ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

Congratulations for making it to day 31 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. If you’re new to the series – check out previous episodes here.

Today’s episode is about how you can plan the next steps for your blog. Great blogs are built upon many small but consistent useful actions over time. We look at how you can use the last 31 days of challenges to set up healthy blog habits and make them stick. 

Street of the Valley of Fire by Andi Hofstetter on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

What are the next steps for your blog? What habits will you try to establish for the health of your blog?

I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

There are 7 bonus days in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog workbook.

Also keep your eye open for future episodes of the ProBlogger podcast. We’re moving to a 2 episodes a week schedule as of next week. Subscribe to us on iTunes or via our newsletter to get notified of future episodes coming out.

In today’s episode ongoing to talk about planning the next steps, particularly looking at the next month, and trying to build some habits based upon some of the things that we’ve covered over the last 31 days. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/31. Let’s get into today’s episode.

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, day 31. Congratulations on making it to day 31. Hopefully, you’ve found some of the challenges that we’ve done over the last 31 days to be useful. I know I’ve really enjoyed putting this podcast together. It’s got me back to some of the basic tasks that I’ve been talking about for many years that I’ve started to do a little bit more myself over the last 31 days and have seen some real improvements in my own blogging over this period. I hope it’s been true for you.

Since I created the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog program a number of years ago now, tens of thousands of bloggers have walked through it, both in the workbook but also on the blog and I guess now in the podcast. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with many bloggers who’ve been through the process and I’ve heard all kinds of stories about how it’s helped people to improve their blogs. I’d love to hear your stories as well if you’d like to shoot them to me on Twitter or Facebook. There’s one observation that I’ve made of those bloggers who’ve had the most success with this program and I wanted to share that today.

The people who seem to have benefited the most have gone beyond the 31 days. They’ve taken these challenges, or at least some of the challenges, into the rest of their blogging. Now, not every challenge that we’ve covered over the last 31 days is going to be completely relevant to you, your blog, your niche, and the stage that your blog is at. That’s totally fine, leave some of them behind. But some of them could be quite useful if you incorporate them into your regular blogging workflow at different intervals. You might want to do some of them on a daily basis, but I suspect most of them will be things that you could incorporate on a weekly, even a monthly, or even a quarterly basis. The key is to keep doing them.

Most of the things that we’ve talked about over the last 31 days will have some benefit if you do them once but many of them have an accumulation of benefits that come to. For example, building a presence in a forum or on another blog in the comments section. These things will have some benefit if you do them once but they’ll have much more benefit if you build a presence in those places over time. So, the key today is to make them habits, to build them into your workflow in some way.

To help you to do that, what I want to highly recommend that you do today is to build yourself a bit of a plan or a calendar. Habits don’t just happen, you actually have to be intentional about them especially in the early days. Over time, they become a natural part of what you do. But today, I want to encourage you to get out a calendar, create a calendar perhaps, to help you to get into the rhythm of some of these key activities that are going to help you to build a better blog.

Depending on what sort of calendar you normally use, set up one. Whether it being Google, Google’s calendars, iCal or whether it be a paper calendar, whatever suits you, whatever you will be checking on a regular basis. Then, just go back over the last 31 days of activities and begin to slot some of those activities, some of the ones that resonated with you the most into that calendar. It’s probably a few different areas that you want to think about this in.

Firstly, there are activities that revolve around content creation. You might take the brainstorming or idea generation challenge and you put that in either on a monthly or even a weekly basis. For me, I actually do it every Friday morning. I spend time by myself thinking about ideas for future blog posts and then, when I get together with my team, we also talk about it as well.

Another important challenge is setting up your editorial calendar. Again, you could do that on a monthly or weekly basis. For me, it was always a Friday afternoon activity. Mornings were for generating ideas and then Friday afternoons were times where I would slot into next week’s calendar the posts that I needed to create.

Another task is the writing of content. We’ve covered a number of different types of posts over the last 31 days. One thing that many people who’ve been through this process do is to assign a different type of post for each day of the week. Mondays might be list post days, Tuesdays might be opinion post days, Wednesdays might be review posts, Thursdays might be a how-to-post, Friday might be a link post, Saturday might be a reader question post, and Sunday might be a day off. Now, you don’t have to have six posts a week, you might have three. Choose the posts that resonate best with you and that your readers respond to best, or you might want to just mix it up and change it every week.

The other thing that you might want to start to put into your calendar are times for writing content, times for editing content, times for the task of scheduling content as well. Really, it’s up to you but do slot into your next month’s calendar. Time challenges and activities that are based on the creation of content.

Another area you might want to think about is the promotion of your content. We’ve done a number of challenges on this as well about getting off your blog and building a presence in other places, whether they be other blogs, forums, or social media. You could slot these things in a number of different ways. You could assign different days for different activities. Tuesdays might be comment-on-other-blogs day, Wednesdays might be interact-in-forums day, Thursdays might be write-a-guest-post day.

You might want to mix it up and put these different activities into different times of the day; 9:00–9:15 every day might be Twitter time, Facebook time might be at 8:00 PM as you shared your post for the next day. Really, it’s completely up to you but slotting things in and setting yourself reminders, set making appointments with yourself to do these types of things means that you’ll build it into your natural workflow.

Another area you might want to slot in tasks is building community and we’ve got a number of challenges that we’ve been through over the last month that are all about engaging with your readers—emailing readers, making readers famous. There is a whole heap of activities and some of the social media activities are community-based as well. Slot some of these things into your next month’s calendar.

The last area that we’ve been talking about is some of those more administrative tasks. Analyzing your statistics that we talked about yesterday, that might be good to slot in on the last day of the month so you can look back. Going on a dead link hunt, updating an old post—these types of activities can be really useful to do at certain intervals. So, you might want to build some of those in as well.

Your plan needs to reflect a number of things that really need to reflect the amount of time that you have, the level you’re at as a blogger, but also the goals that you have as well. Your plan doesn’t have to be complicated. I’ve seen all kinds of people with 10 things every day and then I’ve seen others say I’m going to do one thing per day and just spend 15 or 20 minutes per day on my blog. It’s totally up to you but the key is to keep active. One thing I’ve learned about bloggers who have success, it’s that they are active people.

Great blogs are built upon many small, consistent, useful actions over time. Great blogs are not built on a single post, they’re built on lots of different things over time and many of the things that they’re built on are quite small things. They mainly center around creating useful content, putting yourself out there and building a presence where your readers are gathering, building community, and deepening the engagement you have with your blogs.

Outside of that, there are some administrative-type things and monetizing your blog if that’s a priority too but really, it comes down to creating great content, finding readers, and building community. If most of what you do focuses on those three things—content, finding readers, building community—you’re going to be on the right track.

So, this comes to the end of our 31-day challenge. Some of you will be asking where to go from here. As I said in yesterday’s podcast, there are more podcasts to come. I’ve really enjoyed this process and I want to commit at least for the next few months, to continue to create podcasts on a weekly or maybe twice a week basis. These podcasts will continue to have a teaching focus. I also want them to be actionable so that they’re things that can go away, try and do on your blog as we’ve done for the last 31 days. I also want to begin to feature some case studies and interview some bloggers—both big and small—so that we can learn from them together.

The last thing I say is that those of you who’ve got the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook that came with seven bonus days of activities, you’ve got another week to go if you want to continue to get deeper into some of these sorts of activities and I encourage you to dig into that. If you haven’t got the workbook it’s still available at 50% off so do pick that up if you want those extra seven days.

I really hope that you found this last 31 days to be as useful as it has been for me. As I said, I’ve really enjoyed engaging in these challenges myself over the last month and really hope to hear your story of how these challenges have helped you improve your blog over the last month. I look forward to talking to you, not tomorrow but over the next week, as we continue to publish these podcasts that I’ve got planned for you. I look forward to talking to you, then.

Today’s show notes can be found at problogger.com/podcast/31 where you’re invited to leave us a comment. Now, you’ve got to the end of the 31 days, tell us how you found the experience. I’m really interested in your feedback. You can also participate in a little survey that I’ve got set up there on those show notes as well which will help us to plan the next episodes in this series. We will be going to one to two post episodes per week so you can relax a little and enjoy some other podcasts as well but we would love to hear your feedback.

Also, if you could drop us a review now you’ve got the end of the month on iTunes or Stitcher, that’s going to help us a lot to draw others into this podcast. I really appreciate those reviews that you can leave. Look forward to chatting with you in the next few days for the next episode of the ProBlogger Podcast.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Today’s episode is about how you can dig into your blog statistics to work out patterns in what’s working and what’s not working for your blog. The numbers might seem daunting at first, but I share how you can understand them and use them to uncover the secrets of how people are using your blog.

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). Today we talk about:

As promised in the episode – here’s the process I went through to dig into these Google Analytics stats.

Note: I refer numerous times to a previously written post on the ProBlogger Blog in which I go into more depth on using Google Analytics. You can read that post at A Powerful Exercise inside Google Analytics to Set You Up for a Successful Year of Blogging.

Start by opening Google Analytics and clicking the Audience >> Overview menu item.

On the next page you’ll see your ‘sessions’ analytics like this (taken from my last month of blogging on Digital Photography School).

To get a ‘comparison’ of this month to last month go up to the date section and put in the two periods you want to compare. Make sure you check the ‘compare to’ check box as pictured below and then hit ‘apply’ and you’ll get a chart like this:

While you’re in this area of Google Analytics you can look at some of these areas of stats. If you click on each one you’ll be able to see a larger chart:

Also in the audience area there are a whole heap of other ares you can dig into in the sidebar menu.

Next we’re moving into the Acquisition area. Click Acquisition >> Overview menu item:

You’ll be given a good overview page but you can drill down further. Go ahead and click the ‘all traffic’ menu item and then ‘channels’ to show you the different areas that traffic is coming from for your blog.

Click on the different channels to drill down and see more detail in where the traffic came from. For example if you click the ‘social’ link you’ll see it broken down into the traffic coming from different social networks.

The last section we’ll look at is ‘behavior’. Click on Behavior >> Overview for the overview page:

Drill down further into the Site Content >> All Pages menu item.

Listed there will be 10 most viewed pages on your blog. Click the ‘show rows’ drop down menu to make it show 100 instead of 10 so you can see more.

This is where I’m asking these 9 questions:

On day one, I asked you to install Google Analytics or some other stats program. Today we’re going to dig into the data that’s being collected. I’m going to walk you through my exact process for analyzing my own Google Analytics. I’m also sharing some screenshots on today’s show notes. It might be worth opening up the show notes if you’re able to just to be able to follow through the podcast as we go. Today show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/30, where you will get some further reading but also see those screen grabs. Let’s get into today’s show.

Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 30 of our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. We’re getting to the end—second last day—and I know some of you are probably feeling a little bit sad, although perhaps some of you are feeling a bit relieved. 

It’s been a fairly intense 31 days but I just wanted to let you know that we will be continuing to podcast not on a daily basis but one maybe two times a week going forward. I’ll continue to share with you some of these types of activities, but I’ll also mix up some other teaching and perhaps a few interviews with bloggers that you can learn from as well. Do stay subscribed to this podcast.

Today’s challenge is to dig into your statistics, into your metrics. Right at the start of this 31 days challenge, I encouraged you to make sure you had analytics installed on your blog in some way, whether you used Google Analytics or something else. My preference is definitely Google Analytics. I hope you did that because today we’re going to dig into those stats that you’ve been collecting on your blog and to track your progress. Now, if you haven’t already installed Google Analytics, your task today is to do that. This is really important to have some way of tracking your blogs. 

