Six years after starting a blog called the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington sold the website for 315 million dollars. But 3 years before the deal was done, Arianna shared her secrets to creating a successful blog at the MarketingProfs event. Little did they know at the time just how successful her blog would become!
Here are 3 points she said marketers should keep in mind when creating and growing their own blogs, along with my elaboration:
1. “Make it easy for your contributors to contribute.”
You’ll notice when you visit the Huffington Post there isn’t just one writer, there are hundreds of writers. In fact, any celebrity can share their thoughts in a blog post if they do it “transparently and honestly.” How can you adapt this method to your blog? Allow anyone known (and perhaps even unknown but up and coming) in your industry to make blog posts, and make it easy. If they want to phone it in, email it in or use any other method (snail mail?) then let them. So long as it fits into your blog’s guidelines, publish it.
2. “Have a clear point of view.”
Forget keeping everyone happy by covering every point of view. Instead, choose your angle and stick with it. It’s clear to all where the Huffington Post stands, and it should be just as clear to your readers where your own blog lies in the spectrum of opinion. Find the truth in each story from your point of view and your visitors will have a clear idea of what you stand for.
3. “Provide a safe environment.”
It’s not going to be easy to get new contributors if they’re afraid they’re going to get attacked each time they make a post. That’s why the Huffington Post employs a team of comment “pre-moderators” who approve or reject comments. Thus no personal attacks are allowed, and disagreements are kept on a civil and intelligent level.
If success leaves clues and you consider selling a blog for $315 million to be successful, what can these blogging guidelines do for you? Put them into practice and let’s find out!
Why don’t your customers recommend you to their friends? It’s not because they don’t like you – if they didn’t like you or your products, they wouldn’t be buying from you. Nor is it because they don’t have time – we all naturally recommend things we like to friends.
The reason they don’t recommend you is because you don’t make it easy for them. Here are 7 ways to not only make it easy, but to also remind them in a very nice, non-pushy way that you really would like a little word of mouth now and then…
1. Encourage them to write online reviews. Whatever your product or service, if you believe in it then ask your customers to rate it for you. Give them a 1 to 5 star option on one or several aspects of your product, and give them a place to write their comments.
2. Remember those “refer a friend” scripts? You used to see those buttons everywhere. Now that they aren’t as popular as they once were, it’s the perfect time to add them to your website. Remember, doing the opposite of what others are doing is quite often the way to stand apart and get ahead.
3. “Share with a friend.” There are other options besides the “refer a friend.” For example, you can let them share the content of your blog post or article by simply clicking a button and choosing the email addresses they want it sent to. Better still, simply having this button will often remind people to send it to their friends, and they’ll copy and paste the content in an email.
4. Use your “Tweet This,” “Like This,” and “PlusOne” buttons. Then ASK them to share it. You can double your tweets and likes simply by asking.
5. Depending on your service, you might be able to “share the credit.” For example, the Flip digital video cameras have an option at the end of the video editing process where the user can “share the credit” with Flip. They check the box, and a small screen appears at the end of the movie saying it was created with a Flip Camera. If you can incorporate something like this into your product or service, by all means do so.
6. Do you have raving fans? Then create a button for their websites and Facebook pages that lets them share their enthusiasm for your product or service.
7. Make a special offer. For example, if you offer a monthly service, give each customer a free month of service for each paying customer they refer.
You subscribe to a certain marketer’s emails, blog and tweets. He writes a blog post saying he’s headed to the Incredible Fantastic Marketing Symposium tomorrow. The next day you get tweets he sends during his airport time, and a little later he sends you another update telling you he’s arrived and he just met Joe Rich Bucks Guru!
Have you had this experience? Next, he sends you updates via his blog, tweets, Facebook status and emails filling you in on all the details and sharing some of the new ideas he’s picked up. Really, you can’t help but feel like you’re there yourself, and you’re really into it. Near the end, he tells you to watch out for an incredible deal he’s putting together with Guru’s 1, 2 and 3, and when he sends the offer, you can’t help but check it out (and maybe even pounce on it, what the heck!)
So how did he manage to hook you into sharing the whole experience with him, and maybe even making a purchase you hadn’t planned on?
