, the animosity will usually blow over.

5. Controversial blog posts help you to build a reputation as an expert in the niche, if you can write both controversially and intelligently. They can even lead to job offers from clients who enjoy your style.

If you want to be truly comfortable as a blogger, it’s important that you be truly comfortable with yourself, and your opinions, first. Controversy doesn’t have to be edgy – it’s about sharing your thoughts on your side of an issue that interests your readers. Here’s how I look at it – if you have nothing to “say,” why on earth are you even blogging?

Summary: When you start a new website or blog, should you write articles solely for search engines, or should readers be your number one concern? Find out how why your starting content strategy can make or break your website.

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A lot of webmasters really have a pretty lousy content strategy in place. Here’s an example (based on a question I recently saw asked on a webmaster forum):

Someone wanted to know whether it was better to write for bots (search engines) or human readers. Their purpose seemed obviously to lean towards making a solid content-rich site. Because SEO is always a hot topic (because frankly most people are either too lazy or too dense to look beyond it for quality traffic sources), you’ll find a lot of information like this around (paraphrased):

“Write for search engines first to get rankings and traffic, and then start writing for readers to keep them.”

I had a total “duh” moment when I read that, thinking I must be on a total idiot binge lately on the webmaster front.

Actually, that suggestion is beyond stupid as far as content strategies go. Let’s break it down into to your two most basic options:

1. If you want to build an authority website or blog in a niche, and have a site with long-term potential, you write for the readers.

2. If you’re building sites only thinking about the short term quick buck (driving search traffic to sites loaded with high paying keywords), then you write for the bots.

If someone had the goal of number one above, but started off with the model of number two (as the forum “geniuses” suggested), the site might very well find itself doomed to failure. Why?

Because if the starting content (which is ranked well and the reason viewers are getting to the site) is nothing but SEO’d-to-death content for those rankings, those visitors aren’t going to come back. The only way to get visitors coming back (necessary if you want to build an authority site of any level) is to always write unique and interesting content for your readers.

Starting off with the wrong content strategy can seriously screw up the reputation of your site or blog even before it really gets going. Don’t make that mistake. Know what your ultimate site goals are from the beginning and tailor your content strategy to the right audience.

Summary: Do you take your online business seriously, or are you setting yourself up for failure? Find out why you need to treat your online business as a real business venture and not a casual hobby (such as blogging for profit) if you want to reap the most rewards and keep it all legal.

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I know there are plenty of “serious” online ventures. At the same time I think there are infinitely more webpreneurs, webmasters, bloggers, etc. who are essentially running online businesses but not taking them seriously as such (and of course I’m only talking about the ones blatantly trying to make money here – a blogger on a personal journal-style blog doesn’t count). Why is this?

I think the biggest problem is that it’s extremely easy to set up an online business, and there’s little to no startup capital required for many of them. Therefore it really is possible for “anyone” to start an online business these days.

However, being easy doesn’t make it any less of a business, and there are a few benefits to taking your online business seriously from the start:

• Avoid legal and tax problems down the road
• The more serious to treat your project, the more likely you’ll stick with it in the long run (and more likely you’ll earn a significant income)
• Others can tell when you don’t take your work seriously, and it can hurt your credibility

Here are a few basic things you should consider doing to take your online business more seriously:

• Register it as a formal business if appropriate
• Keep thorough financial and administrative records
• Invest time and / or money into adequate marketing tactics
• Take the time to do market research on your audience and their behaviors before getting into your online business to begin with

What else do you think people can do to take their businesses more seriously, and what other benefits do you see in doing so?

Is Twitter marketing just another marketing fad, or is marketing via microblogs here to stay? Find out how people are marketing through services like Twitter, and what benefits or damages they may see because of it.

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Whether you’re a fan of microblogging platforms like Twitter or not (I’m not), you can’t deny that there is marketing potential there. There’s actually a lot of spamming potential there. I talked about this recently at NakedPR.com, and whether or not spam will lead to the death of Twitter. Today let’s take a look at types of Twitter marketing, and whether it’s just a fad or will likely be around for the long haul.

How it Works

One thing that makes it tough to evaluate any kind of social media marketing is that single tools (like Twitter) can be used in a lot of different ways for promotional purposes. Here are a few things people are already doing or talking about doing to leverage Twitter as a marketing tool:

• Simply adding links to your own products or sites to drive traffic.
• Adding a link to every site update you post (such as every new blog post) – again to build traffic (you’re not getting the Pagerank link juice, as the links are no-follow).
• Artificially inflating follower counts for more exposure (such as paying people to be followers, using bots, or exchanging friend status with others).
• Buying links in others’ tweets.