For those of you who have done so we’re going to dig into that now. I know some of you are seasoned pros at this and you’ve been looking at these stats every day for years, so you may not need all of what I’m going to share with you today, but I do encourage you to do the challenge particularly looking at the last month of statistics that you’ve been collecting. 

I’m going to link to a post that I wrote recently in today’s show notes that gives you an overview of how I use Google Analytics. I wrote this post at the end of last year and it looks at how I dug into Google Analytics to look at last year’s data for my main blog, Digital Photography School. Now, the process I described there is actually quite long and detailed and it’s what I do at the end of every year, but I do a quite similar thing on a monthly basis as well. You can use the pattern that I’ve outlined there and I’ll just go through some of it now in this podcast as well. For those of you who don’t want to read it, you can listen to it.

You’ll notice when you log into Google Analytics that down the left-hand side there are some menu items. The first one we want to look at is the audience. Audience shows you a lot of information about your audience—funny about that—and it’s a great place to start. 

If you click the audience button—audience link—it will open up the audience overview option. This just gives you a really good overview of the last month of traffic to your blog. In particular, it will show you sessions. The session statistic is defined by Google Analytics as a group of interactions within 30 minutes. If someone comes to your site, they view 10 pages, they leave comments, and they buy a product that’s counted as a session. It’s not looking at the exact number of visitors. It’s counting sessions so when someone comes back every second day for the whole month, that’s 15 sessions being recorded there. 

I don’t want you to get too caught up by the actual numbers that are being shown here in your sessions. Rather, look at the trend. How did you go over the last month? Look at the shape of the graph. Was it trending up? Is it trending down? Did it go up and down? Were there spikes? Were there peaks and troughs?

Start to try and get a feel for what happened over the last month. Particularly pay attention to any peaks and troughs. What happened on those days? You might want to go back and look on your blog and see, was it because I published a post today? Was it a certain type of post? As we dig through these statistics you might get some other hints on why those things happen. 

You’re particularly looking for any peaks that you can work out, that something happened that you can replicate. Maybe it was a certain type of post or maybe you did something on social media that you can replicate in the coming month. 

The other thing I really like to do right even at this point is to compare this month to last month. I’ll show you in quite detail how to do that in the post that I’m linking to from the show notes today. 

There is a compare option in Google Analytics and it’s really fascinating. You can actually compare what happened over this month to what happened over last month or what happened this month or last year, if you like. I find this is really useful because it actually gives you something to compare your stats to.

Many bloggers compare their stats to other bloggers stats and that can be a bit depressing or it can be a bit of an ego boost depending on how your stats do compare. It’s much more useful to compare your stats with your stats, so comparing yourself with last month or last year, will give you a real insight as to whether you’ve had any growth and how that growth has come about. I encourage you to use that compare tool if possible. Again, I outlined how to do that in that post, so compare it. 

You’ll also be able to do that same comparison on some of the other things that you find in the audience section of Google Analytics. There’s a number of options there and it’s worth looking at some of these every month.

You can look at your user numbers. This is a bit different to session numbers because it counts how many people have visited. If someone’s come back 15 times in the month, that discounts them as one. It gives you a slightly different view.  You’ll find that the shape of the graph is probably going to be pretty similar to the session number, though.

Pageviews are probably a similar sort of shape. It shows you how many pages on your blog people are viewed. If someone comes and views 10 pages on your blog in a single session, it counts as 10 rather than 1. 

What I find more interesting than page views and user numbers is pages viewed per session. This one’s worth keeping an eye on, particularly if you’re monetizing through advertising or where you might get paid per page view, but it also gives you an idea of how well you’re doing at getting people to go deeper into your site. This is one of the things that you’ll notice if you use sneeze pages, as we talked about earlier in these 31 days, that you’ll notice this number going up. You’ll also notice the next couple of numbers going up as well. 

Session duration, this is how long people are spending on an average visit on your site. The longer that is, the more they’re reading, the more they’re commenting, the more they are interacting, and the deeper their experience of your brand is. That’s a number that you want to see if you can increase. 

The other one is the bounce rate. This is one you want to actually see a decrease. This is the percentage of people who land on your blog and then leave without seeing any other pages. These statistics really tied to the last two. The duration that people are on your site and the number of pages that they viewed. Keep an eye on those three. It does give you some real insights.

In the audience area, you can all also look at how many people are new to your site versus returning. There’s no right or wrong with this statistic. It just gives you an indication of how well you’re doing, perhaps promoting your blog to new readers. It also shows you how many readers are coming back again, which is a good thing. Both of those things are good, but it’s interesting to see what the mix of new versus old readers is. 

You can also dig into language and the location of your audience. This is something that I certainly would recommend you keep an eye on. It does change over time and it’s fantastic to know where your readers are and their first language as well. It will give you all kinds of insights as to how you write your content, how you use language, and what sort of spelling you might use because there is a UK spelling versus the US spelling of some words. Having that understanding really gives you a lot of insight. It may explain some of the questions you get in the way that people interact with you because there are cultural differences in the way that people interact online. 

The last area in the audiences section of Google Analytics that’s worth having a look at and keeping an eye on is the devices section. Over time, this will have changed. If you’ve had a blog for a year or two, you’ll have seen some changes in this because it shows you how many people are accessing your site on a desktop versus a mobile and tablet.

For most blogs, this is getting to a point now where at least half of the people visiting your blog are probably on a mobile or a tablet or it will get to that point soon for you. I think we’ve just hit 50% so we’re at that switching over point. 

Again, you can do all of those statistics in a comparison mode so you can go back a year and see any of those things; how you are going and then how you’re going now. That’s the audience area. There’s a lot more you can do in there but if you’re just starting out particularly pay attention to some of those statistics.

If you scroll down the page in Google Analytics and look on the left-hand side in the menu, you’ll see that there is a section there for acquisition. This is basically an area that helps you to analyze where traffic is coming from on your blog. 

The overview gives you some great overview analysis. Immediately, on clicking acquisition overview, you’ll get a sense, therefore, how much of your traffic comes from search, how much is coming from social, how much is coming from direct—that’s people just coming directly to your site—how much is coming from referral and email as well. 

I actually find the email statistic isn’t overly accurate because a lot of the people coming from direct on our site seem to be coming from email as well. You can dig a little bit deeper here.

I’d encourage you to click the channels button there. This will allow you to go in and analyze the traffic coming from search, social, and then within social,the different types of social. 

You can do some analysis here. Is search traffic up or down? Can you explain that change? This is really good to keep an eye on because you might notice that you suddenly get a real drop in your search traffic. That gives you a hint that you need to go and look at it. Has Google changed the algorithm? Has something broken on your site that you need to fix and you manage to get some help with that?

The same thing with social. How were some of these social experiments that we’ve done over the last 31 days had an impact on your traffic. Have you done something that’s seen a real spike or have you seen it tail off? That gives you some hints as to what you should keep doing and what you should stop doing. 

What pages on your site did social media drive the most traffic to? This, again, gives you some insights into what type of content is being shared and what type of post you might want to write more of. It also gives you some ideas on what you could continue to be sharing in social media. You don’t want to just keep sharing every post you’ve ever written on social media. You want to pay particular attention to posts that have been shared previously. You might want to continue to share them on a monthly basis.

Lastly, have you had any spikes in traffic from other sites? This is in your referral area. It will identify if you’ve had a lot of traffic coming in from another blog or a forum or some of these other places that you perhaps have been interacting over the last month. 

You begin to see here correlations with some of the other activities you’ve done over the last 30 days, whether it be certain types of posts or certain activities that you’ve been doing on the web in building your presence. Pay attention to the things that you’ve done and what happens to your traffic because it will give you all kinds of insights as to how effective you’ve been in building a presence, how effective you’ve been at creating content. Again, you can do the comparative analysis of this type of data with what happened last month and again that will give you useful insights.

Now, if you scroll down the page in Google Analytics on the left-hand side, you’ll now see that there’s a category behavior. This is my favorite section to dig into. I dig in here on a daily basis. It shows you what type of content has been getting that traffic. 

Acquisition shows you overall how much traffic. Now, you’re going to see where the traffic is going on your site. For me, this is where it’s at. That’s partly because I really love writing content and seeing how people interact with it. In this section, open up behavior, then click on-site content, and then all pages. 

It’s also good to dig into the landing pages tab. All pages show you all of the pages on your site that have had people visit it and it ranks them. Landing pages shows you how many people land on a particular page and it doesn’t really track what happens after they land. You’ll find that they’re slightly different and it’s worth taking a look at both. 

For now, let’s just look at all pages. Once you click site content and then all pages, it will show you the top 10 posts or pages on your site. Scroll down a little bit and click the full report link. That will only allow you to dig beyond the top 10, so you can actually view that page by the top 100 posts or the top 1000 posts. You might want to just stick with 100 because it might overload your computer. This is really great to dig into because it shows you what posts are resonating with your audience and it gives you all kinds of insights.

I’ve actually got a series of nine questions that I ask in this area. I do ask these on that post that I mentioned before. I just want to quickly go through them because I think this is just so key. It will help you to work out what kind of posts to keep writing, what you might want to stop, and how you can share those posts as well. 

The first question is what posts do you want to reshare on social at some point? If you’ve got in that top 100 posts, you might find that some of them have been shared a lot on social media. Take note of those. Actually make a list. I’ve got a spreadsheet of my most shared posts and this is stuff that I continue to reshare on Twitter, on Facebook, in the coming months and years. 

I don’t share them all every day because I don’t want to overload my followers. This is stuff that on a daily basis, I’m trying to share two or three posts that I’ve previously written that otherwise, would be hidden in my archives. What type of post might you want to reshare at some point? 

Number two, what type of posts get shared the most? You begin to notice that there are some trends here. Last time I did this analysis, I noticed that a lot of our cheat sheets and infographics were being shared a whole heap and they were getting a lot of traffic. This gives me some hints as to what type of posts I might want to write next month. Again, you might see certain trends there and the types of posts. 

The third question is what topics are hot at the moment. A bit different to the type of post, but what topic? Last year, I noticed as I did this analysis that we had in our top post a lot that was about camera lenses. This is on Digital Photography School. This, again, informs what I might do in the coming period. We need more posts on lenses. It seems to be resonating with our readers. 

Question number four. Again, similar, what type of headlines did well? What I noticed as I did this analysis last year, is that post that mentioned mistakes that photographers made, did really well. That word “mistake” seems to trigger people to want to find out what this mistake is. 

Another thing I noticed was that a lot of posts that had steps: “12 steps to do this,” or, “14 steps to do this,” or, “how to do this a step-by-step guide.” Our readers seem to really respond to that sort of step-by-step type approach in the headline but also the format of the post. So, pay attention to the headlines of your most popular posts. It may give you hints as to keywords that you might try and use in the future. 

The fifth question I ask as I’m digging into this area is what type of posts could I extend? Some of the posts that you’ve written in the past might lend themselves to a series in the future. 

In the example I gave in the post that I’m referring to today’s is that we had a post last year that did really well titled, The Only Three Lenses You’ll Need for Travel Photography. It struck me that this could easily be extended to do other posts.

We could do, The Only Three Lenses You’ll Need for Wedding Photography or The Only Three Lenses You’ll Need for Portrait Photography. That’s something that we’ve begun to develop as an ongoing series. We’re not going to do a whole week of those posts, but every now and again, we’re throwing that into the mix this next year. 

