ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

Today’s episode is about some policies or operating standards you might like to consider for your blog. Having policies can save you time, help you to make better decisions, and make you more transparent to your readers.

Terms & Conditions by Chris Yates 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/21. Let’s get into today’s episode.

Hi, this is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 21 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. We’re on that final home stretch now, just 10 days to go. Today’s challenge may sound a little odd, but I think it’s really important to do. It’s to spend some time looking at some policies, operating standards, or procedures for your blog. This sounds very corporate, but it’s actually important.

For some of you, it’s actually a legal requirement for you to put some attention into some of these things. Some of you live in jurisdictions where you are required to have a privacy policy or where you’re required to have a disclosure policy if you’re working with brands in some way. For others of you, it may not be a legal requirement, but it might just be good form to be transparent with your readers on how you operate. For others of you, it’s not so much about how you look or whether you’re complying with the law.

It’s actually about putting processes in place that help you to deal with issues that might crop up so that when you are faced with these issues, you’ve already made the decision on how you respond to them. Hopefully, it’ll become clear which of these fits in with the different policies I’m going to talk about in a moment.

I want to go through seven different areas—in fact, I want to suggest seven—that you might want to consider creating a policy in. I do touch on six of these in the workbook for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, but I want to suggest a seventh as well. The first one is copyright. Are you willing for other people to use your content in some way? This might mean you put a Creative Commons license on your blog, and there’s a variety of different types, so you might want to do a little bit of research on that today. 

If you’re not willing for other people to use your content, that’s okay. You might want to brush up your copyright notice. You probably want to do a little bit of research on that and there are posts on ProBlogger on that topic. You want to also put into place processes if you are using guest posters on your blog to ensure that they own the copyright of the material that they submit.

For instance, we’ve at times on Digital Photography School had people submit posts that they didn’t write. You might want to put a process in place where you run a few sentences of any guest post through a tool like Copyscape to ensure it’s not being posted elsewhere. Also related to this, you might want to think ahead about what you’ll do if you find someone else using your content without your permission. What approach would you take? Would you issue them a DMCA legal notice? Would you confront them publicly?

Having a little process in places to the two or three things you do in what order might save you going on a rant on your blog when you could just simply email them and ask them to take it down and get an adequate reaction that way, thinking ahead about that situation might be a good thing.

Secondly, you might want to think about our policies in the comments section of your blog. If you’ve got comments running on your blog (and most of us do), do you have any guidelines for what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in those comments? Will you ever delete a comment? Would you ever edit a comment? If so, under what circumstance? Do you allow swearing or is it more of a family-friendly policy? Do you allow linking to products or back to people’s blogs? If so, how many? Do you allow people to attack other people in your comments and how do you react if they do?

These are policies that are good for you to have in place as you moderate comments, but it’s also something that you might want to make public. There have been times where I’ve actually made comments policies public on my blog because people were commenting in ways that I wasn’t comfortable or happy to have on my blog. So, actually create a page on your blog where you explicitly state what your comments policies might be a good thing.

Another area you might want to create a policy or procedure in is in the area of content or acceptance of guest posts. If you have guest posts on your blog, you might want to set some ground rules and a submission process. How do you want people to submit posts? What topics do you want posts on? Do you have guidelines on the length of posts? Do you allow people to self-promote in their posts? Do you have a format that you want them to submit those posts in? When will you respond to submissions? How will the guest posts be credited in the blog post? These are things that you could quite easily write up in just a few paragraphs and then post on your blog somewhere.

Another area you might want to think about policy is in email management. I’m really thinking about the emails that you get as a blogger. How are you going to respond to those emails? If you’re only getting one or two a day, you probably would really be responding to any email that you get, but once your blog gets bigger and you start getting 50 or 100 emails a day, you might want to think about a policy there. Do you respond to everyone’s email? How long does it take? Put that policy on your contact page and it will help those people who do email and contact you to have more realistic expectations about how and if you’ll respond.

The fifth area you might want to think about a policy in or at least boundaries in is your own personal privacy. How much are you going to discuss your personal life? It’s good to have some boundaries in place and to discuss these with your family ahead of time. Personal safety is not something to gloss over here. Will you share photos of yourself or your family? Will you be using your real name on your blog? Will you disclose what area you live in? Will you get yourself a silent phone number or a PO Box? These are things that you may need to think through and discuss with your family and today might be a good day to do it.

The sixth area I talked about in the workbook is advertising or promotions disclosures. This is one that you legally may need to put in place depending upon where you live. If you promote other people’s products, whether you’re working with them as a sponsor or you’re promoting them as an affiliate, how are you going to disclose that? Will it be in the post that you write or do you have a site-wide disclosure?

Again, in many parts of the world, you need to disclose. You might want to do some research on your own local area. What type of products would you consider as a sponsor and what would you not? When I ran advertising on ProBlogger, I got approached regularly by scammy products and services. I didn’t want to be a part of promoting those so I put a policy in place. What type of advertising would you accept? Will you accept sponsored posts, text links, banners, competitions, other types of advertising? It’s good to have that decision made before you start getting approached by advertisers. How will you link to people? Will you give them a nofollow link or follow link?

The seventh area that I would suggest that you think about in terms of policy is a privacy policy. Here, I’m thinking about your readers’ privacy. In many jurisdictions and sometimes working with different advertisers, you are going to be required to create and publish a privacy policy. Some of the things that you probably would want to include in that privacy policy are things like what types of personal information do you collect from your readers.

For instance, if someone leaves a comment, you’re collecting their email address and you’re collecting their IP address in many instances, whether you know it or not. When you collect the information, it’s good to disclose that as well. In the comments, if you sell an ebook, there might be another place.

Another thing that you might need to disclose is whether you’re using cookies on your site. How do you manage personal information? How will that personal information be used? How can people contact you to talk about their personal information? Depending on the jurisdiction you live in, you may need to include all of these things in a published privacy policy. Today might be a good day to do some research on what you are required to publish. If in doubt, please seek legal advice.

The challenge today is to pick at least one of these areas to develop some policy or procedure in. It doesn’t mean you have to publish it. Some of these, it’s more for you to think ahead about a particular issue. Some of those issues like reader privacy policy, advertising disclosures, and comments, you may want to actually publish something on your blog as an actual page that you link to publicly and you may want to do some research today on what you are legally required to publish in those regards.

I hope you find today’s challenge useful. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow on day 22 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

I’d love you to stop by problogger.com/podcast/21 to let us know what you thought of today’s episode. You can tell us what policy you decided to develop today or update, and any other reactions that you have to today’s podcast. You can also find there any links for further reading that we’ve got for today’s episode, and you can purchase the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook there with a 50% off discount for those of you who are interested in that. Looking forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 22 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Do you have policies or operating standards for your blog? What policies or standards will you develop next?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to reviewing blog policy 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 all about how you can leave comments on other blogs to build relationships and grow your blog’s audience.

Photographer smiling in satisfaction at her images by Lars Zahner 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:

Do you leave comments on other blogs? What ideas will you use next for commenting on other blogs?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to commenting on other blogs in the comments below.

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 20 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Probably the most common piece of advice that I hear people giving on building to bring traffic to your blog is to leave comments on other people’s blogs. I’ve been hearing this advice since 2002 when I started blogging. It’s been around for many years and that’s because there’s some truth in this advice. It is a great technique for helping you build your profile and to build some traffic back to your blog, but it’s worth saying right up front that today’s challenge also has the potential to hurt your blog, so proceed with caution.

There are definitely some benefits of leaving comments on other people’s blogs. It gets you off your blog and viewing other people’s blogs, which is a good thing because you learn more about how other people approach blogging. It could also spark all kinds of ideas for your own blog posts, particularly if you’re reading other blogs in your niche. It’s also great for helping to get to know other bloggers in your niche, which could lead to all kinds of relationships and even collaborations down the years. By them knowing who you are, they’re more likely to link to you and want to work with you in some way.

It also creates a little doorway into your blog for the readers of those blogs. A lot of people say that’s the number one reason, but for me, it’s probably not the number one. It’s certainly an opportunity to drive some traffic that way, but for me, it’s the other things that are more beneficial. Lastly, it also builds your profile, and it showcases your expertise as well if you leave good comments, that is.

I said before, there are some dangers if you don’t comment well on other people’s blogs. The dangers are that you could come across as overly self-promotional, spammy, pushy, or just a try-hard. I want to give you some dos, but at first, I want to give you some don’ts when it comes to leaving comments on other blogs.

Don’t leave too many links. Don’t leave too many comments. There’s nothing worse than having a commenter that comments on every single post, and multiple times on every single post, and dominates the conversation. Don’t dominate the conversation. Don’t always be the first one to leave a comment. There’s nothing wrong with being first, but if you’re first on every single post that a blogger writes that can look a little bit try-hard.

Don’t always talk about yourself. Talk about the blogger, react to what they’re saying. Don’t just write a great post, go a little bit beyond that. Don’t attack the other blogger. Don’t attack their readers. Don’t keyword stuff the name that you comment under. Use your real name if possible. They’re some of the don’ts. I don’t like to talk too much about don’ts. I would prefer to say what you should do. Let me give you the flip side.

