ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

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Today’s episode is about how to build relationships with the readers on your blog. Having a community around your blog gives your blog social proof and makes your blog more useful and satisfying to you and your readers. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Part one was an in depth look at why you should spend time and energy trying to build community. Today is all about practical strategies and tips for how to build community.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

Today we’re talking about building community on your blog. As I said in the last episode, this is so important. It has the potential to really build your blog, to build social proof, and make it easier to find new readers for your blog, but also to make your blog more useful and satisfying for you. Before I get into today’s seven strategies and practical tips. I want to talk a little bit about some overarching tips that I think are really important to acknowledge before we get into the practical stuff.

Firstly, what I’m talking about today is not just about getting reader engagement. I see a lot of people talking about reader engagement. I like the idea of engagement, but for me, that’s not ultimately what I’m aiming for. What I’m aiming for is a culture of community on my blog. For me, an engagement from a reader is more about getting a comment, more about getting a like, more about getting a share, or a vote in a poll. All of those things are good, but in my mind, they’re just stepping stones to a real community.

Engagement’s great, but most successful bloggers that I’ve come across go beyond getting those moments of engagement to something deeper with their readers where their readers not only interact with them or engage with them. But their readers actually have a sense of belonging, a sense of ownership. When the reader almost embodies and lives out the values of the blog with one another, this is what I’m really aiming for with my blogs. It takes time to get to that level.

When you have that deeper kind of engagement or community with your readers, that’s when your blog really comes alive in ways that I described in the last episode. This is when you get that sense of belonging and ownership with your readers, when they become advocates for your blog and when they start to add value to your blog. As I’m talking today, and I’m talking about some strategies that might help you to get deeper engagement, keep in mind that those engagements are really just stepping stones to building this culture of community for your blog.

The second thing I want to say before I get into the practical stuff is that if you’re going to build a culture of community for your blog, it’s really important that you realize that this needs to start with you. You need to be the community that you want to have. It’s really important for us as bloggers to take the lead in building that community that we want to have. If we’re not willing to be that community, then why would any of our readers want to do that. We need to take the lead, we need to model it, we need to set the tone for the type of community we want to have.

I think if that’s true and it certainly has been the case in my own blogs, it’s when I’m most engaged that my readers are most engaged. We need to almost put a little bit of thought into the type of community that we want to have. I would encourage you to do this exercise to map out, to describe, in just a few sentences, perhaps a few bullet points, the type of community that we want to have. What do you want your community to look like? What values do you want it to have? What boundaries do you want it to have? What is and isn’t acceptable behavior in the community that you want to have on your blog.

The clearer you are about what you want your community to look like, the better position you’ll be to start modeling that for your readers. It will also help you when things perhaps don’t go particularly right in your community as well because you’ve already thought through what is and isn’t acceptable.

Before I get into the practical things, I really want to encourage you to think about the type of community that you want to have and how you can lead the way into that. Let’s get into some of these more practical things on how to build a community. There’s a whole heap of different ways of doing it. These are just seven things that I’ve tried to build into my own blogging.

The first one is to write in a conversational voice. I actually think the community starts with you and the way that you communicate. This fits into the “it’s not rocket science” category of blogging tips as do many of my tips. However, I think it’s really important to write in a way that is engaging. I see regular bloggers falling into the trap of talking at their readers rather than talking with their readers. The art of conversation is as much as being interested as it is about being interesting. I think it can really shine through in the writing when we are interested in our readers, when we are interested in what they think, and when we are interested in serving them rather than just trying to be interesting.

Good conversationalists ask questions. They pause to allow other people to speak. They listen to what other people are saying. I think this can shine through in your writing in a whole heap of different ways. For me, I try to write like I speak. My best post often starts out as me writing to a reader in an email or answering a question in a very conversational tone. I write like I speak. That’s partly just my voice, it’s partly just my style, but I think most bloggers do best when they write like they speak.

Another thing I try to do, that I think helps to bring that conversational tone to my writing is that I try to tell as many stories as possible, even if they’re just really short two-sentence stories. I was doing this the other day and this is what I learned. Those anchoring the things that you’re writing about down in real life really makes you more relatable. It makes your writing more personal. I tried to use personal language in my writing. I used the word I, you, we quite a bit to my readers. I try to personalize as much as possible. I also try to share my opinions and I’ve talked about this in previous episodes of this podcast. Sharing your opinions actually makes your writing more conversational, makes it more about an individual writing rather than just a theory being shared.

Whatever you need to do to come across in a more conversational tone of voice can really be effective in helping to build that culture of community. If your readers read your content and they feel like you are interested in them, they feel like you are talking just to them, they’re much more likely to want to interact with you.

If you want to learn a little bit more about writing in this more conversational tone, check out episode 52 of the podcast where I interview Beth Dunn on this very topic of sounding more human in your writing. I think it does have a massive impact and sets the tone for the community on your blog.

The second thing that I want to talk about today is to invite interaction. This really builds upon your conversational style of writing. As I mentioned before, good conversationalists ask questions and they pause to allow their readers and their listeners to interact with them and to respond to them. I think it’s really important in your blogging to ask questions to invite people to interact with you and then stop and let them talk.

There’s a whole heap of different ways that you can do this. The most obvious of which is probably in your blog post to ask your readers to comment. At the end of your posts, you can signal that you want them to say something. Whether it be sharing their opinion, share their story, share their experience, share their own tip, or just to respond to what you’ve written and to let you know whether they think you’re right or wrong.

There’s a whole heap of different ways that you can shape that. You can ask very specific questions. I actually find this gets you more comments if you ask a specific question. Instead of ending your post with, “What do you think?” Or, “Please leave a comment.” Guide your readers with a more specific question about your topic. Give them some alternatives perhaps, or some examples to help them to make that first comment. Give them guidance in the type of comment that perhaps you’re wanting.

Another technique that you might want to use to get that first interaction from readers is to have a blog post that’s purely about discussion, that’s purely a question for your readers. We’ve done this a number of times both on ProBlogger and on my other blog, Digital Photography School, where the post might only be a sentence or two long and it just invites readers to give their opinion on a particular topic.

We ran a series on ProBlogger a few years ago, it was a whole week of content on the topic of using Pinterest and we finished that series with a discussion post on the topic where we invited our readers to share their Pinterest boards and to share their experiences of using Pinterest. The post itself was three or four sentences long, but we got a whole heap of interaction. It signals to our readers that we weren’t there just to teach, we were there to learn and to hear from our readers.

Another way that you can do this is to set a challenge for your readers. Every week on Digital Photography School, we set our readers a little bit of homework. It usually builds upon a tutorial that we’ve done in previous days and then we asked our readers to go away and take a photo, based upon the tutorial that they’d read and then to share it in comments. It gets out readers doing something, but then also it gives them an opportunity to show off what they are doing. I’ve done the same thing on ProBlogger over the years with group writing projects where I ask my readers to go away and write a certain type of blog post and then come back and leave a comment with a link to that blog post.

There’s a whole heap of different ways that you can do that, but setting your readers a challenge, giving them an opportunity to show off what they’ve gone away and done, builds community. It shows your readers that there are other readers interacting with you and it gives them a chance to do something, which is a very powerful thing.

Other things you might want to do to get people interacting, to put polls up. We do this semi-regularly on Digital Photography School, we ask our readers what type of cameras they use, or if they’ve ever done a photography class, all kinds of things. It’s really interesting both to get that interaction, but we also find our readers really enjoy looking at the results of those polls as well. We follow-up the poll with a results poll, which again, shows off the fact that people are interacting with you. To be able to say, “Here’s the poll results and there were a thousand people who responded in this poll,” actually builds a little bit more social proof.

The other thing that you might want to do is to invite interaction off your blog. The community doesn’t always need to be happening on your blog for it to be worthwhile. Invite interaction on your Facebook page, on your Periscopes, on your Blabs, on your LinkedIn, on your podcasts. There’s a whole heap of different places where you can give your readers an opportunity to interact with you. I’ll touch on some of them a little later on in this podcast. Invite interaction is the second point that I want to make today. Some of your readers will simply not ever interact with you unless you invite them to. So, go out of your way (whenever you can) to invite interaction, make it really clear to your readers that you want to hear from them. 

The third thing I want to talk about today is to consider a dedicated community area on your blog or off your blog. Now, blogs have a community built into them to some degree by allowing comments to be made on blog posts, but there are many other options for you to build community on or around your blog. For me, the first time I ever did this was on Digital Photography School back in 2006 or 2007, I think it was when I started a Flickr group.

Flickr (the photo-sharing site) has the ability to start groups in a similar way to you being able to start a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group. I found really quickly by starting this group in a place where my readers were already hanging out, that community formed quite easily. I didn’t have a whole heap of readers at that point, but by starting that group I not only built a community, I also found some new readers as well.

The Flickr group for me was a bit of a stepping stone, though. As we started that group, we found out readers were asking for a forum. The features on that group were fairly basic and they wanted to be at a setup thread of discussion in different areas. I transitioned that Flickr group into a forum that we built with vBulletin on my own domain.

I found forums to be quite successful for us. They are a little bit old-fashioned in some ways, but some readers really love forums. It may be something that you want to consider for your own blog. Forums do increase reader engagement, they build community, they’re great for helping you to generate user-generated content, they increase page views, and they’ll appeal to a certain type of person. But there are some challenges as well with forums. They do take moderation, they need a critical mess to really make them effective. You can’t really start a forum with 6 people, you need 600 or so people (maybe even more) to get it going, and there are some technical challenges of getting them up and running. 

You may not actually want to start a forum on your blog, you might want to use someone else’s site or tools to do that. A Flickr group was an example of that. Today, Facebook groups are very popular with many bloggers, LinkedIn also has groups as well. I know a number of blogs who use those.

Of course, keep in mind here that you are building on someone else’s property here. By not hosting it on your own domain, you really need to play by their rules. Be a little bit careful with investing too much into groups on other people’s properties. Certainly, I think it is a way to add a little bit of community around your brand. But again, it takes work. Don’t start a Facebook group unless you’re willing to moderate it and be involved in it in yourself or to at least bring someone on into your team to help you with that.

Tip number four is to use interactive and accessible mediums. While we’ve been talking about different types of social media, let’s touch on a range of other tools that you can use to help build community on your blog through being a little bit more interactive and accessible and transparent. Perhaps the simplest way to do this is to post some pictures of yourself when you blog. It may sound a little bit strange, but I’ve seen a number of times now where bloggers have begun to post pictures of themselves and it’s really changed the dynamics on their blog.

Probably the best example I can give you if this is my own wife’s blog, Vanessa. Some of you know her from Style & Shenanigans. For the first month or so of her blog, she didn’t use her own name and she didn’t post pictures of herself. She was shy and I guess was a little concerned about privacy. But one day she summoned up the courage and posted a selfie on her blog. Now her blog’s about fashion and style. She posted a selfie not just to show herself, but also to show a dress—I think it was—that she was wearing. That post, where she posted a picture of herself got the most comments she’d ever had. In fact, it’s 10 times the normal amount of comments on her blog.

It showed her the power of using a medium that was a little bit more transparent and that showed who she really was. I actually found the same thing to be true when I first started posting videos on ProBlogger. The first video that I did, it was just a very simple talking-head video, where I stood in front of a camera and talked about blogging. I can’t even remember what the blog post was about, but I remember seeing the comments stream in.

I had comments that day from people who told me that they’d been reading for years, but had never left a comment before. It’s saying that video really touched people on a deeper level and it made the content more personal to them. They heard my accent, they saw my face, they saw my body language, they heard my expression. It opened up conversations in a way that I never expected to happen. 

It takes a little bit of courage to stand in front of a camera and talk, but I would encourage you to give it a go. Of course today, there are all kinds of other mediums that are even more interactive because they take into your live interaction as well.

A number of years ago, I began to experiment with a tool called YouStream to connect with my readers. It was a live streaming application where I set up and sat in front of a camera and took questions from ProBlogger readers. I think I did it on Friday afternoons and called it Have a Beer With Darren. It was really fascinating to see out of those interactions only 50 or so people ever showed up to those live streams, but I noticed that the people who did show up became more avid commenters on my blog and they seem to interact with me more on social media as well. 

Today, there are all kinds of other options for their live engagement. We’ve got Periscope, we’ve got Blab which I talked about in episode 44. We’ve got Google Hangouts, which are perhaps a little dated now; I would encourage you to probably move towards Periscope or Blab before you go to Hangouts. We’ve got other tools like YouTube Live and Facebook Live which is now available to some people, not everyone.

There are other options as well which are not so much about video, but still, have a live element to them. You might use a webinar tool. Again, some of those do have video, but a lot of them are more just audio, but there are live audio interactions. And then there are also things like Twitter chats where you can have a chat, a live chat on Twitter using a hashtag. All of these mediums give you live interaction with your readers, which in my experience takes things to the next level of community.

There’s something about a live interaction that just seems to make people feel a deeper connection with you and others in your community. Even in Twitter chat, it gives people that conversation with you which goes beyond a comment conversation because it happens in real-time. The other thing about a Twitter chat is that people see you interacting with other people and they begin to meet with each other, and this (I think) is a very powerful thing. When your readers feel connected not just to you but to each other, that’s where true community happens. It also personalizes your brand in a way that can only really be beaten with a face-to-face meeting. So, give some of these live interactive mediums a go.

Another thing you might want to try is my fifth tip, is to run a project or a challenge on your blog. I’m often asked what the tipping point for ProBlogger was in terms of readership the moment that that blog really took off. There were a number of these, but I think the first time that things really began to take off on ProBlogger was when I ran 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. It’s what many of you have heard in the first 31 episodes of this ProBlogger podcast, but originally, it started as a 31-day series of blog posts that are run on ProBlogger where I gave my readers a little challenge to do every day and invited them to go away and do the experiment and then come back and share what they had learned.

I didn’t really know what was going to happen when I ran that first 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge, but it was an amazing thing. While running this challenge with my readers for 31 days, it just built a community in ways that I could never have expected. I’ve seen this happen many times on many different blogs. It seems 31 Days to Build a Better Blog triggered a whole heap of other people doing 31-day challenges on their blogs. In fact, I think it’s Nestor who runs every October a challenge for bloggers to run their own 31 days challenges which sounds a bit bizarre, but I think last year there were thousands of bloggers who joined in on the 31-day challenge.

There’s a whole heap of other variations as well. You could check out Fat Mum Slim Photo a day Instagram challenge which we can link to in today’s show notes. Vanessa, my wife, did a style challenge where every day for seven days she nominates a different color or a different pattern for people to wear and then her readers go away and take a photo of themselves on Instagram and hashtag that. She had hundreds of people participating in her style challenge.

There’s a whole heap of other challenges and community challenges that bloggers have run over the years. These challenges usually revolve around hashtags on a social network or networks and they usually give readers something to do and something to show off a little to get their readers engaging with you as a blogger, but also each other.

Give it a go, come out with your own challenge. I encourage you probably to start with 7 days rather than 31. It’s a lot of work to get through a 31-day challenge, but a 7-day one is achievable, I think for most bloggers and it won’t overwhelm your readers either with just 7 days. 

The sixth thing you can do to build community on your blog is to not just have virtual interactions with your readers, but have a real-life one. This is easier for some bloggers than others, depending on where you live and how many readers you have. What I found over the years is that this is one of the most powerful things you can do to build a community with your readers, to meet them face-to-face. It’s got all kinds of logistical challenges, but if you can do it, it’s amazing.

I started out doing this in a number of fairly simple ways. I did meetups, at first. I think the first one I did was in Melbourne where I just tweeted out if anyone wants to meet for a coffee or for a drink, let me know. The first meet up that we had, there were about six or seven got together in a bar for a drink. It was a bit awkward, I have to say, it was a little bit strange, but they did show me who was reading my blog and it began to deepen the relationships with some of those local readers.

I then did one in London when I was traveling there for a holiday. Again, we had 10 or so bloggers show up. Again, I learned so much in those interactions. It got to the point where pretty much any time I go to a new city, I try to tweet out and post a time in a bar or a café where I will be and allow my readers to come and interact with me. Of course, I did have a blog with quite a few readers already, it was a little bit easier to get people together.

Another way to do this is to attend other people’s meet up and other events. I began to attend conferences both here in Australia and internationally. When I would go to a conference, I would just tweet out to my readers and sometimes even post on my blog that I will be in this city at this conference and I love to meet with you. You want to be careful here not to hold an event in competition with another conference, you don’t want to hijack it. But many conferences won’t mind if you do this type of thing as long as you do it at a time that’s not competing with something that they are running.

Of course, you can take things to the next level. If you’ve got a blog perhaps a larger readership by running your events. This is something that I’ve done now for six years here in Australia with bloggers. It started out relatively small, the first time we did it we had 120-130 people show up to an event here in Melbourne and it’s grown every year since.

This year, we had an event for 714 bloggers, mainly from Australia but also from New Zealand, different parts of Asia, and we tend to get a few people from other parts of the world as well, from the Middle East and from the US.

What I’ve noticed is that by running these events, it has deepened the community on our blog and around our blog in ways that I could never have imagined otherwise. It could never have happened to the level that it has on social media or using some of the other tools. There are plenty of other bloggers who have built their blogs by doing these types of events.

Chris Guillebeau is probably one example of someone who’s done this. He actually took meetups to the whole next level by doing every state in the US and trying to have them in every country around the world as well. It’s quite amazing, I went to one of these events in Melbourne and a hundred or so people showed up to that. He has a massive impact by holding real-life events. 

The last thing that I want to talk about is to put your readers in the spotlight. This is tip number seven. Back in 2006, I wrote a post on ProBlogger and it was a very short post. It encourages bloggers to make their readers famous. At the time, it was a bit of a throw-away idea and not something that I’d really pondered too much.

Ever since I wrote that post, I have tried to do it on my blogs. The idea is pretty simple, it’s to put your readers in the limelight of your blog. Most blogs keep the blogger in the limelight, but I think when you put the reader in the limelight, you make them a little bit famous for a few minutes, that’s when your readers really take notice of you and your blogs. There’s a whole heap of different ways that you can do this and most of them are pretty simple that you can do.

The first one that I’d encourage you to think about is to promote a comment to a blog post. Sometimes you’ll have a reader who makes a really insightful comment on your blog. That might tell a story, give you an observation, or a tip. While that comment might be read by a few of your other readers, it’s not really going to have a massive impact, but if you take that comment and make it into a blog post, it actually makes that comment have a bigger impact. It makes it seen by more people, it also has an impact upon your reader. It shows your reader that you really value their comments.

There are other ways that you can do it. You could write a blog post about one of your reader’s blogs. Actually encouraging your readers to go off and read something that they’ve written. You could give your readers an opportunity to promote themselves in some way. This is something that I do from time to time on my Facebook group, I just invite my readers to share their Facebook pages, or their blogs, or to show off a blog post that they’ve written in the past. Sometimes people will say, “I don’t want people to leave links on my Facebook page,” but I actually invite it. I want my readers to have an opportunity to grow their blogs and to show off a little. This actually shows your readers that you care about them.

Inviting guest posts from your readers is another way that you might want to encourage your readers and put them in the limelight. It may even be that you just ask your readers on social media to give you a tip and then you combine all of those responses into a blog post. There’s a whole heap of different things that you can do to let your readers show off a little and to have a moment in the limelight of your blog. Use your blog to build not just you up, but to build your readers up to benefit then. That’s when they take notice.

Related to this, I have some one-on-one interactions that you can have with readers that really build up a community on your blog. I think it was in episode five of the ProBlogger podcast. I encouraged you to email one of your readers as part of the 31-day challenge. This is something I used to do on my blogs all the time. Any time anyone would leave a comment for the first time on my blog, I would email them personally to thank them for leaving a comment, to respond to their comment, to show them that I care, that I noticed that they’d emailed. As I said back in episode five, I still have readers today many years later who continue to read my blog because I emailed them, because I went out of my way to welcome them to my blog.

You can, of course, pay attention to your readers in a whole heap of different ways. This is one-on-one interactions by answering comments when they ask a question or they leave a comment, actually responding to those comments both on your blog and social media, responding to the individual needs that you see in your readership. From time to time, readers will tell you about their problems. Actually, help them, go out of your way to serve and encourage individual readers. Sometimes these things happen in public, but many times, it’s important to do them in private as well. This has a big impact.

The last thing I’d encourage you to think about doing is to surprise and delight your readers. What about giving a prize away to one of your readers. Your most prolific commenter. Someone who has added value to your community. Actually reward the type of behavior that you want to see more of.

This is something I’ve done over the years on ProBlogger. I recently did it in some Periscopes. I emailed some of my Periscope listeners who had been the most prolific commenters and said, “Here’s a free ebook.” It doesn’t cost me anything to give an ebook away, but it has an impact on the people who receive it. We did this at our event last year as well. We got a couple of our attendees up on stage and gave them free tickets through the next year’s event. The surprise and delight have an impact upon the people that you give the gift to, but they also show other people that you care about your readers as well.