The sixth question is what type of posts or what post could you optimize? Here, I’m thinking particularly about search engines but also the format of the posts. What I noticed last year is that we had these posts that I had written in 2007 that were still doing really well in terms of getting search traffic, but when I went and had a look at those posts, I realized that the formatting on some of them wasn’t great. Some of them were slightly dated in the information. Some of them mentioned things that were no longer active on our site. Some of them could have had better calls to action. 

I was able to go back and update those key posts that were getting a lot of traffic. By doing so, I’ve been able to increase the user experience on those posts, but also I’ve been able to add some links to give people further reading. It’s decreased our bounce rate and increased the session duration of people landing on those posts. 

The seventh question is what posts did I expect to do well underperformed? Sometimes you have a post that you think is just going to go crazy and it just flops completely. It may be worth doing some analysis on maybe why that happens. Maybe it was the wrong headline. Perhaps you published it at the wrong time. Perhaps you published it on the Fourth of July and everyone was off partying and doing something fun that day. Or perhaps you just want to avoid doing that type of topic again. Or maybe they need to republish that in some way or publish that topic in a different way to see if you can get some traction on that. Doing some analysis on what didn’t work is really important as well. 

The eighth question is what older posts need updating that is still getting traffic? I kind of touched on that already. 

The last question or I’ll get you to ask is what posts are generating a lot of extra page views? What you’ll find is that some pages on your site get your readers to read a whole heap of extra pages. This is probably going to be those sneeze pages that we talked about earlier in the 31 days.

On Digital Photography School, I noticed that probably anyone who lands on our portrait photography tips needs page, goes on to view an average of five extra posts on the site. To me, that really shows the value of these in these pages. You may actually find that you’ve just got other posts in your mix that seem to stimulate people to view a whole heap of extra pages. That’s worth noting. 

There are some of the questions that I ask as I’m going through my Google Analytics. My final words of advice for you when it comes to statistics and doing this exercise. One, don’t become a stats junkie. It’s so easy to become obsessed with this. I think most bloggers that I talk to, at one point or another, get so addicted to checking their stats that it kind of takes them away from creating great content for their blog. Do this but do it in moderation. You may need to […] when you’re going to do it because you might spend your whole day there so you might put some boundaries around that. 

The other thing I’d say is don’t let these exercises get you down. It’s really easy in the early days, even in the middle days, or the later days of your blog to get disillusion with statistics. It does take time to build traffic to your blog. We all feel small when we start out. Many of us continue to feel small particularly when we let ourselves compare ourselves to other people. That’s not a fair thing to do. You don’t want to be comparing yourself to other people. Compare yourself to you when you just started out. You have progressed. You’ve learned. You’ve grown in different ways. Refocus your attention back onto how things used to be for you and where you’ve come from. I think that’s a much better and more useful comparison to make. 

Most successful bloggers that I’ve talked to, it takes them two, three, or more years to get to that tipping point. Then, there are other successful bloggers who never really got to a tipping point and don’t really, even to this day, have a massive amount of traffic. 

I keep bumping into bloggers who have smaller amounts of readers but they’re still doing really significant things with that smaller group both in terms of monetization but also bringing about change in the life of the people who read their blogs. 

The key is to focus on the right type of reader. Really identify who you’re trying to reach and go after that smaller number of people who are much more focused. That will bring about better things than just going after lots of random readers. 

Keep an eye on your trends. Don’t look at the absolute number all the time. In fact, if you’re setting yourself a goal to reach a certain number of readers, that can work. I personally prefer to set a goal that’s more like you know, “I want my readers to go up by 10% or 20%,” or, “This year, I want it to go up by 50%.” I’ve actually found those more percentage-based goals to be better than actual numbers. You want to look at growing exponentially over time. 

When I started out, my goal was 10% growth every month. Now, that may be unrealistic today. Things were a bit different back then. When I focus on that type of goal rather than an absolute number of readers, I actually just found it more helpful to do that. And 10% per month when you’re just starting out doesn’t sound like a lot. If you’ve got 10 readers, it means you’ve got 11 next month, but that adds up over time.

I hope you enjoy today’s challenge. This has been our longest podcast of the 31 days, but there’s so much goodness that can come out of doing this type of analysis. Dig in there, see what you can find, see what you can learn, and most importantly, come out of it with some action points that you can take away that will begin to shape your next month of blogging.

I hope you found today’s challenge useful. As I mentioned at the start of the show, I’ve included some screenshots of my own stats and walking through the process I’ve just outlined on today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/30. 

There’s also some further reading there, a link to a survey which we’re doing at the moment with podcast listeners, which helps us to shape our next shows, and an invitation to comment. I’d love you to check those out.

I will talk to you tomorrow on day 31 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, where we’re going to start to do some planning and create some next steps for you based upon some of the stats that you’ve dug out today, but also, some of the activities over the last 31 days. I’ll talk to you then.

What new things have you learned about your blog after looking at your statistics? What are your 10 most popular blog posts?

I’d love to hear about your experience digging into your blog statistics in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Today’s episode is about developing a plan to drive new readers to your blog to grow your readership. Many bloggers I talk to think that if they write great content, readers will just show up. This simply isn’t the case. Almost every successful blogger I’ve met has spent significant time on proactive activities that will grow their readership.

Coffee cups and drawings on napkins by Gable Denims on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

Writing is really important, but today, we’re going to get off your blog and start to think about how we’re going to drive some readers to it. I’ve included some tips on that in the episode. I’ve also got six really important questions to ask yourself as a blogger, to help you to tap into where your readers are gathering and how you can build a presence in those places, that will hopefully help you to build today’s plane. There’s a lot in today’s episode so I’ve included some show notes with some further reading at problogger.com/podcast/29. Let’s get into today’s episode.

Hi. This is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. As we’re approaching the end of our 31-day challenge, I want us to switch our focus a little from creating content and the day-to-day of building community on our blogs, to do something a little bit more forward-thinking and strategic 

On day 12, you created an editorial calendar for your blog to help you plan content creation. Today, I want you to create a plan in another really important area of blogging, that of growing your readership. Many bloggers I talk to have the expectation that if they build it, readers will come, i.e., build, write, and create great content, and people will just show up. This magical expectation certainly hasn’t been my experience.

Almost every successful blogger that I’ve met has focused at least some of their time on proactive activities that help to grow their readership. In fact, most successful bloggers that I know spend a fairly significant time on promoting themselves rather than just writing content.

Today is really about developing a plan to be a little bit proactive about building your readership rather than just focusing on content. I want you to build a plan today to get off your blog and promote your blog in some way. 

Many bloggers don’t do this and that’s one of the problems that I see in this area that bloggers have. Another problem that many bloggers have is that they just sort of drift along in this area. They spend a lot of time doing good things, things that could help them to grow their blog but they end up wasting their time along the way. 

I admit freely that this is me and you may relate to this kind of scenario. You get on Twitter to promote your blog, then you follow a link, then you follow another link, and then 30 minutes later you’ve just followed links. Then, you decide, “I’m going to get onto Facebook,” and then you spend about 45 minutes there talking to an old high school friend, following a link, then watching cat videos.

Then, you get onto Pinterest and you end up thinking about sharing links to your blog, then end up designing your new office. Then, you go back to Twitter and then you’re over to stumble upon. Before you know it, three hours have passed and you’ve done really not much at all on a series of sites that have the potential to help you grow your blog, but you end up really not doing much of it.

It’s very easy to just drift through the act of promoting your blog, not end up doing much of it at all, and wasting your time in the process. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wasting a bit of time on social media. I kind of enjoy relaxing there. If we’ve got this goal of growing our blog, we, perhaps, need to get a little bit more focused. Sometimes it’s good to step back, assess what we’re doing, and to come up with a plan so that we can be a little bit more strategic. 

That’s my encouragement for you to do today. I want you to step back. Hit pause on how you’re currently promoting your blog, even if it’s just a pause for a day, and create a more strategic plan about how you’re going to move forward and use your time more effectively. After all, you spending all this time creating great content for your blog would be a pity if no one read it.

What I’ve done today is I created a series of six questions that I want you to ask yourself that will hopefully bring a little more clarity to how you promote your blog. Take a few minutes on each question. At each point, perhaps press pause on the podcast and jot down your thoughts. Hopefully, by the end of it, you’ll have a clearer idea of how to be more focused for your blog. This is the exact strategy I’ve used over the years and it’s one that just instinctively I’ve seen other bloggers using as well. In fact, I heard a podcast the other day from Tim Ferriss. He pretty much described exactly the same thing. I’ll tell you a story about Tim in a moment.

The first question to ask is this. How much time do you have? How much time do you have to promote your blog on different parts of the web? Now, remember you need to leave enough time to create content, to build community, to think about monetization, and then, of course, have a real life. The time you spend promoting a blog is just going to be a percentage of what time you’ve got to put into your blogging altogether.

Keep in mind that this might change over time, both the amount of time you’ve got to put into blogging but also the amount of time you might put into promotion. In the very early days, you probably want to spend more time creating content. Soon after, you’ll switch into needing readers. In the first year or so of blogging, I probably spent a lot more time on promoting my blog. In more recent years, once momentum has grown, I’ve spent less time although I still do put myself out there. So, how much time do you have to promote your blog?

The second question is who is your ideal reader? You may have already created a persona or reader profile or an avatar, as they often called, and that’s great; you can skip over this question. Get clear in your mind who you want to read your blog. This sort of persona or avatar should include sort of logistical kind of stuff or demographic stuff like gender, age, and location. 

Dig a little deeper. What are their needs? What are their problems? What are their fears? Who are they? You could spend a whole heap of time on this. I do encourage you to spend time building a reader profile, but for today, if you haven’t already got one, just spend 10 or so minutes trying to define who that reader is that you’re trying to reach.

Once you’ve got that clear in your mind, ask the third question, that is, where is this type of reader gathering? Where are they hanging out online? Now, I want to give you some really specific things that you can plugin here. On a piece of paper, jot down the top three blogs that that type of person would read. What three blogs do they read? Jot down the top three forums that they would have joined. What forums are they active in? What are the top three social networks that they would use? Go beyond just Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn here. Think a little bit more outside of that. 

For photography, I know a lot of my readers are on Flickr or they’re on 500 px, which are kind of photo-sharing sites, but there is also a social networking aspect to them. Maybe there’s something like that for you, too.

Once you’ve got the top three networks, actually go a little deeper. If one of your networks is Facebook, jot down on the page the top three Facebook pages that they’d be following. Jot down the top three Twitter accounts that they’re following, the top three Pinterest pages that they’d be following, the top three people they’d be following on LinkedIn. Just do this for the accounts that you think your readers would be using. Jot down the top three podcasts that they listen to, the top three conferences that they attend, the top three books that they’d read—you kind of get the picture here. 

You want to get really specific about where your readers are gathering, where their attention is focused, both online, and offline Once you’ve done this activity—I really encourage you to spend a little bit of time on it—you’ve got a whole list now of places, events, activities, and people where your ideal reader is focusing their attention and places where they’re already gathering. 

The fourth question is this, what opportunities are there to build a presence in those kinds of places? You’ve got this long list of places, people, social media accounts, blogs, forums, podcasts. Now, the key is to start identifying things you can do in these places or with these people to build a presence. What goals could you set for meeting the people on the lists? What goals could you set to appear in the events, in the places, in the podcast, and the blogs that you’ve already mentioned?