Do read the post first. It’s amazing how many people comment without really understanding what they’re commenting in reaction to. 

Do add value to the post. Add something that the other person’s missed out. Add an experience. Add an example. Add something of value. If you’re not adding value, don’t comment.

Do be personal. Use your name, but also write in a more personal conversational tone as if you are having a conversation with a person. 

Do be relevant with your comments. It’s amazing how many people just go off on tangents that really have nothing to do with the post. 

Do be honest with the blogger if you don’t agree with them, but be gracious.

Do add advice where you’re invited to do so, but don’t go too far on that. 

Do ask relevant and insightful questions that keep the conversation alive. Bloggers love it when a conversation develops in the comments on their posts. Don’t just add your opinion, ask a question that gets the conversation going. You’re helping the blogger achieve their goals. 

Do respond to what other commenters have said.

Do fill in the URL form in the comment, and let that be the main way that people find you. I actually talked to some bloggers who say they don’t ever leave the link where they’re invited to do so by the blogger because they think that’s too pushy. It’s okay to leave a link there because there’s actually a field for you to do it, and the blogger wants you to. 

Do occasionally, leave a link in the comment itself if it’s highly relevant to the conversation. It might be also worth saying like, “If this isn’t relevant, please feel free to delete it.” You’re telling the blogger that you don’t really mind if the link goes. The danger really with this approach of leaving comments on other people’s blogs is leaving links all the time, so do make them relevant.

I’ll just give you two last tips on leaving comments on other blogs. There’s probably a lot more that could be said. But the first one is to build this into your daily rhythm. Five or ten minutes a day reading and commenting on others’ blogs—if you do it well—can lead to all kinds of good things.

The second thing is this, always pay attention to the comment you’re leaving. Ask yourself the question, could I turn this comment into a blog post? I’ve lost count of the times over the years when I’ve spent time writing a comment on someone else’s blog that adds value, that is insightful, that’s useful in some ways, and then I get to the end of it and I think to myself, I could easily post this as a whole blog post. I’ve been known to leave 500-600 word comments on other people’s blogs. 

I often take those comments—after posting them—and then I put them up on my own blog. I link back to the initial post on the other blog, which inspired me to leave the comment. Sometimes I’ll adapt the comment a little bit to make it into a flow of a blog post, but at the very least, use those comments as the starting points for future posts. This way you’re linking back to really good conversations, you’ve got a link post—like we’ve talked about previously—but you also have taken the effort you’ve put into leaving that great comment, and you’re able to repurpose that in some way.

It’s time to do some commenting on other people’s blogs. Perhaps the first place you could go to comment is problogger.com/podcast/20, which is the show notes for this particular episode where we’d love to hear what you thought of today’s episode and challenge, and what you’re going to do about it. We’ll talk to you tomorrow on day 21 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

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.

Lastly – 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 all about how you can write an opinion post to draw people in to engage with you and your blog. Your opinion is something your readers actually want to know and it has the potential to set your blog apart from the pack.

Strangers #3 – Hands Up by Dora Hon 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).

Have you tried sharing an opinion on your blog? What opinion will you share next?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to getting readers to draw down into your blog in the comments below.

Today, I’m going to share why opinions are important, but also give you some tips on how to do it, different types of posts that you might write depending upon the niche that you’re in. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/19, where you can also leave a comment to share the post that you write today so we can see it and you might get a little more traffic to your blog. Let’s get into today’s challenge.

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to day 19 of our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. Today is another writing challenge and it’s to write an opinion post. Some bloggers are going to have no problem with this one. You have lots of opinions. You don’t mind sharing them. In fact, some bloggers perhaps go a little bit overboard on that, but that’s another podcast.

For many bloggers—myself included—sharing your opinion is something that you might not find comes naturally to you. That’s the way I was brought up. I was taught to keep my opinions to myself, so I worry naturally about what others are going to think when I share my opinion. What will they say? How will I be perceived? These are all things going on in the back of my mind as I sit down to tackle today’s challenge.

Here’s the thing. When you add your opinion to a post, it’s actually something that your readers want. It has the potential to set your blog apart from the pack and become more useful. Opinions make your blog more useful. Readers are not just looking for news or what’s happening, they’re looking to see how that news impacts their situation. If I’m looking to buy a product, I don’t want to just know the features of a product, I actually want to know what someone else thinks about that product, for instance.

Opinions also make your blog distinct. There are probably hundreds of blogs in your niche, maybe more. Your experience, story, and most of all your opinions are what make you and your blog unique. Don’t be afraid to share them. I remember my first camera blog—doesn’t really exist anymore—I used to report on the news of new digital cameras being released. That was interesting to people, but the problem is that over time, there became more and more blogs doing exactly the same thing.

It was only when I started to not only say, “This is a new camera that’s been released with these features,” but I started writing things like, “This is what I think this camera is for,” or, “There are some features that I think are missing,” or, “Here’s another camera that has better features.” That’s when people started to pay attention to my blog when I added my opinion about the news.

Opinions also draw people into conversations. If you’re lacking comments on your blog, adding your opinion can sometimes stimulate more comments. When you share your opinion, it draws others in. That’s just the way we’re wired as human beings to have a conversation. Someone shares their opinion, we share ours. When I started sharing my opinions of the cameras being released, I found that often led to all kinds of conversations on my blog.

In the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook, I write this, “Expressing opinions on your blog is like adding seasoning to food. Without opinion, your blog could end up quite bland; blending into the crowd. Adding your opinion helps to give your blog a unique flavor.”

Today, I want you to write an opinion post. The whole post doesn’t need to be an opinion. The whole post, that is, doesn’t need to be a rant. It could just be adding your opinion to something else that you’ve been writing. It’s going to be easier for some of you than others, both based upon your niche but also your personality and what you’re used to, but give it a go.

If your blog is about products, go beyond writing about a new product and tell people what you think about it. Another great technique that I use regularly is to compare two products and give your verdict on which one suits your readers’ needs best.

If your blog’s about books, write a review of a book that you’ve read and what you thought about it, what you feel about it. If your blog’s about nutrition, share what you think about a popular diet. What’s good about it, what’s not so good about it in your opinion? If your blog’s about tech startups, talk about why a startup succeeded or failed. If your blog’s about travel, share why you think a destination is a great place for your audience to visit. You get the picture. You might need to work a little hard on that depending on what your niche is but give it a go today.

Just a few quick tips before I finish. Firstly, you don’t have to write a rant. You don’t have to even write on a hugely controversial issue. Those topics are sometimes good because they can lead to all kinds of conversation, but they can also lead to barn fights happening on your blog as well. Choose something that’s relevant to your niche, something that’s relevant to your readers that will be interesting to them. Particularly pay attention to opinions that can help your readers to make a decision that they’re making.

The second tip is don’t be afraid of a bit of controversy. Sometimes it’s actually important to go there. There’s nothing wrong with a diversity of opinions. A little controversy can actually bring some life to your blog. Just keep it relevant. Also, pay attention to this third tip: write with some grace. Maybe it’s just me but there’s almost always a way to be a little bit inclusive, gracious, and constructive even when you’re talking about something that you feel really passionate about, something that you feel quite black and white on.

I personally find that there’s no real need to be highly divisive, use confronting language, or be attacking to get my opinion across. Maybe that’s just me. In fact, just saying, “Maybe that’s just me,” is one way that I water it down a little bit and try to be a bit gracious. Using that kind of line gives people permission to take another opinion and to have another experience.

The last tip I’ll give you is to invite other people’s opinions. One of the best ways I find to be gracious is to actually finish your post with an invitation for people to share what they think. To actually say, “I’m sure other people think differently to me,” gives them permission to feel something different but also to share that. Sometimes when you do that, it actually kicks off a conversation where your readers and you may actually learn something and have your opinions changed. That’s okay, too. You set the tone for your blog. Most times your readers are going to react in the way that you write. Share your opinion but be a little bit gracious and see where the conversation leads.

I hope you find today’s challenge a good one, not too hard. I really look forward to seeing your opinion posts today. Make sure you share them with me.

It’s time to get writing your opinion post. I hope you’ve got some inspiration as a result of this episode and ready to do that. Once you’ve written it and have published it on your blog, please head to today’s show notes. They’re at problogger.com/podcast/19, where you can find a summary of today’s podcast episode, but you also got the opportunity to leave a comment. What I love about this 31-day challenge is that people have been sharing the posts that they’ve written and commented on each other’s posts. A few of you have even been sharing one another’s posts on social media, which has been great. Hopefully, everyone’s blog is improving as a result of the interactions that we’re having.

Do share the link to your post today. Also, share how you found creating an opinion post. Is it something that you normally do or is it something a bit new to you? You can also find the coupon code to get your 50% off the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook over on those show notes as well.

As we’re getting ⅔ of the way through this challenge, if you have a moment to leave us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever you’re listening to this podcast on, we would greatly appreciate it. It does help us to grow the podcast and also (more importantly) helps me to get a feel as to how this podcast has been helping people. I really do read every review and take note of the things that you say because that then will feed what I do in the future episodes.