Fad or Fab?

FAD – Do I think Twitter or similar services will ever be marketing-free? Of course not. But if you’ve read past Fad or Fab features, you’ll know how I feel about marketing tactics that violate the terms or spirit of the tools or companies being used. It rarely proves to be a smart long-term marketing strategy (and that makes it a fad in my book).

Why? Because if your marketing tactics are going to be actively fought by the tool’s creators, your efforts may prove to be in vain in the long run. For example, all the time or money someone spends to artificially inflate their friend count is completely worthless once the service bans your account if you’re caught.

At the same time, being manipulative when using tools designed to foster a community atmosphere solely for your own benefit runs the risk of damaging your reputation (or that of your site or company). That would be counterproductive to good marketing, isn’t it?

As always, think about the ROI compared to other tactics. Chances are that you can do better. And if you can do better, Twitter marketing (or whatever you’re considering) just isn’t a “fab” option.

Summary: Is it really possible to make money online blogging? How realistic is it to think you can earn a real blogging income? How can you beat the odds? Find out how to make money blogging with these tips and resources.

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Blogging has been a hot business concept for a few years now, but most bloggers blogging for income are still baffled about how to make serious money. “Is it even possible to make a real income blogging?” you might be wondering. It is.

My Background in Blogging

I’m not at the point where I would call myself a “professional blogger” just yet (although I hope to be in the foreseeable future). Even so, I’ve done fairly well with my blogs, bringing my “big three” to decent income levels at various times ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. I’m working to bring them all back to those levels (including some newer ones – around a dozen blogs in all). The key (and where I sometimes struggle) is consistency.What I’ve found personally is that your consistency in your blogging can have more of an impact on your earnings than your SEO or even monetization streams (although I’ll readily admit this can vary depending on the type of blog you’re running – mine were all launched with the intention of creating so-called “authority sites,” so repeat traffic is my most valuable asset).

Revenue Streams for Bloggers

Speaking of revenue streams (how you can actually monetize your blog), here are some common examples that can be used or combined into an overall monetization strategy:

1. Network ads (Google Adsense, Chitika, etc.)
2. Private ads (selling text links, banners, etc. on your blog)
3. Sponsored posts (sold privately or through pay-per-post programs)
4. Affiliate ads (Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.)
5. Donations (through Paypal or similar services)
6. RSS feed ads (through Feedburner or other services)
7. Digital Products (e-books, reports, software related to your blog niche, etc.)
8. Teaching / Services (paid webinars, offering services related to your blog niche, etc.)

The Reality of High Income Blogging

Plenty of people make far more money than I do blogging. Plenty of people also make far less (and almost nothing). Pro blogger Darren Rowse did an interesting casual study in 2007 on what real bloggers are earning (many simply aren’t). (Read his findings.) Should you be discouraged by the fact that a lot of people make next to no money from their blogs? I don’t think so. Here’s why:

1. Not all bloggers are really “in it for the money.” Earning may just be an added benefit, so many bloggers may simply not be optimizing their revenue streams (because they simply don’t care).
2. A lot of bloggers are new, and still learning the ropes of monetizing their blogs. Like in any kind of business model, it can take time (one of my blogs became my highest earner in just three months, while another wasn’t earning significantly for over a year, as an example).
3. Frankly, not all bloggers know how to effectively market their sites. If they can’t market the blog, or offer something people really want to read, they’re not likely going to make money.

Ingredients of a High Income Blog

On that note, there are a few key elements that, while they won’t guarantee you’ll earn real money, will make earning a blogging income easier (assuming you’re looking for a long-term strategy, and not a “post crap content, load it up with ads, SEO the hell out of it, and earn until Google penalizes you” strategy):