I feel like today I’ve just scratched the surface with these seven tips of building community on your blog. There’s a whole heap more that you can do. The key is to be the community that you want to have. To do whatever it takes to build your readers up, to serve them, to pay attention to them, to make them feel noticed, and to do whatever you can to make them feel like they belong. This investment of time (and it does take time) will pay off many times over in the years to come on your blogs.

I look forward to hearing your tips, your responses to what I’ve gone into today. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/61. I’d love to hear your tips and thoughts on how to build community on blogs as well. Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you in episode 62 of the ProBlogger Podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

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Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is about how to deepen relationships with your readers on your blog. One of the most common questions I get from my readers is “how do I get my readers to interact with me?” Not all bloggers spend a lot of time trying to build community but most of the successful bloggers I know of do. This is the first of a two-part episode. Today is about why building engagement with your readers matters so much.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

Creating great content, finding an audience, building engagement, monetizing your blog. This is ProBlogger.

Do you ever feel as a blogger like you’re talking to an empty room? I know I have. Day after day we publish our blog posts only to have them greeted by [bird sounds]. If that’s how you feel, you can relate to that, then I want you to know that you are not alone. In fact, one of the most common questions that I get from readers is how do I get my readers to interact with me? How do I get them to leave a comment, to acknowledge that I’ve even written something?

In the next couple of episodes, I want to talk a little bit about how to build community on your blog. Before I do it, I want to talk a little bit about why it’s so important to deepen reader engagement because not all bloggers actually spend a whole heap of time on this. There are different approaches to this, I’ll say that right up front. I know someone like Seth Godin on his blog, doesn’t have comments, doesn’t respond to comments, and doesn’t engage on Twitter. In an engaging way, I think his only social media presence is broadcasting and he’s got his own good reasons for that.

I think for most bloggers, there’s a really good case for building community on your blog. There’s no one way to do it, but in most cases, I think most of the successful bloggers that I’ve come across have invested time and energy into building community on their blogs. One of the best examples that I can personally think to illustrate the importance of community is when I started my own blog, Digital Photography School, which is my main blog today. 

I launched it back in 2006 and I launched it without comments being activated. I did this for a couple of reasons. One, I just didn’t have time to moderate comments, or at least I thought I didn’t have time. Two, it was a bit of an experiment. I’d seen people like Seth Godin not having comments and had heard his arguments for not having them and thought I’m going to give it a go to see what impact it would have on a new blog.

I very quickly discovered that by starting a blog without comments, that there were more negative impacts than positive ones, at least in my case. The main one for me was that it just felt weird. It left me feeling like I really wanted interaction with my readers. I was putting content out there. I could see through the statistics that people were reading, but I didn’t know who they were, I didn’t know what they thought of what I was writing. It had a real impact upon me as a blogger, and I really did feel like I was talking to an empty room and had no idea how people were interacting with me.

I guess this was partly because I’d become used to reader engagement on my other blogs that I previously had. It just felt wrong for me, so I decided for those reasons to switch comments back on and to begin to interact with my readers. The impact for doing so was pretty much immediate, and it was pretty big on that blog. Pageviews went up. I began to see that readers were returning more. I began to feel like the quality of my content was increasing because I began to understand who my reader was. I began to get questions from readers that I could build upon. I started getting more ideas for content and readers actually started to offer to contribute content.

I’m going to touch on all of these in a few other things as well but I guess really for me, my experience of adding comments and by having a blog that was just about content, and then moving it to be more of a community focused blog, the impact was pretty massive for me. I think it’s one of the main reasons that that blog has grown to become 10 times bigger than ProBlogger and my main source of income today.

Why should you build community on your blog? I want to give you nine quick reasons for doing so. The first one is that it increases your blog’s usefulness. Right from the very early days of ProBlogger, I’ve been saying that the way to build a successful blog is to build a useful blog. If you’re not being useful to readers on some level, then it’s very difficult to have success with your blog, and my experience of having community on a blog is that it does make your blog more useful.

I think James Surowiecki said in his book, The Wisdom of the Crowds, that together we are a lot smarter than any single one of us. I’ve seen this in blogs many times and in my own blogs particularly. Let me give you a really quick example. One day I received an email from a reader, her name was Mandy. It was a heartfelt email. It was a reader of my Digital Photography blog, and she asked me the question how she should go about photographing her dying grandmother with dignity?

Her family didn’t realize they didn’t really have any photos of their grandmother, but she was in hospital and she was going to pass away in the next week. This was way out of my depth, to answer that question. I’d never done it. I didn’t really know what to do, or how to answer that question, but I wanted to answer it. I posted her question with her permission on the blog.

Over the next week, we had 90 responses to it. I’ll link to that particular blog post in the show notes today.

I realized the power of our community at that point. Whilst I didn’t know the answer, whilst Mandy didn’t know the answer, 90 people had ideas on how she could go about photographing her grandmother in this really tough time. The community rallied around her, they gave her all kinds of interesting and useful responses. This is just a simple example of when the community on a blog can make the blog more useful. Without the community on Digital Photography School, I would’ve never been able to help Mandy.

Ultimately, for me, increasing your blog’s usefulness to your readers is the number one reason to build community on your blog, but there are a whole heap of other reasons too. Number two, it builds social proof on your site. If you’ve ever walked down a street and been looking for a restaurant to eat in, you’ve probably seen the power of social proof. Generally, we’re drawn to the restaurants that have other people sitting in them rather than the ones that are empty. The same is true on blogs.

It’s much easier to attract new readers to your blog, if you’ve already got readers on your blog, and readers that are engaging. If you’ve got lots of community, if you’ve got lots of comments, if you’ve got people engaging in polls, if you’ve got people engaging in your social media, it’s much easier to attract new readers to your blog. I’ve seen this many times in my own blogs. It’s almost like a snowballing effect. Once you have some readers and they’re engaging, it’s much easier to grow that readership. 

You’re listening to ProBlogger.

Number three reason for growing community on your blog, it increases your pageviews. Pageviews won’t matter to everyone. It probably depends a little upon the business model that you’re building around your blog, but those of you who are monetizing with advertising, or particularly want to focus upon pageviews and increasing those pageviews, particularly, if you’re advertising with ad networks like AdSense or other ad networks. Community increases pageviews; just simply by the fact of someone leaving a comment on your blog means that they’re going to view two pages on your blog. One is when they first arrive, and two when they hit publish on that comment, it then reloads another comment.

They’re also more likely to come back to the blog to see if other people are responding as well. It could end up being three, or four, or five pageviews. Just some from them simply leaving a comment. What I found is that the more community feel there is on a blog, the more people are wanting to surf around, and there’s a whole heap of different tools that you can use to help with that. For instance, we’ve got Discus loaded on Digital Photography School, it’s a commenting system. Not only does it notify people when other people have responded to the comments, but it also suggests other hot threads of conversation on the site in the comments area, so it increases community in that way.

The other good thing about pageviews that’s not so much tied to monetization is that they help to keep readers retained. The more people view content on your site, the more pages they view, the more sticky your blog becomes. I talked about sticky blogs in episode 35, it’s basically about turning your surfers into readers. Those first time visitors are much more likely to become ongoing readers if they feel engaged in some way. If there’s an interesting conversation that they can join in on, they’re much more likely to come back again and subscribe to your blog. If they feel like they belong, if they feel like they’ve been acknowledged in some way.

The number four reason to build community on your blog is that it makes your blog more attractive to advertisers. This is only for those of you who want to monetize your blogs with advertisers. What I’ve found is that advertisers are much more likely to advertise on your blog if there’s some sort of community or some way that they can engage with your readers, and this is becoming more and more important. Ten years ago, banner ads were big. These days advertisers aren’t just satisfied. Many of them aren’t too satisfied to put banner ads all over your site.

They want to engage with your readers, they want some interaction with them. One of the best examples I can give you of this is a competition that we run on Digital Photography School once a year with one of our advertisers. The advertisers, the New York Institute of Photography. Five years ago, they came to us and said, “We might want to run a comments competition.” It was just a simple competition. People had to leave a comment to be entered into the draw to win one of their courses.

We ran this competition, and we had hundreds of people enter that competition. They’ve come back every year since to run the same competition. Part of the competition was that people had to go over to their site and choose which course they wanted to win, and then in comments, give a reason for wanting to win that course. It got people to their site, but it also got people to engage with what they did. To win the competition you had to understand the courses that they offered, and so we’re able to drive a whole heap of engagement to all those competitions.

As a result, they come back every year and pay us to run these competitions. If you have community on your blog, it’s much easier to run these sorts of campaigns for brands and advertisers. The fifth reason you might want to build community on your blog is that it makes your blog much easier to sell products on whether they be your own products or other people’s products that you can promote as an affiliate. 

This is a different model of monetization, some of you might not want to do advertising. Whether you have an E-book, or a course, or whether you sell your own services. It’s much easier to sell when your readers are engaged, if they feel like they belong, if they feel like they know you and they’ve had an engagement with you and others in the community. The other part of creating products is that when you’ve got community on your blog. It’s much easier to work out what to create when you know your readers, and sometimes your readers will even tell you what to create directly. The best example I can give you of this is 31 days to build a better blog, which I ran as a blog post series back in 2005 on ProBlogger.

I repeated it in 2007. And then in 2009, I did again this 31 day series of blog posts, but at the end of the 2009 series, my readers began to ask me if I could create a product around it. I’m not even really considering that idea but because I’d run this project on my blog, and it was a very interactive project where people could do a little bit of homework and then come back and report how they went. It was highly engaging, and it was out of that engagement, my readers began to brainstorm together without me initially on how I could monetize that particular program.

This to me is the prime example of how to use community to monetize your blog. They asked me to create the product and then they bought it and it went on to become my biggest selling e-book ever.

Having community on your blog will sometimes help you to create the products but also help you to sell them. I’ve seen the same thing over at Digital Photography School, we’ve had over 35 ebooks now there. The readers who buy those products are often the people who are in our forum, or who are leaving comments on our blog, who are in the newsletter, who engaging on social media with us sets the raving fans the most engaged readers who tend to buy the most.

You’re listening to ProBlogger.

The sixth reason to build community on your blog is that it makes your blog more attractive to sell. Over the years, I’ve had a number of companies come and offer to buy my blogs and whilst I’m not looking to sell them at all, although for the right price you never know. In most cases the conversation starts with the potential buyer interested in knowing your traffic numbers and the income numbers on your site. That’s generally where the conversation starts, but in a couple of cases, when I also started to talk about the community on my blog, the engagement with my readers on the blog, the people coming in and who were interested in buying started talking about higher prices, and their eyes lit up when it came to community.

This depends a little on the business model of the person who might want to buy your blog, but I’ve seen this happen a number of times. Community makes your blog more attractive to potential buyers. Number seven reason for building community on your blog is that it creates you an army of advocates and evangelists. An engaged reader is a very powerful thing, because not only do they make your site more useful, not only are they more likely to buy your products, but they’re also more likely to help you to grow what you do in a number of ways, firstly, by telling other people about it. I see this all the time.

Every time I meet someone in person, I ask them, “How did you find my blog?” This is when I made the reader say it at a conference. Many of the times it’s because someone else referred them to the blog, and they remember who that person is. Many of the times where I hear Sarah referred me, or it was Joe, or it was Anne. Often it’s people I actually recognize the name of because they are regular commenters on my blogs. What I began to notice over the years is that the most engaged readers are also the most likely to share what you do.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes–it doesn’t happen all the time, but–the most engaged readers can also help you in other ways. An example of this was quite a few years ago now just after Digital Photography School started, one of my most engaged readers emailed me and said, “Hey, I know a journalist at the New York Times. Would you be interested in being interviewed by them? They’re looking for bloggers at the moment to interview.” This was a highly engaged reader, one of my most highly commenting readers. I knew them by name, and I’ve engaged with them many times. They would never have emailed me with that particular introduction if I had not engaged with them, if I did not build community with them.

When you acknowledge your readers, when you know your readers, they’re much more likely to think of you when opportunities arise. Another example was when our readers actually began a campaign to try and get Canon and Nikon to advertise on my site. I’d never asked them to do it. They just loved our site and actually got together as a group in our forum to begin to try and campaign to get those brands to advertise with us, and it did end up getting us a small advertising campaign with Canon quite a few years ago.

You never quite know where the community might lead, but if readers are engaged, they feel ownership of your site, they’re much more likely to help you to improve it. The eighth and second last reason to build community on your blog is that it can really help you to build and generate user generated content on your site. Some of you won’t be looking for user generated content on your site, you prefer to create your own content yourself, but if you are interested in it, you’re much more likely to attract guest posters and contributors if you have engaged readers. Guest posting might be one of those but there’s other ways that you can generate content from your readers.

For example, in the past, I’ve asked my social media followers on my ProBlogger accounts to share their advice on different aspects of blogging on social media, and then I’ve turned their responses into blog posts. I remember once I asked for productivity tips from my readers, and my readers all tweeted back to me their productivity tips, and then I embedded their tweets into my blog as a blog post. There was user generated content, I didn’t need to write much at all, because my readers know how much I do. Together, we know so much more, so there’s all kinds of creative ways that you can tap into that community to generate content. 

Another example would be the polls that we regularly run on Digital Photography School, we try to do one every month or two, just a poll asking a simple question to our readers. That in itself can generate content because we embed the polls into a blog post, but we then take the results of that and put it into a nicely designed chart, and then do a follow up blog post, which is another blog post. It’s more content, but that often stimulates all kinds of conversation.

For instance, we asked our readers once what brand of camera do they use, they all voted in the poll, then we presented back to them and told them that most of our readers use Canon, and then Nikon, and then whatever it might be, and that, of course, opened up a can of worms that opened up all kinds of debate and interesting discussion. Using your readers’ responses, using that community to generate even more content and even more discussion can be a very powerful thing.

Creating great content and building your audience, this is ProBlogger.

The last reason that I think it’s really important to build community on your blog and this one probably is one of the most important to me, is that community brings more personal satisfaction to your blogging. When I first came up with this list of things that I’ve been talking about in this podcast, I didn’t really have this point, but on my reflection of the last 13 or so years of blogging, this is one of the biggest benefits of having community on your blogs. 

I’ve kind of touched on this by talking about Digital Photography School when I started that blog without comments. It wasn’t satisfying to write that blog. It left me wanting more and it didn’t motivate me to keep writing the blog, but when I switched the comments on and began to engage with my readers, began to know who they were, began to see that I was helping them in different ways, began to see their questions, it became a whole heap more energizing. At many times over the years, it’s my readers comments, and it’s my readers engagement that has driven me through the tough times where I’ve had bloggers block, when I’ve had a lack of motivation. It’s the engagement that I’ve had with readers that continues to drive me on time and time again.

I’m often asked the question, “How have you kept at it for 13 years?” My honest answer is, “It’s my readers. I love my readers.” If I didn’t have community, if I didn’t have comments, if I didn’t have engagement on social media, I’m not sure I would have stuck at it that long. If it’s only for that reason, I think it’s worth investing time and energy into building community on your blog. I don’t want this podcast to become a bit of a Kumbaya moment where we just talk about the benefits of creating community on your blog, there are also some costs and building community on your blog does take time.

It’s a gradual process. It will take you years to really build up a community on your blog, and also takes time in that you have to invest time into this. If you want to have community on your blog, you need to put time into building community on your blog. You need to take the lead on that. Building community on your blog can also be a bit of an emotional roller coaster. When you invest into your community and no one comes back at you with comments in the early days, that can be incredibly disheartening.

You can also have periods where perhaps the community gets a bit sour on your blogs where a troll might come in and it will spam as might hit you. That can be disheartening too but it can also lead to many highs as well. Roller coasters have their highs and lows. I guess it’s probably important to also acknowledge that having community on your blog and investing into community on your blog can also be a little bit risky at times.

There have been times over the years where I’ve seen a bloggers readership turn on them in different ways because they’ve either sort of not invested into the community, or they’ve done something wrong and haven’t been transparent in some way. If you’ve got to engage readership, they feel like they own your site to a degree, so you need to manage them, and you need to look after them, and continue to invest into them, continue to build that culture. If you don’t, or if you take your community in a different direction to what your readers want, then there can be some pushback on that.

I think it’s worth mentioning that there are some costs and perhaps some risks at times of building community on your blog, but in my experience, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

How to build and monetize your blog? This is ProBlogger.

In the next podcast episode, I want to get a little bit more practical. We’ve been talking about why you should build community today, but I think it’s probably really important now that we shift gears and we get into how to do it. I’ve got a variety of really practical things that you can do to build community on your blog, and you’ll find that in episode 61 in a couple of days’ time.

Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find today’s show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/60. I’ll talk to you in episode 61 on how to build community on your blog.

You’ve been listening to ProBlogger. If you’d like to comment on any of today’s topics or subscribe to the series. Find us at problogger.com/podcast. Tweet us @problogger. Find us at facebook.com/problogger or search ProBlogger on iTunes.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

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Today’s episode is all about how to decide on the focus topic for your blog. Having a niche topic for your blog helps you focus but it also helps new readers find you and current readers to understand more easily what you and your blog is about. I share 15 questions that you can ask yourself that will help you work out possible themes for your blog and help you choose a niche to focus on.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode I show you how answering these questions can help you unlock what the focus topic of your blog should be:

Bonus Question: What type of person do you most feel for?

Defining what your blog is about is something that is well worth doing particularly when you’re starting out with your blog. It’s probably a question that you will want to revisit every now and again as well as your blog develops. It’s okay to change direction and to change the topic of your blog at times.

Most successful blogs do have a niche or a topic. Some also have a variety of topics that they cover but they usually have some way of focusing on what they do. In many cases, it’s more about the reader and their particular demographic rather than a specific topic. You might have a blog for moms and talk about parenting, fashion, and other interests that moms might have. Or you might have a blog for retirees and talk about travel, finance, and being a grandparent, or a variety of topics that are relevant for that particular audience. Generally, you either have a niche, a topic, or a demographic as the focus of your blog.

Today I want to give you 15 quick questions that will help you to define what your blog’s niche or focus should be. What I would encourage you to do is to jot down these questions and I will share them over on the show notes to work through them one by one and just simply answer them with a few keywords for each question. Hopefully, by the time you get to the end of the 15 questions, you will see some themes emerging which might give you some hints as to where to focus your attention in terms of a niche or a topic.

So, let us get into them. They are relatively quick. Some of them are pretty obvious and some of them are a little bit different. Hopefully, we’ll give you some fresh insights.

Question number 1 is one of the more obvious ones. What interests do you have? What is it that you find yourself thinking about when you have got the spare time? What magazines do you read? What hobbies do you have? These types of interests, whether they be work-related, life-related, or relational interests, might give you some hints as to what type of blog you might have.

Question number 2, what experiences have you had? Experiences (of course) can be work experiences. They could be your professional experiences. They might be personal experiences, relationships, hobbies, or experiences of travel. Also, think about the good experiences that you’ve had but also some of those tough experiences that you’ve had. What challenges have you overcome? Sometimes, the hardest times in our life are actually the times that are most formative for us. They actually give us insight into life that can be really useful for other people as well.

I talked to one blogger recently who had gone through a divorce, and the experience of that really was something that she wanted to talk about in her blog. Her blog is for people going through that particular experience. Don’t just pay attention to the good experiences, the fun, the things that you’ve achieved. Also think about the tough times, the values, the mistakes, and some of those sorts of experiences as well. 

Question number 3 is what expertise and skills have you developed? I’m not just talking here about professional skills and expertise; although that’s certainly something that you want to think about. I’m not just talking about the qualifications that you might have educationally. I’m also talking about life experiences, life expertise, and life skills that you have developed.

One of my friends, Nicole Avery from Planning Queen (a great blog), Planning with Kids, one of her skill sets is that she is a mom of five kids, that’s an experience that she’s got but she is particularly good at organizing that family and you’d want to be if you’ve got five kids. She’s very productive and that’s an experience that she’s had, but she has also built up some expertise in that. She brings that to her blog. The expertise and skills that you might have might be work-related, but they might also be to do with your family, the relationships that you have, might be a supporting type of thing. These can all shape your blog.

Question number 4 is what are your passions? What keeps you awake at night? What could you talk for hour after hour after hour about with friends?

Number 5 is what are your dreams? What do you one day hope to become? This was why I started ProBlogger. ProBlogger was a blog I started in 2004. I was already making some money from my blogs. I was on the way to being a professional blogger but I wasn’t yet a full-time blogger. It was a dream that I had, so the blog became a journal of me chasing that dream and sharing what I was learning along the way to achieving that dream in the long run. So, what are your dreams?

Question number 6, what gives you energy? What wakes you up? What lights you up? When you see something that’s related to it, makes you pay attention to it, makes your eyes widen. It’s probably connected to some of the passions that you have.