I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 20—we’re into the 20s now—of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. I’ll talk to you then.

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.

Also, if you have a moment we’d love to get your feedback on the ProBlogger Podcast with this short survey which will help us to 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 all about how you can create a page or post that propels (or sneezes) people deep within your blog to read your archived blog posts.

#4 by Fábio Sneeze 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).

Also – 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.

Check out this previous exploration of Sneeze Pages (which I wrote as part of the last time I ran 31 Days to Build a Better Blog on the ProBlogger Blog).

The above post contains some examples of sneeze pages but here are the links to the examples mentioned in today’s episode:

It’s great for SEO and helping you to rank higher in Google. It’s helpful in keeping those first-time readers on your blog longer and increasing page views. There are many benefits to this exercise, and I hope you enjoy it. You can find the show notes, including some examples of sneeze pages at problogger.com/podcast/18.

Today is all about creating something that has the potential to have really quite huge benefits and ongoing benefits for your blog. You’re going to create what I call a sneeze page. It’s a term I invented that has been slightly grossing people out since 2009, the first time we did 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. I’m sorry if it does gross you out a little bit but the idea is really simple. It’s to create a page or a post that propels or sneezes people deep within your blog, to read your archived posts.

You might be asking why? Well, if you’ve been blogging for longer than a few months, now, you’ve got a problem. Whether you know it or not, you’ve got a problem. The problem is that you’ve invested a lot of time into creating content for your blog. Potentially, you’ve got tens. hundreds, or even thousands of blog posts in your archives. Each of these posts has had a moment of glory when it has been your most recent post on the blog. It’s been when you’ve promoted it on social media. It’s been sitting on your front page; it’s been really visible. Gradually over time, it slides down your front page, and then it disappears into your archives. For most of the posts that you’ve written, it’s rarely going to be looked at again. This happens with every single post you write.

The accumulation of that time, energy, and creativity that you’ve put into those posts is a lot. It’s a bit depressing if you think about it too much, those posts just sitting there, so today is really about getting a little bit of attention back to some of those older posts, particularly, your best ones that deserve to be seen again and again over time.

The benefits of creating a sneeze page today, the first one is that it’s going to show off your archives. It’s going to bring them back to life, lengthen their life a little if you like, and keep traffic flowing back to it, potentially for years to come. It also has a secondary benefit of being good for search engine optimization, helping your posts to rank a little higher in Google. The internal links that you have on your blog don’t really count for a lot, but they do help a touch with SEO.

The secondary benefit is that if people constantly have seen these posts, it increases the chances that they’re going to be linked to from other sites and shared on social media, which all goes into helping your posts get more traffic directly but also has indirect benefits in turn of SEO. It also helps to make your blog sticky, which basically is another gross term, I guess, in many ways, particularly, if you combine it with the sneeze analogy. It increases the chances that someone is going to stick around on your blog if they’ve been exposed to lots of different good posts on your site.

The last benefit is that it does increase the views per visit. So, every visitor who comes, instead of them viewing maybe one page, you might increase that to two or even more, which is good if you’re monetizing your blog with ads. It’s going to get your bounce rate statistic down.

There’s a variety of ways that you can create sneeze pages. I actually outlined a few different types of sneeze pages in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook, but I don’t want to confuse you with all of them in this podcast. I just want to talk about one today. If you want to look at the others, you can grab the book.

The type I want to look at today is the themed sneeze page or post. This is where you create a page or a post that collects your best information on a single idea, category, or theme. I want to give you a couple of examples, and I’ll include links to them in the show notes for today. They’re both from Digital Photography school, my main blog.

The first one is a page. It’s a page that I titled Digital Photography Tips and Tutorials for Beginners. This page is one of the most traffic pages on our site. As I look at Google Analytics, it’s always in the top 10 posts that are being viewed. I created it in WordPress as a page as opposed to a post.

If you look at it, you’ll see that I write a really short introduction, which introduces the idea of the page. And then it’s simply a list—a number of lists, actually—that I hand-picked from links in the archives that really relate to a beginner photographer. This post, if you look around our site, is very prominently linked to in a number of places. It’s in our navigation menu. I’m constantly linking to it from other posts on the site. Pretty much, anytime I use the words “beginner tips,” it gets linked to. It gets suggested at the end of a lot of posts, too, that relate to beginners. I’m also sharing it regularly on social media. I’m constantly driving traffic to it.

If you look at the post, it’s got 30 or 40 different links to beginner tips. Anyone landing on that page from all of those different places that are promoted is potentially viewing 10, 20, 30, even more posts on our site. By the end of that, they really have gone deep into our archives. In addition to the links to posts, there’s also a couple of calls to action. We call people to subscribe to the blog, to our newsletter. People do it from this page, it’s actually the page on the site that generates the highest number of subscribes.

Also, at the end of the post or the end of the page, I include a video that promotes our course. It’s a call to action to buy something and that course highly relates to the topic, and it does convert. So, that’s one example.

The other one is also on DPS. It’s similar in some ways. It’s called 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know. This is actually a post, it’s not a page or WordPress page. It’s a post, so this actually was written and published in 2009. It’s six years old as I say this, but it’s been one of our most popular ever posts. It continues to this day to get traffic every day from Google, but also social media, partly because I share it semi-regularly on social, but also because other people do. It’s just one of those posts that just keeps on giving and giving and giving. It’s a sneeze page or a sneeze post in many ways.

As the title suggests, it summarizes 21 key things new photographers need to learn. In some ways, it’s similar to the beginner page, but for each of the key points, in this case, I’ll write a paragraph, and then include a link to another post. You can get some value from the post itself just by reading it without following any of the links, but really, to get the real benefit from the content you need to follow the links and many people do. Someone reading this post potentially ends up having viewed 21 posts on the site. That creates an impression upon people.

Again, this post gets linked to from other parts of the blog so we’re driving traffic from other posts. Also, it is something that I share semi-regularly on social media. As with the other posts, there are calls to action, to subscribe, and then we also again, promote that same video course that relates to the content on this post.

Now, both of the examples I’ve given you today are around beginner photography, which is our key audience. They’re the people who read our site the most. So, these are really relevant pages to them, but we also have others. If you look up in the navigation area, you’ll see that we link to portrait photography tips and again, that’s a sneeze page. We link to landscape photography tips as well, and there are others on the site. There are landing pages for wedding photography, for photographing babies, for posing, for portraits. There’s a whole heap of them. This is something that I use prolifically around the site. Almost all of our main categories on the site have sneeze pages somewhere.

This is your challenge for today. I want you to create a sneeze page. Now as I say, there are other types of sneeze pages that you can create. Time-related ones would be another one that I do fairly regularly, but today, I encourage you to choose a theme that you could do. So just choose the main topic of your blog or the main category of your blog.

Another way to do a themed one is to think about a frequently asked question that you get, and then create a theme page that answers that with a number of different links. Now, if you’re a new blogger and you don’t yet have a heap of archives that you could create a page with, just create a simple one. You can always come back to this page later and add more. If you only have two or three links on the topic so far, you might want to include a few links to other people’s sites as well, as we’ve talked about previously in the 31-day challenge.

The other way that you might want to do it if you’re new and you don’t have a whole heap of posts on one theme is to do a wrap-up type sneeze page, so “best of.” I know a number of blogs that do this on a quarterly basis. Every three months, they might do a look back and just do a post, “Here are our top five posts over the last three months,” or, “Five posts you might have missed in our archives.” Those posts can work as well as a sneeze page.

Just two last pieces of advice. Firstly, create this nice page today but maybe diarize to come back to it again in three months, what could you add to it. It’s good to update these pages with any new content that relates to the theme that you’ve written about.

Secondly, think today about how you’re going to drive traffic to this sneeze page. You might want to link to it from your navigation area, or your menu, or your sidebar. You might want to go and find 10 posts in your archives that you could link to the sneeze page from, so you’re driving traffic from there.

You also might want to think about how you can share this post or page on social media semi-regularly. You might want to set yourself a reminder to share it once a month on Twitter or set up some sort of a system. We use Meet Edgar to set up a library of tweets and updates for Facebook so that you can regularly share it in an automated way.

There’s a variety of ways that you can continue to drive traffic to it, but it’s important that this type of post is something that you push people to regularly. Otherwise, it’s just going to drive a little bit of traffic to some of those older posts for a few moments until that post disappears off your front page again, which is just making the problem worse. Think about how you can drive traffic to it.

I’ve included some examples of sneeze pages from my blogs at today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/18. You can find those links there. You also have the opportunity to leave a comment there and connect with others during this 31 Day Challenge. There’s been some great discussion happening on some of the previous days.

I would love today to see the sneeze pages that you’ve created. If you create more than one, feel free to share them, too. This is going to drive a little traffic to your blog, but also give you the chance to show off what you’ve done but also get a bit of feedback from other bloggers on the challenge. So please do head to problogger.com/podcast/18, where you can share that link.