It’s now time to start brainstorming. Let’s go through the list again. The top three blogs and podcasts that you’ve listed, are there opportunities to guest post on these? Could you be interviewed by the blogger or the podcast? Could you pitch a story to them? Could you leave comments? Ask questions that spark posts? Could you be useful to the blogger in some other way? Perhaps to volunteer or become their intern for a month? How could you build a presence in that place?

The saying goes for a forum. Could you spend time each day answering questions in that forum? Could you identify and network with the key influencers in that forum? The owners of that forum? Could you volunteer your time as a moderator? 

The social networks. Do you already have a page, group, or profile there? Could you start more? Could you advertise on that social network? 

When it comes to the social media accounts that you’ve mentioned, the pages that your ideal follower might be following, or the Twitter accounts that they might be following, how could you get to know the people behind those pages? Could you submit a suggested link to those people and those accounts? Could you engage them in conversation? Could you promote them and help them achieve their goals in some way to get on their radar?

The events that your ideal reader attends, could you attend those events too? Could you volunteer to help at these events? Could you even submit to speak at these events? The people on your list, the key influencers, could you spend time with them in some way? Could you get on their radar? Could you get on the radar of people that those key influencers respect? Their friends? The people who influence them? 

Brainstorm. Anything goes at this point. I want you to come up with a list of ways that you could appear on these blogs, forums, podcasts, that you could appear at these events, that you could get on the radar of these key influencers. Hopefully, by the end of this activity, you’ve got a long list of potential ways that you could promote your blog.

At this point, you’ve got a long list. You might be a bit doubtful that you could get on the radar of some of these key people, but I’ll tell you you can. Here’s where I want to tell you a little story about Tim Ferriss. I don’t think he’d mind because he pretty much described what he did in a recent podcast, and I’ll link to that in the show notes. 

I was in Washington, DC, must have been about eight or nine years ago. That was before Tim’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, came out. I got an email from him. I never heard of him at this point. I got this email and he said, “I am attending this conference that you’re at. I’d love to grab a few minutes with you. I’d love to buy you lunch.”

Now, I don’t always respond to people who make that kind of approach but there was something about him that made me say yes. I spent half an hour or so with him and he basically told me about the book he was writing. He picked my brain on how to build a blog and through that conversation, we got to know each other. 

That conversation led to him guest posting on ProBlogger. This was before his blog had even begun. Tim didn’t really have a profile. He didn’t have anything to leverage but he made me a priority because I had the type of reader that he was trying to reach. 

Now, I know for a fact that Tim did this with lots of other bloggers. I’m not even sure he went to that conference for any other reason to meet with me, but it worked. He appeared almost overnight on at least 10 or 15 blogs and many of the blogs had shared readers. It appeared like he was just everywhere all of a sudden. Those were the exact type of readers that he was trying to reach with his blog and with his book. Listen to Tim’s podcast. Again, I’ll link to it in the show notes. You’ll see him describing almost the same process that I’m describing here. 

The fifth question, once you’ve got this list of blogs, forums, and places that you want to appear, how are you going to spend your time? You’ve got all these key activities and things that you could do. Now, you need to start to prioritize. Which ones will you do first? How much time will you spend on each activity? What will you be doing on these sites?

Be really specific with this. You may say, “I’m going to spend 15 minutes every day on Twitter and I’m going to do these activities. I’m going to share links to useful content, I’m going to interact with this list of key people, and I’m going to search for questions I can answer.” That’s really specific. It means that you are much more focused on the time that you’re spending on Twitter.

What are the main goals that you have? What are the things that you need to do first before you can reach those goals? For example, your goal might be to write a guest post on the biggest blog in your niche. How are you going to get that to happen?

Many of those big blogs get pitched. Many blogs. You might need to do a little bit of research on the type of posts that do best on that site. You may want a guest post on some smaller blogs to build up your guest blogging portfolio. You may want to get to know the blogger a little bit, who owns that site. You might want to follow them on social media and begin to engage with them there. These are small steps that can lead you to that bigger goal.

The last question that you need to ask is this, what needs to change in the way you currently spend your time? This one is a key one. To do the activities that you’ve just outlined that you want to do, you’re probably going to have to spend some time on that. You’re going to have to get that time from somewhere. Do some analysis on the type of activities that you are currently spending your time on and whether they’re worthwhile.

Where are you being distracted? Where is there no traction? Where are there no conversions? Where are you wasting your time? What will you give up to be more strategic about promoting your blog? Now, I’ve just used that word strategic and this might all sound a little bit strategic. It may even sound like it’s bordering on manipulative, tracking down key people and then working out how you can appear on their blog.

In some ways, it can be a manipulative process but the reality is that if you’re not looking for a win-win, this isn’t going to work. I’m not going to let you guest post on my blog unless you pitch an idea that I think is going to benefit my readers which then benefits me. 

You need to be looking at how you can provide value, how you can be useful with those you’re interacting with if you want to get any win for yourself in the long-term. Reach out with a servant’s heart, reach out with the goal of being as useful as you possibly can in the places that you’re building a presence. This genuine interest in helping other people will shine through in the way you interact in those places. 

My last advice today is don’t become obsessed with building a profile so much that you forget to work on your own blog. I’ve certainly seen this happen to numerous bloggers over the years. They are so prolific in the way they promote themselves. Then, you go to their blog and they haven’t updated for weeks and months. You need to keep this in balance. Don’t give up creating content. Don’t give up building community with the readers that you already have. In fact, those readers that you already have can be a big part in growing your readership, so keep it all in balance.

Well, there’s a lot of content in today’s episode so I’ll summarize some of it for you and give you some further reading on some of the different aspects of what we’ve covered at problogger.com/podcast/29, where there’s also an opportunity for you to leave a comment. I’d love to hear a little bit about the plan that you’ve developed for finding readers for your blog. Head over to the show notes, leave us a comment. Tell us what you are planning to do in the month or two ahead as it pertains to finding readers for your blog.

You’ll also find on those show notes a quick survey that I’ve designed for listeners of this podcast to tell us a little bit about who you are, what your needs are, what your questions are, what the problems are that you’re facing so that we can base future episodes of this podcast upon you and make them as relevant as possible for you. 

Lastly, I’d love to get your review of this podcast on your favorite podcast listening, whether that be iTunes, Stitcher or something else. I do read all the reviews that you are leaving and I really do appreciate the ones that have already been left. It does help us to get the word out about our podcast if you could do that for us. Even just a sentence or two, telling us a little bit about how you found the podcast over at iTunes or stitcher, I’d really appreciate that.

I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 30. We’re almost at the end of this 31-day series, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

What new ways will you try to connect with your ideal readers?

I’d love to hear what you have planned in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Today’s episode is about how to write a review post. Reviews are used many millions of times every day by people looking to make sense of the array of choices that they have, and to help them to make a decision. Writing reviews can help you to help those people, but also help you to grow your blog.

Decision by Alan Crosthwaite on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

Hi. It’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 28 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, we have our very last writing challenge of the 31 days. Today, I want to challenge you to write a review post. For some of you, this won’t be a massive challenge as you may regularly write them already. I know some of you probably have blogs that are just purely reviews, so today, it’s business as usual for you.

For many others, this will be something quite new. I keep coming across bloggers who’ve never written a review, even though it would be a legitimate type of posts for their blog. Let’s just briefly talk about why review posts are something to consider for your blog. The main reason is that the web is used every day by millions of people looking to make decisions, choose between options, seek advice about buying something or using something. They use the web to make sense of the array of choices that they’ve got in front of them.

This is just what we do all day every day on Google. I suspect there’s a large percentage of searches that are really searches for reviews or people’s opinions on the sorts of choices and decisions that we make every day, so writing a review on your blog positions you to be found at the end of those searches. Reviews are also great places for you to insert your opinions, which we found on day 19, which is something that can be really good for your blog. It sets you apart and makes you distinct. 

There’s also an opportunity with reviews to monetize your blog, whether that be through promoting products as an affiliate or working with brands who want to reach audiences who are in a buying- or decision-making mode. If you’re writing reviews on your blog for people who are making purchase decisions, you’re going to find advertisers wanting to align themselves with you more and more.

This is how I’ve made my first commercial blog. It was a camera review blog, I wrote reviews and I aggregated other people’s reviews from around the web. My two sources of income on that blog were advertising revenue, both through ad networks like AdSense and Chitika, but also advertisers wanting to put their ads on my blog because they knew people were making a buying decision, and then the other revenue source was affiliate income. Some of the products that I reviewed, I then gave a link to where people could purchase that product.

Some of you are probably saying, “Well, this is all well and good but my niche doesn’t relate well to reviews. There’s nothing to review. I don’t talk about products.” Don’t fear. For almost every blog that I can think of, there’s at least something that you could write some kind of review on, whether it’s a product or a service, whether it’s something that you can monetize in some way or something else.

Books are one great example of this. If you’re writing a blog about a topic, the chances are pretty good that someone has written a book on it, and if not a book, an ebook or a magazine. There are plenty of […]. I just didn’t know those three things—books, ebooks, and magazines. Maybe a movie, if you write a personal blog or review of a movie could also help someone to decide whether they want to view that movie or television show, another blog, a website, a course.

If you’re a food blogger, a restaurant or a recipe. If you’re a travel blogger, a hotel or a tourist destination. If you’re a style or fashion blogger, some new line of clothes, some new style or some outfit. If you’re a political blogger why don’t you review a speech that was given by a politician or a television show that covered politics? If you’re a tech blogger, there are 101 gadgets you could review. If you’re a DIY blogger, some tool or equipment that you might use as you do your DIY.

If you’re an art blogger, an exhibition, a gallery, an artist. If you’re a parenting blogger, a toy or some product that relates to parenting kids. If you’re a music blogger, an instrument, a CD—although, the people even view them or listen to them anymore—some an album. There are plenty of things out there, whether they’re products, services, brands, or even podcasts. Choose a product that you’re going to review today and begin to write a blog post on it.

I’ve included a few tips in the workbook on how to write good reviews. Really briefly, let me run through some of them. Firstly, you want to give your opinion. This seems pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how many bloggers just don’t like to give them as we talked about on day 19, so an honest opinion of both the positive and negatives of the thing that you’re reviewing.

Where possible, give it a rating. I find writings work really well because people like something concrete to make their decision on. If you can tell them how much it rates out of a certain number, whether it be a 5 or a 10, they’re then able to make that judgment for themselves. Be balanced, if it’s bad. Is there something good that you can also say about it, to show that you’re not just there bagging the product or service? If you are going to talk negatively about a product or a service, make it factual rather than the emotive.

Think about the keywords as you’re writing your review. What will people be searching Google for when it comes to this product, service, or thing that you’re reviewing? Words like price, problems, review, compared to. These types of words are things that people plug into Google when they’re searching for advice. Maybe you could incorporate some of these words into your review and maybe even the title of your post.

Another good thing to do in reviews is to make comparisons. Are there alternative products, or services, or things that you’re comparable to the thing that you’re writing about? Knowing how it compares to something else is one useful thing that many people would be looking for, as they’re making decisions between two things.

Where you can use an affiliate link if there is one, but make sure you disclose it. Say who the thing is good for and who it’s not good for. A lot of products are really good for a beginner but they’re not so good for an advanced user. If that’s the case, say it, it will help those who fit into those categories to make a decision.

Be personal with your review. I found that if you can tell a story about how you use the product, how you felt about it, or how you discovered it, that makes it more relatable to people. Definitely use visuals. If you can include images of the thing that you’re reviewing, it brings alive for those who are viewing it. It’s really important to do this and don’t just use the official images of the product. If you can take pictures yourself and show how you use it, then that is really great.