Question number 7 is kind of the flip side of some of these. What is your pet peeve? What is the thing that gets on your nerve the most? Now, while I would encourage you probably not to define your blog by what you hate or what you don’t like, sometimes the pet peeve that you have or the thing that gets on your nerves can actually be flipped around in a more positive way. I guess it’s about trying to find where your itch is, where you need to scratch. Maybe that will give you some sort of an indication about what you could be wanting to fix or solve in terms of a problem or a challenge that you face or you see other people facing. 

Question number 8 is what do you find yourself talking about to your friends, colleagues, customers, or even strangers? It’s funny how some topics just keep coming up for us. Whether that’s because we are interested in those things and we bring up those things in conversation, or whether that’s because other people bring up those conversations with us because they perceive us to be interested in those things or they perceive us to have some expertise in those areas.

One of the things that come up in conversations for me quite regularly is productivity, which I find quite odd because I’m not the most productive or disciplined person. At least that’s not the way I have seen myself from my whole life, but it keeps coming up in conversation. I’ve paid attention to that because other people seem to think that I am a productive person and I guess I am in some ways. That’s something to pay attention to. It’s how other people perceive me. What topics come up in conversation?

Question number 9 is related to this. What are your most frequently asked questions? What questions do people ask you? This again indicates how other people perceive you, how other people see you. It’s in effect your personal brand. The brand that you portray is often indicated by the questions that people ask you. Pay attention to those types of things.

I was sharing this morning on Periscope, my wife, for many years, has always been asked questions around “What dress should I buy?” or, “What shaped dress should I wear?” or, “What colors might suit me?” or, “Could you help me to design or start my laundry room?” She used to get all these questions about style, about fashion, about design; these types of questions. I guess that was a good indication that maybe that should be the topic of her blog. It is today what she blogs about. What questions are you asked?

Question number 10 is again similar in some ways. It taps into how other people perceive you. The question is how do people introduce you or how do people talk about you or describe you to other people? Sometimes when you get introduced to a new person by a mutual friend, they will talk about you to each other. Say, “This is Darren, I met him when we were doing this. You should talk to him because he’s really good at this.” Those types of introductions or those types of descriptions about who we are, again, tap into how we are perceived by other people. Sometimes they can surprise us the way other people perceive us. That can be really useful to tap into because it might actually unlock something that we can talk about.  We can actually help people in those particular areas.

Question 11, what is your superpower? What is the thing that you can do almost effortlessly that sometimes other people struggle with? Again, I think of Nicole Avery. She manages that house of five kids really, at least from my perception, quite seamlessly. She puts together lunches every week, she batch cooks and does certain things that seem to make the rest of her week easy whereas I find just getting three kids ready for school a real chore. She’s got a superpower in that area I would say. Each of us has those sorts of things that just seem to come naturally for us. So, what’s your superpower?

Question number 12, what do you wish people around you did differently? What do you wish that they knew? What do you wish they understood that they seem to not understand? We each have these things that we kind of wish everyone was like us in. Again, probably just tapping into that pet peeve sometimes or the thing that you wished other people were more like you in. That might indicate something that you could talk about.

Question number 13, if you could write about anything for a whole day, what would it be? If you could just sit down and brain dump something that you know down onto paper, or you could brain dump it into a podcast, or you could brain dump it into a video, what would it be? Perhaps related to this is what do you want your kids to know that you know? That might actually indicate something that you could write a whole heap of content on over time. 

Question number 14, what are you learning at the moment? And what are you most interested in learning more about? I don’t know if you’re like me, but I go through patches where I really tap into a whole heap of books on a particular topic or I’ll listen to a whole heap of podcasts on a particular topic. What are you tapping into at the moment? What are those big themes that seem to make you interested in learning more?

And the last question, question 15 is what is your mission in life? What is the thing that you are trying to achieve the most? What is the cause that you’re most interested in? What is your fight? These types of bigger picture missions can be really helpful to tap into.

These are 15 questions that I think will help you (hopefully) to begin to see some things and some of the things that you might be able to blog about. I want to leave you, though, with another bonus question. This is not so much about the topic or the niche; it’s more about the reader. What type of person do you feel most passionate about? What type of person do you feel you have a heart for?

I was talking to a blogger the other day and she was saying that her heart goes out to single moms. She was a single mom herself, so every time she meets a single mom, she just really feels for them and she just really wants to support them, encourage them, and help them in any practical way that she can. Once she tapped into who she was most passionate about, that unlocked what her blog should be about the most.

I talked to another blogger a month or so ago and they said a very similar thing, that their heart was for retirees, people who had just finished working full-time for the first time and were in that in-between phase of trying to work out what life was like at that stage, how to fill their time, and how to enter into this next exciting phase of their life. A time that can be really exciting but can also be a bit unsettling. That’s the kind of person that she felt most drawn to.

Perhaps if you’re struggling to come up with a topic, ask yourself some questions around the type of person that you feel most strongly towards and it may actually be that that’s what your blog should be about. In that case, it may be that you can cover a whole heap of topics that might be relevant for that type of person.

I hope these questions have helped you. If you’re just in the beginning phases of thinking about a new blog to unlock what your blog might be about. I do think it is useful to have a focus on your blog even if you do want to touch on different topics. It probably is important to have some kind of focus. Some sort of boundaries around the things that you will and want to talk about on your blog. Again, what I would encourage you to do is to go through these 15, actually 16 questions and just make some notes on each one of them.

At the end of that, look for the themes that you note them. It might actually be that there’s a number of things there that you could potentially create a blog on. You can find all of these 16 questions over at problogger.com/podcast/59 where I got today’s show notes. Once you’ve done the exercise, I’d love to hear what you’ve found. What did you come up with for your blog’s topic, niche or focus?

While you’re over at the podcast site do head over to problogger.com/podcast/subscribe to subscribe to the ProBlogger PLUS newsletter. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com/problogger and at Twitter at @problogger, where I’m also @problogger on Periscope. 

That’s a lot to remember but I would love to connect with you on social media and via our newsletter so that I can keep you up to date with new episodes of this podcast.  Lastly, if you found this podcast useful I would love it if you would give us a review on iTunes where you can find us by searching for ProBlogger or on Stitcher if you use that service as well. Thanks for listening and I hope you have a great week of blogging. I’ll talk with you in episode 60 of the ProBlogger Podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS for free to get free blogging tutorials and podcasts in your inbox each week.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is all about how to decide whether to include the date on your blog posts. I received this question from a listener, who noticed that I use timestamps on one of my blogs, but not on the other. Dates can either add or take away from your blog. I share how I decided what to do with each of my blogs and tips for you to work out what is right for you.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

Bernadeth’s question is one that I get quite a bit. A lot of my readers do read both of my blogs, ProBlogger and Digital Photography School, and have realized that on one, the date that the post was written does appear on the blog, that’s ProBlogger and over on Digital Photography School, there are no dates as to when the post was written. My theory is that dates can either add to or take away from your blog posts. Let me explain that a little further.

When you put a date on your blog post, you signal to your readers when the post was written. There are no record signs there, that’s pretty obvious, I know. This is useful to your readers who want to make a judgment on how relevant the post is for them at any point in time. It signals to them that a post is either current, recent, or that it is dated when the year is older and dated.

There’s a problem here and that is when you have a timeless or evergreen piece of content. By that piece of content, that doesn’t really date. The principles that you write about today might still be relevant in 10 years’ time. When you put a date on that type of content, it can act as a distraction to your reader. 

When they arrive at a blog post and see it was written in 2007, like many of the posts on Digital Photography School, a little warning bell goes off in their mind that they are reading a post that is not current. I’ve had comments on this type of post, numerous times, saying, “This post is out of date,” or, “This post is old,” even when the content in the post is still completely relevant for today. When a reader has this reaction, no matter what information your post contains, it’ll seem old to them and they lose engagement with the post. 

This may not happen to everyone, I suspect, most of us listening to this going, “No, I’m willing to learn from old stuff,” but I reckon it happens to most of us, at least on a subconscious level. 

On the flip side of this, time dates can be good on evergreen content when the date is recent. If you arrive at a post and you see that it was written last month, psychologically, we’re more open to that type of content because it’s new, it’s fresh, it’s a new idea even if it is exactly the same idea that was written in 2006. Dates can be good and they can be bad. They can make your post seem dated or they can make your post seem cutting edge. 

What’s a blogger to do? Should we have dates on our posts? For me, the way I determine whether I put a date on a post or not is to ask, is the date going to be relevant to the post in some way? The answer to this really is to let me take two different courses of action on my post. At ProBlogger, problogger.net, which we’re emerging over the problogger.com/blog in the coming months—don’t go there yet—we do have the dates on our post. The reason that I do this is that it’s two-fold. The main one is that the industry of blogging is moving fast.

When I started ProBlogger back in 2004, I think it was, things were moving fast. Principles were changing all the time and they still are today. The tools of blogging are constantly evolving, social media networks are constantly changing, search engine optimization principles are constantly shifting. The things that I’m writing about at ProBlogger or my team are writing about on ProBlogger are changing and they are time-sensitive types of things. When we write about search engine optimization in 2006, most of the few things are the same, most of it has changed. It’s relevant to have a date on that to let our readers know whether the information in it will still be relevant.

The other reason I want to update my post on ProBlogger was that I was on a really steep learning curve when I started the blog and I still am today. I’m still accumulating knowledge on this particular topic. Many things I wrote in the early days, I knew I wasn’t overly experienced in them. So, I wanted to show the journey of my knowledge growing and show the journey of my own development on this particular topic of blogging. ProBlogger very much started out as a personal journal of my discovery with blogging. I thought the dates were relevant on that front. 

Digital Photography School, I don’t timestamp my blog posts and I never ever have. The reason for not having timestamps on the content at Digital Photography School is for the vast majority of the posts there, the date has no real relevance to the post itself. Digital Photography School is not a news-related blog, while occasionally we’ll review cameras and we will include a date in those posts (in the content usually). The main focus of that site is to teach people how to take better photos and how to get it out of automatic mode. While the cameras are changing, the principles of photography really are not changing at all. If they are changing, they’re changing quite slowly. 

Many of the posts I wrote in 2007 on aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and how to hold the camera, those things have not really changed, they’re evergreen. Dates would only serve to distract our readers from the content itself. I do occasionally get a comment from a reader saying, “When was this written?” and asking for that information. I’m more than happy to give them that information. To be honest, they can actually track it down if they scroll further down the page and look at the comments. They’ll begin to see that comments have been left since 2007 or 2008 but I get very little push back from our readers on not having dates on our site. 

There are some other solutions that you might want to consider. Firstly, you might want to have your timestamp underneath your blog post and I think this is an in-between compromise. You don’t have to broadcast right up front that this post was written in 2008 but you can include it there underneath your post and then perhaps in a lighter shade rather than big, flashing lights. You can have it in a gray color, not the largest font underneath your blog post for those who do want to find out when it was written. I think this could be useful because people, by that stage, would have read the content and hopefully, they will have been served by the content. 

Another approach that I’ve seen a number of bloggers take is to hack WordPress and there may be a plugin, I’m not sure whether there is yet for this, but I have seen a number of bloggers who show the dates on their blog post for three or six months after the blog post was written and have WordPress not show the date after that. Once the content becomes a little more dated, because it’s over 6 or 12 months old, they just don’t show the dates anymore. I guess that could be the best of both worlds if you do want to show that a piece of content is new, if it is new, and then to hide the fact that it’s old when it becomes old.

Maybe the other approach, I’ve seen other bloggers do this as well, they have dates on the front page of their content or in the archive categories of their content but not on the post themselves. This helps if someone is scanning through a category to see what is recent and what is older. But on the blog post, when people land on that directly from Google, they don’t see that. 

I’m not sure there is a right or wrong answer here. Last time, I surveyed my readers which was a few years ago now on this. I asked them if they had dates on their post. Around 75% of my readers that they did have dates on their posts. I do think that that’s probably the most common thing, but I personally think there’s a place for it and a place where it’s okay to have them off. But I’ve love to hear what you and why you do what you do in today’s show notes. 

You can find today’s show notes on problogger.com/podcast/58. Let us know what you do, why you do it, and whether you’re thinking about changing now as a result of listening to this particular podcast. I hope you found this helpful, in particular Bernadeth, thanks for asking the question. If you do have a question, feel free to shoot me an email by the contact form on my site or leave a comment for us on the show notes. We’ll talk to you in episode 59 of the ProBlogger podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

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Today’s episode is about how to face the things that you are struggling with on your blog and how to make it successful despite the challenges. There are many hurdles to building a successful blog. Every blogger encounters their own unique combination of challenges. I share 9 of the major hurdles I’ve faced with my blogging and how I’ve got over them.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

Today, I sat down for a good couple of hours and thought back over the last 13 years of my own blogging and some of the major hurdles that I’ve faced along the way. I want to share them with you today because many times when I talk to people, people see the end result of what I’ve built and what other bloggers have built. I’ve got ProBlogger, I’ve got Digital Photography School, but the reality is that those two blogs, well, ProBlogger started in 2004 and Digital Photography School in 2007. Whilst you see the finished result or the result of 2015 today, you haven’t seen the journey along the way. I’m really aware that perhaps it’s useful to share some of the challenges that I faced along the way because I know many of them are similar to what you’re facing today too.

Today, I want to present to you nine hurdles that I’ve faced as a blogger and how I got over them. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/57 where I’ve got a stack of further reading for you. I’m not going to go into great depth into each of the nine hurdles. I do have some practical things to say about each one, but I want to give you further reading so that you can go away and dig into them more, particularly the ones that relate to you. Let’s get into today’s nine hurdles.

The first hurdle that I struck up against when I first started blogging back in 2002 on my first personal blog was that I was a complete technological Luddite. I often tell the story about how for three months after I started that first blog, I didn’t know how to make text bold on my first blog. I just had no experience previously in anything to do with creating content online or setting up a blog particularly. The only thing I’d really done online up until that point was to use email, do a little bit of search, Google wasn’t even around back then it was Netscape, and I had used some IRC chat. None of it was really particularly technical. I had certainly never coded anything. I’d never had to register a domain, or set up a server, or design any kind of website.

When I started out, I started out on a free blog platform. Back then, it was called Blogger or Blogspot, which is now Blogger today and owned by Google. Back then it wasn’t even owned by Google. A lot of what you had to do, even with Blogger back then, whilst it was all templated and all hosted for you, you didn’t need to know some code. That’s why I didn’t know how to make text bold because you needed to know the HTML back then. There was no what you see is what you can get. I didn’t need to learn a lot. 

As I look back, I realize that whilst it felt overwhelming at the time, I never really needed to know everything when I first started out. This is I guess one of the things I’d encourage you with if you’re feeling overwhelmed with the technological side of blogging, is that you don’t need to know every single thing about that tech side. There will be times where you do need to be intentional about your learning and learn a new skill, but you don’t need to learn it all at once.

The key is to be a learner, even if you’re going to eventually outsource some of this stuff, which is what I did. It’s good to get a grasp of the basics; to be able to understand the basics of HTML, to be able to understand the basics of servers, to understand the basics of how to set up a WordPress blog. Even if you don’t use that over and over again, it does help you when you’re talking with people who you outsource to. 

Another thing is that you need to almost make peace with the fact that there’s always going to be something else to learn. Almost making peace with that that you don’t know it all and you don’t have to know it all can actually be something that helps you. Take it one step at a time. The other thing for me is the realization that whilst you don’t know it all, and whilst I don’t know it all, together we do know it all. There are plenty of helpful people around on the internet. I remember a month or so into my first blog, beginning to network with other bloggers and realize that some of those other bloggers did know more than me. Many of them were willing to share what they learned.

For the first year or so of my blogging, I interacted with a couple over in New Zealand, Rachel and Regan Cunliffe. They helped me to learn some of the basics, and then eventually Rachel designed my blog. At first, we bartered services, not that I really had much to offer her at the time. Later on, we actually became collaborators on a project as well. You never quite know where those relationships will go. In the early days, you may not be able to afford to hire someone, but there are plenty of Facebook groups and other groups of helpful people out there who will help you.

As you do begin to earn something from your blog, I would encourage you though to begin to outsource what you can and what you can afford because that will certainly help you to focus on the things that you do know how to do, which is really important. Challenge number one for me is technological know-how. I can barely even say that let alone do a lot of the tech stuff on my blog. Really today, to this day, I’m still not that technologically-minded. I’m a testament to the fact that you can build a relatively successful blog and still not know it all on this front. Again, I got some further reading in today’s show notes on some of the tech side of setting up a blog. You might want to check that reading out too.

Hurdle number two I want to talk about briefly today is the fear of looking stupid. This is probably another one of those really early challenges that is probably quite tied to the first hurdle that I’ve talked about. As a result of being challenged in the area of the technological side of my blogs, I did always worry that I was looking a little bit stupid. I have really distinct memories of those first few months of blogging where I would compare my horribly designed blog. What I thought was a pretty badly written blog, I never had training in writing, with other bloggers who seemed to know what they were doing. I fell for the comparison game that many of us fall into. 

Luckily, I got past this fear of looking stupid and kept working on developing my blogging voice and skill set. Over time, some of that fear of looking stupid began to subside. For me, one of the keys to getting past this was to focus not so much on what I didn’t know and how I looked but to focus on creating content with my blog that really attempted to solve tangible problems that I knew people have. People will get past the fact that your blog may not look pretty, or that you may not know everything there is to know about blogging if you are helping them in some way. If you are being constructive and you are creating content that does tangibly help people, then they’ll look past how you might look, and see your heart, and see that you are a helpful person, you’re a useful person. 

Also, if you’re struggling with fear, you might want to check out episode 54 of this podcast. Just a couple of episodes ago now where I did give some other suggestions on facing fear.

Hurdle number three that I’ve come up against many times, I have to say, is finding a focus for my blogging. Particularly in the early days of my blog, my first blog was quite general, it was a personal blog. I might describe it as today, although I didn’t use that term back then. It was just what everyone did with blogging back in 2002 where I write about all kinds of stuff. 

Previous to blogging, I’ve been working as a minister. I used to talk a lot on my first blog about churches, theology, and spirituality. But in time, I broadened that to talk about other interests that I had including movies, politics, photography, life in Australia, and then later on, talking about blogging itself. What I found is that the more topics that I wrote about, the more I enjoyed blogging, but the more pushback I got from my readers who didn’t always share that eclectic mix of interests that I had.

I decided to start niching down. I began to start blogs on different topics and different niches. My first one was a photography one, then I started ProBlogger. I then started a whole heap of other blogs. I’ve had about 30 over the years. That was my approach, I guess, to finding focus. Whilst not every blogger does that, not every blogger has a single focus for their blogs, I do find that most successful blogs at least have some way of focusing their blog. Whether it be the topic or niche, or whether it be the demographic of their reader, or whether it be some sort of a fight or cause that they’re on about. I’ve got some further reading on how to find some focus with your blog that I’ll share in the show notes today. 

I would encourage you to try and give that some thought. If you do have quite a general blog, it can be easier to monetize a blog that has some kind of focus to it. Also, it can be easier to find a readership for it. There are, of course, bloggers who are exceptions to this. There are a few general kinds of blogs out there, but most of them do have some focus in one way or another.

Hurdle number four that I want to talk about today is blogger’s block. It was about a few years into my own blogging that I had my first bout of blogger’s block. I found that it was soul-destroying. I’d been working on my blog for at least two or three years I guess by this stage and things had been relatively easy. I kind of went into this period where the creative juices just stopped flowing. I would just sit there at the computer staring at an empty draft of a post and wonder if I’d ever, ever come up with an idea to write about again. It was soul-destroying stuff. The first time for me I think it lasted about a week or so, but I’ve had numerous bouts of blogger’s block since.

One of the keys I think to overcome blogger’s block is to work out what kind of blogger’s block you have. As I look back over the last 13 years of my own blogging, I realized that the blogger’s block that I’ve had has actually been different at different times. At times, the block is around what should I write about? It’s almost ideas block. Other times, it’s the writing process that seems to be the problem. It’s the writer’s block I guess, or the creation block. Then other times, still, I’ve had a lot of ideas and I’ve written a lot, but I’ve not completed what I’ve written. I look at my drafts and I have 40 or 50 unpublished drafts. It’s almost completion block. Then I guess, even just to work out what type of blogger’s block you might be suffering can help you to move towards breaking through that.

For me, it’s about trying to work out where is the blockage and how I can allocate more time, more creativity, and more energy to that particular area. If I’m struggling with ideas block, I find rather than sitting at my computer as I sit down to write a new post, if I have already brainstormed a whole heap of ideas, then that can help me to combat that ideas block. Just work out which one it is and then begin to allocate some extra time to that particular activity. Again, I’ve got further reading in today’s show notes on battling with blogger’s block. Particularly a post that I wrote, which gives you 11 tips to breaking through that blogger’s block.