Also, check out the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook, which is linked on that same page, where you can get a coupon code to get you 50% off. I’m looking forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 19 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Tomorrow is a writing challenge, so you’re going to create a new post for your blog. I’ll chat with you then.

Have you created a sneeze page? What sneeze page will you create next?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to getting readers to dive down into 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.

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

Today’s episode is all about how you can see your blog from a first time reader’s perspective, and draw them in to keep reading.

You will need to find someone to help you today (although I suggest a service to try too) but it can be well worth the effort!

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).

Also – 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, this is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 17 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. We’re way over the halfway point now and the home stretch. Congratulations. Today, we are going to do something I always find insightful. I actually love this, but at the same time, I’ll always feel a little bit frightened when I do it. It’s to get someone who’s never seen your blog before to view it and give you their feedback.

Here’s the frightening reality. Within just a few seconds of arriving on the blog that you pour hour after hour after hour of time and energy into, just after a few seconds of arriving a new reader is making snap judgments about what your blog is about and if it’s worth their time to stay on it and come back again. It’s frightening to think about it. You put so much time into it, and you see it as a complex and wonderful thing, yet these strangers are making snap judgments about it.

First impressions are so important in real life. We all know that when we meet other people, we’re making judgments about them. In the online space, it’s even more important. People make even quicker judgments about others. You just have a few seconds to draw people into your world or they’ll never return. This is a great activity to do because you’re going to get some insight into what a first-time reader thinks about your blog by conducting a little audit. First-time reader audit on your blog to try and get inside their head.

To make this work, you’re going to need a couple of things. Firstly, you’re going to need a friend, a friend of a friend, a friend of a friend of a friend, a family member, a colleague, a blogger that you’ve not had much to do with, or a random stranger off the street if you can convince them, who hasn’t seen your blog before. We want someone who doesn’t know anything about your blog, if possible.

Ideally, there’s someone who would fit your desired reader category. Whether that by age, demographic, interest, level of experience. This could be tricky, but if you can find that, then that’s fantastic. The other thing you’ll need is a computer on which the person can view your blog. You could do it on a phone as well, but choose a computer for a start, at least.

Ideally, you want to be in the room with them as well so that you could watch them, but you could do this virtually as well. If you’ve got some way for the person to record their reactions to your blog, but it’d be great if you were there, just in the background. If you can’t do those things, I want to give you a couple of services later that you can get some of these insights from, but let’s go through these exercises if you’ve got someone in the room.

Firstly, you want to give the person your blog’s URL, and let them load it up. Have them spend four or five minutes just looking around your blog. Don’t give them anything to do. Just say, “I want you to use this blog, and surf around, and see what you think.” Don’t talk to them while they do it. Don’t distract them. Just sit behind them and watch. Just watch how they use your blog. This is going to be a bit of an uncomfortable experience in some ways for you because you’ll want to leap in and say, “No. Click here. Click there,” but just let them do it.

How do they navigate? What do they click on first? What do they pause to read? Where does their cursor hover and then move on? What calls to action do they react to? What do they tend to skip over without even giving it a second glance? Where do they look confused? How far do they scroll down the page? What parts of the page do they seem to click more often than others? What areas of the blog do they seem drawn to? What doesn’t work the way it should, technically, for them?

Once they’ve been surfing for a while and come to a natural end of their visit, spend a few minutes just asking them some questions about their experience. Some of the questions you might consider asking are things like, what was their first impression? What do they think your blog was about when they first landed on it? Did they find it easy to read? Did they find it easy to navigate, understand? What did they feel when they first arrived? What suggestions do they have about things that you can improve?

What questions do they have after surfing your blog about what you do? What do they still not understand about what your blog is about? What words would they use to describe the design? What were the main elements that they’ll remember about your blog 10 minutes later? What words do they remember that you used to describe your blog? What was your blog’s name or tagline? What words would they use to describe the content of your blog or the voice that you had written it in? Lastly, what type of person do they think would read your blog?

Some of these questions may not have too many words to answer, but you may be surprised at the things that they tell you and whether it hits the mark in terms of what your intentions are for your blog. I do this exercise semi-regularly. Quite often when I meet someone at a conference and we’re on a break. I might say to them, “Can I show you my blog? I’d love to see what you think.” Tell them a little bit about what I want them to do. Even at a conference, in five minutes, you can get all kinds of insights.

There are some tools around that I mentioned earlier that you could use to get some of these insights. There’s a service called Peek, peek.usertesting.com. I’ll give you the link in the show notes. It’s a service that you can put your URL in and for free, you get a five-minute video of someone using your blog. You actually get to see how they use it, and they talk as they’re doing it, and they give you feedback. Sometimes the feedback can be quite confronting because they don’t know who you are and you don’t know who they are, but it can be insightful. I’ve used it a few times, and I always get little tidbits of ideas.

You can actually pay more to get more tests, choose a particular type of person to do the test, set the user task, or to get them to do it on different devices, but there is a free version there. Just doing that once or twice can give you interesting information. The other one is a service I’ve used many times called Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg shows you exactly where users click on your site. It creates a heat map of the clicks. Even clicks on areas that aren’t clickable are tracked.

The other thing it shows is how far down the page people scroll, which gives you interesting information as well. You don’t get any actual feedback from your users, but you do get an idea of how they’re using your site. Today, if you can, try and line up for someone to use your site in front of you so you can have a conversation with them and see what you learn. After that, choose one of those services to give a go as well.

I hope you find today’s challenge interesting. I hope it’s not too depressing to watch someone use your blog. Sometimes it can be confronting to see how people react, but it’s a useful thing because every day people are coming to your blog for the first time. Many of them just never come back again, so it’s great to see why that might be.

I hope you find today’s challenge helpful. I look forward to hearing your reflections on it. If you head to the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/17, you have the opportunity there to not only get links to the tools mentioned today but also to leave a comment and tell us a little bit about what you did and what you noticed as you did today’s exercise. I would be fascinated to see what you picked up through doing this one and whether you’ll do it again.

Again, those show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/17, where you can also see the coupon code to get 50% off the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook. You can also subscribe to the ProBlogger Plus newsletter, which will get you updates of all the new episodes here on ProBlogger. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow on day 18 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. See you then.

Have you asked first time readers of your blog for feedback before? Who will you ask next?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to getting feedback 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.

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

Today’s episode is a writing challenge and is all about how you can spot and solve your readers’ problems, which is a powerful way to grow your audience.

Do it well and you’ll make a positive impression on people, create a memory and give people a reason to come back, and give people a story to tell others.

Businesswoman with a worried frown busy thinking by Lars Zahner 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).

Also – 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.

There are a variety of keyword research tools available but I’m going to recommend you read Rand Fishkin’s “Beginners Guide to SEO”, which has a section on keyword research. He recommends starting with:

The team at Moz also have good tips about how to do Keyword Research.

Also check out these previous ‘writing challenges’ in this series at:

You can go to the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/16 and share the post that you write as a result of today’s podcast. Today’s podcast is a really important one in many ways. This is what I build my business around, solving problems. I hope you enjoy it.

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to day 16 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, where we’re going through 31 different ways to improve your blog. I challenge you every day to spend about 15 or so minutes working on a different activity. Today is another writing challenge. We’ve already had a few of these and I always hear back from readers that they love the writing challenges. After all, we are bloggers. Your writing challenge today is a little bit general. It’s not to write a certain type of post, but it’s to do something for your readers. It is to solve a problem for them.

This is the backbone of my blogs, really. If I have to narrow down what I do every day, my goal is to solve at least one reader problem. Not just a problem for one reader (although that’s part of it) but to solve at least one problem that might apply to multiple readers, at least one every day. I know that if I’m solving my reader’s problems I’m making a positive impression upon people, that I’m creating a memory for them, and giving them a reason to come back. I’m also giving people a story to tell others. 

If you think about it in your life and I think about my life, if someone solves a problem for me, it has an impact on how I see them. I see them in a more positive light. I want to interact with them more, and I’m likely to tell other people about them particularly that other person that has the same problem. My goal is to be a prolific problem solver for my readers.

The key to being a prolific problem solver first is to become a prolific problem spotter. This is what you need to turn your attention to partly today. Some of the activities you’ve already done may have already unearthed the problem that you’re going to solve. 

In the brainstorming exercise, we did a few days ago, you may have already identified some problems that you can solve. You may just go away and write one of those, but if you want to dig a little deeper, let me give you some suggestions on where you can find these problems. The chances are that if you’ve had that problem, someone else will have it too. 

In many ways, having these posts that are based upon your own problem is something that is very effective. They are very relatable to people and they actually break down the wall of people feeling like they can’t relate to you. Many times on blogs, the blogger seems like the expert and they seem like they’re much further advanced than their readers and that can be good on some levels, but it’s also nice to be able to show that you’re a human being and you have problems just like someone else. Even if you’re talking about problems that you’ve overcome yourself. It’s also quite motivating to hear how someone else has overcome a problem.

Do some analysis on the problems that you have or that you have had. What problems did you have when you started out in the area that you’re blogging about? What did you ask? What were the problems that you ran into about a year in? Two years in? And just track through your own journey with the topic that you are writing about and try to brainstorm on that from. 