There’s a great blogger here in Australia called Nikki from Styling You who does well. She has a series of posts called, The Model and Me, where she models a piece of clothing and then puts it next to a model wearing that piece of clothing. The official view of the product versus hers and this helps a lot of people make a decision based upon how it looks in the real world rather than just in a fully styled picture. I know that she gets a lot of positive feedback about those types of reviews.

Give details of how people might buy, see, use, or get the thing that you’re reviewing. Invite others to share their opinions. This adds to the quality and the usefulness of the review if your readers are getting not only your opinion but your readers’ opinions as well. Disclose if you’ve got that for free, or if you’re being paid, or you have affiliate links.

Also, disclose any conflicts of interest that you might have. If you’re reviewing a product that’s a competitor, you’re an investor in it, you’re the owner of the company, or it’s a friend’s product, you may want to disclose that to be transparent.

The last thing I’d say is to keep your readers in mind. If they’re a beginner, tailor the review for a beginner. If they’re more advanced, tailor it for them there. Always be asking yourself, what would my readers be asking at the end of this review? Are there questions that I’ve not answered? Ultimately, the main questions you probably want to include are, what does it do? What does it do differently to other products? What does it do well? What does it not do well? Who is it for? And where can I buy it?

If you’re covering those six questions, you probably have written a useful review, but do read through your post and see if there’s another question that’s left unanswered. If you do start getting questions about the product or the review, always update it, add an update at the end answering those commonly asked questions.

Review posts can really do a lot of good for your blog. I encourage you to take today’s challenge whether you feel like reviews really belong on your blog or not, write it, see how it feels, and if it feels good, publish it, and see how your readers respond. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow on day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/28, where I link to some of the reviews mentioned in today’s episode as well as some others that I’ve written that you might find interesting. There’s also an opportunity for you to share a link to your review that you write right today. It’s really important. Those of you who have been doing these challenges and sharing your reviews have been giving me feedback that you are seeing some really nice traffic coming to your blogs as a result of doing that.

Head to today’s show notes. Leave us a comment with a link to the review that you write today, and while you’re there, check out some of the other reviews that other participants in this challenge have been submitting. You might just find some other bloggers that you could collaborate with there and some links that you could share on your social media which is useful to those who follow you.

Check out today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/28, where I also share a link to a survey that I’d love you to participate in. It’s a survey for ProBlogger Podcast listeners that helps us to shape this particular podcast moving forward. As we’re approaching the end of our 31 days, we’ve already got some plans for the next few episodes, but after that, I’d love to base future episodes upon your needs, challenges, questions, and the situation that you find yourself in as a blogger. Head to the show notes and complete that survey. I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

What did you decide to review? I’d love to know what response you got from your readers.

I’d love to see your review post. Share a link to your review post in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Today’s episode is about going back into your blog archives do updates – especially paying attention to broken links. Broken links can cause many problems, including potentially exposing your readers to harm.

З Днем Незалежності Україно!!! by Olena Zaskochenko on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

Today we talk about:

Hi there. It’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 27 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog where we’re giving you a different challenge every day for a month, that you can go away and do that will improve your blog in some way. The idea is that by the end of this month, you’re going to have about 31 different activities that you can come back to over time. Some people do one every day for the rest of their lives, or at least for the next year or so. Others just dip into them from time to time after the 31 days. It’s really up to you.

Today, we’re going to look at broken links, and we’re gonna go on a bit of a broken link hunt on your blog. While we’re at it, I’m going to suggest some other things that you can be doing to some of your old posts on your blog. The thing with broken links is that when you create a link in your blog posts to another site, that link almost always will work right from the start, but over time, you’re bound to start to get broken links. And that’s because other people change their sites. 

Some people delete their sites, some people forget to renew their hosting and the site disappears. Other people change the way their site works, so their link structure might change or they might delete a post on their blog. This can cost you on your blog in two ways because of a change that someone else’s makes.

Firstly, it can have an impact on your SEO. I don’t really know the technicalities of it, but Google recommends that you do check for broken links. More importantly than that, it impacts the readability of your posts. If your readers are clicking links that no longer work, that’s frustrating for them and they blame you for it rather than the other person. It’s good to be checking for broken links.

The question is, how do you do it? There are a few different ways that you can approach this. Firstly, you could go through every post on your blog and manually check every link. That’s going to be something that some of you will find easy because you might only have 10 posts on your blog, you’re relatively new, but for some of you, it’s going to be a big ask. I know on my blogs, I’ve got tens of thousands of posts that are published over the last 13 or so years, so that’s impossible. I can’t do all of them at once manually.

I do actually manually go through old posts every day. I set myself a challenge to do one old post per day to look at it in a variety of different ways, and I’ll share how I do that later. For many of us, we’ll need some tool to do it, and I want to suggest a few. I’ll link to each of these in the show notes for today’s podcast.

The first one is free. It’s pretty easy to use. It’s Google Webmaster Tools. If you haven’t signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, you probably should do that. It’s going to give you a whole heap of good information. Basically, it shows you how Google sees your site in a whole heap of ways. One way is that when they find a broken link on your site as they’re crawling your site (as they do every day), they will make a note of any error that they get and if you can go in and look at the crawl error page, you’ll see some of the broken links on your site. Interestingly, as I look at mine, it doesn’t find all of the broken links on my site. It may be a good starting place, but you might want to dig a little deeper and use another tool as well.

A second option might be to use a WordPress plugin if you’re using WordPress and there’s numerous of these. One that I know some people recommend is Broken Link Checker. I will give a bit of a warning here, though, many people find that these link checkers through WordPress plugins can slow down your site a lot, as it does put strain on your database. This is particularly true when you have a large site. These checkers are crawling your site in the back end all the time and they do notify you when they find a broken link, but it puts some pressure on your database and your server. It might slow things down, so be a little bit careful.

A couple of other tools that I know people use and recommend—I’ve used one of these over the years—one is called Xenu’s Link Sleuth. This is a Windows-only app. It’s very comprehensive, it’s quite technical, and it goes beyond just link finding, but it will find broken links on your blog.

The other one is Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? There’s no screaming that goes on in it, but this is a similar app type thing that you download and run it from your desktop. There’s a Windows version, Mac version, Linux version, I think there might be something else as well for memory. There’s a free version of this which will let you scan for a limited number of links, but then there’s also a paid version as well which is unlimited. The thing is £99. It’s very advanced and it goes way beyond just checking for broken links. That’s one of the things that it does, but it’s designed as an SEO tool, but quite technical.

Another one that you can check for free is W3C Link Checker. I’ll put all the links of today’s in the show notes. This one just simply lets you plug in your URL, and then it goes away and checks. It goes deep, deep, deep into your site. The downside of this one is that it can take a long time. I put my URL to Digital Photography School in there about 20 minutes ago and it’s still crawling so it’s gonna go very deep. There are ways that you can make it shallower. You might want to check that one out, but go make yourself a coffee while it does its thing.

Whatever tool you use, I think it’s probably worth doing this exercise. I would recommend you start with Google Webmaster Tools, because it’s going to give you some other good information on your site and how Google sees your site as well. You may want to use one of the other tools as well. When you find a broken link, you’ve got a few different options. One, you could fix it if you’ve made a mistake or if the link has changed in some way. You can find what you were originally wanting to link to just change that link.

Secondly, you might need to delete that link if it no longer exists, or you might want to find an alternative link that you could put in there as well. You may or may not need to disclose the change that you’ve made. If the post doesn’t completely make sense anymore. You might want to put a note, I’ve deleted a link here because it no longer exists, and just let anyone who reads that post know what you’ve done. In some cases, you may need to delete the post altogether.

There’s been a few times where the whole point of my post has been to link to a product or a tool, and then that product or tool disappears. The post no longer makes sense at all, so I have deleted some of those posts as well. It is important to look for broken links.

There are some horrible stories as well where it actually hurts your readers. I know there’s been a few bloggers that I’ve talked to who have previously linked to blog posts or products, and then that domain has expired. Then, someone who does something malicious or something a bit dodgy takes over that domain. People could get malware or viruses by clicking on that link and ending up on a malicious page. It could take someone to a porn page or something else that can impact your brand, so you do want to check those sorts of links periodically.

The last thing I’ll suggest you do if you don’t have a big site at the moment or if you do use these tools and don’t find any broken links, choose an old post that you can go back and do a bit of a review on. Find something that maybe is a year old or even older if you’ve been blogging for a while and just do a bit of a review of it. Give it a once over for spelling, grammar, and perhaps you could add a nice image to it. Perhaps you need to change some of the formatting, particularly if you redesigned your blog, and then just ask yourself some questions along these lines. Is the post still relevant today? Could you update it? Do you need to delete it because it’s completely irrelevant, or should you write another post that gives an update on that older one? 

As I go back through my old posts, I always and do choose one every day to do this exercise. I always asked myself, could I reshare this post on social media? Is it still relevant today? Is it an evergreen post? Secondly, is there a way that I could repurpose it in some way so could I turn it into something else, whether that be a SlideShare show, an infographic, a podcast, or something else? Going back into your archives like this every day to find the broken things but also find the opportunities can be a really beneficial exercise to do.

Today’s show notes can be found at problogger.com/podcast/27, where I do have some links to the tools that I mentioned in today’s show. There’s also the opportunity for you to give us a comment and let us know how you found today’s challenge. I’m also going to link in today’s show notes to a survey that we’ve got running at the moment for you as podcast listeners.

As you know, we’re approaching the end of our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog series. As I indicated at the start of these podcasts, I’d like to continue on beyond these 31 days. I can’t promise that things are going to continue on a daily basis. In fact, they won’t, but I do wish to continue the podcast. I’d love to base my future podcasts upon your needs, your questions, and the challenges that you face as bloggers.

I’ve set up a short survey. You can find it linked on today’s show notes. Again, they’re at problogger.com/podcast/27. It’s just a few questions that tell us a little bit about who you are as a blogger—it’s all anonymous, so we won’t be tracking you—but also some of the challenges that you face. There’s also the opportunity to give us some feedback on the podcast that we’ve had so far. We want to know a little bit about how long you’d like podcasts to be, what format you’d like, whether they be interviews, teaching or something else. I certainly will be looking at every response that we’ve got to that survey and basing future episodes upon it. Again, problogger.com/podcast/27 for today’s show notes and that survey.

What did you do to check for broken links on your blog? What ideas did it give you for improving your blog?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to keeping links up to date on your blog in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Today’s episode is about how to help another blogger to achieve their goals in some way. This might seem a little counter-intuitive, but if you help others you create a good impression that just might come back to help you improve your own blogging.

gesticulation by Marczak Marcin on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

What did you do to improve another blog? What ideas did helping someone else give you for improving your own blog?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to growing your community in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Hi there. It’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 26 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, I want to challenge you to help another blogger achieve their goals in some way, to improve another person’s blog. Now, this might sound a little counterintuitive. You might ask, isn’t this 31 days about improving my blog? Well, yes, it is, but one of the ways you can do this is to be outward-focused in your own blogging.

I found over the years that sometimes when I focus on helping someone else in my blogging or other areas of my life that it comes back to help me in different ways. Some people might call it karma. I think it’s just being a good human being in many ways. It’s also really satisfying to do and might give you a little bit of burst of energy to see someone else reach their goals in some way. You might also learn a thing or two about your own blog by doing it.