Hurdle number five I want to talk about today is kind of related in some ways. It is a blogger’s burnout. There were times, particularly in the early days of my blogging probably about year three, year four, where I went through times where I almost burnt myself out with the amount of work I was putting into my blogging. This is just after I’d gone full time, and I was really excited about blogging. I became quite obsessed with them in many ways, but I also began to work on lots and lots and lots of projects. 

There was one time when I was running 20 blogs at the one time, and I was trying to publish content to them every day. It was a recipe for disaster because the quality of my blogging suffered, but so too did my health. The solution really was I had to scale back. In order to be able to sustain my blogging, I had to pull right back, just do a couple of blogs. They’re the two blogs that I still have today, ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. By doing that, I raised the quality of what I was able to produce. I was also able to sustain that and to sustain my own life in many ways as well. My health improved as a result.

The realization is that you don’t need to have a whole heap of projects on the go at the same time. There’s a realization that came to me that you don’t even need to publish daily. This is a myth that a lot of bloggers buy into is that you need to be producing new content every single day. Whilst that is a successful model for many bloggers, it’s not the only model. There are plenty of blogs around that may only publish three or four times a week. My wife only publishes three times a week. On ProBlogger, at the moment, we publish four or five posts a week. I know other bloggers who only publish once a week, one really great article. This idea of slow blogging rather than fast blogging is really something that can be sustainable. It’s about quality over quantity.

Another realization for me over the years is that I need to take breaks. Even from the early days of my own blogging, we always took an annual holiday as a family, which was time away from blogging. Lastly, paying attention to your own health, your own mental health, and your own well-being is really important. Those of you who’ve been listening to the ProBlogger podcast will remember episode 38 where I talk about my biggest lesson of building a profitable blog and really had nothing to do with blogging itself. It had all to do with finding myself, finding my why, and getting back in touch with my own well-being. Go and listen to episode 38 if you want to hear my own story of humiliation, which turned that around for me.

Hurdle number six that I want to talk about today is dealing with personal attack. Blogging is one of those mediums where you just have to keep putting yourself out there. Your ideas, your experiences, your story, sometimes your photo, your video, and your voice if you’re podcasting. When you do that, from time to time, you will get people critiquing what you do. You’ll get a lot of feedback as they like to call it, but many times it can be critique. In the main, I’ve not had a lot of nasty attacks. I actually find that if you take a relatively positive, constructive approach to your blogging, that 99.9% of people will have a positive and constructive reaction to you. On the flip side to that, if you take a kind of a snarky aggressive tone to your blogging, you might get that kind of feedback back as well.

Even if you are constructive and positive, you will occasionally get attacks. Some people seem to attract more negative attacks and personal attacks than other people, but I find in the main, if you’re positive, it will only be the minority of people who do that. In some ways, this is just all part of blogging and putting yourself out there. There have been a couple of instances over the last 13 years where the critique of other people began to feel more like a personal attack than constructive and genuine dialogue. 

This really can take its toll. I do actually remember a couple of times over the 13 years where I actually began to wonder whether it was worth continuing with blogging. It’s kind of weird that it only really sometimes takes one or two people really going in hard at you to make you consider whether you should give up, even though there are tens of thousands of other people who are very positive towards you. It’s very easy to dwell upon that negative stuff.

I remember particularly on one occasion, this was really tough when the attack not only became personal but it became physical. The person actually tracked me down here in Melbourne. It ended up being a very not nice situation. Thankfully, one that where things worked out in the end after a bit of a frightening encounter. I guess it was a realization to me that you really need to pay attention to your own well-being and how you’re going to put yourself out there in this way. 

There’s no real solution to this. We probably should and could do a whole episode on this particular topic. I actually will try and get some other bloggers to give some input on this. A few of my own tips on dealing with this feedback, critique, personal attack of other people; it partly is about trying to get a thicker skin and not react in some ways. I know that’s not the easiest thing to hear, but over time, you do become a little bit more used to that. Sometimes there is a place to try and listen to the critique and to learn from it if there’s something valid in it. Many times, when it gets nasty, it’s probably more about trying to put some distance between you and the critique.

Certainly don’t seek out the negative stuff. If you do go looking for negatives, you’ll probably find it. Don’t go seeking it. Secondly, surround yourself with positive people, this is both online and offline. It’s really important to have offline people that you can find positivity in those relationships and to find support in the offline, but also online. Get your online cheer squad around you as well. It might be a matter of getting a Facebook group around you of other bloggers who are in your niche that you can support each other through those tougher times. 

Remember that many times the nastiness is more about the circumstances of the other person than anything to do with you at all. There’s been many times where I’ve been on the receiving ends of really nasty stuff and then hear a few days later that that person is actually really sorry that they did that and they were having a really rough day. Remember that it’s many times nothing to do with you at all and more about what the person’s going through.

There are certainly times where you can turn the other person around with a kind response or a generous response, but there are also many times where you need to ignore, and sometimes when you either need to block or delete that person’s comments, or block them on social media. There are also times where you need to seek the help and intervention of other people in this whole process as well. 

I don’t really feel like I’ve brilliantly covered some how-tos on this. I know there are many different approaches to dealing with critique, and particularly attack. It’s certainly something that I want to return to and get some expertise on this podcast in a future episode.

The seventh hurdle that I’ve faced is one that I know almost every blogger has faced. Maybe 1% of bloggers have never faced this, but it’s around building readership. When it comes to building a profitable blog, there’s no escaping the fact that you do need to build your readership. You don’t need to have millions of readers to be a full-time blogger. There are some monetization models where you won’t need as many readers, but every blog monetization strategy that I can think of relies upon having some people read your blog. In most cases, the more people we have, the easier it is to make money from your blog. This is really frustrating and is a massive hurdle for most bloggers as I say.

I remember times in the early days of my own blogging where I almost lost hope after hours and hours of writing great content every week and then looking at the stats and realizing that really nobody was reading it at all. I don’t want to give you a whole heap of practical tips on this particular topic here because over the last 56 episodes, we’ve probably done about 10 podcasts on this topic already. I will link back to those episodes in today’s show notes. There’s a whole finding readers category of this podcast. It’s probably the category that has the most podcast episodes in it already. 

I would encourage you to take a long term view of that. It does take time to build that readership; it does snowball and build momentum over time. Particularly pay attention though in the early days of your blog to growing your readership one by one and looking after the readers that you have. Don’t become so obsessed with finding new readers that you ignore the current ones you already have. 

Only two more hurdles to go here. Hurdle number eight is finding the right monetization model. Again, this is another thing I’ve talked about in previous episodes. There is some further reading and some further listening in the show notes. Having readers is not enough if you want to build a profitable blog. You also need to pay attention to how to monetize that. That can take a little bit of time to work out what model is right for you. 

For me, I’ve actually constantly experimented with this. In the early days for me, it was putting some AdSense ads on my blog and experimenting with Amazon’s affiliate program. Whilst I still do those two things even today 13 years later, there have been 12 or so income streams that I’ve experimented with over the years. It’s actually probably more like 15 now. There’s a post in the further reading of today’s show notes where I do go through the first 12 income streams that I added to my own blogs. It’s really important to realize that those 12 income streams didn’t all appear on day one. They came over about 10 years of experimentation.

It’s really key to always be thinking ahead on this particular area as well. Even when you might have an income stream that’s working really well for you, be thinking about the next steps. For me it was AdSense, that was my one thing that was working brilliantly. This is probably about six or seven years ago now. 

I was making really good money from AdSense, but the economy was changing. I began to realize that the advertising model wasn’t going to last forever. That was around the time I began to experiment with different types of affiliate promotions, but also creating my own products. I’m really glad I did that because even though the advertising model didn’t completely go away, it certainly has changed. By adding these other income streams, I not only had a defensive approach to if things did change, I found new income streams from my blog as well. It’s really important to be thinking ahead and experimenting with new models.

The other thing to remember is don’t over-promote. You don’t really want to go too hard on the monetization as well. You really need to balance the need of your readers with your need to sustain your blog. It’s really important to get that balance right and it can tip one way or the other. You can look after your readers’ needs so much that you forget about looking after yourself and that’s not sustainable. If you truly want to serve your readers, you need to sustain yourself. On the other side, you can become so obsessed with making money from your blog that you forget the needs of your readers. Really try and get that balance right. As I look back over the last 13 years, there’s been times where I’ve gone one way or the other and have needed to readjust. 

Be really wary of relying too much upon advertising. It does need a lot of readers and it is dependent upon the economy. When the economy goes up, there tends to be more money going into the advertising from marketers. When the economy goes down, that’s an area that can suffer. Whilst it’s not something to ignore, I would encourage you to experiment with other models. Play with affiliate marketing. It’s a really great learning model to go down. It’s low investment, it means you don’t have to develop any products of your own, but you’ll learn so much by promoting other people’s products and earning your commission. You’ll learn about how to sell, you’ll learn about what type of products work well with your readership, you’ll learn about pricing, and you’ll learn about marketing practices and sales copy. It can also be a really great stepping stone to creating something of your own to sell through those learnings.

Then, I’ll also be thinking about what you can make to sell of your own? This means you don’t need to be promoting other people’s stuff all the time. You can keep people on your own site. This is certainly going to help you to build a more robust business. If you have something of your own to sell, that then becomes a business, having your own product or whether it be your own service. Again, there’s heaps of further reading on today’s show notes on this particular topic and there’s a whole category of this podcast dedicated to making money from your blogs. In recent times, we’ve done podcast episodes particularly on affiliate marketing. There’s a couple there, one on general interaction to affiliate marketing and one on using Amazon’s affiliate program.

The last hurdle that I want to briefly touch on today is time management. This is something which I’ve struggled with from day one. When I started blogging, I was working three part-time jobs and studying part-time as well. I was newly married and kind of getting used to life as a newly married, trying to keep my social life going as well and some voluntary stuff that I was doing. My life was very full. 

Then I became a full-time blogger. I was able to dedicate more time to it and gave up some of those part-time jobs. I finished my part-time study, but you know what, it still was a juggle. Even though I wasn’t juggling all the jobs, I was juggling all the different pressures of having full-time blogs. I have multiple blogs, and different income streams, and lots of reader requests.

Then in more recent times, I’ve had a family, I’ve gotten our three kids. Again, I’m trying to juggle two relatively successful businesses and a team of people that I outsource to. There’s a whole heap of pressures there. It doesn’t really matter what stage of blogging you’re at, time management is so important. There’s a lot to juggle even just in the blogging part of your life. Coming up with topics to write about, writing the content, editing the content, promoting the content, answering comments, engaging in social media, and commenting on other blogs. The list goes on, and on, and on, and on. Then, of course, there’s real-life to manage as well. 

This is something that you just need to constantly be working on. For me, it’s about trying to work out what are my goals, what are my priorities, what do I need to do to get towards those things, and then get organized, be disciplined about how to do that. Also for me, over the last few years about being able to develop a team and outsource some of that as well. Again, I recently did a podcast on this where I gave you seven different tips for being more productive as a blog owner. Outline seven different things that I did at the beginning of this year and late last year in trying to become more productive in my own way. That was episode 40 of the podcast. We’ve also got an e-book on the topic as well, which again, I’ll share with you in today’s show notes.

Today, I’ve just gone through nine different hurdles that I’ve faced over the last 13 years as a blogger. You know what, I realize as I’ve been talking to you today, that I could have probably listed another nine different hurdles. There’s a whole heap of things that we face as bloggers. Whilst I hope that some of the hurdles kind of relate to you and hopefully I’ve said something that’s helped you in the hurdles that you face, the other thing I really wanted to get across today is that we all face these challenges. It can sometimes feel like you’re the only one like you are the only one facing particular challenges. I hope today, in addition to anything practical you’ve got out of this, that you realize you’re not alone in facing this kind of stuff.

I’d love it if you would come to the show notes today, as I’ve mentioned many times, there is a whole heap of further reading on today’s show notes. Also, I’d love to hear about the hurdles that you faced and any practical tips that you can give me and how you face those as well because I’d love to learn from you. I’m sure our other listeners would love to learn from you as well in either any of these nine hurdles that I’ve touched on or anything else that you’ve been facing as well. 

I’m also particularly really looking for stories of bloggers who overcome some of this kind of stuff who might, at some point, come on as a guest for our future podcasts. If you’ve got a story to tell about some hurdle that you’ve overcome that you think might be useful for others, leave a comment in today’s show notes. You can find them at problogger.com/podcast/57.

I’ve been talking for too long today. I have lost control of my tongue, so I might sign off. I really do look forward to reading your comments but also talking with you in episode 58 of the ProBlogger podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? What other hurdles are you facing? Do you have any other practical tips that you can share with me and other listeners that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS for free to get free blogging tutorials and podcasts in your inbox each week.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is all about how to finish each blog post. How you end your blog post determines people’s final impression of you and whether they will choose to take action, like buying one of your products or connecting with you on social media. It’s an opportunity to deepen the relationship between you and your reader. I share 8 ways you can finish each of your blog posts to make a lasting impression.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/56. 

Today, we’re talking about how to end your blog posts. This is a really important topic. It’s something that really I am a bit surprised that there hasn’t been more written about. If you look around all the blogs about blogging, you will find the never-ending supply of articles about how to start your blog posts. There are all kinds of templates, formulas, articles, with heaps of advice on how to title your blog posts. That’s for good reason because the way you title a blog post will hook people in. It can be the difference between people reading it or not. 

But there’s very little written about how to end your blog post. I actually think the way you end your blog post is just as important. In the same way that a title hooks people into reading, the way you end your blog post hooks people into how they’re going to do something with what you’ve written and whether they’ll take action upon what you’ve written. This has benefits for both readers when people go away and do something as a result of reading something you’ve written, that can benefit them. Also, it has an impact on your blog. If people go away and do something as a result of reading your article, their life (hopefully) is going to be changed for the better. They’ll have a lasting impression of you and the advice you’ve given them. 

It’s also going to have other impacts upon your blog because some of the things you might do at the end of your blog post will get people to become more sticky to your blog—to subscribe to your newsletter, to follow you on Facebook, to leave a comment, to or not buy a product. There’s a whole heap of things that you can do at the end of the blog post that not only helps your reader but also you.

During this podcast, I want to give you eight things that you can potentially do at the end of a blog post. I will say upfront, you probably don’t want to do all eight for every particular post that you write, rather see this as a bit of a toolbox of things that you could do at the end of blog posts. Let’s get into it.

The first thing that I think you probably would want to do in some way, in almost every blog post that you write, is to sum it up and to get succinct with the message that you’re trying to run home for your reader. I’m amazed at how many people don’t do this. I’m amazed because most of us are thought to do this in English classes and writing classes that we do at high school. To write a conclusion is something that we are taught to do when we write an essay and end an article. 

I think it’s important, in that last paragraph or so, to really think about, “What is the message that I’ve been trying to convey here? How could I sum that up and really emphasize it in some way?” This is really important to do if you’ve written a long article and an article with lots of points. To come up with the summary statement or maybe even a short bullet point list of the things that you want people to remember as a result of the article you’ve written would be important.

Sometimes, it’s also useful at this point in summing up, to try and find a new way to present it. If you can find a new way to say what you already said, then that actually might just help a reader who hasn’t quite understood what you said to get it in a new way. 

Another thing that you can do at the end of an article is to create a tweetable statement. This is good not only because it creates a memory, something succinct that people can remember, and hopefully apply. It also gives your readers an opportunity to share something. If you come up with a summary statement, it sums up what you’ve been trying to say, and put a “Click here to tweet this,” button or a link. That becomes a shareable moment as well. You might also turn it into a social graphic that you could put there and say, “Here’s something that you can tweet out,” or, “Something that you can pin to Pinterest.” Sum it up is the first thing I’m talking about today.

The second thing that you might want to do at the end of an article is to ask a question and to try and get a comment from your readers. You’re looking for engagement either as a comment on a blog post or you may actually want them to answer it somewhere else. You might want to call them to answer the question by tweeting your or by sharing their thoughts on your Facebook page if you get more engagement in social media and you want to encourage that.

Most of us will probably be looking for comments on our blog. There are a variety of ways that you can get that comment. I’ll share a link in today’s show notes on how to get more comments on their blogs because it is something that I know a lot of bloggers struggle with. A couple of really quick tips, firstly, ask a specific question. Get them a specific way that you want them to respond rather than just saying, “Leave a comment.” Ask them a question that you want them to respond to. That shapes the discussion that will happen.

You can also tell them or ask them for a specific type of response. Rather than just saying your question, you might say, “Tell us a story about a time where you had this experience.” Or, “What’s your experience with this particular area?” Actually shaping that question a little bit rather than just answering a random question can be useful. You will find that you can shape the discussion that you have.

The other thing that I would say is you really want to make it as easy as possible for people to respond. A simple question rather than a complicated one is important or even something like, as a response, you might want to just ask your readers to share one word or three words that describe their experience with what you’re writing about. I actually find that that works really well as a technique. If you actually say, “I’m not looking for a long comment here, I’m just looking for one sentence or one word that describes how you’re feeling at this point.” Those types of questions could work quite well.

The other thing you might want to do, instead of asking a question, and trying to get a comment, is to put a poll. There’s a lot of WordPress templates plugins out there that are available, that will enable you to put a poll in at the end of your blog post. Again, that’s about getting people to engage. 

Firstly, sum it up. Secondly, ask a question. Try and get a comment. Thirdly, ask for a share. I know for a fact that when I ask my readers to share, they’re much more likely than if I just leave it to them to think to share, I actually see this all the time when I’m on Periscope. I don’t know if you’ve been following me on Periscope. I’m at @problogger on Periscope. The start and at the end of almost every Periscope that I do, I ask people to share what the Periscope is if they think it’s relevant for their particular audience. I know for a fact, every time I ask for a share, at least someone shares it if not 5, 10, or 20 people. 

If I do a Periscope where I’m not asking for a share, people rarely do it. It’s just this reminder. I see the same thing on Facebook. I see the same thing in comments on blogs. When you ask people to share something, they’re much more likely to do it. Many of your readers are finding your content useful, but they just won’t think to share. Just a simple request to share can work quite well. Now, you might want to encourage them to share on different networks if you have a priority where you’re trying to build up your presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or you just want to ask for a general share. 

The other thing that you can do here to help them to share is to have some sort of a social graphic. You might want to have a graphic at the end of your blog post and then suggest that they share it on Pinterest. Or, to have a “click here to share” type feature. There are certainly tools around that will enable you to do that.

Tip number four that you might want to use to sum up or to finish your blog post is to give your readers something else to read. If they’re reading your blog, probably, quite likely, they’re interested to read something else on a related topic. This is the key here. You want to give them something to read that is relevant both in terms of the topic, something that extends the ideas that you’ve been writing about your blog post. Also, you might want to consider the medium of what you want them to go away and do next. 

If you’ve just written a long blog post, you might want to give them another long blog post. If you’ve just shared with them a video, you might want to share with them another video. If you’ve just shared a podcast, then the type of person who’s interested in seeing another podcast. Think about relevance not only in the topic but also in the medium and type of post that you’ve written.

You will find on most blogs that there are related reading links underneath every blog post. Most of us have some sort of plugin that produces that list. They do work but don’t just rely upon that. I’ve actually tested it with tracking code on my blog which creates a heatmap of where people are clicking. I find that when you give people related reading in the blog post itself, sometimes halfway through or sometimes just a line at the end, that people are much more likely to click that because they know you have tailored that further reading. They’re much more likely to click that than just the automated ones that a plugin might pull in.

Go to the extra effort of finding the next piece of reading that they should do. Do consider also pointing them to other sites as well. It may seem a little counterintuitive to be sending people to another blog at this point, but if it’s another blog and it’s really useful content, then they’re going to thank you for that. It actually creates a moment of connection with you and your reader. They’ll hopefully be thankful for the fact that you sent them to that particular blog. So, point number four was to give them something to read. 

Number five is to tell them about your next post. This is where you’re trying to build some anticipation. This is really all about trying to get a subscription. Getting them to follow you, getting them to subscribe to your newsletter. The best time to get someone to subscribe is just after you’ve helped them. When you signal to them that something else is coming that is going to be helpful for them as well, they don’t want to miss that.

In some ways, this is about trying to tease them a little or leave them on the edge of a cliff. You don’t want to actually manipulate them too much. You don’t want to leave them on too much of a cliffhanger where you haven’t delivered any value previously. You’re going to deliver all the value in the future, but you do want to signal to them that something else is coming that they would want to get. It’s about building anticipation. 

At the end of the blog post, you might want to say, “I’m going to continue this particular series of blog posts tomorrow or next week. To get the next installment, click here to subscribe to my newsletter,” or, “Click here to follow me on Facebook and you’ll begin to see the new content that’s coming.” Tell them about what’s coming next is number five.