What were the problems, and challenges, and roadblocks, and things that held you back from success in the area that you’re writing about? That may unearth a whole heap of problems for you if you’re a type of person like me who’s had many problems. I could go on and on about mine. That might be one place to look for problems.

The other place, which is really not rocket science, is to ask your readers about their problems. I mentioned this, too, on day 11 in coming up with your post ideas. Any way that you can ask your readers to nominate their problems or questions is a good thing.

We use surveys quite prolifically on Digital Photography School and ProBlogger. If you sign up for our newsletter particularly on Digital Photography School, you get sent an email about three months later just asking you to do a short survey. In that survey, we ask specifically about the problems and questions that people have that we can then write about.

That might be one way to set up a way of collecting those problems, but there’s plenty of other ways that you can get more immediate feedback. On Facebook, I quite regularly will start a discussion that simply says, “What’s the biggest challenge that you’re facing right now?” If you follow me on ProBlogger, on Facebook you would have seen me ask that numerous times. I do the same thing on Twitter, and from time to time I’ve done the same thing on LinkedIn. 

Another place that you can look for problems is on Twitter itself by doing a search for some of your keywords. Just put in a keyword that relates most likely to your blog and then do a search and see what people are saying about that keyword. You’ll find a lot of people are talking about the questions and problems that they have. That could be a good source of information also. 

You can write a blog post that simply asks people to discuss their problems. You could email some of your recent commenters and ask them if there’s anything you could do to help them or write about them that might solve a problem for you. You could run a poll asking readers to prioritize their most pressing needs and then to comment if the needs you mentioned in the poll are not their own. 

I’ve seen this done a few times on blogs, you can run a little focus group with readers and invite them to join a little Facebook group to talk about their issues. I’ve seen that used very effectively because it not only unearths some of the issues that your readers face, but it gets them solving those problems together which can then turn into content. 

The other thing I’d get you to ask is, “What do you notice about your reader’s problem?” Sometimes your reader is too close to their own problems to know that they have those problems. An example that comes to mind on this is with ProBlogger readers. I noticed that some of my readers, not all but some of them, spend so much time reading about blogging that they don’t actually blog. 

They fill up their time learning about the topic, but so much learning goes on that they don’t act on what they’re learning. This is a problem that I see amongst a good segment of ProBlogger readers, but I’ve never had a reader come to me and say, “How do I solve this problem?” I don’t think too many of the people who have that problem are overly aware of it. They’re stuck in that problem.

It might be worth asking yourself that question. What problems do I observe my readers having that they may not even know about? Those can be some of the most effective posts. If you can draw their attention to the problem that they have and put a name to it, then they have that “aha” moment about that issue and they’re in a much better position to be then taught what to do about that problem. 

The other thing I’d say about your reader’s problems is that sometimes their problems are not specifically related to your topic, although they impact your topics. Again, for ProBlogger readers, some of our readers struggle with fear. Others struggle with confidence. Some struggle with health issues that are related to their blogging. All of those things actually do impact their blogging and can be the result of their blogging also, particularly the health one.

I’ve noticed my own health beginning to suffer because I was sitting down all day and I wasn’t exercising as much as I could because I was sitting in front of a computer all the time. That was a problem I had and I noticed a lot of my readers have, but it wasn’t really a blogging-related topic. But I decided to tackle it anyway and it turned out that a lot of my readers really related to that and that led on to me starting a Facebook group on that topic as well. There’s a whole heap of ways you can identify those reader problems that may not even be specific to your overall topic.

A few other quick ideas. You can do a search on the forum that you joined a few days ago. You could be looking at some of those blogs that you might have subscribed to a few days ago. Both in the blog post themselves, but also the comments on those blogs.

The last thing I’ll talk about is keywords. One of the best places that I used to always go hunting for questions and problems was the data that Google Analytics reported on the keywords that people were using to arrive on my site. Google used to tell us exactly what people had searched for when they arrived on our site. They still do give us some of that data. You do get some of those words, but nowhere near as much as they used to. You need to be a little bit more creative about how to get that data now. 

There’s a lot of really good research tools available that can help with this. Some of you probably already use some of them, but I want to recommend today if you are just starting out with search engine optimization and digging into these data that you read a post that’s actually a guide that Rand Fishkin from Moz wrote called the Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which has a whole section on keyword research. I’ll put the link in the show notes today, but he recommends a few tools in that that you can start with. They’re not the most advanced tools, but if you’re just starting they’re a good place to start. Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool is one of them. Google Trends, and there’s a couple of others. I would say Moz themselves have some great tools, too. 

That might be one place to go, but one last place I want to mention that I don’t really see too many people talking about and that is to do some analysis of what people are searching for when they’re on their blog. Most blogs, almost every blog I go to today has a search field on it and those search fields get used all the time by your readers to search for content on your blog. Many of the searches that people do on your blog reveal the problems that they have. Sometimes specifically and sometimes they just put in a word which shows you their interest which could be a problem.

There’s a variety of tools out there that could help you find that, but probably the simplest one is to look at your Google Analytics. If you have a word press blog, there’s a very simple way to do that if you have Google Analytics installed. I’m going to outline it on the show notes, but I’ll just quickly run through it now.

Open up Google Analytics. Log in and then in the sidebar on the left, look for the word Behavior. Click on that and a little sub-menu will open up and click on the words All Pages. This will show you the pages on your blog that have been viewed over the last month if you have those dates specified. 

What I want you to do then is to start scanning through those. By default, you’ll see the most-read 10 pages on your blog. You probably want to look at the biggest 100 or even the top 1000, then you can start to scan through those pages and you’ll see what pages are popular. 

But pay particular attention to any of the URLs listed there that have /?s= as the start of the URL that they show. These are the search results pages that people land on when they’ve done an internal search on your WordPress blog.

This is just for WordPress. I don’t know exactly what the URL would be for other types of blogs. It may be the same, it may be different, but I find those search results just illuminating and fascinating. You could actually look at the top of the page there for a little magnifying glass icon and you can actually put that /?s= into that and it will then filter all the pages just to those search result pages.

Again, I’ll outline this with some screenshots on the show notes for today, but those results are fascinating because they show you what people on your site are searching for information on and you want to pay particular attention to the questions that you see there or the problems you see expressed there. 

Let me give you two really quick examples. Today, I was doing this exact exercise on my Digital Photography School Google Analytics and I saw that 10 people in the last month had searched for the term “Best Lenses for Weddings.” That tells me that 10 people—only 10 but 10 is fairly significant—are searching for that exact term. If 10 people have searched for that exact term, there’ll be others out there who’ll search for other terms that relate to that that shows me that there’s a demand for knowledge for that issue.

I also saw in the same results that 15 people had searched for this exact term, these exact words, “How to name a photography business?” That fifteen people had strung together those six words in the exact same order and landed on that page. There are two problems that I could then go on and write about. 

To be honest, I’ve written about that first one before but that second one, I’ve never ever ever thought about that post topic and you could bet that we’ll be writing one on that exact topic. Check out the show notes from today to see how I get to those results if you haven’t been able to follow it.

So far we’ve just been talking about spotting problems that you can then go away and create a post on. Now it’s time for you to actually create that post and this could happen in any number of ways. Probably the most common one will be that you take the problem that you’ve identified and then you will provide the solution by running a blog post yourself. That’s probably the number one way. Most of you will probably do that today.

But some of those problems that you noticed, you won’t actually be qualified to write that post and that’s okay. You can write something that you don’t know the answer to and the second option I’ll give you today is to research the answer and to write a post based upon what you found.

This is what I used to do in ProBlogger quite a bit. I was relatively inexperienced, even though I was making a living from blogging, but I didn’t have all the answers so I spent a lot of time researching the answers because you want to give credit back to the sources of those answers, but you can write a post based upon what you found. It’s similar to what you would have done at school writing an essay where you had a topic, you didn’t know the answers, but you went and researched, and then presented an argument.

The third thing you might want to if you don’t know the answer to the problem is to interview someone who does know the answer to get their opinion on it. That could be a great post, too. Similar to that, you can ask that expert if they might write a guest post for you which saves you a little bit of work, but it means more work for them so they may not be as open to that unless you are able to give them something, some profile or some exposure in return.

Perhaps the last way to go about finding an answer to a problem that you don’t feel qualified to write is to do a search on YouTube and see if you could find the answer on that and then embed the video that you find the answer on and then do some writing of your own reflecting on that video.

There are five ways you can respond to a problem. I will just finish by saying again, you don’t have to have all the answers. I think most readers would be more than willing for you to admit that you don’t have all the answers and this was the case on ProBlogger in the early days. I was really transparent about what I did know and what I didn’t know. I would encourage you to do the same. It shows that you are human, but you’re on a learning journey as well.

I hope today’s been helpful to you. I really have built my whole business around today’s exercise of trying to identify and solve problems for other people. It’s obviously been something that has worked for me and I would really encourage you to make it a daily part of your own blogging experience.