1. Niche – Your blog’s niche is the topic it covers. You’ll have an easier time earning money from a blog niche that lends itself to ads, products that you can sell as an affiliate, or products and services you can offer to that audience. You’ll also have an easier time if you go with a niche that not only has a decent-sized audience (preferably one that you don’t expect to disappear in the near future), but that also isn’t already over-saturated with other blogs that would make it difficult for you to reach your target readers.
2. Expertise – Do you have to be an expert in your niche? No, but it certainly helps. That’s because when you know the niche topic well, and you have credentials, it’s easy to build trust with an audience. When your blog audience trusts you, they’ll take more kindly to certain types of monetization (such as affiliate links to products that you’re reviewing, because they’ll trust your reviews more).
3. Quality Content – It’s not usually too difficult to tell the difference between a blog written by a true expert giving quality advice and information and a blog where the “blogger” simply hired a bunch of cheap ghostwriters to put together keyword-rich posts for ad revenue. While the not-so-”elite” content can serve a purpose (and even make money for a while), quality content carries far more long-term income-generating potential. Why? Again, people will learn to trust it. When people trust your content, they not only keep coming back, but they start to spread the word about your site (including by giving you unsolicited backlinks). High quality content offers other benefits as well. For example, you may be able to get media exposure if you become recognized as an expert in the niche. When others spread the word for you, your blog’s (and income’s) fate doesn’t rely solely on traffic from search engines (so you don’t have to panic if you get penalized for some reason). Quality content makes that easier.
4. Marketing Ability – You have to promote your blog in some way to get traffic. Without traffic, you have no visitors (no one to monetize through ads, sales, etc.). Many bloggers don’t excel at marketing… they just follow the same “been there, done that” tactics that everyone else uses, instead of really paying attention to their market and how they would best be reached. Marketing encompasses everything from your search engine optimization (SEO) to get higher search rankings to advertising to networking with others in your niche (such as by commenting on their own blogs).
5. Consistency – It’s important that your readers have at least a vague idea of when you’ll be updating if you want to keep those regular readers exposed to your income streams. Depending on you and your niche, that may mean posting once per month, once per week, daily, or any other schedule for that matter. (This is what I mentioned previously as being one of my own biggest struggles in blogging.) In my own experience at least, when I blog consistently, income climbs quickly; when I stop for a while or get too irregular in posting, income drops respectively.

Making money from your blog might not be an easy task, but it can really be done. If you treat your blog like a business, and don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll instantly make a lot of money, you’ll improve your chance and rise above the ever-growing blogger crowd. Take your blog seriously. Take yourself seriously. And most importantly, never give up. Anyone can start a blog, but you need to be persistent to really make it work as a business.

Do you have additional monetization tips to share? Would you like to share your own successes or struggles with making money blogging? If so, leave a comment.

After you’ve chosen a niche for your new blog, the next steps in setting up a blog are choosing a blog name, domain name, and Web hosting company. Start by reading Choosing a Business Name and Domain Name for Your Online Business. (more…)

Summary: Learn how to find a niche for a new blog, from choosing general niche market ideas to doing keyword research and evaluating the competition in a potentially profitable niche market. This post is a part of the “Start a Blog in 7 Days” series, designed to help new bloggers launch their first blogs, from choosing a niche to launch marketing.

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When you want to set up a new blog, the first step is to find a niche (a topic) to blog about. How you choose a niche for your blog will depend on your blogging motivations: whether you’re blogging simply for pleasure, to promote something, to monetize the blog, etc.The information here and in the rest of the “Start a Blog in 7 Days” series is designed to help bloggers setting up blogs for their own use (not people setting up blogs solely for making money, where they don’t intend to actually blog themselves – such as setting up splogs or hiring other writers / bloggers to do all of the writing).

Blogging Goals

If your primary goal of launching a new blog is to promote a company, product, service, or person, then you already have your niche; what you’re promoting.

If your blogging goal is to manage a personal blog, then your niche topic is yourself and your life or business.

If your primary goal of blogging is to write about something you love, and you’re not concerned with making money, then you will simply choose something that you’re interested in enough to write about it regularly without running out of things to say (perhaps your favorite local sports team, a specific type of craft, a style of cooking, a hobby, etc.).

What poses a bigger problem for new bloggers, or experienced bloggers launching a new blog, is how to find a niche for a new blog where the goal is to treat it as a business (or at least supplemental income stream). Let’s talk about finding a profitable niche for blogging.