Number six is to offer them something specific as an opt-in for your blog. I’ve seen this used quite effectively over the last few months particularly on blogs where they actually offer their readers something specific to that post if they subscribe to their newsletter. I’ve seen this recently where someone wrote a post on a how-to article. They said, “If you would like to get this article as a PDF with some bonus information, click here to download.” When they click that link, they’re asked for their email address, and they’re emailed the PDF version of that particular blog post.

You might want to turn your blog post into a PDF or you might want to create something different—a cheat sheet or some extra bonus material—that relates to the particular blog post. You probably wouldn’t want to do this with every single blog post that you do because it would take a lot of work. If you’ve got a blog post that’s doing particularly well or that you think might go viral, then it might be something that you would want to add to that post. It certainly has worked for a number of bloggers that I’ve talked to in growing their email list.

Number eight is to sell something. This is something I would not encourage you to do on every single blog post that you write. You don’t want to use every post to sell something. Your readers are going to see that pattern. They’re going to feel like you’re just trying to sell, sell, sell, all the time. If you’ve got something that’s particularly relevant to the post that you’ve just written, by all means, promote it at that point. 

I know that when we do an article for portrait photography on my photography blog, at the end of the article, that’s a great place for us to mention, “If you want to learn more about portrait photography, check out this ebook that we’ve produced.” To give them a coupon code increases the chances of them buying that at that particular point. Again, it’s got to be relevant to the content that you’ve written. You don’t want to do this all the time. It works best if you do it in moderation.

The last thing that I encourage you to do at the end of the blog post is to really think about the call to action. We’ve already given you some calls to action that you could include at the end of the blog post. Asking for the share, getting them to comment, getting them to subscribe, all of these things are calls to action. Here, I want to particularly get you to think about, what could you call your readers to do that is for their benefit? Not just for your benefit. Something that they could go away and do as homework to practice what you’ve just taught them or to do something that’s going to enhance their life in some way. Again, it has to relate to the content you’ve just written. 

I find that this works brilliantly when you give them something to go away and do. I used to call this homework on ProBlogger. It’s your piece of homework today. Go away and implement what I’ve just taught you by doing this. 

To give you an example of this, at the end of this podcast, what I want you to do is to go away, and look at the last blog post that you’ve written. Particularly look at the last paragraph, the last two paragraphs of the last blog post that you’ve written and just see how you ended it. The homework I want you to do today is to tweak how you’ve ended your last blog post and to improve it in some way. Use one of the techniques that I’ve talked about in this particular podcast.

I’ve just given you a call to action to illustrate what you could do at the end of the blog post to actually give your readers something to go away and do. We do this all the time in Digital Photography School. We actually would say, “Here’s a technique that we’ve just taught you. We want to see you further than you’ve taken and used this technique. Go away, get your camera out, take a photo, and come back and share the photo you’ve taken.” That’s a call to action that we know not only gets engagement for our site (which is good for us) but actually gets our readers to implement the technique that we’ve just talked about which is the best way that they can learn to improve their photography if we get them to go away and get photos.

It won’t really relate to every kind of blog but if you’re teaching people something, then this is a great way to finish a blog post. Give them a piece of homework then get them to come back and report on how they went.

I hope you found these eight techniques for ending blog posts useful. I really would love to hear what technique you were going to use on your last blog post or on the blog post that you’re about to publish. Give us an example. Share a link with us at today’s show notes on what you have done that has worked well for you. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/56. 

Again, I really would encourage you not just to listen to this podcast but to go back to that last post that you’ve written. Ask yourself, “How did I end it? How could I’ve done it better?” and to make some changes to that post if you need to.

I hope you found today’s podcast useful. I look forward to chatting with you later this week in episode 57.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS for free to get free blogging tutorials and podcasts in your inbox each week.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is all about how to promote yourself without coming across as an arrogant jerk. It’s in response to a question from a reader, but I know that this is something that a lot of people struggle with. It can be tricky conveying your talent, experience, and expertise without being annoying, but it is possible. I share 13 tips to make it less daunting.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

Other episodes with tips for finding new readers:

I received an email this morning from Samantha, at least we’ll call her Samantha because she did ask to remain anonymous. She writes, “I’ve been blogging now for a few months and have built up an archive of posts that I think are useful for those who might find them but I’m struggling with one big question, how to get people to read? I’ve listened to some of your episodes on growing readership and I understand the techniques that I probably need to use but my problem is that I’m scared to start. Most specifically, my issue is that I don’t want to get too self-promotional and come across as a complete jerk by overdoing it and always being in people’s faces. Can you help?”

This is a great question and it is one that I’ve heard many times over the years and it’s something that I’ve struggled with as well over the years. Many of the times that I’ve been asked this question, it’s come from Aussies and I’m not sure whether it’s tall poppy syndrome which seems to be something that we struggle with as Aussies; we don’t like to be seen to be self-promotional. I think perhaps cultural issues do come into this, at least in part but it may also be a personality type of thing as well. Some people seem more comfortable promoting themselves than other people.

As Samantha does say in her email, we have talked in previous episodes about finding readers. Specifically, if you want to get into some of the techniques to finding readers and promoting yourself, you might want to look at episodes 33–37. Those five episodes, we do talk about the topic quite a bit. But this question does remain and we really didn’t address it in those particular episodes about coming across the wrong way when you’re promoting yourself. 

You’ve got to believe in yourself to some degree, you’ve got a talent, you’ve got some sort of experience, or you’ve got some sort of expertise. Most of us do have something that we feel comfortable in talking about but we don’t want to come across as a complete jerk as Samantha says. So, how do you convey what you can do for people, what you do know, and what skills you have without alienating everyone else who’s listening to you?

What I want to do today is suggest a few different things that I think are helpful in this whole area of self-promotion, […] things to be specific. These are not techniques. These are more mindset things and bigger picture strategies. The first one that I want to talk about—we won’t talk about it for too long because it almost goes without saying—really, you want to do good stuff.

If you want to be found on the internet, you need to have something worth being found. You need to be doing something worth promoting. If you’re a blogger, you need to be blogging well. If you’re blogging on a specific niche, you need to understand that niche, have some skills and worthwhile things to say. Obviously, that makes it a whole heap easier if you’ve got something of quality to promote. I don’t really want to talk about that one too much because I think it almost does go with that saying, but it’s foundational. 

Number two is that you need to really think about this whole activity of putting yourself out there in a different way than self-promotion. Think about it as an exchange of value rather than self-promotion. If you’re always thinking about promoting yourself, it’s a bit of a selfish place to start from. “I want people to see me.” That’s a bit of a selfish way to think about it. 

I would encourage you to think about how you can serve others, how you’re going to use your talent to improve the situation of those around you. Rather than promoting yourself, you’re promoting something that you can do for other people. I think this is a bit of a subtle mind shift. When you begin to see what you’re doing and putting yourself out there is a way of helping people rather than promoting yourself primarily, it begins to change things, at least it has for me.

My passion is to help bloggers to improve their blogs. I know I do have some experience. I’ve been blogging now for 13 years and I’ve developed some skills. I don’t have every skill that is needed but I do know some stuff and I know that I need to get myself out there in order to help people. If I just stay in my own little shell, I’m never going to help anybody and I’m never going to do anything meaningful for anyone.

Rather than thinking about, you’ve got to promote yourself, think about getting yourself out there to help other people. This also means you need to become a listener, you need to understand the needs of other people around you, and offer your talents when the moment is right rather than pushing your talent upon anyone who cares to listen to you. Get inside that mind shift of thinking about what value can you bring rather than how can I promote myself?

The third tip is to lead with your passion. It’s much better to lead off when you’re meeting someone new or when they first discover you on Twitter, for example, by talking about how passionate you are about your topic rather than leading with your list of achievements, list of skills, or list of qualifications. Perhaps, instead of on your social media or accounts, leading with, “I’m a social media expert,” “I’m a rock climbing expert,” or, “I’m a guru in productivity,” lead with what you’re passionate about. I’m passionate about rock climbing, I’m passionate about social media, I’m passionate about productivity.

There might come a time where you can list your skills, achievements, and qualifications, but people are much more interested in connecting with people who have passions. I admire people who have passion and I want to talk to people who have passion. Passion stimulates conversation, passion stimulates questions which may open up opportunities for you to share what you’ve achieved, what you know, and what you can do. But instead of starting with those things, lead with your passion. It’s a gentler way into the conversation.

Tip number four is to be a learner, be a learner and to share what you’re learning. I personally would much prefer to pay attention to someone who is still on the road to their destination, someone who is still open to new ideas, someone who’s still learning. I’d much prefer to connect with that type of person than someone who is already at the summit and who is presenting themselves as someone who knows everything there is to know on a topic.

Maybe that’s just my personality but I suspect that most people are like that. They much prefer to know someone who is ahead of them in the journey but who is still learning. Be someone who’s reading, who’s asking questions and gathering knowledge, and who’s upfront about the fact that you’re doing that. Ask questions in public, share what you’re learning and what you’re reading, share what you didn’t know yesterday that you know today. This actually shows to people that not only do you know some things, but you are gathering knowledge and you are continuing to hone your skills and qualifications. I think this helps you to present a more relatable person who still does know something.

Tip number five is to tell stories and to give case studies. When the opportunity does come to share your skills, achievements, and qualifications, they’ll come across much more naturally if you embed them within a story rather than just listing off what you know, what you’ve done, and what you’ve achieved.

Stories are so much more relatable. They show the context of your qualifications and expertise. They create memories and they’re much more likely to leave a person feeling that they’re connected to you rather than they just admire you. I think stories are so powerful in building a perception of expertise in a particular topic.

The key here is to make sure that the story is relevant to the context and the conversation that you need to share them into. Don’t just try to manipulate conversation so that you can tell a story. That comes across a bit arrogant, too. Keep it natural, but do have stories that you can share when the opportunity arises. 

Tip number six is to give people facts and let them interpret those facts rather than interpreting for them. It’s very hard to argue with a fact but it’s easy to write off an interpretation of a fact. Now, let me give you an example of this. On Twitter, I see quite a few people talking about how they are a guru on a particular topic.

I’m thinking particularly in the social media spaces, a lot of social media gurus or social media experts, self-proclaimed social media experts at least. That’s always going to be debatable. What can’t be debated is how many Twitter followers do you have, how many books you’ve written, how many blog posts have you read, how many readers you have, what your stats are. These types of things are probably better to lead with rather than “I am a social media guru.” That’s an interpretation of a fact.

Just lead with the facts. Put it out there what you have done, if you do need to put those things out there at all. They come best when you are telling a story but sometimes, the opportunity does arrive to lead with a fact. Let other people make those interpretations of who you are and what you are. They can arrive at their own conclusions rather than you having to tell them that you’re an expert or you are a guru. 

Tip number seven is to not compare yourself with other people, particularly in public. Rather, compare yourself to where you’ve been. I came across a really interesting study—I’ll put a link in today’s show notes—that talked about how self-superiority claims can be one of the worst things that you can do. When you talk in public about your self in comparison to another person and how much more you know, how many more skills you have, what they don’t know, what they can’t do, and what they haven’t experienced; when you put someone else down in a public way, that can do a lot of harm to you. It’s one of the worst things that you can do. It can really hurt how people perceive you. 

The same study found that on the flip side, one of the most powerful things that you can do to make a good impression upon people is to make what they call self-improvement claims. Showing where you once were and where you now are. This creates a much, much, much more favorable impression upon someone.

I do this in some of the talks that I give when I’m doing a keynote, I often talk about how, when I started blogging, I had no credentials to be a blogger. How I’d had 20 jobs in the last 10 years and I didn’t know how to code anything, I had never written before, I only had a C-grade average in English, and how, for the first three months of my blog, I didn’t know how to make text bold. It’s a little least I run through that shows, how I really didn’t know what I was doing when I started. That’s my before (if you like), but my after is that I’ve got 4 or 5 million readers per month today, that I’ve written a book, and I get to travel the world.

I talk on that second list about some of my qualifications, about some of my achievements but I do so comparing it to where I started and how I knew nothing. That type of contrast is very well received. People loved those before and after snapshots. If you do need to talk about where you’ve gotten to, what you’ve achieved, and what your qualifications are, one way that you can soften that a little is to make your self-improvement claim, to paint the before and the after picture, and particularly don’t compare yourself to others. That comes across as very arrogant and it can really hurt your reputation.

Tip number eight is to share credit where it’s due. You have probably achieved some really great things. You probably do have some qualifications and some expertise in a particular area. You’ve done some great things and that’s great, it’s worth talking about these things. But in most of those cases, at least in part, they are probably due to circumstances that are outside of your control or at least are partly due to the work of other people as well. 

When you give credit to other people or to other circumstances that were outside of your control, that’s not belittling who you are or what you’ve achieved but it gives context and I think that’s really important.

So, a few examples of this. When I was in my last year of high school, I was second or third in my year level, I think I was third. Now, that was an achievement, that was something that I was proud of. The reality is, at that year level in our school, I was a part of an amazing group of students. I was in a politics class. It was a very small class and there were about eight or nine students in the class, but they were amazing. We collaborated together as a group and we spurred each other on. And because we’re all working together, we raise everyone’s marks. When people would congratulate me on my marks, I would always point to the fact that I did it with this other group of people. Yes, I did work hard, but it was partly because of the work of other people around me. 

Another example of this is the ProBlogger event that we run. I regularly get compliments at the end of that event about how great the event was. Most, I could quite easily take credit for, but I know that it’s the result of a lot of hard work from my team. While I contribute to the team, my team really puts on that event. So, I always give them praise and always reflect back to people who give me compliments, that is, at least in part if not almost completely, due to the fact that I’ve got a great team.

Similarly, when I started blogging, I had a wife who worked full time while I worked hard to build my blogs. I didn’t bring much income into the family at that time, and yet, she continues to work full time. I acknowledge today that I’m where I am. A big part of that is to do with my wife and the fact that she worked really hard. I was incredibly gracious with her time in those early days of my own blogging. 

I don’t bring myself down and my own achievements down by giving credit to other people, but for me, it’s about giving context. It’s about showing that it’s just not me who’s gone to bring me to the point that I’m at today. It’s my wife, it’s my team, it’s my colleagues. I guess it’s about humility. Humility shouldn’t be false. It’s not about putting yourself down, it’s about telling it as it is and giving credit where it is due. I think this really helps when you are promoting yourself because it means you’re not just promoting yourself, you come promoting other people as well and the contributions of other people.

Tip number nine is to not go too far with modesty. While nobody likes a bragger, excessive modesty can also come across poorly. It can make you seem like you almost don’t believe in yourself. It can also come across as false modesty at times. What I’m saying here is it needs to be balanced. Believe in yourself, celebrate your successes, put out your skills but also do it with humility. 

In the context of the things that you don’t know and the […] used to have and the flaws you have as well. I think people receive that so much better. If they can see that you’re a normal human being, that you’re relatable, that you can have things that you could have and things that you’re still working on. 

Tip number 10 is to let other people promote you. There are times where letting other people have the microphone to talk about you is very appropriate and more effective than anything you could say about yourself. I think it’s been scientifically proven, I can’t remember what the study is, but people pay a whole heap less attention to what you say about yourself and they pay a whole heap more attention to what other people say about you. Being a bit strategic about that can sometimes be effective. Testimonials can be particularly used effectively. 

Although, I have to say, sometimes I read testimonial pages and I do wonder who wrote them. They can come across as a little bit boastful if you have too many of them or if they’re too hyped up, so you do need to be a bit careful about how testimonials are presented. Certainly, they can help a lot, particularly if it’s the right person giving you kudos and credit.

Having a wingman, having a wing woman to work with, who you work in tandem with can also help. I know some podcasts that I listened to, this works particularly well when two people are interviewing another person and they each give each other props along the way, which helps to build credibility of the two interviewers rather than one person just talking about their own experience all the time.

Tip number 11 is to build meaningful relationships rather than just shouting at random people. You want to spend your time investing in relationships with those you meet rather than trying to get your business card into the hands of many people. This is an analogy of when you go to a networking event. I personally would rather spend my time in a networking event having really meaningful conversations with four or five people over an evening rather than trying to get out there and put my business cards in the hands of 200 people. I’d much prefer five people feeling like they have a deep connection with me, a meaningful connection with me rather than 200 people having some vague idea of who I am.

When you are promoting yourself, go deep rather than wide. There are probably situations where going wide might work, particularly when you’re invited to speak at a conference or something like that. Lots of people can hear your voice for a few moments and that can be an effective thing, but particularly, when it’s an opportunity for one-on-one, I think it’s really important to go as deep as possible. So, be genuine with people, respond to questions, engage with people.

When we’re thinking online, particularly, don’t just be a broadcaster. Don’t just shout at people with your tweets. Actually talk with people, respond to people, engage with people. It is much better to have deeper, meaningful relationships with a few key people in your industry than to be known by everybody. 

Tip number 12 is to read the mood of the moment. There are times where self-promotion is more acceptable than other times. For example, a job interview. That calls for some self-promotion. If you go into a job interview and you don’t sell yourself, that shows that you aren’t really that interested in the job or you don’t believe in yourself. That kind of situation, you do need to sell yourself.

On the other hand, if you go to a dinner party, it calls for some restraint, it calls for a different type of conversation and interaction. There may be an opportunity during that dinner party to be self-promotional in an indirect way by telling a story, through a meaningful conversation, but it’s going to be a different situation. 

Similarly, some personality types or people from different cultures may have different expectations, higher levels, or different levels of what can be appropriate in terms of promotion. You need to really learn to read the signals and respond appropriately. When someone asks you to tell them what you know, who you are, and what your experience is, that’s an invitation. But don’t force that type of information upon people who aren’t asking. Learn to read the signals and respond appropriately.

The last tip, tip 13 that I want to give you, encompasses a few of the things I’ve already talked about, it is to be generous. The secret to being a great influencer is to use the influence that you’ve grown for the benefit of those that you influence. That statement has a few too many “influences” in it. Let me say it again for you. The secret to being a great influencer is to use the influence that you’ve grown for the benefit of those that you influence. If you have expertise, if you have skills, if you have the knowledge, if you have the experience, if you have qualifications, those things are completely wasted if you spend your whole life simply gathering them up for the benefit of yourself. 

In my opinion, those things are for the benefit of those around you and this is actually the quickest way to grow your influence; to become well-known. When you are generous with the things that you have, use those things for the benefit of other people. When you are generous, when you exercise the gifts that you have for the benefit of those who are around you. The recipients of your generosity will see who you are, they’ll see what you know, they’ll see what you can do, and they will shout it to the world for you.

This is the best self-promotion that there is, in my opinion. It’s not promoting yourself, it’s simply being useful, it’s simply being generous to those around you. Some of those people will just take from you and they’ll never shout to the world but you’ll be amazed how many people will tell other people about you, what you know, and what you can do if you’re just generous to them. You’ll not need to promote yourself anywhere near as much as you might think if you take on this idea of generosity.

Use the influence, use the skills, use the knowledge, use the experience, use the qualifications that you have for the benefit of the others. Be generous with those things and I believe opportunities will come your way. 

I’ve just bombarded you with 13 tips on how to self-promote or not to self-promote in some cases. I would love to get your feedback on this. This is all fresh stuff that I just came up with in response to Samantha’s question this morning, and I’m sure there’s much more that could be said on this particular topic.

Again, if you want more tactics and techniques for growing readership of your blog which you can build on some of these things that I’ve talked about today, go back to episodes 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37. There’s a whole heap more tactical stuff there, but I hope that these 13 things have helped those of you who are struggling to get out of that place of just building your blog, writing great content, and don’t really want to come across this too self-promotional.

I hope some of these have been helpful for you and your own blogging. Most of it also (I think) is applicable, no matter whether you’re a blogger, you’re a YouTuber, or whether you’re in business in some other places as well.

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/55 where you can give me your feedback on today and let us know what you would add on today’s list. Look forward to chatting with you in episode 56 of the ProBlogger Podcast. This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that have worked for you? What will you try next?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS for free to get free blogging tutorials and podcasts in your inbox each week.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is all about fear. Fear holds a lot of people back from engaging. If you let it, fear can hold you back from being an effective blogger, podcaster, live streamer or social media user. I share some strategies for recognising, harnessing and overcoming your fear so that you can use it to your advantage.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

The podcast episode I mention where I did my first ever interview:

In fact this morning I was talking to someone and encouraging them to get on to Periscope and fear was the major factor there. I want to talk about some strategies for overcoming fear and moving past fear. Not ignoring it because I think it has its place, but getting past it and getting to a point where it doesn’t hold you back, and even being able to harness it a little bit. 

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/54. I also want to briefly mention before I get today’s podcast, episode 52 which is my first ever interview with Beth Dunn. I’ve had so much positive impact on that particular episode and if you haven’t listened to it yet, I would encourage you to go back and have a quick listen to it. It’s not long, it’s an interview in which Beth shares some […] tips; ten simple, practical, actionable tips.