I hope you found today’s challenge to be useful. As I said at the start of today’s episode, this is what I’ve really built a lot of my blogging business around, solving problems. I would really encourage you to make a daily part of what you do on your blog. You can find the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/16 and you could also subscribe to get updates from ProBlogger. New episodes and new posts on the blog at problogger.com/podcast/subscribe. I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 17 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Do you solve your readers’ problems? If so – how did you work out what their problems were? Any surprises?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to blogging in 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.

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

Today’s episode is all about finding another blogger (or bloggers) to help you improve your blog. Blogging doesn’t have to be a solo venture – in fact it can be incredibly social and when we grasp this idea of doing it together it can lead to all manner of great things.

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

Head to the ProBlogger Facebook Page to connect with other ProBlogger readers – you might just find a buddy there.

Hi there. It’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to day 15 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, we’re going to talk about finding yourself a blog buddy. I’m an introvert. I’ve declared this many times on my blogs before. While I enjoy the company of other people very much, I get my energy by spending time alone. Blogging and podcasting are great mediums for me in this respect. I get to interact with people, but I had a bit of a distance. I get to monitor how much time I spend by myself.

However, one thing I’ve learned over the last 13 years is that sometimes I need to push myself out of my comfort zone, out of my solitude, and into the presence of others because when I do, my blogs actually grow faster, the quality of my blogging increases, and the impact that I have upon my readers grows as well when I work with other bloggers. I learned this very early on back in 2002 when I started blogging. Even in my first weeks, I remember I stumbled into the company of a very small group of other wonderful bloggers who helped me through those first really tricky weeks of blogging.

You probably remember those times where you had so many questions, doubts, fears, and so little knowledge about what you’re doing. I had no idea what I was doing and it would have been very easy for me to give up blogging many times in those first few weeks, but with the support of that small group of other bloggers—friends, really; it was no formal group—I got up and running, and I started walking on my own feet. Gradually, I grew the knowledge. Some of the doubts and some of the fears—not all of them—began to disappear. I began to understand what I was doing.

There have been many times over the years since this has been the case for me as I’ve faced different challenges. I remember the times where I’ve been burnt out and struggling to create content and people have given me ideas, support, and encouragement. I remember times where I couldn’t seem to find readers for my blogs and other bloggers helped me by promoting my blog to their readers really generously. I remember starting new blogs at different times and just being completely out of my depth with the technicalities.

I remember switching platforms from Blogger to Movable Type and then to WordPress and having no idea what I was doing. It was only because other bloggers generously helped me that I was able to do that. I remember monetizing for the first time and another blogger teaching me about AdSense and affiliate programs. I remember creating my first products and people helping me out by proofreading and helping me to design and helping me to set up shopping carts. I remember many times where I’ve been exploring new mediums like I am now with podcasting, bloggers, and shifting with advice or even time. I remember starting new businesses and people jumping in, collaborating, and partnering even at times on those businesses. I have achieved so much more as a result of the relationships that I have with other bloggers. I’d never be where I am today without them.

It really reminds me of an illustration that I’ve heard many, many times. You probably heard it, too, about how geese work together when they fly long distances. Studies show that geese flying in formation fly 78% farther as a result of flying in formation than when they fly alone. I don’t know if that’s a myth or not. It’s on Wikipedia, so it must be true.

The reasons for this extra distance that they fly and numerous. One, aerodynamically is it’s better to fly in formation. The front bird seems to break the air in front of the flock and creates a slipstream and then the birds behind it with the upward motion of their wings that push that first bird forward, rotate their leadership so they share the load. 

When one is injured or sick and drops out of the flock, at least two others always drop out with it so that they can fly on again in formation. And then there’s the honk when you’re up there. The formation of geese is a really noisy place. No one really knows why but some think it might be about mutual encouragement and support.

I’m not saying we’re all geese here, but certainly, the same principles are true when we blog and in many other areas of life. Together, we can achieve so much more. There are many benefits that I found from working with other bloggers. First, there’s the ability to brainstorm for content ideas or even brainstorming design ideas or product ideas. There’s a place to vent with other people who understand what you’re going through. There’s a collaboration of opportunities. There’s the potential to share links and to help each other grow in your traffic. There’s the potential for inspiration and motivation of each other, to write guest posts, and help each other with content and swapping of skills.

The challenge today is to find or at least begin the process of finding a blogging buddy or buddies. For some of you, you already have formal mentors, mastermind groups, or Facebook groups. You might already have this one covered. For others of you, this might be a first. It could be a bit of a step out of your comfort zone. I encourage you to do it. It’s going to take you some time to find and develop these relationships to find the people that you feel some affinity with, but you can begin that process today in some really small ways.

It’s probably three different levels that I’d suggest you might be at and really it will depend on your experience. First, for some of you, meeting some other bloggers for the first time, you may not actually know another blogger whether online or in real life. You might want to start that process by simply commenting on some other blogs, emailing another blogger, maybe to say that you admire what they do or thank them for a piece of content that they wrote, or maybe even attending a meet-up or an event for bloggers. These could be the first steps in making a friendship that ends up being a win-win collaboration in some way.

For others of you, it’s probably a little bit farther along. You might already know some other bloggers but you want to join a group in some way. There are many forums or community groups out there already for bloggers. Some of them are localized. I know there are Australian blogger groups on Facebook. Some of them are niche-based. I know there are photography blogger groups. Some of them are private and you might need an invite to join them, but others of them are public. All you need to really do is search Google or Facebook and ask around. If you can’t find one, it may be that you need to start that group. It could be a localized group or on a topic. If you want to ask around, ask on the ProBlogger Facebook page. It might be a good place to see if there are other bloggers who want to collaborate with you.

The third level that you might want to think about if you’re already a part of some of these groups is to take it up a notch by starting or joining a more intentional group. Most of these groups, these mastermind groups or mentoring groups as they are sometimes called, are private groups, closed groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, and they often emerge out of relationships that bloggers have pretty organically. You might need to ask around if anyone knows about any of these groups, but you’re probably in a better position to start one already with an existing group of bloggers. I would probably suggest that you start with a defined period of time, maybe say three months, so in the end, people have no obligation to continue, but you might just find that it does.

A simple format for a mastermind group like this might be to do a weekly or a monthly call on Skype as a group. As a simple format for those calls, you could go around the circle and each person shares a win for the week, a challenge that they’re facing, and a goal that they have. You also might want to set up some group on Facebook for interaction between the calls or collaboration and support. Over time, your group will emerge and evolve into something different from what you started, which is based upon your needs.

I really look forward to hearing what comes out of today’s challenge. I’ve had a lot of benefit from finding blogging buddies and being a part of these types of groups. I hope that you do as well.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and feel a little inspired to join in with another blogger, to find your blogging buddy. You might like to pop over to the problogger.com/podcast/15 show notes for today and tell us a little bit about whether you have a blog buddy already or whether you’re looking for one. You might just find on that page, someone else looking for one or two that you can team up with. Also, check out facebook.com/problogger where there are thousands of bloggers following the ProBlogger Facebook page. You might just find someone there that you could connect with as well. Again, the show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/15.

As always, you can check out the ebook for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. It’s linked to those show notes as well and it’s available for you at 50% off if you’d like to get that extra bonus seven days. Looking forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 16 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Do you have a blogging buddy or buddies or are you apart of any mentoring groups? If so – how did you find them?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this approach to blogging in comments below.

Also if you’re looking for a blogging buddy feel free to put the shout out in comments below – you never know who you might meet!

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.

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

If you’ve been blogging for even just a little while you’ve probably got pages or posts on your blog that need an update.

If this is the case those pages could be causing embarrassment, frustrating your readers or even costing you money.

So your challenge today is to select one page on your blog to update, refresh or improve.

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

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to day 14 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, we have a challenge for you to update a key page or post on your blog. This is an activity that many bloggers who have been blogging even for just a little while could benefit from. Over time, it’s really easy for key pages and posts on our blogs to become dated or even obsolete. I’ve done this exercise many times before. I don’t think there’s been a time I’ve done it where I haven’t discovered something that was either broken, factually incorrect, potentially embarrassing, or simply holding my blog back in some way. You could do it on any number of pages on your blog.

Let me just quickly run through a few suggested ones. Just choose one for today but add any of these that you think you might need to update to a list and then you can work through them over the coming weeks. The first one is probably your homepage. It’s the most important page on your blog in many regards because it’s usually the most visited page that you have. I think last time I looked around 20% of ProBlogger readers hit the homepage on their first visit. It’s an important page to look at. We could do a whole heap of things on the homepage and you could spend a lot of time tweaking and overhauling it. But today, at least just do an audit.

What first impressions does a moderator have on your blog? Do they know what your blog is about when they first land on it? That’s a really important question. Is it easy to navigate? What are their eyes drawn to on that front page? What do people naturally want to do first when they’re there? Look at the sidebar on your page if you’ve got one on your homepage. Is it cluttered? Is there anything there that could be distracting, dated, or broken? Could it do with a bit of a spring clean? What about the navigation? Is it easy to understand? Is it clear? Is it easy to use? Are there any elements that are hidden, broken, or not quite fitting into the page? Lastly, do you have any calls to action on your homepage? What do you want people to do when they’re on your homepage? Is it obvious that you’re calling them to do that?