Sharing a live event with your readers isn’t magic, but it does take some skill to pull it off effectively. And this isn’t just for Internet marketers attending conferences – this is for anyone in any niche who is at a live event. Maybe you cover local sports on your blog, or you’re a foodie at a culinary show, or you’re a book reviewer going to a writer’s conference. Whatever the event, if you can effectively share it with your readers, you can amp up your professional credibility by several notches in one weekend while increasing your readership and even your sales.
Here are 9 tips for effectively live blogging an event…
1. Know your purpose. What do you hope to get out of your live blogging? Do you want to better connect with your readers? Educate them? Increase your readership? Sell a product? By knowing your purpose going in, you’ll have a much better idea of how to proceed. For example, if you’re looking for new readers, you’ll be spending more time on Twitter with real time updates. (Don’t forget to ask for the retweets.)
2. Get it right the first time. At a live event you don’t have time for rewrites. That’s why you’ve got to get it right the first time so that you can spend as little time as possible rewriting and correcting mistakes. Speed is paramount – after all, if you have to spend 100% of your time writing, you won’t have time to network or even enjoy what’s happening.
3. Go for quality, not quantity. Maybe you’re at a weekend training and you’ve got six different classes to attend. Go to all six and blog about each one, right? Well, no. It’s better to pick and choose what you’ll be writing about so that you can provide high quality content your readers will enjoy. If you’re trying to cover everything, you won’t cover anything well and you’ll just end up fried because you’re not taking breaks. Not to mention the fact that your readers may not appreciate getting six full blown 300 – 700 word updates in one day.
4. Share golden nuggets, not War and Peace. Let’s say you’ve chosen 3 of those 6 classes to attend. Now then, don’t cover them play by play or word for word. Instead, simply pick out the juiciest bits and share those. And if you’re tweeting, don’t forget to use the hashtag for the event so that people can find your tweets.
5. Make it personal. That is, don’t give a book report. Instead, put your own personal spin on what you’re reporting. Have a point of view and SHARE IT – otherwise your coverage will be no different from anyone else’s.
6. Be a real reporter. Real reporters don’t simply take what is offered – they ask questions, they get interviews, they investigate what’s going on and they even get the pulse of the entire event. Who can you talk to? What can you discover? Find angles of your own and not only will your reporting be more interesting – you’ll also find that because you’re being proactive, you’re enjoying yourself infinitely more then if you were simply a passive observer.
7. Team up. If you’re going with a friend or colleague, you might work together on writing and promoting your content. If not, get someone to help you with promotion so that you can focus exclusively on creating great content. For example, they can submit your posts to Digg and other sites for you, thereby freeing you up to focus solely on content creation.
8. Get questions from your readers answered at the event. Your readers will become even more engaged if you ask them for questions they want answered from someone there at the event. Think of yourself as their representative and take polls on what they want to know. Again, if you have an assistant, they can help you with this.
9. Recap the event. This can be your most popular post, so spend some time on it. Recap the highlights, add in things you didn’t write about previously and highlight the biggest takeaways.
Pssst: This is also a great time to plug the recordings of the event if you are an affiliate. 😉
You pour your heart and soul into a blog post and BAM! Someone hits you with a rude, disparaging comment. Should you fire back and show them just how wrong they are?
While it’s tempting to do just that, I advocate you take a breath first. Sit back, relax, go get a cup of coffee, walk around the block or do whatever you need to do to calm down.
Only when you are completely calm and rational should you even think about replying. Now reread the comment and look for something positive. Anything. You might have to look hard, but it’s there.
Maybe they said you don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you? If you did your research, this is your chance to point out the experts who back what you wrote. Perhaps the commenter completely disagrees with your point of view. This gives you a chance to honor the fact that their opinion differs, while calmly and rationally explaining why you hold yours.
The one thing that is paramount to keep in mind is that this is not a fight and should not become a fight. That adrenaline surge you felt when you first read the comment occurred because your primitive brain thought you were under physical attack and needed to defend your life. You do not. This is simply another person on the planet who chooses to view things differently than you do. And that’s ALL it is.