But that’s not the reason I’m mentioning it today although that was a good episode. I want to get your feedback on who you want to see interviewed in future ProBlogger podcasts. Now, I’m tempted to get some of my big blogging friends that you would have heard before on and I may do that, but one of the things I’ve heard about Beth’s interview was that she was someone you perhaps hadn’t heard from before. I am trying to unearth some of these smaller bloggers and people who have expertise in some of these fields that are useful to bloggers, whether that be promoting your blog, finding reader’s marketing, visual content, writing tips, these types of things.

If you know someone that would be interesting in the ProBlogger audience, can I encourage you to fill in the survey that we have on today’s show notes? There is a question in the survey that asks specifically who you’d like to see interviewed or present on this particular podcast, as well as some other questions that give us ideas on content for future podcasts. Anyway, you can find that survey at problogger.com/podcast/54. Now, let’s get into today’s show.

Today, I want to talk about fear and it’s something that I think all of us face one time or another in our life when we were kids. My kids certainly face their fair share of fears and as adults as well, and particularly those of us who are bloggers, podcasters, and getting into the social media space. I’m finding it also particularly those getting into the live streaming space, which is pretty confronting when you are wanting to get on camera and a whole heap of fears come into play.

Here are some of the common fears I hear from bloggers (particularly) and I think most of these apply to other social media networks as well. If nobody reads it is a big one. That’s the first fear I face when I start blogging. What if my family gets hurt by something that I write? That fear of your world colliding can be a factor. What if I don’t write as well as I think I write? What if people laugh?

Worse than that, what if they attack me as a result of something I’ve written? What if I say something stupid that might come back to bit me later? What if I reveal too much about myself? What if I fail? What if I look stupid? What if I am wasting my time? What if people steal my content? What if I run out of things to say? What if I get hacked? What if I make a promise that I can’t keep? What if I get stalked? What if my product doesn’t sell? What if my service crashes? What if I get criticized for trying to make money from my blog?

This list of what-if questions could go on and on and I’m sure that you could insert several of your own. I faced many of these fears in my blogging but also fears in creating events. A lot of fears in creating the event that we run. We invest hundreds of thousands of dollars every year into the event that we create and I’m always, in the back of our mind, wondering what if no one shows up? What if no one buys a ticket? What if our speakers don’t arrive? And the fears play on my mind particularly in the weeks before our events.

The fear is something that many of us face, particularly in this space where we are putting ourselves out there for other people to read or listen to, and we don’t know how they are going to respond. It’s a common thing and that’s the first thing I want to say is actually we all face this and if you are feeling fear in your blogging or something else to do with your business, then you are not alone.

I actually want to say, “Fear is a good thing.” Fear of the right things can be useful and this goes right back to the caveman days when fear of that saber-tooth lion chasing us is probably a good thing; we want to be ought to run away from that. We want to be able to avoid those dangerous things, and right from the beginning of the time, fear has played a role in our survival. 

It’s a signal that maybe we need to stop doing something or maybe we need to get away from something and that continues today. Part of what I want to talk about today is that fear is a signal. It’s actually something that we need to pay attention to but to a point where it is useful to us and not that it stops us and that it overwhelms us. I think partly it’s about timing. Paying attention at the right time to fear is important.

I once tweeted this, “Don’t let fear stop you from starting. Let it motivate you to finish.” What I meant by this is that there are times to push past your fear and almost ignore it. For me, this is often the start of a project and there are other times where it can be a motivating factor. So for me, when I accept a speaking engagement, often that comes with fear. Recently, Mike Stelzner asked me to speak again in the Social Media Marketing World, which, on one hand, I was really excited about and on another hand, it came with fear. What if no one comes to my session? What if I don’t come up with a good topic? All of these fears begin to creep up. 

I’ve learned that when people ask me to do things, if I am hearing fear questions, I usually push those aside in the early days and say, “Worry about those things later,” and I push those fears to later on. By doing so, I accept a lot of things and I say yes to those things which open up all kinds of opportunities.

Now, the fear does come back, but when it comes back later, it becomes a motivating factor. I’ve already committed to it, so the fear is something I could use to improve what I am doing and I know in a month or two times when I begin to prepare my talk for Social Media Marketing World next year, those fears I’m going to let them come back a little bit and motivate me to create the best presentation I’ve ever created. By pushing it aside at the right time and by allowing it to come back and harness it at a later time, it could be a powerful thing. 

Learn to see fear as a sign or a signal. I said this at a ProBlogger event a couple of years ago, “Fear is a sign or signal that something important is to happen.” I think that’s a really important principle and it’s something that I learned a few years ago. Fear is a sign that something important is about to happen.

As I look back on my life and all of the important things that have happened to me, everything from when I proposed to Vanessa to when my kids were born, to when I bought a house, to when I started blogging, to when I hired my first team member, to when I launched my first ebook, to when I accepted my first speaking engagement, to when I wrote the ProBlogger book, to when I started podcasting (even recently), all of these important moments of my life were accompanied by fear.

I learned that by looking back at the important times of my life that fear is a part of those things and fear is a signal that something important might be about to happen to you. By seeing fear in that way, it actually becomes almost a good thing. It’s like I’m feeling fearful, something important is happening here and it makes you pay attention to those things. 

Learn to pay attention to things that you are fearful of often. See them as a signal and not something to overwhelm you and stop you. Now, that is easier said than done. Being paralyzed by fear is something that I think we all struggle at different times so to help you through that, to help you to avoid fear paralyzing you, I want to suggest you ask three questions when you face fear and these are three questions that I’ve talked about on the blog previously that I’ve had a lot of feedback from people that it’s been helpful for them.

I want to say right in front that these are not my questions. I’ve heard them in many variations from different people, but it’s a bit of a synthesis of those things that I’ve heard from other people. 

The first question that I ask myself when I face fear is a question that you’ve probably told your children or heard kids being encouraged to think about. It’s, what’s the worst thing that could happen? What are some of the worst things that could happen to me if this fear, this thing I am fearful of actually happen? What’s the worst thing that could happen? 

This question is all about getting perspective. This is all about trying to bring your fears into some sort of reality. Simply by asking this question, you’ll realize the worst thing that could really happen isn’t that bad at all. Sometimes, this is the only question needed to ask and I’ve seen this particularly in raising my boys. I ask this question all the time, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

When my son started in a new basketball team recently just was a bit of a worry, “I’m worried that I’m going to look stupid in front of my new friends, my new teammates,” and I said to him, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” and he began to go through some scenarios of bad things that could happen and in doing so, he realized that weren’t that bad after all. 

The second question I think is important, particularly if the worst thing that could happen is a bad thing (and sometimes it is). My big fear a couple of years ago, when we ran the ProBlogger event was that our three international speakers might not make it. Maybe there would be a weather delay. That’s a pretty bad thing when you are running an event and your three main speakers don’t come, so I ask myself the question what’s the worst thing that could happen and it turns out that the worst thing that could happen is a pretty bad thing. 

The second question I get you to ask is how I would recover if that worst thing happened? This is a good question to think through if your worst thing is a bad one. What would you do if that worst thing happened? By asking the second question, it allows you to make some contingency plans and that’s what I did when I began to think the worst thing that could happen, three of my international speakers couldn’t show up, I began to make some contingency plans. 

What other sessions could we run instead? How can we make it up to our attendees? Could we perhaps get our international speakers to Skype? We began to come up with some plans that would fill the holes and hopefully make that worst thing not quite as bad. How would you recover if the worst thing happened?

Sometimes by asking those first two questions, you find out that the worst thing that could happen is really bad and that you couldn’t recover and that’s the time where you might need to make a decision not to do what you are thinking about doing or to change what you are thinking about doing.

Again, this is when fear can actually be a useful thing. Sometimes fear is there because what you are about to do is stupid and you shouldn’t do it. You shouldn’t walk off a cliff. You can’t recover from that so by asking those two questions, you hopefully are able to change what you are about to do. 

Again, listen to your fear because it could actually be a signal that you are about to do something that you can’t recover from. The first two questions, what’s the worst thing that could happen? How would I recover if that happened?

The third question is again about trying to bring some perspective and it’s the flip side of a questionable one. What is the best thing that could happen to me? Question three is about focusing not only on the worst-case scenario which is what most of us tend to do. We tend to look at the negative. We tend to look at and dwell on the worst thing that could happen. 

The reality is that the worst-case scenario is probably likely to happen as the best-case scenario, but we don’t’ focus on the best-case scenario, do we? Unless we force ourselves to. The reality is that most times, someone between those two realities as to what will actually happen. 

Focus yourself upon the best outcome and by doing so you might just get the courage up to take a step forward. You might not get to that best case scenario but you may actually find that the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen either and that you are closer to the best case than the worst. 

What’s the worst thing that could happen? How would you recover from that? And what’s the best thing that could happen? I find that those three questions are often enough for me to make a good decision about what to do next and to move forward without fear paralyzing me.

The last thing I want to just briefly touch on is that it’s not about smashing or eliminating fear from your life. Hopefully, you’ve already picked up on this that I think fear is an important thing and something that we shouldn’t push aside completely. There are times to do that, but we need to pay attention to it. It’s a signal something important is going to happen. 

The reality is that when we face important life-changing things that will almost feel a little wobbly. A friend once said to my wife, actually, it’s a quote that I often requoted, “Even wobbly courage is still courage.” You don’t need to eliminate fear. You just need to get enough courage to move forward.

By definition, courage actually requires you to feel some fear. If you’re not scared, you can’t be brave. So, it’s not about eliminating fear, it’s about getting that little bit of wobbly courage up and to take a step forward despite that fear, despite feeling wobbly. That’s when you can be brave.

I’d love to hear your feedback on this topic of fear. By no means do I have all the answers on this one. I struggle with it still to this day despite my three questions, but I actually found by thinking this one though, it’s enabled me to take a lot of steps that I would never have taken even just a few years ago. I’d love to hear your stories of overcoming fear and your advice for others facing fear in today’s show notes. There’s the chance to leave a comment at problogger.com/podcast/54. I hope you found this helpful and I’ll talk to you in episode 55 of the ProBlogger podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Do you have other tips that help you work through your fears that you’d like to share? What will you try next?

Who would you like to us to interview on the ProBlogger Podcast in future?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS for free to get free blogging tutorials and podcasts in your inbox each week.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is all about making money with the Amazon Affiliate Program.

In episode 51 I introduced the topic making money through affiliate marketing and gave some practical tips on how to do it.

Amazon’s Associates Program is the first affiliate program I started making money from and I continue to earn money from it today. I share my experience and top tips that you can use to generate your own income from the Amazon Affiliate Program.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

Also here are a couple of the charts I mentioned in the show:

The first is my annual income from the program for the first ten years.

The second shows the income on a quarterly basis so you can see the spikes around the holidays.

In episode 51 of the ProBlogger podcast, I talked about making money through affiliate marketing. In that episode, I talked a little (in passing) about the Amazon Associates Program which was the first type of affiliate marketing that I did. It was back in April of 2003 that I first heard about Amazon’s Affiliate Program. I’ve been blogging for about six months at that point and realized that this hobby of mine was growing to the point where it was starting to cost me because I had to pay for servers, I wanted to get my blog redesigned, and I really want to get off the dial-up internet which I was still on at that point. I wanted to upgrade my computer and the list went on.

Because I was newly married at the time and we were on a bit of a tight budget because I was working a number of part-time jobs and my wife was a young lawyer who was just starting out and wasn’t being paid a whole heap. We realized that if I was going to keep blogging it needed to pay for itself. I began to experiment with a couple of different ways of making money from my blogs. This is back in 2003 and no one was really talking about monetizing blogs at the time. I started to do searches online for how people were monetizing other types of sites and came across two methods.

Firstly, it was Google’s AdSense program which had only been out for a few months (I think) at that point. It was pretty simple and pretty basic. I put some code on my site one night and the next morning woke up and it made a few cents. The other one was Amazon’s Affiliate Program which I did see a few other bloggers using. It was a program that I saw mainly bloggers promoting books from Amazon because back then, Amazon was pretty much a bookstore, it wasn’t what it is today.

I occasionally wrote on my personal blog about books, so when I mentioned those books I decided to link to Amazon’s Affiliate Program. Of those two methods (Google AdSense and Amazon), AdSense certainly was the biggest earner and to this day it continues to be a bigger earner for me. It’s always in my top 2 or 3 income earners for each month, but Amazon has actually done pretty well for me over the years as well. 

In those early days, it was earning a few cents a month. It was not much at all because you were earning a 4% or 5% commission on a book. A book was like $10 and you were earning a 4% commission on that. It was very, very little, but over time it has really grown. I actually did the stats the other day to try and work at how much I’ve earned from Amazon’s Affiliate Program since 2003. Unfortunately, Amazon’s statistics and reports don’t go back that far then. You go back I think until about 2008 so I had to really reconstruct the earnings quite a bit. I’ve worked out that it’s up over half a million dollars since that time. It’s $582,000 or at least that’s about what I can calculate it to be.

I’ll share a graph with you from 2003 up to 2012 when I first did this calculation. You’ll see the first three years it was very small. It was probably just a few hundred dollars a year, but it’s really stepped up. I think in 2006, it was probably around the $20,000 mark for the whole year and then it peaked up in 2011 probably at around the $80,000 mark for the year. It actually escalated fairly quickly during that time. If I was to overlay over that graph that you find in today’s show notes, if I was to overlay the traffic to my sites, it would correlate. It actually would follow that same line.

The AdSense really does depend a lot on traffic, but it’s also one of those things that, as you add more links into your content over time, you’re going to have more post in your archives that are linking in to Amazon which is another reason that it does tend to grow over time because people will find that content in your archives and still continue to be sent into Amazon. 

As I think about my sites, I now have tens of thousands of posts across my sites. Not every post has a link into Amazon but outside there are probably over a thousand posts now that link into Amazon. That’s a lot of people go into that particular shop everyday and people do go on to buy all kinds of stuff. I want to say right up front I’m not guaranteeing that you’re about to make half a million dollars from Amazon’s Affiliate Program. I’ve been at it now for, well, it’s coming up on 12 years since I started, just over 12 years. It’s taken a whole heap of time and I have built fairly significant traffic to my blogs over that time as well. I do think it’s an option that you can start out with particularly if you’re new to blogging.

A lot of people kind of diss Amazon’s Affiliate Program. There’s a number of reasons that they say you shouldn’t do it. One is that the commissions are quite small. They start at 4% on some products and go as high as 8% on some products that are in the store. It depends a little on how much you sell but that’s fairly small when you compare it to an affiliate program for say an eBook where you might earn as much as 50% on a product. A lot of people say it’s not worthwhile doing it.

The other reason is Amazon’s cookie, which tracks where the people go on to buy something. When you link into Amazon, you’re given a special code and that then “cookies” the person. When they go into Amazon, Amazon says, “Yes, they’ve been referred by Darren.” Then if they go on to buy something within the next, I think it’s 24 hours, you get a commission on that. That cookie is quite short, 24 hours is not long at all so some people say it’s not worth it. I actually think it is worth doing and there’s a number of reasons.

Firstly, Amazon’s a really trusted brand. Everyone knows about Amazon, particularly if you’re in America. Amazon is just part of the culture now. Amazon doesn’t have massive commissions but they add up because people buy more than one item at a time. I’ve actually tracked it. I’ve actually seen through my tracking links that when you link into Amazon, people end up buying something quite different to what you link to very often. They often add a number of things into their shopping cart at once.

Those of you who buy from Amazon know this. It’s like going into a shop that might be a supermarket going in wanting to buy a roast chicken and you come out with a roast chicken but also packets of chips and some bananas and a whole heap of other things. Amazon’s like that. It’s very easy to go in looking at one thing and coming out with a whole heap of other things. Your commissions do add up.

It’s fairly easy to use as well and also, I will touch on this later, holidays are a great time to buy as well. When people go into Amazon in a buying mood, it can really pay off quite well. Obviously, I’ve made half a million dollars from Amazon so I’m fairly happy with that particular program. I think it’s paid off for me. 

What I want to do today is to give you some practical tips on how to make money with Amazon’s Affiliate Program if that’s something that you want to try for yourself. I have written a guide. I call it My Ultimate Guide to Making Money With the Amazon Affiliate Program which I will link to in today’s show notes. It goes into detail into some of the things that I’m about to go through if you want further reading and if you want to learn even more because there are a few things on that post that I won’t actually be able to cover today. I want to just run through quite briefly these practical tips in this particular podcast.

The first one is the most obvious of all and that is that you need traffic. Traffic, traffic, traffic is what I write in my Amazon guide. As with all ways of making money from blogs, the more eyeballs that see your affiliate promotions the better chance that you have of them converting. Some of you are probably saying, “Well, I don’t have much traffic. Is it worth getting involved?” I actually do think it is worth it because as I mentioned before, the more posts in your archives that link into Amazon the better because gradually, over time, more people are going to come to your blog and some of them will get into those older posts. It can pay off over time through that long-tail traffic. Starting early is the lesson that I would mention there. 

As with all affiliate marketing, it’s really important that you focus on building trust and loyalty with your readers. This is the second point that I would give you, the second tip that I would give you is to really try and work on building relationships with your readers. When you link to these products on Amazon and say, “This is a good product. This is one that you should consider.” The more your readers know you, the more likely they are to take action upon those sorts of recommendations.

This is important. Before you start to promote on Amazon, you want to be really those relationships but it’s also really important as you do link into Amazon to not break that trust. Don’t just link to anything, link to good quality stuff. Link to products that are going to enhance the lives of your readers. That’s tip number two.

Tip number three is to keep in mind that the intent of your readers really does matter. Where are they in the buying cycle? I began to understand this on my site in the early days, particularly my first digital camera blog. That was a review blog of cameras. A lot of my readers at that point were using my site to work out whether they should buy a particular camera. They were in a really strong buying mood. Amazon links worked really well when I linked to cameras on that site.

When I started my second photography blog which is the one that I have today, Digital Photography School, my readers’ intent when I came to Digital Photography School was different. They were led there to learn how to use cameras. When I linked to cameras on that particular site, they didn’t convert as well. What did convert well in Digital Photography School was when I linked to books on how to take good photos.

You really need to think about why are people on my site, try and link to things that relate to that intent. It’s not just about trying to find a product that is relevant to your topic, but it’s going to be relevant to the intent of that particular reader as well. That’s tip three, it is really to think carefully about the type of reader that you have.

One of the things that we’ve actually done on Digital Photography School is to add a section to our site which is a review section. This was partly because our links to Amazon weren’t working because we were just mentioning them in other tutorials when our writer was saying, “I took a photo with my Canon 5D camera,” and we would link to Amazon there. Those links weren’t working but what we decided to start to experiment with was to start doing reviews on Digital Photography School off-gear and those links worked much better. You can actually almost change the intent of your readers in some ways by adding sections to your site that may be more about buying gear or technology or other things that are relevant for your particular niche.

Tip number four is relevance matters. I kind of talked about this already so I’m not going to spend a whole heap of time talking about it but you do really want to be linking to products that relate to your topic, which also relates to that intent.

Tip number five is to get people in the door at Amazon then let them do what they’re good at. One of the great things about Amazon is that they’ve been around now for, well it’s at least 2003 since I started. All of that time, they’ve been optimizing their site and perfecting the art of selling to people. And they do it incredibly well.

The great thing about the Amazon Affiliate Program is that you earn a commission on anything people buy once they’re in the door. It’s not just what you link to. I’ve actually seen people as a result of clicking on a link to check out cameras go on to buy something like a ride-on lawnmower worth $10,000. That’s pretty amazing that someone would go to look at a camera and end up buying a lawnmower. I’ve seen this many times over. The things that people buy just make me raise my eyebrows and I know I only linked to photography-related stuff. So, get people in the door. It’s about trying to link to products that relate to your content but also you can do other creative things.

One of the things that I did once in the lead up to Christmas, was to do a post on my blog (and I’ll link to this in the show notes) where I gave my readers a hypothetical $1000 to spend on photography gear at Amazon and asked them to surf for in Amazon and then leave a comment on my blog about what they would spend that $1000 on. The result was pretty amazing. We had over 350 people engage in this exercise and leave a comment telling us what they would buy. That in itself was great. It was a very engaging post and we had a really great discussion.

What I found, and I did a tracking link with this particular promotion, was that people went on to buy all kinds of stuff as a result of clicking on that link. I got people in the door, in a relevant way, got a good discussion going, but people then went on to spend thousands of dollars on Amazon and I earned a commission on that, which was pretty cool. 

Tip number six is to use social proof. I think I touched on this in episode 51. We used best-seller lists on our site. Again, I’ll give you some links to this in the show notes as I did in episode 51. Basically, this is where we tell our readers what other readers are buying as a result of the program.