That’s one page that you could do. There’s probably a whole heap of others. The next one and probably the most important is your About page. Most blogs have an About page or at least most blog themes come with one, whether you set it up or not, is another question. Often, people set up their About page and then it becomes a bit dated containing information that’s not relevant anymore.

On the ProBlogger About page, I tell my story. Periodically, I have to go into it and update it because my story evolves. There are parts of the story that perhaps aren’t as important to emphasize anymore and other parts that have happened since I updated. So, I need to keep updating that page. It’s a really key page on most blogs because it’s one of the first places that a new one really goes to learn more about you and to make a decision about whether they’ll subscribe, follow, or keep coming back. It’s a place where you can build credibility or destroy it. It’s also a place where advertisers, PRs, other bloggers, potential collaborators might go as well. You really want to keep it up to date.

There are a few mistakes that bloggers make on their About page. (1) Not having one at all. I think it’s probably a good thing to have one. (2) Not updating it at all and just letting it be the default About page that comes with your blog’s template. I’ve seen many of those. They’re empty pages and say something like this needs to be updated or has some Latin text in it. (3) Letting it date. Give it a proofread. Is there any information that needs to be added?

Another page you might want to update is your sales pages. If you have an ebook or a course that you’re selling, are they still up to date? Are the shopping carts working? It’s amazing how many are broken and that could be weeks or months before you realize. Are there any things that you can do to tweak it? Could you add a testimonial? Could you update the design? Could you give some extra screenshots? Could you answer some frequently asked questions that you get from potential customers onto that page? Is anything broken? A good spell-check helps as well.

Your contact page might be another page that you want to give a once over. It’s amazing how many blogs don’t have one. If you don’t, maybe it’s time to add one. Is it working if you have a contact form on there? Sometimes those forms break. Are the emails getting through? We’re testing that one. Are your contact details on that page up to date?

The last type of page that you should build into your monthly workflow is what high-traffic post do you have that you could update? Most older blogs have at least one or two, if not more, posts in their archives that get significantly more traffic than others. Even my wife’s blog which is relatively new has three or four posts that do really well in comparison to other archive posts. These are really important posts to go back to from time to time because they’re important gateway points into your blog.

The problem is that most people hit these posts, hit the back button, and never come back again. This is a wasted opportunity. What you might want to do today is identify the top posts in your archives. Often they’re getting search engine traffic as their main source of traffic. Do a search and find them and then think about how I could update them to make those posts a little bit stickier to get people viewing a few extra pages or maybe to subscribe or follow me in social media.

Firstly, I’d be asking are their posts up-to-date? Do they have the best quality content that they could? The better you can make those posts, the bigger impression you’re making upon those first-time readers. Then, how can I get people to view other pages from those posts? Could I add some links to further reading at the end of the post, perhaps add a section for the reading, or even better, perhaps is to link throughout the posts to further reading? As you mentioned, certain words that you’ve written about elsewhere. Link them. Get people onto a second page. And then think about what calls to action could I add to this page? It might be, “Subscribe to my newsletter, follow me on Facebook, share this post,” or it could even be, “Buy this product,” if you have a product that’s highly relevant to the content on that page.

The last thing that probably worth doing if you’re getting some search traffic to that page already is to think about how you could get some more, how could you optimize that page so that you rank even higher in Google. It might be worth doing a little bit of search engine optimization on that page. You might want to think about the keywords that you use and increase the frequency of use of those keywords a little bit. It might be worth linking to that page from other pages on your blog. Do a bit of research on SEO and you’ll come up with a few things that you might be able to tweak that raise you from third or fourth to first in search engine results.

There’s a whole heap of other pages that you could update. I would suggest you go through your navigation bar and just see any key page that you link. You might have an advertiser page, an archives page, a subscribe page, or any number of others. Gradually move through them one by one and update them as you can. It’s probably worth scheduling in your diary once a month to look at those pages just to give them a once over and see how they’re going.

Check out the show notes on problogger.com/podcast/14. Today, I have summarized what we’ve gone through but I also included some further reading, particularly relevant for those of you wanting to update your About page today. I’ve given you some tips on doing that. Also for those of you who are going to spend some time today looking at hot posts on your blog. I’ve got a link there that tells you how to find those posts, but also, some things that you might want to do there to increase reader engagement, get people reading more pages, and just updating them in different ways.

You can get those show notes at problogger.com/podcast/14. Again, please subscribe to our newsletter at problogger.com/podcast/subscribe and you’ll get an update every time we update this podcast. Hope you found today’s challenge useful. I’d love to hear what you thought on the show notes and I will see you tomorrow on day 15. We’re almost halfway of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Which page did you update today?

What did you do to it?

I’d love to hear in the comments below how you found this episode.

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.

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

Today we’re going shopping!!!

Woman shopping by Emilia Ungur on 500px

Yep – you heard me, we’re going to the mall!

If nothing else this challenge is going to get you away from your blog for a bit – but there’s more to it than that.

Today we’re doing some observation exercises that could bring a lot of life to your blog.

You can listen to todays 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’s challenge is a bit different, to say the least. It’s gonna get you away from your computer and your devices into the real world. I want you to visit your local mall or shopping center as we call them here in Australia. I can just see people shaking their heads and muttering under their breath, “Darren has completely lost his mind,” but stick with me. There are a few benefits to this little exercise. If nothing else, it’s going to force you to get out of your pajamas, brush your hair, get away from your blog for a little while, and hopefully to get a little bit of exercise. If nothing else, that’s probably a good thing. I know what else bloggers are like.

Secondly, it’s going to give us a chance today to do some observational exercises that could help your blogging, particularly if you’re selling something on your blog, product or service, affiliate products, or even if you’re selling an idea, even if you’re just trying to change the world, or if you’re selling yourself in some way.

Why are we doing it? It comes out of the realization that many times, my best ideas come from my blog when I’m not blogging at all and when I’m doing something else. Many times, the idea comes when I’m in a different environment. I see something that’s unrelated to blogging or online, but it triggers a thought process that actually does come back to it. I’ve had so many blog post ideas and I’ve made so many changes to my blog, particularly the way I sell my products based upon what I observe in the real world. For me, many of those ideas come while I’m at shopping centers, sometimes while I’m waiting outside changing rooms for a certain someone in my life, but just observing what’s going on around me in those environments gives me all kinds of ideas.

Here is the challenge. Grab a notebook, a pen, or some other way to jot down notes, preferably not a device that’s going to distract you, and then head to your local shopping mall or super shops. I know for some of you living in rural areas, this might be a bit harder than others, but I’ve got some suggestions for you below as well.

Once you’re there, take 30 minutes or so to wander with no agenda other than to watch, observe. Watch the people, watch the places, watch the shops. Ask yourself some of these questions: Who’s here? Who are they with? What are they doing? Are they actually shopping or doing something else? If they’re shopping, what are they buying? What products seem to be particularly hot right now?

If you can observe people’s buying without being too creepy, how do they make their decisions? What do retailers do to attract people’s attention and stand out in that environment which could be quite noisy? What messages and calls to action are they using? What colors and design techniques are particularly popular at the moment? What else is in fashion? What sales techniques are staff using? What are retailers doing well? What are they doing poorly?

Just watch and observe. You’ll be fascinated by the things that you see. Take some notes, but don’t try to interpret them yet, rather just walk, wander, and observe for 30 or so minutes. At the end of that time, sit down with a coffee and ponder if there’s anything that might relate to your blogging. Maybe it relates to your design, the calls to action that you’re using, the way that you’re marketing or selling. Any number of things might come out of it. For me, a lot of things have come out of this.

I remember the day I was walking through a bookstore and I observed the bestseller list. I noticed that no customer in the shop was on any of the other bookshelves but they were all standing at the bestseller list. It taught me the power of social proof. A guy gave me an idea to go home and create a bestseller list based upon affiliate products that I noticed that it sold well. It had a massive impact on the sales of those products.

Another time I observed the power of upselling, a smart sales assistant with a well-timed suggestion about what goes with what convinced me to buy the second item. That challenged me to go home and think about the selling experience of my ebooks. I can’t even begin to describe the number of things I’ve learned in an Apple store. That’s a great place to go and observe. There’s a whole heap of things that I can tie back to my experience in shopping centers that I’ve learned that has improved my blog.

If you don’t have a shopping center or a mall close to you, then maybe this activity could work in another place. A local library, analyzing the books and how people interact with them, the shopping channel on TV—I’m sorry; it’s probably not what I’m going to do—a local tourist destination, a museum, a gallery, a restaurant. It’s about people watching, but it’s also about watching how people sell and are sold to.