Also keep in mind – as nasty as this person appears to be right now, this is still a living, breathing human being with friends, family, fears, challenges and shortcomings. Don’t escalate the dialogue with confrontation. Instead, allow them to have their opinion. Respect their opinion, or at least give the appearance of respecting it (no matter how off-the-wall crazy it might be.)
Answer calmly, rationally and above all NICELY and politely. Often they will respond to your kindness with kindness of their own, and may even offer an apology. If they don’t respond, don’t worry about it. Your goal is not to win them over; it’s to appear as the same rational, intelligent, level-headed expert your readers expect you to be.
That’s why you’ll always keep in mind that your audience is reading this interaction. If you sink to the level of your detractor, you will lose respect and you will lose readers. But if you fail to take the bait and remain the same cool, calm professional you are, your readers will respect you even more.
Hi, it’s Lawrence and this is my new website. Stay tuned… I’ll have great things to share!
For starters, here’s an article I think you’ll enjoy…
It’s called: “Make the Leap to Home Business Success”
If you are going to build a successful home business, you need 3 “intangibles.” These are things that must come from WITHIN you.
===> Intangible 1 <===
First, you must have a strong WHY.
Why must you make a home business work? What’s driving you? What is it that you CAN’T have in your life anymore and/or what is it that you absolutely MUST HAVE now?
For me, I couldn’t stand working 12+ hours a day anymore and missing the experience of my children growing up. I also absolutely HAD TO HAVE the freedom of being able to control my life and finances through a little box that I could carry with me anywhere in the world and not be tied to anyone’s time pressures or demands but my own. That was my carrot and my stick. I felt a great pain deep in my gut of missing out on my children’s lives and the incredible freedom that succeeding in this business would provide for me. I found my why. You MUST find yours.
===> Intangible 2 <===
You must BELIEVE that it is possible.
If you don’t believe that it’s POSSIBLE for you to succeed in a home business or make your living on the Internet, you won’t. It’s that simple.
For me, figuring out that it was possible was just a matter of realizing that many other people were ALREADY making great money with a home business online. If they could do it, I could too. It would just be a matter of figuring out what those people were doing and then adapting it to my situation.
There is no shortage of undeniable PROOF that people (millions of them) are making money online in many different ways. Just get online and do some research and you’ll find countless testimonials and stories of REAL PEOPLE making real money on the Internet. Or head to your local bookstore and you’ll find the same documented evidence of this fact. Truth is, it’s getting easier and easier to start and succeed in a home based business. This is primarily because of the Internet and affiliate marketing.
I’ve always said that “affiliate marketing” is the job of the future. In the “old” days, you had to go to a potential employer, apply for the position and hope for the best. Now you can simply go to any company you want, fill out their affiliate application and start work immediately. Affiliates are the new working class. Believe me, making money with affiliate programs or making your living on the Internet is WAY MORE than possible. It is pretty much (or will be soon enough) unavoidable now. Affiliate marketing is the “job” of the future that’s here TODAY.
===> Intangible 3 <===
You must be willing to MAKE THE LEAP.
Ready, FIRE, then aim… This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with an Internet home business.
That’s backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire. The fact is the Internet is a moving target… The only thing constant about it is change. You need to stop analyzing the game and simply jump into it. You can’t learn from the outside… You have to be IN THE RING to truly understand it.
The lesson here is that you will never really be READY to start a home based business. You simply have to start one. This is what I call “Making the Leap.”
The good news is that the cost of failure on the Internet is very small. In the “brick and mortar” world you need to evaluate things very carefully before you decide to open up a business. It’s almost always necessary to invest thousands of dollars to get an offline business off the ground. However, on the Internet you can often start a successful business for less than $100. In fact, Plug-In Profit Site is a really good example of this.
You simply need get IN THE GAME… Each moment that you stay “out there,” you’re wasting valuable time that you could be learning and skills necessary to become a successful affiliate marketer. In fact, if you’re not in the game yet, you’re ALREADY behind the times. Come on… You can do it! Make the leap to becoming a successful home based business owner today!
About the author:Stone Evans was a washed up restaurant worker desperately searching for a way to save his family when he discovered the internet and affiliate marketing… 24 months later he finally cracked the code and started earning over $10,000 per month. Now the same system that saved him is available to you here >>