One of the great things about Amazon’s Associate Program is that they give you a report and this tells you not only what you earned but also what people are buying. You can actually go through your report and say for the last month, I can rank the products that people bought in terms of how many were purchased. I looked at that report and I’m able to create a bestseller list of digital SLRs, or lenses, or photography books, or photography accessories. I actually have created bestseller lists for all of those things. In our site there’s a best-selling digital SLR page, there’s a best-selling digital SLR lens page, there’s a best-seller point shoot page, and the list goes on, there’s a number of these.

Actually, our readers really love these posts, but the great thing about them is that as I go through the bestseller list I’m linking back into Amazon again with more affiliate links. They again get people in the door and because other people are buying these things, people are more likely to consider purchasing themselves. This is something that we see in all kinds of retail experiences as well and on Amazon itself. They use bestseller lists on their own site. Again, if you don’t have the sales coming in already to be able to create a bestseller list, you can also present Amazon’s bestseller list. Go to the relevant section for your site, find the products that you want to promote and then rank them in terms of what’s selling best and you can write a post based upon that. 

Tip number seven is to write genuine recommendations and reviews. What I found is that while these bestseller lists work really well for us, the other type of promotion that we do that works very well is when we write a review of a product. A lot of people just link in the Amazon from their sidebar or put a banner ad on their site. They don’t tend to convert anywhere near as well as if you are promoting products on Amazon through reviews of products. This is what we actually do quite regularly. We try and publish at least one review of a camera or a piece of gear every week. Through that review, we simply say, “You can buy this product here,” and we link with the affiliate link.

We also encourage our offers to write a fair, genuine review. They talk about what’s good about the product but they also talk about what’s not good about the product. At the end of the review, we always try and say, “This is who this product would be useful for.” While the product may not be a 5-star review, we can usually find a way to recommend it for a particular type of person. If a camera may not be the highest-end camera but it’s good for a beginner, that’s worth mentioning in your review. Anything that is positive is good of course to sell it, but anything negative as well and your readers will actually appreciate that. Some people would still go on to buy that knowing the pros and the cons of doing so. Contextual promotion is really king.

The next tip is to promote any specials or promotions or discounts that Amazon has. You’ll find that during the year, Amazon runs their own promotions. It’s really important to keep an eye on this section of Amazon that relates best to you. I’m always in the camera section on Amazon to check out what specials they’ve got running because when they run those specials they can be worth promoting. This is particularly relevant around the holidays, Cyber Monday. This is a time of year when Amazon is doing all kinds of promotions. If you can be linking to those with an affiliate link, that’s offering your readers deals and discounts that they’re more likely to buy from. 

Another quick tip is if you are reviewing a product or you’re mentioning a product is to not just link into Amazon once in that but to link multiple times within your post into Amazon. What I would do if I’m writing a review of a particular camera, in the first paragraph, as I’m introducing the camera, I would be linking the first time I mentioned the camera’s name into Amazon. At the end of the post, I would also be linking to Amazon with a more call-to-action-related link. “You can purchase this camera here,” or, “If you’re interested in this camera, purchase it here on Amazon,” or, “Get a price here on Amazon.” 

The other place I would link in a post is the image itself that you might use of the product. If you have a product chart at the top of your post, link that image into Amazon. The reason I say this is that I’ve done a number of studies of content on our sites with a tool called Crazy Egg which creates heat maps of where people click when they’re on your site. I also more recently have been using SumoMe which has got a whole heap of WordPress plugins for bloggers which I would encourage you to check out more or do a review of in the coming months. Both of these tools give you a heat map of where people click when they’re on your site.

What I’ve noticed is that people quite often click images. I don’t know why they do it. I guess we’re just wired that sometimes images are linked. If people are clicking your images, you might as well be linking to Amazon to point them to where that product can be purchased. That’s a tip that may actually lead to some extra sales for you.

Another quick tip is to focus on the holidays. I’ve already talked about this, but again, I can show you a chart in the show notes, which shows you our Amazon earnings based on quarter-by-quarter results. You’ll see pretty clearly that the holidays are times where people purchase more on Amazon. This is because of the intent that they’re in. They’re obviously more of a shopping mood at that type of year.

Another quick tip is to promote related products. If you are reviewing a Canon 5D Mark III, you might want to (at the end of the review) talk about other products that people might consider if they’re considering purchasing this product. Many reviews do this anyway, so you might as well be linking into Amazon with those as well. This not only increases the chances of a sale, but it’s also useful to your readers. You could be saying, not only could you purchase the 5D, it is a relevant camera for you that you might want to consider from Nikon, Sony, or Pentax. That actually gives your readers more options that makes your review more useful but also gets more people in the door at Amazon as well.

Another thing that we’ve done that’s had some success on Amazon is that sometimes they will allow people to pre-order products. Particularly in the camera space, I know many times manufacturers will announce a product months before they actually release the product. Canon and Nikon do this quite a bit. They got a new product coming out, they will say, “It’s coming out in the spring,” or, “It’s coming out in the fall.” Then as soon as it’s announced, Amazon will add that product into their site, but it’s available for pre-purchase. You can link to that particular product with an affiliate link and promote the fact that you can pre-order your camera here. It’s amazing how many people do pre-order products in that particular way. You don’t get the commission immediately, you get the commission when it’s shipped when the sale actually happens but there can be a nice payer down the track.

Another tip here, I’ve got only a few to go now, is to track your campaigns. Amazon does give you the ability to set up tracking links that allow you to specifically track particular promotions. The last time I checked, you only get a hundred of these tracking IDs. You do need to use them a little bit carefully. You might want to set up tracking IDs for certain categories or promotions that you might do. We have a tracking ID for reviews of cameras. We also have another one for just general mentions of cameras in other types of articles where it might be just mentioning a camera by the way. This enables you to track different types of promotions that you might be doing. Do use those and do track what is working and what isn’t working.

Also, be really getting into the reports that you get of what types of products people are buying. You’ll find there that people will not only buy the things that you recommend but other things. Sometimes, it can open your eyes to new products that have come out that you haven’t considered writing reviews on. You might find that a particular product is getting bought a lot that you haven’t ever talked about. That gives you a hint that maybe you need to do a review of that particular product.

The next tip is to not rule out small-ticket items. Again, as I said at the start, some people say, “You only get 4% commission and if you’re only promoting a $5 product, it’s not worth it.” They actually do add up over time. A lot of the commissions that I’ve had over the years are like $0.03 commissions or $0.10 commissions but I’ve had thousands of them over time. They do add up. Like what I’ve said before, if you do have enough of those commissions adding up, then it can add up to a fairly significant thing but people do go on to buy extra stuff once they’re in there.

On the flip side, don’t ignore the big-ticket items either. Sometimes people look at a $10,000 camera and, “Who’s going to buy that?” but someone does buy that. You want to be recommending a spectrum of products at different price points as well because you have readers who are making purchases at different price points, too.

Some final tips now. These are a little bit more general, but this is a long-term play. The half a million dollars that have come in from Amazon for me has taken, well it’s coming up on 13 years now. It does add up and you can make significant amounts here, but you’re going to have to take a long-term view of this. Get these links into Amazon and this builds over time. Start early. Don’t feel that you need to have a massive amount of traffic before you can start to do this. Those early links into Amazon can continue to pay off for years and years and years to come.

Be transparent with your readers. This is really important and it’s a legal requirement for many of you, particularly those of you who are in the US. The FCC requires you to disclose when you are benefitting from a link to a site like this. You do need to disclose that. In places like Australia, the laws are different, but I think it’s just good ethical behavior to disclose this. You’ll actually find that if you do it in the right way, it can actually increase your sales. I know in the photography space there’s a number of blogs that do this particularly well. When they link into Amazon, at the bottom of their post they have a little statement that simply says, “There are links within this post that we can earn a commission on and this is how we keep our site free for you. We really appreciate it if you do purchase through our links.” 

I know for a fact that people do read these statements not only are grateful for the disclosure but they sometimes will go out of their way to find a link that you have provided so that you get a reward because you’ve added value into their life. I see this all the time. Not only in the comments that we get on our site but also on other sites as well. I was nervous the first time that I disclosed that I was an affiliate for a product. I felt people would say, “Why are you making money off me?” but my audience actually understands that I need to sustain my site. I think it’s really important to make those disclosures.

Don’t hype, put your readers first. This is a big message that I had in episode 51. You really want to value those relationships that you’ve built with your readers. Don’t be recommending rubbishy products and there are rubbishy products on Amazon because there are so many products there. Not every product is of high quality. Be careful about what you’re promoting there, it’s really important. Pick high-quality products.

I guess the last tip I’ll give you—I mention this already—keep a real eye on what Amazon is doing. They are experts in selling. Learn from them. Actually look at how their site is structured. Look at the calls-to-action that they have. They will give you hints as to how you can sell not only your own products, your own eBooks, and those types of things that you might create but also how you might promote their products and how you might be a better affiliate.

Also, of course, keep an eye out for the opportunities that are within the categories of products that you want to promote. Look at their bestseller lists to see what products are rating well there. You might actually find products that you’re not aware of yet. Look at what they’re promoting. Look at what they’re emailing you about. Look at the deals page that they set up for different categories of products that you’re related to.

I hope that you have got some value out of this particular podcast. It’s probably been one of my longest ones yet but it is a big topic. It’s one of what I wanted to cover fairly comprehensively. I do have some further reading for you today. If you go to today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/53, I’ll link there to my ultimate guide to being an Amazon Affiliate. It has I think about 30 tips, some of which I’ve touched on here and some other ones as well that I have not mentioned. It’s completely free. There’s no opt-in around that particular post. It’s just everything that I know about being an Amazon affiliate that I’ve written there. It’s actually one of the most popular posts on ProBlogger. It’s probably one of the longest posts that I’ve ever written as well. It’s quite comprehensive. You’ll need a beverage to get through it, but I hope you find it useful.

I’d love to get your comments on today’s show, also at the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/53. If you have a moment to leave a review on iTunes, if you find today’s show of benefit, that certainly helps us to get the word out about our podcast. I look forward to chatting with you in episode 54 of the ProBlogger podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? If you’ve been using the Amazon Affiliate Program already, what tips would you add? If you haven’t, how do you think you might start using the Amazon Affiliate Program in future?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS for free to get free blogging tutorials and podcasts in your inbox each week.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes.

Today’s episode is all about using your writing to build relationships and your brand. It’s a special interview with Beth Dunn, Product Editor-in-Chief at HubSpot. In today’s podcast episode, Beth shares really practical tips and strategies you can use for helping you sound more human in the way you write your blog content.

You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we’d also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today’s episode:

How to be a writing god:

https://youtu.be/S8Q3vnPM6kk

How to fix your writing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzkXcZcayA0

More writing tips and resources from Beth:

You can connect with Beth and more of her writing at:

I came across Beth recently at the Inbound Conference at Boston where she gave a fantastic talk. The talk was titled Use Your Words. The idea of the talk, in short, was the words we use in our content really have the potential to grow or pull-down and destroy our brand. She gives you 10 tips during this particular podcast interview to help you come across in a way that builds your brand. We just talked in an episode recently on Building Your Brand. While a lot of us know a brand we want to build, we still don’t achieve building that brand through the words that we use. 

Hopefully, in today’s podcast, you’ll get some really practical tips that you can go away and apply, both in the creation of new content of your blog but also looking at the last post that you’ve written. You may actually want to go back and do some editing on some of those posts once you’ve listened to this particular episode. There are some really great practical takeaways for you.

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/52 where there is a whole heap of links and further reading based upon some of the stuff that Beth talks about in today’s interview.

Thanks for joining us, Beth. It’s so nice to finally be talking to you. 

Beth: Delighted. Thank you for inviting me. 

Darren: No problem. I think I first came across you earlier this year when I was invited to speak at the Inbound Conference which was run by HubSpot. I ran across a video from you speaking at HubSpot. Two videos, actually. One was called How to be a Writing God which grabbed my attention. The other one was How to Fix Your Writing, both of which grabbed my attention because I think I can do some fixing. I guess we all aspire to be a writing god of some kind. Both great videos. I will share links to them in today’s show notes.

As soon as I agreed to come Inbound this year, I thought, “I’m going to track down Beth and listen to what she’s got to say this year.” You did the search this year called Use Your Words, I think it was titled?

Beth: That’s right.

Darren: Can you give us a little bit of a premise of that talk? Just introduce us to the concept of what you’re talking about and why you chose that topic.

Beth: Sure. It’s the third in the series. I started talking at Inbound three years ago. I started at the beginning of the writing process. That first video that you spoke of, How to be a Writing God, is really how to get started with writing, how to establish discipline around writing, overcoming your fear of writing, and starting daily writing practice. It’s kind of inspirational and motivational.

The second one in the series, Fix Your Writing, was really about how to edit that lousy first draft that you come up with in those daily writing sessions. How to go just about taking it from a big ugly mess to something close to worthwhile. 

This one was really a bit more about the final polish. It actually grew out of a Wiki post that I wrote internally for HubSpot. I was asked to write a list of Beth Dunn’s top 10 rules for how to write in a HubSpotty way, I think was the original assignment. I came up with these 10 rules and they boiled down into what you saw in my talk.

Darren: What I loved about your talk, there were a lot of things I loved about it. I tweeted every point you made. They all got retweeted. The way you started off, you really resonate with me. You were talking about what I’ve talked about ProBlogger previously, how every tweet we do, every blogpost we do, all has the potential to either enhance our brand or pull down our brand. You took it to an even more micro level by talking about the actual words we use. Every single word you use has the potential to build your brand and to pull down your brand. Can you unpack that a little more for us?

Beth: Absolutely. As you’ve mentioned, I started off by talking about just simply learning how to say “please” and “thank you” when I was a child and asking for treats from my grandmother. Something as simple as not saying “please” can actually make people think that you’re the opposite of what you are or want to be seen as. As opposed to a nice child, they’ll think that you’re a greedy little jerk.

The same thing holds absolutely when you’re writing, posting online, blogging, writing web copy, microcopy for a product or an app. Every single word, whether or not you use punctuation and which kind of punctuation you involve in your writing, it all affects how you’re perceived. To radical degrees, I think, we underestimate how much of an impact it has on how we’re perceived by others.

Darren: I think it’s a real tension that bloggers feel. I know I’ve sat down many times to write a blog post. I almost started off by saying, “I don’t want to come across pompous. I don’t want to come across by being a know-it-all. I don’t want to be arrogant. I don’t want to be fake.” I sit down, I write it, then I reread it. I think I came across pompous, arrogant, and fake. It’s a real tension, like how we know what we don’t want to be, but we still come out that way. I think a lot of what you’ve talked about, these 10 things, you termed it as closing the gap between trying to portray what you want to portray.

Beth: Yeah. I think the part of the problem is we’ve all acquired these really bad habits that actually undermine our very efforts to come across the way we want to. You mentioned not wanting to sound pompous, conceited, and know-it-all. I think the very thing we tend to go towards to avoid something pompous is the very thing that makes us sound more pompous and conceited. It’s because that’s the way everybody writes on the web or everybody writes in business. Some of it just has to do with unlearning some bad habits.

Darren: Okay. Let’s get into some of these 10 things that you talked about, the 10 things to reinforce the brand that you’re trying to portray or the person you’re trying to portray. The first one that you’re talking about, “I want to convey that I’m human.” Can you talk a little bit about that and how we can come across as humans rather than robots?

Beth: Sure. It is probably the most common thing that I get asked to do because I edit the product copy at HubSpot. I’m in charge of the words that are in the software itself. Quite often, the copy that you get written by engineers tends to sound a little robotic. It’s getting handed to me and says, “Beth, I need you to make this sound more human.” What do they actually mean? They want to make it sound like it’s a human talking to another human being, that it’s not actually your computer talking to you. That goes for any web copy, too. 

The single most effective saying that I’ve discovered when you want to sound more human is simply to start using contractions in your writing to go through and puts together the words that naturally form contractions like “we are” into “we’re,” “you will” goes “you’ll.” It will sound 100% more human. It’s an amazing trick. It’s pretty much the first thing that I do with any piece of writing that needs to sound more conversational. 

You can argue that you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, if I’m writing something more formal like an apology or like a legal disclaimer or delivering bad news, I don’t want to follow this rule.” That’s exactly when you do want to follow that rule even moreso.

Darren: Definitely. Those are the times where someone will critic you for being too formal. I love the quote. I wrote it down on my notes, “Bash together words like you’re in a roller derby.”

Beth: I want people to watch the video so I don’t necessarily give away all of my best lines.

Darren: That’s good. Do you think there is a time where you could still keep some of that authority or some of that formalness? Can you think of a time where there is a case for that?

Beth: I think that when you want to come across as more formal and it’s a more formal setting, certainly there are times when it’s the right thing to do to not use contractions. There’s no question about that. None of these are hard and fast rules. There are other ways to come across as authoritative but I think have more to do with the length of sentences, cadence, and rhythm of sentences. Conversational tones just have a different rhythm and different word choice than formal writing does. You don’t have to go straight to the fanciest sounding words and the stilted formal language to get across the formality that you’re after.

Darren: Let’s move to number two. This is where you want to convey that you’re honest. This is something I know that a lot of bloggers who listen to ProBlogger want to sell something or they’re recommending a product that they might be affiliated for, they are honest but they want to convey that. Sometimes when you’re selling, there’s a bit of tension there. Any tips on that one?

Beth: Sure. This is kind of a subtle one than the first one. I alluded to it, just a second ago, that we go towards the biggest fanciest words that we can find in an attempt to sound more authoritative and like we know what we’re talking about. It actually has the opposite effect. We use words like “utilize” instead of “use” or “incentivize” instead of “motivate.” It was one of my old professor’s pet peeves. “Leverage” instead of “use.” I think 90% of the time, you can simply use “use.” This rule is just all about using simpler, shorter words. Simple, clear, easy to understand language actually does a big job of making you sound more honest and trustworthy. If you use the big fancy words, it seems like you’ve got something to hide. It’s a little bit of smoke and mirrors.

Darren: I find it’s also really hard to read. It takes more brain power. I’m thinking here of a talk I went to recently at a corporate event. The person spoke in this corporatese, use all the […] words or they utilized the corporate […]. I almost feel like I need a translator. I got to the end of the session, I was just really tired. 

Beth: I think that’s maybe one reason why. Whenever you create more of a cognitive burden for your listeners or your readers, it has this subtle effect, whether or not it makes them perceive you as less honest, or somebody is like, “Man, I don’t have the time for this. I don’t have the energy to take in what you’re saying. I’m going to move on to the next thing.” None of those are the effects that we, as writers, want to create.

Darren: Great. We’re going to touch on some of these things a little bit more and some of the other ones as well. They all do connect a little bit. The third one is we want to convey that we’re exciting.

Beth: Mostly what I find is people are trying to convey that their product is exciting. Sometimes this has to do with being like, “I’m excited!” Usually, it’s because you want to make your readers excited about something that you’re excited about. You say, “This is exciting!” I just had to fix this at work, actually, just an hour ago. It’s hilarious. 

An exclamation mark is a tool we all reflexively reach for when we want to create excitement in the hearts of our readers. It generally does the opposite. It generally makes it seem like you’re overcompensating in some way. If you really need to use an exclamation mark or several exclamation marks, maybe the thing that you’re talking about isn’t actually all that exciting. 

Darren: Yeah. It’s interesting. I was just reading with my son this morning who’s 7. I was reading over some of the work that he’d done. There were exclamation marks at the end of every sentence. He’s obviously learned that if something exciting or something’s loud, he needs to insert that. But he’s overcompensating and I think so many people do that. It’s quite lazy in some way.

Beth: Yeah. I think it’s a really good sign when you start seeing exclamation marks in your writing, that it’s time to go back to your words. You’re placing an undue burden on your punctuation, basically. Punctuation isn’t built to convey that strong emotion. That’s what words are for. If there’s an exclamation mark in your writing and it’s too much, you probably need to strengthen the words that you’re using instead. In that sense, it’s a gift. It’s a good red flag to say, “Ah, I need to go back and do some editing here.”

Darren: That’s good. Does that translate to other punctuation? 

Beth: Well, let’s see. Kurt Vonnegut famously said, “The only thing that a semicolon shows is that you went to college.” I know some people have really strong opinions about not using semicolons. I think that you can make that argument as blogging, web copy, that sort of thing, that semicolons are going to be only used in a slightly more complex sentence structure that is probably necessary for that sort of reading. Again, it creates a stumbling block or makes your reader work just a little bit too hard. It’s probably something to avoid.

Darren: That’s great advice. Point number four was, we want to convey if it is helpful. 

Beth: This is pretty related to the earlier point about using simple, smaller words. There’s one particular pitfall that I think a lot of us fall into, especially in inbound marketing. It’s these acronyms that we love. If your writing is jam-packed with acronyms that you haven’t unpacked and you haven’t defined, you’re making assumptions about the people reading it.

Again, you’re making them work too hard. Quite possible, quite likely, in fact, that many of your readers have encountered these before. They just have to think about, “Oh yeah, what did that mean again?” CTA, ROI, those are common ones. We all have more complicated, complex insider ones that are more common in our work, whatever your field may be.