There are many ways that you can help other bloggers achieve their goals. Some of them are really big and some of them are really small. I want to encourage you to do something today. Don’t just leave 50 comments on 50 blogs and help 50 bloggers. Focus upon one today. Do something as significant as you can for them.

There’s a whole heap of things you could do. I’ll just give you a few examples, but really let your own creative juices flow and look around you at the bloggers that you interact with, that you read, and find something that suits their needs in some way.

The other question to ask to help you identify what would help another blogger or achieve their goals is to ask the question about your own blog. What would help you the most if another blog did something for you? That may just identify the answer to what you do for someone else today. 

Let me give you a few examples. Firstly and probably the most simply, leave some helpful and insightful comments on someone else’s blog. This is probably the most simple thing and I would encourage you to go a little bit beyond this one if you can.

Another thing you might want to do if another blogger is struggling for content at the moment, maybe you want to offer to write a high-quality guest post for their readers. I know this has helped me over the years when I’ve gone on holiday, and I’ve announced I’m going away. Things are going to be a little sparse around here. It’s amazing what someone offering to help you create some content does. It takes a little bit of pressure off.

Times where I’ve been sick as well has been really helpful. So, maybe offer to create some content. Maybe it’s about sending them some traffic. You might want to write a post about another blogger. I’ve seen bloggers do this numerous times over the years. They recommend a blog that they really love and they give some reasons why their readers should read it, just purely self-promotion of this other blogger.

You could do the same thing on social media as well. I know in some of the blogs that I’ve interacted with over the years that it can really help a blog a lot to get a share on Facebook from another blog, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, any of these places. Share a link to another blogger today. Maybe just recommend your readers subscribe to another blog.

[00:04:22] blogger to send an email out to their list that purely was a recommendation that their readers subscribed to someone else and giving some good reasons as to why to do that. Their readers benefited because I got some great content from this other blogger and of course the other blogger benefited, too.

Email the blogger with some suggested topics that you’d love to see them cover. We talked about the idea of brainstorming new post ideas for your blog, and how helpful that can be to help you get through times of bloggers block. Other bloggers are probably struggling with that as well. Shoot them an email and just say, I don’t know if you ever would love to brainstorm topics together, but here are a few ideas that I’ve come up with that might be helpful for your blog.

You might just find that that helps that blogger through a time of bloggers block. The offer to do it in an ongoing way (perhaps on a Facebook group or via email) might be something that that blogger might appreciate as well, and again, that might help you with your own blogging. Too.

If you’re a more experienced blogger, there are heaps of things that you could do. Maybe email a new blogger and offer to spend some time with them answering questions, or start a mentoring group for a few new bloggers.

I’ve seen this in my wife’s own blogging over the last year or two. She started blogging two years ago. A more experienced blogger reached out to her and offered for her to join a little mentoring group that she’d started. This gave Vanessa’s blog a lot of life. In the last six months, she started her own mentoring group for other new bloggers. She’s paying it forward. This doesn’t just help the people that are in her mentoring group that she’s helping, it actually helps her as well. Everyone’s blog benefits from it.

If you have coding, or design, or SEO, or some other skill, maybe offer another blogger some assistance, so you could do with some help in those areas. If you’ve got an advertiser on your blog, offer to introduce that advertiser to another blogger. You might just find that you help that other blogger to generate some income. If you promote affiliate programs on your blog that works well for you, maybe you could suggest to another blogger in a new niche and affiliate program.

Maybe you could write an email to another blogger and just encourage them. Tell them about a post that they’ve written that it’s encouraged you. Maybe you want to send them a gift of some kind, maybe an ebook that you’ve written that you think they might find helpful, or maybe you want to actually buy something, an ebook that someone else has written or a little physical gift that you could send them in the mail.

All of these things could potentially really help another blogger on their own journey. There’s no limit to what you could do today, the keys to doing something as significant as you’re able for another blogger.

If there’s no acknowledgment from the other blogger, don’t despair. Maybe they missed it, maybe they’re busy, maybe they’ve got across this is going on. Move on and do it for someone else. Make this paying it forward in some ways a part of your regular blogging, and you’re going to create an amazing impression upon other bloggers. That can only result in good things.

I hope you find today’s challenge fun, that it brings a little life to someone else’s life and blog, and that in the long term, it might come back and help you in your own blogging. I hope you enjoyed today’s challenge. I’d love to hear what you did, how it impacted you at today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/26, where I summarize today’s show, give you some further reading but also give you that opportunity to share your feedback and to share what you did today. I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 27 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

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

Today’s episode is about how to ask your blog readers a question. It might be a scary idea at first, but it’s quick and easy to do and can be a very powerful way to grow your blog.

Do you have a question? by Chad Freeman on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/25, where I would love to also hear how you found today’s challenge and see a link to the post that you wrote.

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 25 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. I hope you’ve been enjoying the challenges so far. We’re actually in the final week. Today’s one is one that you could repeat over time. In fact, many of the challenges we’ve done in previous days could be something that you build into your monthly workflow, but this is definitely one that I would encourage you to use on a regular basis. It’s a writing challenge, but it’s one that doesn’t really have to take a whole heap of time today. In fact, it might be the shortest post you’ve ever written because all I’m asking you to do today is to ask your readers a question in a blog post. Your blog post might be just a question or it might be part of a blog post.

There are many benefits of asking your readers questions. Firstly, it gives your readers a sense of community, participation, and belonging. There’s nothing like coming to a blog where readers are interacting with one another. It gives a sense of social proof and it makes your readers feel like they belong, that they own the blog in some sense. It also increases your blog’s stickiness. People are much more likely to come back to the blog tomorrow and in an ongoing way if they have contributed something to it. Questions are also relatively easy to ask, these posts are fairly effortless to write, although they can take some moderating and you do want to put some time into thinking carefully about the questions you’re asking.

Question posts are also really helpful for you to learn about your readers and to gauge where they’re at. They can also fuel post ideas for you as you say how your readers interact with your question, and they can also open up opportunities for follow up posts. In fact, sometimes when I’ve started a series of posts with a question, that’s worked quite well. Well-worded questions also can rank really well in search engines. That’s what people tend to type into search engines in many cases, questions. If you pick that actual question that they’re typing in, you’ve got a good chance of ranking for that.

Question posts can be good for generating incoming links to your blog as other people pick up the conversations. In fact, if you ask a question and then say something like, “Feel free to answer this question on your own blog.” You might actually find that it generates some incoming links. They also give you a real means of entering into a conversation with bloggers and other readers of your blog. This is great in the early days of your blog, in particular, as you’re getting to know your readers. And the answers that you get in question sometimes can act as actual blog posts, as I mentioned in yesterday or the day before’s challenge, using reader’s comments as blog posts are something that makes your readers feel a little special, but it also can be really insightful for other readers.

Some bloggers don’t ask questions on their blogs because they’re scared that nobody will answer the questions. This is certainly a challenge that will face some of you today if you don’t have many readers, but I’ve got some tips on how to get the conversation going even if you don’t have many readers below. But build questions on a regular basis and will overtime bring a lot of these benefits that I’ve talked about.

Your challenge is to ask a question in the blog post. I’ve got a few tips for you as well. These come out of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.

Firstly, you want to keep your question really relevant to your blog’s topic. You don’t want to just ask a question that really has no bearing on the rest of what your blog’s about.

Secondly, ask a question that builds upon a previous post. You don’t have to do this, but this is something that I found that works really well.  I give the example in the workbook of a post that I wrote on Digital Photography School where I talked about the pros and cons of shooting in raw versus JPEG, which is a choice that most photographers have to make. The post went quite well; it was quite popular. I followed it up a few days later with a post simply asking my readers what format they shot in, and then I’ll link back to that post. By asking this question, it got a conversation going, but it also drove readers back to that previous post. If you can keep a conversation going on something that has been working on your blog already, that can build some momentum on your blog.

Ask questions that are answerable. This might sound a little obvious and silly, but sometimes the questions I see bloggers asking are so hard to answer that people don’t actually answer them. 

This is related to it, the number four is, ask questions that readers will want to know the answer to. Ask about a hot topic on which readers will value the insight of other community members.

Number five is to suggest possible answers to your readers. I find if you ask a question and you give some options at the end of the post, it can help to start the conversation. There are times, though, where you won’t want to suggest the answers because you may actually change the direction of the discussion, so use that one in moderation.

Number six is to generate some debate by asking an either-or question. This is a technique that works really well on social media where I find if you give people two choices to choose from, would you do this or would you do that? These questions are particularly easy to answer because people just need to write a single word to respond. This is good particularly in the early days of your blog where you might not have a whole heap of readers and you’re still in some ways training your readers to be interactive with you.

This is why the raw versus JPEG question that I mentioned earlier is a good approach. It generated a heap of discussion because people just had to write raw or JPEG as the answer. Some people chose to go a little bit deeper and talk about why, but for many people, I’m sure that was their first comment on my blog and hopefully, it showed them that commenting wasn’t too hard or scary, and hopefully, they came back and shared more comments in the future.

Another thing that you can do in the early days of your blog just to get people interacting is to try using a poll. Polls are great because they’re anonymous, people don’t have to reveal who they are and they can participate by simply answering your question with a click by choosing an option.

Another way to get a conversation going is to choose a more controversial question. This might be something that you do use in moderation or that some of you probably like to do it a lot. Just be aware that readers could get a little fired up if you choose something that’s a really hot, controversial question. You want to moderate those questions as well.

Being willing to share your own answer is also another tip that I share in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook. It’s really important to do this because if you’re asking questions, you need to show your readers that you’re willing to answer them, too.

But you might want to hold off a little bit. If you’re pretty confident that you’re going to get some people answering, you may not want to be the first person to share your answers. Hold off a little bit, see what other people say first so you don’t sway the conversation, but be ready to add your opinion. The other option here is you might want to follow up on your question by giving your answers to the next post.

Do you have a frequently asked question that you’re unable to answer? This is another place that you can ask a question to your readers. I’m going to show you an example of that in a few moments.

The second last tip is to ask more personal yet on-topic questions. Instead of just asking people what they think about a question, ask them what they do in their own lives. For example, I want to ask my readers to tell me what they’re favorite lens was at Digital Photography School. It was answered by over 200 people and at the time it was my most commented-upon post. So, don’t just write theoretical questions. Ask questions that people have some sort of personal experience with.

The last tip I’ll give you is to follow up on your questions with summaries of the answers that people provide. This is my favorite type of post. When I ask a question in one post, I take the answers and I put the best ones into a second post. This gives you more content, but it also shows your readers that you value their answers. It creates a really interesting second post.

For example, when I ask my readers about their favorite lenses, I then followed up with a second post which was a summary of the most popular lenses. This second post went viral. I think it was because a lot of my readers wanted to see where they fit into the rest of the community. It was a really interesting exercise.

I want to give you just a few examples of questions to help you to think through what type of post to write today. These all come from Digital Photography School. One question I’ll link to this in the show notes. That one question I asked was which digital camera manufacturer is best? This is a question that caused a real debate among my readers. There’s no clear cut single answer to this. It’s an opinion-type post. It was a little bit controversial in some ways, but it provided me with a perfect opportunity to do a second post where I provided the results of the answers that people gave and I was able to summarize those results in a post called The Best Digital Camera Manufacturers. I was able to show my readers what they thought as a community.

That one was a little bit controversial, but it works for us because when people buy a digital camera, they invest a lot of money into that camera, so they want to back that up and to prove themselves. It’s just a good question to ask when someone’s invested heavily in something.