I hope you had fun with today’s challenge. I’d love to hear what you thought of it at today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/13. I’ve also included in today’s show notes a post I wrote that has 10 lessons that I learned doing this exercise, 10 different things that I observed in a mall or shopping center that impacted my blogging. You might want to check that out as well. That’s at problogger.com/podcast/13. Looking forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 14 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

If you do have a moment, I love you also to leave us a review or a rating on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast listening tool. Also if you’d like to subscribe to get updates about this podcast, go to problogger.com/podcast/subscribe. I’ll talk to you tomorrow on day 14 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

I know todays challenge is a little on the abstract side but I hope you got some value from it.

Where did you go? What did you observe? Did it impact the way you’ll blog in any way?

Let us know in 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.

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

Yesterday I challenged you to come up with at least 10 blog post ideas for your blog. Today we’re going to take those ideas and begin to form an editorial calendar around them – specifically we’re looking to create an editorial plan for next week on your blog.

As I share in this episode this something I resisted doing in the early days of my blogging but having started to do it a few years ago it transformed my blogging on many levels so if you’re yet to do it I can highly recommend you give it a go.

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).

By the end of this challenge you now should:

Here are the editorial calendar tools I mentioned in today’s episode:

And here is some further reading on the topic:

Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 12 for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Yesterday, you came up with 10 blog post ideas. I suspect many of you would have come up with more than 10, which is great because it’s going to give you a great head start on today’s challenge. Today, we’re talking about editorial calendars. Specifically, I want to challenge you to create an editorial calendar for the next week of your blog. Not this week but next week. Some of you have already got an editorial calendar and today is the perfect day to assess it and to do a review of it.

If you’re like most bloggers who simply sit down to write, come up with an idea, and then hit publish all on the same day, this could be a blog changing exercise for you. I know it was for me. To be honest, this was a bit of a process for me to get my head around. I’m a pretty spontaneous kind of person. For the first few years of my blogging, I pretty much did it as I just described. I sat down, I came up with an idea, I’d write the post, and then publish it almost immediately. But I found a lot of value in switching gears and starting to think ahead.

I know that probably is going to relate differently today to each personality type but bear with me and give it a go just for one week, see what happens. Ultimately, today is about setting up a publishing schedule for next week and to determine what you publish on which days.

Let me give you a few benefits of an editorial calendar, even a simple one. As I said yesterday, this is going to help take the pressure off idea generation when you sit down to write which, hopefully, will remove one of those big obstacles that face many bloggers. Secondly, as I’ve also mentioned yesterday, it’s going to help you create momentum and create content that takes your readers on a journey and brings about a change rather than just hitting them with random pieces of content. The third thing that I love about having an editorial calendar is that it sets deadlines.

Deadlines don’t feel great on some levels but for me, at least, they helped me to identify when certain things need to be done and then to make plans to get that to happen, which for my personality type is a good thing. Like I said before, I’m pretty sporadic and impulsive, and if I left it to myself, some things would never get done. It means that you’ll develop a more consistent production of content, which means that you’ll start to produce more regular content, hopefully, and establish a rhythm for your publishing. This is good for you as a writer but it’s also good for your readers.

What I’ve found over time is that readers begin to notice when you publish and they’ll show up at those times and those days. The other thing about an editorial calendar is that it gives you a great bird’s eye view of what’s coming up on your blog and you can begin to notice patterns or gaps opportunities. By having that big picture, you can see that I have got a whole heap of posts coming up that all have this one voice or this one topic and perhaps, I’m neglecting this other area of my blog. It enables you to mix up your content in that way.

If you’ve got a team, it also is a great place for working out who’s going to do what and when and how to use different team members to their strengths. If you get a longer-term with your editorial calendar, it can also help you to coordinate other aspects of your business.

For instance, on our business, we know that we’ve got an ebook being launched in a couple of months time on Digital Photography School so we’re already beginning to plan what sort of content we’ll use in the lead up to the launch of that ebook and during the launch period. Not just sales copy but how can we actually create content that builds awareness of a need in our readers and leads them to the point where they might want to purchase our ebook. We’re able to design a whole week of content around that topic of the launch for instance.

It’s also great if you’re working with advertisers to be able to say, “In June, we’ve got this theme coming up. We’re going to tackle this theme and it relates to your product. Would you like to sponsor that type of content?” Opens up all kinds of opportunities and conversations with other brands and collaborators. It also helps you to plan around holidays and seasonal events that might be coming up. I know, for us, we always have a whole heap of content that relates to the holidays in December and we’re planning that ahead of time.

It also helps you to mix up your content and achieve certain goals. Every blogger will know that some type of content is more shareable than others so it’s great to have shareable content in the mix. But some bloggers fall into the trap of only creating that type of content. They forget to weave into the mix of content, content that helps to build community, that helps to teach, and sometimes, that helps to sell. A calendar helps you to be more intentional about those different objectives. 

There’s a whole heap of reasons why a calendar might be good for your blog and some great tools out there to help you with this (and I’ll mention some of them at the end of this podcast), but today, I want to encourage you, just create a very simple calendar just for next week on your blog. Here’s how to do it.

Firstly, calculate how many posts you want to write next week. There is no right or wrong answer to this. More frequent posts are good on some levels but not if it comes at the expense of the quality of your content. Three posts, four posts, five posts, it doesn’t really matter. Just calculate how many you want to write next week or publish next week. Then, set up a spreadsheet. Could be a spreadsheet, could just be a Word document, or a piece of paper if you really want to go that way.

On your spreadsheet, just give enough slots for each post and the time and date of publishing of those posts. Take the list that you came up with yesterday of post ideas and just do a quick review of which ones you want to publish next week. It’s probably worth spending a little bit of time on this, prioritizing which are the best ideas because not all the ideas will be great. Some might need some further development. Take each post that you want to publish and put it into a slot.

What I like to do is to write a short description of what the post will be—the main points and sometimes, even the headline—anything that’s going to help you write that post. Also, write down when you will create that post. I’ll write this post this afternoon, I’ll write that post on Monday morning, I’ll write the last post on Wednesday. Whatever it might be, set yourself some deadlines and begin to diarize when you create that content.

Once you’ve done that, congratulations. You’ve just set yourself up an editorial calendar. It’s a pretty simple one, but it’s one that tells you what you need to know for next week. You now know what post you need to create, you have some starting points for each post, and you have a plan about when you create each post.

Another way that some bloggers like to get into the rhythm of creating content and to set up an editorial calendar is to make each different day of the week a different type of post day. On Monday, you might create your list post. On Tuesday, you might write a review post. On Wednesday, you might like to publish a how-to post. Thursday might be in an opinion post. Friday might be a link post. Saturday might be a day where you ask your readers a question and have a discussion post. Sunday might be an interview post where you interview someone.

You can slide in whatever you like but the beauty of this is that it creates this rhythm and its different types of posts that will appeal to different types of readers. Give it a go if you’re feeling a bit stuck. Many bloggers start out this way and then their editorial calendar evolves.

It’s probably worth saying at this point that often at the start of the week, I’ll start out with a plan and things change. Don’t get too stuck on it. You don’t have to publish everything you plan at the start. You might get another idea or some news might break that you need to cover instead so you can shuffle things around. Like I said before, there’s a whole heap of tools out there—tools, plugins, templates—that can help you with the editorial calendars.

There are a few that I’ve tried and a few that I’ve heard recommended by others that you might want to check out. If you’re on WordPress, you might like to look at CoSchedule. I’ll give you the link in the show notes. It goes beyond being just an editorial calendar type tool and a very good one at that but also helps you to plan your social media sharing of posts which is really powerful.

There’s also a great plugin for WordPress called Editorial Calendar which we’ve used on ProBlogger for many years. It enables you to see your posts that are coming up as a calendar all within WordPress and to manage those posts from that calendar.

There’s another one that I know many bloggers use called Edit Flow, although it hasn’t been updated for a while. Editorial calendar might be the better choice there. Then, there’s a whole heap of other tools. I know some bloggers who have big teams use a tool called DivvyHQ. It’s a content management system and a calendar all wrapped into one with lots of shared calendars but it’s a paid tool and it’s probably better if you’ve got a larger team.

You might simply want to go with a Google document, spreadsheet, Excel, numbers, whatever type of spreadsheet tool that you use. I know many bloggers, perhaps most bloggers, use that. Then, there’s always a calendar tool as well like iCal or Google’s calendar. I’ll give some further reading in the show notes today.

Whatever tools you choose to use, my challenge for you today is to set up that first calendar for next week. It’s important to give it a go. You’ll learn what works for you and what doesn’t and then can evolve the system that you use. The important thing (for now) is to try it and to set something up, to think ahead about your content, and to see what impact it has upon you as a writer but also upon the content you create and your readers.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s challenge. This is one that I resisted for a long time in my own blogging but once I started doing it, I wish I’d started doing it earlier because it really transformed a lot of the things that I was doing with my blogs. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/12 where I have listed some further reading but also some links to the tools mentioned in today’s show.

I’d love to also get your review of today’s show and the podcast if you have a moment on iTunes or on stitcher where our podcast is hosted. I really do read all of those reviews and really appreciate the kind words that have already been left there. Thank you so much to those of you who’ve done that. I’d love to read yours, it does help us to get our show out a little further. I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 13 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

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