I would say, go through and make sure that you unpack and stretch out those acronyms, more often and earlier than you need to. It’s just more inclusive to your readers.

Darren: Is it okay to use an acronym once you’ve defined it? How do you deal with that?

Beth: Absolutely. I think the general rule is to always use it in a stretched-out non-acronym version the first time. According to the rule book, after that first mention, you can use it like when you say Call To Action and then put CTA in parentheses after it. Henceforth, you should know that when I say CTA, that’s what I mean.

Again, you might want to err on the side of caution and over-explaining things a bit especially if it’s something that you know (maybe) it’s your evergreen content that is going to get in front of a lot of eyeballs who will be fresh and new to your realm, to your domain, your field. They just started doing research in this area and it’s just not part of their vernacular yet. You might want to explain it the first few times. Spell it out the first few times as they go straight to the abbreviated version.

Darren: Sure. I was actually talking to a blogger about this the other day. I know a lot of our bloggers actually work for companies rather than blogging for themselves. They write in this more humanized way and they pass it on to their boss. They came back robotized all the jargon, the acronyms, and also that formal language. Do you have any tips for people who are working with that tension?

Beth: There are a number of resources on the web that will back-up your claim that a simpler, more straightforward language will get you better results. Maybe you just want to create a list of bookmarks. Basically, if you can just stand on your own two feet and say, “Well, this is the kind of language. This is what you’re paying me for after all. I’m the writer. This is my field. It’s not something that everybody can do, remember?” Even though everybody writes, this is a specialized skill. You have to say, “I know what I’m talking about here. This kind of writing is going to do the job that you wanted to do better. You got to trust me.”

Darren: That’s great. Point number five is one that I know a lot of bloggers are going to cringe at. That is where we want to come across as careful. It’s so easy to come across as the exact opposite with simple errors that could be picked up with a spellchecker or proofread.

Beth: I think a lot of us, especially if we write for a living, we think, “I’ll catch it. I’ll just proofread before I hit publish.” And we don’t. We don’t catch it. Maybe we’re using a word processing or CMS or something like that that either doesn’t have a spellchecker built-in or doesn’t have the most reliable spell check built-in or doesn’t know the unique words that you use in your field which is really common in inbound marketing or brand names. All these different things don’t get caught by spell-check.

The rule here is to spell check always, always, always. I have a system where I always keep my simple notepad document open on my desktop. At any time I’m writing something, before I send it off I copy and paste it over there. It’s got my dictionary baked into it based on our style guide. It’s going to catch everything. If there are any little squiggles, I catch it, fix it, and I paste it back into what I’m doing. 

A lot of what I work in doesn’t have a reliable spellchecker. Illustrator, Photoshop, or PowerPoint. You can’t count on those things. You can’t rely on your own proofreading skills, honestly. We all have to crank out so much writing at such a high rate these days. 

Darren: Do you have any tips for people on the proofreading? I know it doesn’t always catch everything but should you be reading it out loud or anything else?

Beth: If it’s something really important, I rely on my old proofreader trick. I used to proofread romance novels for a large publishing house in New York. (Yeah, I’m a freelance […]). The thing that I do with that is read it out loud. They also say, if you read it backward, it helps. It helps you catch it. That’s for spellings, specifically, if you’re trying to catch spellings. Otherwise, your eyes will skip over words and your brain will fill it in, but if you force yourself to make it harder for your brain to fill in things that aren’t actually there and read it backward out loud while looking at the words, make sure that they’re spelled right. You could catch a lot more.

Darren: I find that when I’m reading it to someone else, that’s where I catch them even more because even if I’m reading out loud to myself, I skip over things. But if there’s someone listening, I’m like, “Yeah.” That’s where it goes for me every time.

Beth: Totally. That’s also a great way to catch when you’re not sounding human. If you’ve read out loud to a friend and you’re using these big fancy words, they’re going to give you raised eyebrows. “Honestly? Are you really?” “No.”

Darren: Yeah. Particularly if I’m reading to Vanessa, my wife, who’s a lawyer, she catches all those things. I catch them way before she does.

Beth: Yeah. When you start to feel the blush creeping up your cheeks, you’re embarrassed. “Maybe I need to go back and take […].

Darren: That’s right. Point number six, we’re talking about style guides. This (I think) is something that a lot of bloggers probably could really do well to create. Can you talk to us a little bit about why a style guide? I’m also really interested to know what other essentials for a style guide.

Beth: Sure. Why a style guide? Simply because they’re very good resources that you may go to. Dictionaries that disagree on basic ideas of what’s correct. At a certain point, you just have to put a flag in the sand and say, “I’m going to use the Oxford comma,” or, “I’m not going to use the Oxford comma.” You just have to make a call on some of the stuff because it’s a perfectly good argumentation for one way or the other. And really, just consistency is what’s important.

If you look up a word in the dictionary, it may be relatively a neologism like “email,” you’ll come across versions that have the E capitalized, that have the hyphen between E and mail. These are perfectly respectable dictionaries. You have to choose a dictionary that’s just going to be your go-to source.

At HubSpot, we use Merriam-Webster partly because they have a great website that’s easy to search. You just go right to it and there you go. Just say, “This is going to be the dictionary of our choice.” You say, “This is going to be our main style guide. We follow the AP style guide.” Some people like Chicago but you just say, “This is what I’m using.” That’s enforced throughout your organization, they documented it. There’s no more argument. “Nope, this is what we’re doing.”

Darren: In a style guide, you’ve got stuff on capitalization, punctuation.

Beth: How you treat numbers. Do you spell out numerals up to the number 10? Actually write the word one, two, three, and after that, you use the numerals. Do you use a numeral at the beginning of a sentence? What about in headlines? How do you capitalize on things that are hyphenated? Personally, I have a lousy memory. I can’t keep all this stuff in my head. I go and reference our style guide all the time.

What I find the most valuable part of our style guide is what we call the list of commonly troublesome words. The AP has its own. In the field of inbound marketing, we’ve got all these quirky words and phrases. Either they don’t exist in the real world or we use them in a way that’s unique to us. We need to say, “Do you capitalize tweet? We capitalize Twitter because that’s a brand name but do you capitalize tweet? What about Facebook posts?” There are all these weird questions that arise in our industry. You just document them.

We’ve got our style guide in one big long page on our internal Wiki but we’ve externalized it for common use. You can download a version of it if you do a search for “HubSpot written style guide.” You can get it as a free download with instructions on how to customize it for your own needs, which is a great start because writing a style guide can be a pretty big mountain to climb.

Darren: Yes, for sure. I’ve got a link for that already on the show notes. If you want show notes, you can guys straight across to that. Things like the persona of your reader, would you include who’s the reader? Who’s voice do we write in? The tone of the writing?

Beth: Yeah. We’ve got a section on voice and tone. We got a section on how to change your tone for different personas and different types of writing, whether it’s an apology again or delivering bad news—all the different types of writing that you might find yourself having to do. Or simply blog posts aimed at a completely different audience, your executive blog that aimed at CEOs, maybe we’ll have some slightly different guidelines than the one that’s for more general use.

Darren: Obviously, it’s useful if you’ve got a multi-author blog or a team that’s working together and you want consistency across that team. For a single author blog, do you think there’s any sense in putting together something like this? 

Beth: I do. Again, if anybody has a bad memory as I do, I can’t ever remember one day to the next whether or not I said, “Oh, yeah. Reentry doesn’t have a hyphen.” It takes the cognitive load off of yourself to not have to remember all that stuff anymore with consistency being so important in how you’re perceived. Again, this is one of those inadvertent perception problems. If you’re inconsistent in your writing, people will catch it out. They will think that you’re less trustworthy. It really does affect how they perceive your character.

Darren: That’s right. One that we get caught up all the time because I’m in Australia, my audience is in America, we have a very international audience, the use of certain words, color, those types of words, we get critiqued all the time on social media for spelling it the wrong way. We just need to have consistency, I guess.

Beth: Spelling it the wrong way and also, you’re going to have some guidelines around, “Do I use terms like, ‘Oh, that’s really inside baseball or is that too much inside baseball?’” We’re careful about that at HubSpot because we’re an international company, too. We tend to be very fond of using sports metaphors. We need to learn some new sports metaphors, quite frankly.

Darren: Yeah, that’s all right. I can give you some cricket ones, but I’m not sure they’re going to fly.

Beth: That’d be great. I’d love to hear that.

Darren: We’re up to point seven here and this continues the style guide type of thing. It’s about getting someone else involved in the implementation of that style guide with an editor. Give us some thoughts on editors.

Beth: Going back to your earlier question about if this has worked for an individual, maybe, maybe not, but for a team, you really need to have somebody who is the designated gatekeeper of everything that gets published. This rule is to hire an editor without hesitation. Maybe that’s just taking a look at somebody on your team who’s already there. Somebody on your social circle who’s already there, who is already an editor by nature. “This is the person who’s always posting the rants about semicolons on Facebook. This is the person who already has an opinion on the Oxford comma.”

We all know these people. That’s your editor. You just invest them with the authority to say, “This doesn’t sound human. This doesn’t sound good. You need to revise this before you hit publish,” or, “I’m just going to double-check this against your style guide and make sure you’re following the rules you set out for yourself.” That’s what an editor does, hold you accountable. Everybody needs one.

Darren: Yeah. The question is, one-man-band or one-person-band, how do we find an editor if we are not a HubSpot or a large corporation?

Beth: We have a designated editor at the small non-profit that I used to work at which had four employees, two of whom were college-age interns. A small organization can still have an editor. Again, it’s somebody who’s already there, probably. If you’re a one-man-band, most writers that I know have a writing buddy. Somebody’s who’s simpatico in some way. It’s a reciprocal relationship. You just constantly pass things between each other.

I have somebody at HubSpot that I do. Even though I’m the final authority for a lot of people’s writing, I still need an editor. I have somebody that I always send my stuff to and say, “Can you please tell me where I’m wildly off-base here?” Maybe it’s a friend, maybe it’s a buddy, maybe it’s somebody you’re in a class together at some point. It’s someone you can rely on to call you on stuff.

Darren: That’s right. I think a lot of bloggers are in little support groups, Facebook groups, and that can be a really great place just to copy-paste what you’ve got. If it’s about to go live, give it a once over. It’s amazing what people pick up.

Beth: That’s right.

Darren: Okay. Number eight is, I want to convey that I care about you as my reader. How do we convey that compassion we have for our readers?

Beth: I think the way that we failed to do this, that goes unnoticed a lot of the time is we start off our sentences (just the way you and I have) by talking about we and I. This comes across web copy a lot when you say, “We’re super excited to announce this new feature.” “I can’t wait to tell you.” “We’ve been working really hard behind the scenes to bring you X.” All those emails, announcements, and web pages that start off like that, come across to the reader as incredibly self-centered. Every time I get an email that starts off with, “We’re so excited!” I literally say out loud, who cares? I don’t care about your emotional state. Tell me what it is that I want to know and why I should be excited or interested or alarmed. Maybe it’s a security breach. “We’re sorry to have to tell you.” Who cares? Tell me what I need to know.

This rule, the way I stated it is to check your pronouns. If you switch your pronouns from “I” and “We” to “You” and “You’re” you’re probably going to have to recast your entire sentence. What it will do in the process is it will put the spotlight on your reader to force you to actually state things in the terms that your reader will empathize with or will understand.

Darren: I’m so guilty of this one. I just start my sentence with an “I.” I don’t know. When you said this during the session, I immediately thought back to all the product announcements I’ve ever done. I kind of think of it when […] where it’s not me being excited about that thing or me feeling something else. I do generally feel excited, but I went straight home and rewrote a couple of things that I was about to publish. It really does change the tone of it. It completely changed the way it came across.

Beth: Sure, and I think that it goes without saying that you’re excited. You wouldn’t be launching something if you didn’t put your own name behind it, if you weren’t thrilled with it. That work is done. You’re already excited about it. Now, you have to convert somebody else. You have to focus on them instead.

Darren: Yeah. I think you can convey your own excitement with the words that you used to describe it as well. This is where you talked a lot earlier about letting your words do the heavy lifting. I think the choice of words is really important here.

Beth: That’s right.

Darren: I think this next point ties into this as well. It’s about imagining your reader or doing some roleplay.

Beth: Doing roleplay, yeah. This is one of my favorite things. Now you’re at the end of the writing process and you’re just about ready to hit publish or hit send. You’ve checked all your pronouns, you bashed together your words and the contractions. The last step, you sit there and read it out loud, imagining that you’re somebody else. Oftentimes, I’ll imagine that I’m the head of our company, Brian Halligan. I would imagine how he would respond. actually trying to physically imagine myself as him. Or imagine myself as one of my intended readers if not him. Usually, a customer or whoever your persona is.

The most useful way to go about doing this is to imagine somebody specific. Maybe you have a well-fleshed out persona, but if you actually can think of a person that you’ve interacted with, maybe did some research with, or just had a conversation with, and imagine that person on her lunch hour reading this. Read it out loud and imagine her emotional response to these words. 

One of the things I think about, too, are those people that you know who will always take something the wrong way. If there’s a double […] should be ferreted out, or a negative connotation that you didn’t intend. they’ll find it and take offense. Read it in that person’s tone of voice.

Darren: I think in your talk, you talked a little bit about imagining your reader in a really bad mood.

Beth: That’s right. Even if it’s not somebody who naturally takes offense, imagine that they just have the worst day of their life. They were late to work. They spilled coffee on their favorite white shirt. They get chewed up by their boss because they were late and they looked like a mess. Then, they sat down and opened up your email. How is your tone going to come across now? Writing doesn’t go out into a vacuum. It goes out to actual people who are having actual days, good and bad.

Darren: Yeah. I love this advice on a number of levels. One, I think my best post I’ve actually started was emails when I was writing to a specific person who wrote to me asking a question often with context around it of how they’re feeling about their problem or their question. I find that if I’m writing to that real person or imagining that person, I write with more empathy and compassion. 

People will often say to me, “I feel like you’re writing to me,” and I think it was because I was writing to someone specific. I think it does help you to write in a different tone if you’re imagining someone or having a bad day. You’re going to write in a more patient and more caring way.

Beth: Absolutely. You’re going to write in a patient and caring way. That’s a good thing to strive for in basically all of your writing. 

Darren: I think the other thing I try to imagine when I’m writing is how do I want them to feel when they’re finished reading as well. What place do I want them to get to with the thing that they’re reading? It’s imagining who they are, how they’re feeling, and how I want them to be.

Beth: And where you want to bring them, absolutely. Actually, if any of your listeners do go ahead and watch that first talk, How to be a Writing God, I had a goal like that. I don’t think I ever told anybody except the woman who helped me break those slides that my goal at the end of my talk is that people would want to carry me out on their shoulders chanting, “Write like crap,” which is going to be their rallying cry. “Write like crap every day.” A lot of people were tweeting it. I think it carried out of the room on their shoulders like, “Someday, we’ll shoot for that. It’s a stretch goal.”

Darren: We’re coming to the end here but we’ve got one more point. This one, again, I can already think of some bloggers who are going to react positively and negatively towards this point because they do it. They actually can do it well. You talked about, I want to convey that I’m hilarious with my writing. Unpack that one for us.

Beth: Sure. This is endemic on the Internet, unfortunately. Somehow, we’ve got to a point where sarcasm and snarkiness equal humor. It just isn’t. My stance on sarcasm is it is humor, but it’s humor performed for a third party. It’s humor performed in front of an audience. It’s not humor that’s shared between you and your reader—the person that you’re talking to or writing to. It’s inflicted on them. 

If you’re performing and you want to make somebody standing off to the side laugh, then good on you. But if you’re actually concerned about your audience, remember your reader feeling cared for, they’re included, and they’re part of your gang or whatever. I would shy away from sarcasm and snarkiness. It’s not helpful.

Darren: You think there is a place for humor and different types of humor?

Beth: Absolutely. I love humor. I do humor writing on a regular basis. I think that sarcasm and snarkiness, first of all, they’re just overdone. I think we’re all inured to them to a certain point as far as finding them funny. The humor was a little worn off because it’s just for swimming in a sea of snarkiness on the Internet. The humor’s worn off and all you’re left with is the meanness of spirit. It comes out of a certain meanness of the spirit, I think, in cynicism. I don’t think that cynicism is a place that you want to start from when you’re trying to win somebody over to your side or convince them or persuade them.

Darren: Also, if you’re trying to build a culture or a community around a blog, particularly, then you need to be really careful about that tone, snark, and sarcasm. It gets picked up and that’s how people react as well. That then gets blown out of proportion in comments, particularly. You set the culture for your blog. Your readers will respond to you in the way that you write.

Beth: Right. You set the tone and you set the ground rules. One of my favorite blogs—I call them that all the time—is Go Fug Yourself. It’s a red carpet celebrity fashion blog. You would think hearing, “Oh, it’s a celebrity fashion blog,” but it’s all about snark. What’s remarkable about it is it isn’t. That carries over into their comment section as well. It’s the most civil, well-behaved, and hilarious comment section community I ever come across. Yeah, it absolutely can be done.

Darren: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much, Beth. This has been a great chat. My first ever interview on a podcast. 

Beth: I’m honored.

Darren: I think I chose someone who is great. While I have a bit of a cold today, I was wondering how I was going to carry this. I didn’t need to. You’ve brought so much great, useful content for us today.

Beth: I’m just elated to have been asked. I really had such a great time talking with you today. Thank you so much.

Darren: No problem. Where can our listeners find more from you and connect with you?

Beth: Probably the best place to connect with me is on Twitter where I’m @bethdunn. I’m also on Instagram as @therealbethdunn. If you want to check out my blog where I do some more of my personal and long-form writings—essays and that sort of thing—that’s at bethdunn.com.

Darren: Great. We’ll have all those links in today’s show notes. I’ve actually found a few posts that relate to some of these points already. I’ll include those in the show notes, too, because there’s some further reading that you can do there. Thank you so much for chatting with us today, Beth. We’ll hopefully chat with you again soon and see another talk at inbound which continues the series.

Beth: Excellent. Looking forward to it. Thank you so much.

Darren: Wow. We covered some ground in that particular interview. I want to thank Beth again for the time that she generously put aside into agreeing to be interviewed today.

Before I go, I want to go just back up over those 10 points again just to reemphasize the things that Beth talked about. I think there are some really great nuggets in that.

Firstly, we want to convey that we’re humans. We get relieved of that formal stilted language and use more contractions in your writing. Instead of “you have,” use “you’ve.” Instead of “he would,” use “he’d.” Instead of “I will,” use “I’ll.”

Number two was to convey honesty by using shorter, simpler, clearer words, and not using those fancy words that make it seem like you may have something to hide that is hard to read.

Point number three ways to avoid using exclamation marks. Don’t use exclamation marks. Rely upon words to convey the emotion that you want to convey.

Number four was to avoid using jargon, especially acronyms. Tell those who don’t understand those words, that they don’t belong. It creates alienation.

Number five was to use a spellchecker. Mistakes make you look careless.

Number six was to use and create a style guide. It gives you a bar to raise your writing to every time and it brings consistency to your writing.

Number seven was to hire an editor to help you to implement that style guide, which again will save you significant pain in the long-term if you give that editor power to implement that style guide.

Number eight was to check your pronouns. Don’t lead with “I” or “We.” Instead, lead with “You” and “You’re.” It puts the spotlight upon your reader.

Number nine, before you hit publish, do some role play. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes and see how they will read what you write. Imagine that reader in the worst possible mood. In a mood where they don’t have time for jokes and they’re having a bad day. It will help you to write with more empathy. Also, it will help you to write in a way that removes some of those objections that they have.

Lastly, don’t use snark in your writing. It has the cumulative effect of making your look like a bit of a jerk in some ways.

I loved the words that Beth actually finished her talk with. She actually said, “Just remember to be kind. Be kind. Be kind.” I think that’s great. In the writing that we create, we have the opportunity to really be kind to our readers.

I hope you feel like we’ve been kind to you today with some practical tips. I would encourage you to take some of these things and to go back over on some of the last posts that you’ve written. See where you can implement some of these things in the things you’ve written.

You might want to go to your About page. That’s a great place to go back and to apply some of these rules. Add some of those contractions, remove some of the jargon, and put yourself in the shoes of your readers. Those pages that people are reading every day on your blog, it’s really good to run through these kinds of filters and to apply some of these things. Also, of course, bring them to your future writing as well.

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/52 where I do have some links for you for some further reading, some of the things that Beth has written about previously, and also where you can connect with her. I hope you’ve enjoyed our first interview on the ProBlogger Podcast. Let us know in the comments how you found it. Hopefully, we’ll bring you some more of these in the future. We’ll chat with you in episode 53 of the ProBlogger Podcast.

What did you learn from today’s episode? Are you already using some of Beth’s strategies? Which ones will you try next? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Finally, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us plan future episodes.

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