Factors When Finding a Profitable Niche for Blogging

• If you plan to use contextual ad networks (like Google Adsense), you’ll need to find a niche with a good selection of keyword phrases that are heavily searched for as well as ones that have a good bit of advertiser competition (advertisers will pay more for the clicks).
• No matter how you choose to monetize your new blog, traffic will play an integral role (the more traffic, the more potential clicks; the more traffic, the more private advertisers will pay, etc.). You have to find out if there’s truly a big enough need for information in niche to keep traffic coming. You’ll also need to evaluate the level of competition (if a niche market is over-saturated, it can be much more difficult to rank well in search engines and steal a decent-sized piece of the niche traffic pie).
• You should always choose a niche that you’re passionate about when launching a new blog, even if your primary goal is to make money blogging. Blogs aren’t like static content sites (if you’re using them in their true sense and not just using a blog platform to launch a content site). You don’t just put a few posts up and leave the site alone. Blogs are designed to be regularly updated, and if you’re not interested in the subject matter, you’ll find yourself discouraged (especially in the beginning when earnings can be quite low) and you’ll risk running out of blog post ideas fairly quickly.

What are you Passionate About?

The best place to start when learning how to find a niche for a blog is to sit down and write a list of everything you’re passionate about – your work or area of expertise, your hobbies, your favorite places, etc.

Go through that list several times narrowing it down to just a handful of topic ideas that you love, where you think you can come up with enough post ideas to get you at least through your first year (if you think it would be unlikely that you could post once per day, or close to it, without running out of ideas, delete a niche idea from your list).

Once you have a few ideas bouncing around in your head, it’s time to do some keyword research and to evaluate the competition to determine which idea would make for the most profitable niche that you could maintain an interest in blogging about.

Keyword Research and Market Research

I find that Google’s Adwords Sandbox tool is an excellent resource for keyword research (even if not highly specific) when finding and choosing a profitable blog niche. The process is simple:

• Enter one or more keywords or keyword phrases to check (if you’re interested in cooking for example, you might search for cooking, recipes, or more specific phrases such as low-fat cooking, low-carb cooking, holiday recipes, etc.).
• Google will return a list of related keyword phrases (including the ones you’ve entered) – meaning it’s a keyword suggestion tool as much as a keyword research tool for search and advertiser information.
• The Adwords Sandbox doesn’t give exact search numbers, but instead a bar showing search frequency, and another showing advertiser competition. The concept is simple: you should preferably want keywords ranking high in both areas.
• If it looks as though there are a good number of keyword phrases available in the niche you’re interested in, you may be onto something. Now do a Google search for some of those keyword phrases, and look at the number of results being returned (search in quotes for multiple word phrases to find exact matches).

In an ideal situation you’ll find a topic that you’re passionate about, which gets a lot of monthly searches, which has a good bit of advertiser competition (if you’re using contextual ads), and which doesn’t have an obscene amount of competition.

Is Your Niche Narrow Enough?

If you’re really interested in a niche, but you’re finding a lot of competition, you can always consider narrowing your niche. For example, if you were interested in writing about holiday recipes, you would find that Google returns one and a half million results for that search phrase. You can narrow it down more by choosing topics such as “Thanksgiving dinner recipes” (which has around 25,000 results), “easy holiday recipes” (with around 67,000 results), or better yet “vegetarian holiday recipes” (with just over 1000 results returned).

If you really still wanted to go with the more general niche for the blog, a good strategy would be to create categories or sections of your new blog to take advantage of more specific niches within your larger choice (like categories for the niche examples given above).

At the same time, if you find that there is almost no competition at all for a niche, it may be because there isn’t enough interest to make it profitable. In that case, see if there’s a way you can expand the niche to a larger topic encompassing the narrow niche you’d like to cover.

Before you start thinking about the technical side of blogging (where to host your blog, what blog platform to use, etc.) or your blog’s overall content strategy, make sure that you’re comfortable with your blog niche choice.

In this seven-part / seven-day series, I’ll be walking you through the steps of launching a new blog. This is set up in a seven day set for those who can’t devote a lot of time up front. Others will be able to complete all of these steps in a matter of hours (something I actually do myself periodically).

The seven day series on launching a new blog will generally target newer bloggers rather than more experienced and advanced bloggers. The topics will include things like:

• Choosing a niche
• Choosing a name / domain name
• Hosting options for the blog
• Coming up with a blogging / content strategy
• Preparing startup content
• Launch marketing and other blog promotion
• Encouraging reader interaction

Be sure to check back tomorrow for our first post in the series on niches and naming your blog.

EDIT: You can access the full list of posts in the “start a blog in 7 days” series here (as they’re published):

Day One: How to Find a Niche for a New Blog
Day Two: How to Choose a Name, Domain Name, and Web Hosting Company
Day Three: How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your New Blog
Day Four: Creating a Content Strategy for Your New Blog
Day Five: Creating Start-Up Content for Your New Blog