The second example I will give you is one where I gave a bit of an incentive for people to answer. It’s a post called Win a Prize by Telling Us About Your Digital Camera. In this instance, offered a prize to get people to answer. This was (again) in the very early days of my blog when I didn’t have a whole heap of readers, so offering some incentive for people to comment was a good thing to do to get people used to commenting.

The third one is one similar to the example I gave earlier in the podcast, it’s called What Digital Camera Do You Use? Again, it’s asking readers to share their own experiences about the gear that they use and it gave me really useful information about what my readers told me about how much they spend on their cameras, what level they might be at, but it also gave me great content for a follow-up post.

Another question I asked was what shooting mode do you shoot in most of the time? Again, this gave me an opportunity to link back to a previous post that I’d written about shooting modes on cameras and it gave me an opportunity again to follow it up with another post that summarized the responses.

This next one is one that I actually didn’t know the answer to myself. I mentioned this earlier. It’s a post titled, How Would You Photograph a Funeral? This question actually came in for one of my readers. It stumped me, I didn’t know how to answer it. I’d never photographed a funeral. I had a few ideas about how I might approach that, but I decided to ask the reader the question to the community. It stimulated the most amazing discussion as readers really came around the reader who is about to do this particular thing. It really served that reader and since other people will find that post and find it really helpful the responses. I’ve done this type of what I would call a community workshop a number of times.

Another reader once asked me, “How should I photograph my grandma who’s in palliative care? She’s in her last days and my family wants me to photograph her.” Again, this is something I didn’t know how to answer so I asked it to my community, and it led to a really interesting and helpful discussion. These questions you don’t know the answer to show that you are willing to learn from your readers as well.

The last example that I’ll give you—this is one that we’ve asked quite a few times—is simply to share your best shot ever, your best photo ever. This post simply asked our readers to share a link to their best ever photo. It gave our readers a chance to show off their work a little and to have a moment in the limelight. Again, it also opens up opportunities to do summary posts and to show off your readers in that way. I’ve done this same type of post on ProBlogger quite a few times. Show Us Your Latest blog post or the best post of the last month.

There’s a whole heap of questions and obviously these all relate to photography, but I’m sure as I’m sharing these examples you can think of questions that you could ask your readers as well. Of course, you don’t just have to ask questions on your blog. You can also do the same thing on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, many of you probably do this on a daily basis. But the challenge today is to create a post on your blog that asks a question.

For some of you, you don’t feel you have enough readers, I’ve already given you a few tips on this. Start with a poll, ask a question that has only two answers, but another couple of things that I did in the early days on my own blog, I always answered my own question in the comments. Instead of writing my answer in the blog post itself, sometimes I would be the first commenter and I would just say something like, “I’m going to kick off the discussion with my answer.” That increased that comment count from zero to one, but it also showed my readers I was willing to have a discussion with them.

The second thing I used to do occasionally in the early days was just to email a few friends or other bloggers and say, “I’d love to hear your response to this question.” That might sound a little fake, but it got the conversation going and it made my one answer look a little less lonely, and many times it stimulated other people to join the conversation, too.

I love asking questions on my blog and I hope that you build this challenge into your weekly or monthly blogging routine. It takes your blog from being something where you broadcast to the world and start to have conversations with the world, and I think it brings a lot of life to your blog.

I’ll talk to you tomorrow on day 26 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode on asking your readers questions as I mentioned at the start of this episode. You can go to problogger.com/podcast/25 and share the link to the post that you’ve written, asking your readers a question. I would love to see what action you’ve taken today based upon this particular challenge. Also in show notes, you can get a 50% discount for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog the Workbook which gives you an extra 7 days of challenges to do on your blog.

Also, as we’re approaching the end of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Series, if you like to go to problogger.com/podcast and scroll to the bottom of the page, there’s a contact form there and I would love to hear your suggestions for topics for future episodes. Tell us what you’ve liked about this podcast, but also give us any feedback or suggestions because now, we’re beginning to think beyond this first 31 days. We’ll base what we do upon your feedback.

I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 26 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, where we’re going to get off our blog again, focus on building relationships with another blogger, and in the process learn something about blogging ourselves. I’ll chat with you then.

How did you ask your readers a question? What did you do to get responses?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to paying asking readers questions in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

Today’s episode is about how to use a magazine to help you improve your blog – using ‘old media’ to help you improve your approach to ‘new media’. As well as being simple – and potentially a bit of fun – looking through a magazine has the potential to help you improve your blog in any number of ways.

Magazines for all domains by Artur Brites on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

What fresh ideas did you get today from analysing a magazine? What will you do differently on your blog?

I’d love to see what changes you make to your blog from this exercise. Share a link to your post in the comments below. Let me know what you’ve done differently.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/24 where you also have the opportunity to let us know what you think about today’s episode.

Hi, this is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and welcome to day 24 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today’s challenge is a really simple one. In fact, many of you probably find it quite fun. It has the potential to help your blog in many ways as well. Today, you’re going to read a magazine. Yup, you heard me. Today, old media is going to help you improve your new media blog.

Today, by looking through a magazine, you could find that it helps in any number of ways. You might get marketing ideas while looking at how the magazine pitches to get itself to get readers and paying particular attention to the front cover, which is what convinces people to buy the magazine or not.

You might learn all kinds of things about calling people for action, headlines, and all types of things to get people to pay attention to you. You might learn about design ideas while online and offline are quite different, how the magazines laid out, the colors they used, the fonts they use could help you to understand current trends in design.

You might get post ideas, particularly if you choose a magazine that relates to your niche, but even if you don’t, I often find as I’m reading magazines that don’t relate to my niche, I get ideas for how to tackle my topics by looking at how they do it.

You might also learn about your niche, particularly if you choose a magazine that is from yours, might help you to keep up with the latest trends and developments in your area. I know in the photography space, I used to read photography magazines really regularly, and it was how I caught up with some of the latest trends, particularly before blogs came out and became popular. These days, blogs tend to break the news.

You might get some writing tips. A good article on almost any topic can teach you a heap about effective communication. You might also get some ideas on monetization. Mainstream media have been monetizing content for a long time and while the web is different, some of the principles still do apply today. For example, I found photography products in photography magazines to become an affiliate for.

You might also learn a little bit about reader engagement. Even though a magazine isn’t a two-way conversation in many regards, it’s a very different medium. They’re increasingly trying to become more interactive by running competitions, setting up online forums, and using reader contributions. Again, this might spark ideas for you and your blog.

Increasingly, magazines are also using freelance writers and even bloggers to write for them. This presents a couple of opportunities for you. One, it may actually show your magazine that you could submit to get a piece in. This sometimes is something that they would pay you for even as well. It might even be an extra income stream.

Also, pay attention to the other people who are writing for the magazine. They may become guest posters for your blog. They may have blogs of their own. I find many times they do. Sometimes, I’ve even interviewed them for my own blogs. So, you might get other opportunities coming out of this exercise today.

The exercise is pretty simple. All you really need is a magazine, a paper one, not an online one (if possible), or even a newspaper could work. You probably want to buy it because you might actually end up scribbling on it today or even cutting up. I know a number of people have done this exercise and cut up the magazine and laid it out in different ways.

Having said that, if you can’t afford a magazine, that’s totally fine. Many libraries have them as well or doctor surgeries or other public places. You might want to use one from there; you just need to refrain from scribbling on it or cutting it up. If possible, get a magazine that relates to your topic, but it’s not essential.

Another stuff you might find handy, some sticky notes. I quite like to use those through it, and then a notebook and a pen, or something to record your ideas. There’s no real one way to do this, but the process that I outline in the book, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, is this: firstly set aside an hour to head away to a place where you can be understood. I tend to do this exercise in a café.  

Bring along the magazine (of course) or a few of them if you’ve got more than one. A notebook, pen, some sticky notes. And then starting with the front cover, just quickly skim through the magazine. Place a sticky note on any page that catches your attention. You don’t have to pause and read anything yet, just take a quick flick through and see what leaps out at you.

As you’re doing it, you might want to ask some of these initial questions. What could you learn from the ad placement and design of the magazine? What level is the magazine pitched at? Is it for beginners, intermediate, advanced? Or a particular demographic of people? What does the magazine do well? What does it do poorly? What would you improve? What are the limitations of the magazine medium? How could you use this to capitalize on selling your blog and standing out from it?

Once you’ve had a quick skim through the magazine, make note of what grabbed you in the first pass. Was it a headline, a picture, a color, an opening line of an article or something else? These attention-grabbing things are really important for blogging. You’ve only got a few seconds to make that first impression upon people. Paying attention to what grabs your attention is really important.

Now take a second and slower read of the magazine. Again, start at the front cover and work your way through and as you go, you might want to ask some of these other questions. What techniques are used on the front page to draw people into the magazine? Who’s the target audience of this publication? What makes you pause and read an article? Why do you skip over other ones? What type of headlines are they using? How effective are they? How are the pitches used? What colors are popular at the moment? How are the articles formatted? How long are the articles? How do they use formatting like subheadings, bold, callouts, lists? How does the magazine sell itself looking forward to future issues or subscription pages?

As you read through the magazine, all kinds of stuff could potentially jump out at you. Take note of any of it that might apply to your blog. I want to make it clear, I’m not really saying you should be copying anything you see in the magazine, but rather, let it be something that stimulates ideas for your own blog. See it as an opportunity to learn and think about your own blog. Some of it will naturally fit with your blogging and what you could do, and other parts [00:08:44] that’s totally fine. Really, the value of this exercise today is to step away from your own blog for an hour and then just gain some fresh ideas and perspectives from another medium.

I hope you find today’s exercise good. Make sure you grab a coffee or your favorite beverage to drink while you’re reading a magazine and let us know how you find the exercise. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow on day 25 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and reading the magazine that you’ve chosen, and hopefully, it’s taught you something about blogging. I’d love to hear what that was at problogger.com/podcast/24 where we’ve put out today’s show notes and I’d love to hear a comment about what you’ve learned and what you’ve done as a result of today’s challenge.

Also, I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 25 on 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. We’re in the final week now and tomorrow’s challenge is another writing challenge, so get ready for some writing. Look forward to chatting with you then. Bye.

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

Today’s episode is about how to ask your readers to go beyond just reading your blog and to DO something. Readers are often ready and willing, if only you asked.

‘If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.’ ― Nora Roberts

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). Today we talk about:

What did you ask your readers to do?

I’d love to see your post that calls your reader to some kind of action. Share a link to your post in the comments below.

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.

I actually want to call you to two actions today. First, I want you to write a post with a call to action and also to leave a comment sharing that post with us. You can do that at problogger.com/podcast/23 where today’s show notes are and there are (as always) opportunities to leave a comment.

Hi, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to Day 23 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today is another writing challenge. It’s one that I know is going to stretch some of you. It’s to write a post that calls your reader to some kind of action. At some point in the life of most blogs, the blogger behind it needs or wants to ask their readers to go beyond reading and to do something. While this might not be on a daily basis, it’s something that’s useful to learn how to do. And so, we’re going to practice that today.

The action you want your readers to take could be anything. It need not be a big ask either. Your challenge is to craft a post that asks your readers to do something. The goal here is to snap your readers out of passivity. Incidentally, I think the vast majority of blog readers are probably in a very, very passive state. My estimates on my own blogs are that less than 1% or even a fraction of 1% ever leave a comment or do anything. The vast majority of people are purely reading, if that. Only you really know what suits your readers to do. It could be a whole heap of things. Here are a few that you might want to try.

It could be getting them to implement some ideas that you’ve written about or to do something that you’re taught them to do. It could be subscribing to your RSS feed or your email newsletter. It could be getting them to follow you on social media. It could be related to them buying something like an affiliate product that you’re promoting or one of your own products. It could be something simple like could you leave a comment, vote in this poll, or take this survey. 

Maybe it’s something a little bit more altruistic. Make a donation to this charity. Maybe you want them to hire you, to buy some service that you offer, to take part in a challenge or a project that you’re running, to attend a meeting, a meet-up, or an event that you’re running. Maybe it’s just something, like read this other piece of content that I’ve written, whether it’s on your own site or somewhere else. Lastly, it might be to visit your business site.

There’s a whole heap of things, and like I said, only you really know what suits your readers and your goals as well. Make it something that furthers your blogging goals in some way, but also make it something that extends your readers in some way. So, something that’s a bit of a challenge for you.

For example, if you’ve never asked your readers to do anything before, a call to action, like vote in this poll, might be a good one because you’ve never made an ask before, so you want to warm them up. If they’re an interactive audience and you’ve asked them to vote before, leave comments, and they’ve taken those actions, ask for something a little bit bigger. See what happens. You’ve got nothing to lose, really.

The challenge today is to write a post that has a call to action. I know for some of you, you’re used to this. You possibly do it in every post that you write by asking for a comment. That’s just normal for many bloggers. But for others of us, making an ask of our readers feels a bit awkward, and it’s something that we’ve really done. I know for the first few years of my own blogging, I rarely asked my readers to do anything. I just wrote. The result of that is that our readers are probably quite passive and they might be willing and ready to do something if only we asked. So, choose something you’d like your readers to do today. It may not be big, but craft a blog post to make that ask.

I’m going to link today in the show notes to a post I wrote a while ago called 12 Tips to Snap Your Readers out of Passivity With Calls to Action. That post has 12 tips on making your ask and making a call to action. I’m not going to go through them all now, but here’s a few from that post and one from something else that I’ve done.

The first thing is to be really clear from the start of the post as you sit down to write what you want people to do. If you ask something that’s just tacked on the end, it’s probably not going to work because you haven’t crafted the posts to lead them to that action.

The second tip is just to make one ask per post. I see a lot of bloggers saying, “Come in on this, subscribe here, and buy this,” all in one post. They may take some of those actions but they’re much more likely to do something if you just ask for one thing and then you clearly outline how they should do that.

The third tip is to make it a win-win. You want to ask them to do something that’s going to benefit you or to further your goals, but also something that’s going to benefit them. You don’t want to just take from your readers. You want to communicate the ask in a way that communicates this benefit. Instead of writing “subscribe to my blog,” you might want to also include a reason why they should subscribe. What benefit will they get from doing that? They’re much more likely to take the action and enter into it with the right expectations.

The last thing that I do quite regularly on my blogs is to give my readers homework. This might sound a little juvenile like they go into school or something but actually giving your readers homework can be a really effective teaching tool. This is really relevant if you have a how-to blog, a teaching, or an empowerment type of blog. Show them how to do something and then make your ask that they implement, experiment, or try what you’ve just taught them, and then to report back on what they did.

Not everyone’s going to do it, but those who do are much more likely to have learned what you’ve taught them than those who simply read it. Knowledge can only go so far. Action is the key to trying to bring about change in someone’s life, so getting them to do some homework or do a project in some way is going to bring about lasting change.

“Be a little bold today. Make an ask of your readers.” I found this quote from Nora Roberts, who turns out as a romance novelist, but it’s a good quote. She says, “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place,” so be a little bold today and make an ask.

I’d love to hear about the ask that you make your readers today. Once you’ve written your post, please go to problogger.com/podcast/23 where you can leave a link to the post that you’ve written and talk about how you found today’s challenge. While you’re there, check out some of the other links of other participants in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog have left. Surf around, get to know some of the other bloggers doing this challenge, leave a comment or two, and if you feel their post resonates, I’d love it if you’d share it on social media so that we can share a little traffic around and get to know each other as bloggers. I look forward to tomorrow’s challenge, day 24 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

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Today’s episode is about how to deepen engagement and interaction with your readers by making at least one reader feel a little bit special and loved. Paying readers a bit of extra attention is a great way to grow your community.

Hands in heart shape framing sun by Elena Elisseeva on 500px

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). Today we talk about:

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to day 22 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today is all about your reader and paying them a little bit of extra attention. In the early days of ProBlogger, I used to give two pieces of advice quite regularly. In fact, I probably gave them too much, but they were catchphrases for me. One of them was to make your readers famous. The other one was love your readers to death. Both of these really were about the same thing, about deepening engagement and interaction with your readers in some way or another. Today, your challenge is to do just that or (at the very least) make one of your readers feel a little bit special, a little bit loved.

On day five of our 31-day challenge, we did this by emailing a reader. Today, I want you to take it a step further and publicly pay attention to one of your readers. Day five is all about shooting them a private note, something that was in private completely just between you and them. Today, I want to challenge you to pay attention to one of your readers in a public way.

This has three main benefits. Firstly, it has an impact upon your reader by taking a little bit of time today to step out of your busy routine and show that one reader that you value them could have a real impact upon that one person. That may sound like a little action, but if you do this on a regular basis, it adds up. You never quite know who that person is and how your action today might have an impact on them and has on-going benefits. I actually did this with one of my readers back in 2005 and that reader became a business partner, just because I paid them a bit of attention.

The second benefit of doing this is that it has an impact on your other readers as well. When you publicly value one reader in front of everyone else, it shows that you have a genuine interest in your readers. It’s infectious. It goes to help create a positive and inclusive culture on your blog. What you will notice is that if you are welcoming and you are valuing individual readers, your readers will begin to value one another as well.

The third benefit is one that’s only really just hit home to me in the last year or so. This activity will have an impact on you. Any interaction that you have with your reader is going to have an impact on you as well and that’s really important. Many times as bloggers, we fail to see our readers as individuals. We look at our Google Analytics and we see the number of readers as our audience. The reality is that behind that number are human beings. It’s good to be reminded of that.

One of my favorite blogging stories is that of Jada Selma, who, after years of trying to create successful blogs was not really getting any traction on them, joined with another blogger Jane Hanson, to create a blog called Simple Green Smoothies. You may have heard of it.

One of the things that Jane and Jada did brilliantly in the early days was to really pay attention to serve their readers. Jada spoke at World Domination Summit last year about her journey and one of the take-home messages that really stood out to me from her message was the phrase, choose love over metrics. That really resonated with me because it’s so easy to choose metrics over your readers and to forget that on the other side of your reader number are human beings. Today, the challenge is designed to remind you of that as much as anything else.

I want you to pay particular attention to one of your readers today. It may actually be more than one, but that’s fine. Just start with one. I’ve tried this many different ways over the years, as I’ve tried to love my readers to death, as I’ve tried to make them famous. Some of the things that I’ve done have been quite big. I’ve ran meet-ups and I’ve had competitions. I remember one time we ran a competition here in Australia with a local tourism board to fly 10 of my readers from around the world to spend a few days with me here on the Gold Coast and on the Great Barrier Reef. That had a big impact on those 10 readers. They actually flew around the world to hang out with me and to get some training. That’s a big way of doing it.

I know here in Australia, there are bloggers who run meet-ups and have morning teas with their readers. At our events here in Australia last year, we tried to do some surprise and delight with our readers and we chose a couple of readers to fly down to Melbourne and spend a day with me and my team. Paying attention to readers in that way has a big impact and we saw it as we spent time with those bloggers.

You may not be able to do something quite on that scale. Start small, build small little actions into your weekly rhythm of blogging, and it can have an impact. A few ideas that you might want to try.

Firstly, you might promote a comment that a reader made into a blog post. If someone’s left a really good comment that’s insightful and useful, doesn’t have to be long, don’t let it just be wasted on the few people who chance upon seeing it in the comments make it into a blog post. Highlight your reader’s wisdom in some way. Put them in the spotlight.

You may want to ask permission from your reader to do that, although they’ve already made the comment publicly on your blog. Promoting it, in a sense, into a blog post has a big impact. I’ve seen this happen many times on my blog where I’ve done this. The reader actually really values that action.

Similarly, you might want to quote your readers either from the comments left on a post or from social. I’ve actually done whole posts which have been purely tweets from my readers who’ve responded to me asking a question. I asked a question on Twitter. I get responses and I just use those responses, giving credit, of course, to my readers in the blog post.

You might want to write a blog post about one of your reader’s blogs, business, or a project that they’re running. You might want to send your readers all over to someone else’s blog to read a post like a link post that we’ve already talked about in this challenge. You might even close the comments on your own blog to force people if they want to react to go over there and do it. You might want to give your readers a chance to promote something that they’ve done.

On Digital Photography School every Friday, we run a challenge, we name a theme, and we say to our readers, go away and take a photo and then come back and show off your best photo on this theme or this technique. We give our readers a chance to show off a little bit and show what they can do.

On ProBlogger, we did this many times on what we call group writing projects where we’d name a theme and send our readers away to write on that theme and then they would come back and share the link to their post.

My wife does this on her blog. She’ll name a color to go away and take a photo of you wearing that color in an outfit and then she collects those photos and puts some up onto a social media account.

Giving people something to do, to go away, and then highlighting what they’ve done in some way, is just giving them a chance to participate in your blog and that gives them a little bit of a moment in the limelight. You could extend this to do on-going challenges or projects. My wife, for instance, does this over a whole week. For every day over a week, she names a different color and people go away and wear that color, and then Instagram their outfits. She creates these collages every day over a week and then puts some on her blog at the end of the week.

There’s a great blogger here in Australia, Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim, who does a Photo A Day Challenge. She gets her readers to go away and take a photo, put it on Instagram, and it goes on the hashtag. Everyone gets their photos seen a little bit more.

There’s a whole heap of different ways that you can run these sorts of challenges. Another way you could highlight a reader and give them a little bit of a moment in the spotlight is to interview someone that comments on your blog regularly. Find out a little bit more about them. Put the reader in the spotlight.

The other thing that I did once on ProBlogger, which worked out really well, is I actually asked my readers to submit a tip on video. I gave them some guidelines. They had to make the video in two or three minutes, put it on YouTube, and then send me the link of that video. Once all the videos came in, I put it together as a post embedding all the videos in the post. My readers were there talking on my blog. It had a big impact. It was great to see the diversity of readers that I had as well.

Either you try one of those ideas or try something of your own, but pay attention to your readers. Make them a little bit famous. Give them a bit of special attention and see what impact that has. May actually find that you do something that has a big impact and that you want to do on a regular basis on your blog,

Thanks for joining us today on this podcast. I hope that you find today’s challenge to be useful in giving one, two, or maybe a few more of your readers a little special attention. I want to finish off today’s podcast by giving a shout out to Paul, who’s our listener of this podcast. Paul has left some great comments, but in episode nine he left a fantastic comment. That particular episode was on using forums and social media groups to build your blog. Paul left a fantastic comment with lots of really great suggestions on how to do that. He talks about his own experience of using forums to build his own business. Thanks to Paul for the insight. You can see Paul’s comment at problogger.com/podcast/9 where he left his comments.

Today’s show notes are also available at problogger.com/podcast/22. I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 23 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog where we’re going to talk about calling your readers to action. I’ll talk to you then.

How did you pay special attention to a reader? What was their reaction?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to paying special attention to readers in the comments below. Maybe you have a success story you would like to share?

Don’t Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

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.