Your health and happiness is every bit as important towards your success as your work. So make 2009 the most enjoyable year you’ve ever had by choosing some positive new years resolutions. That’s a resolution worth keeping.

 Best Blogs: Friday Traffic Report – Jack Humphrey

Do you have to choose? Between being an expert and being unique?
Blogging is a performance art, and as all art forms it asks you to stretch yourself to be as real as you can. If you were a singer and you got up on stage and sang in a mousy voice or a breathless whisper, stumbling over the words, umming when you forget some and ahhing through the chorus – as you might, some days at home, when no one is listening – what will your audience think?

That you don’t care, that you can’t sing, that you have no discipline.

This post came to me when I was reading Jack Humphreys blog. I was twittering last night, at least I was reading and following on twitter, I didn’t write much! As I followed the breadcrumb trails of name links and faces onto other profiles, I came across Jack’s profile and followed a link from there to his blog. I have been a fan of Jacks for some time now, I originally discovered him on You Tube when looking for useful videos for the library, and got three solid video tutorials on aspects of blogging. This trail is a very good traffic strategy as no doubt he knows. I was also impressed by his black book and I enjoy being on his list.

He is a generous marketer who offers a lot of free information. 

His blog post Success comes from striving to be the best  struck a new harmony when I read it.  Striving to be best is all that can be asked of us.  Achieving uniqueness in the process is sometimes our reward. Being an expert is achievable for some of us, being great at something is more common and may well be enough, as he says. Being better than some may be all we manage. But being unique – we can all achieve that, all we have to do is be ourselves.

That said, I’ll just go back to that performance art topic. Would you say Dylan was a great singer? (Don’t ask me who Dylan is, Bob Dylan, Google him!) How about Kate Bush? (Yes I know I’m showing my age but it’s hard for me to find such unique examples in more current music, the perfect body and pitch perfect voice are more common in this century’s music industry)… Let’s try Pink then…

They are hardly Pavarotti, Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald or whoever else you might choose as the epitome of a great singer. Yet each brought a unique voice to the art form. Whether through their words, their body image, their lifestyle or their unmistakeable voices, each one had their own pocketfull of fame because they were so unique.

I bet they started out with people telling them they’d never make it. 

I think all people when first blogging suffer a little from stage fright. When there is little traffic at first, blogging can also feel like a soliloquy to an empty theatre. Whether the audience makes you shy, or the lack of it brings you down, remember that poem about enjoying what you do. I don’t remember it exactly, but it went something like…

Dance as if no one is watching
Sing as if no one were listening
and live every day as if it were your last…

Like the snowflake -  you are unique, embrace it.

I have always enjoy Seth Godin’s writing. He manages to make reading about marketing almost as much fun as fiction, and I have taken to heart the allegory of the Purple Cow.

I come from a country which loves to have BIG statues of country themes erected. In Queensland there is a huge Pineapple and at Coff’s Harbour in NSW an enormous banana. There’s a statue of a drovers dog on a tucker box, there’s a huge cow (somewhere), all these things are there to focus a tourists attention on the produce or an event that the area is renowned for. None of them were purple – but they were all certainly big enough to never be ignored.

Advertising is renowned for it’s Big Promise, but the Guinness Book of Records is full of examples where small is used for uniqueness instead – or tallest, shortest, longest, deepest, widest, highest, lowest or neatest. Branding and all the techniques we use to remain memorable to potential customers, is built on something unique. In copy writing a similar principle is called the USP or unique selling point or proposition. That is one thing that this product has that is outstanding. Even if it means making a positive of something someone else may feel is a negative.

Mom bloggers have built names for themselves by joining the unique niche of being moms who are blogging about being moms. Although kids are talked of, a variety of subniches are tucked under this title. There are mom bloggers who are marketers, mom bloggers who do craft, moms into fashion, single moms. Each mom blogger has found a way to be a tall poppy or an expert for something, while enjoying the security and networking of a similar niche, that is, being a mom and blogging.

If you do have expertise in something then sing it out loud. Show the world that you are an expert blogger about that topic. Don’t worry that your blog may get little to no traffic at first. You don’t stress out if no one’s listening when you sing in the shower, however fine it may sound (and it does sound fantastic, singing in the bathroom with a fine reverberation). It’s never a waste of time, although being proactive about some traffic strategies will help you to find your audience.

Call it practice, scales, rehearsals. Use your full voice and don’t hold back. Make sure that it is worth listening to – ie. spell check it, check your information, be creative and try new things, toss in a quote, add a personal story. Read Jack’s post for more specific ideas. Then read it back and ask yourself how you can emphasize something memorable in it or about the theme of your blog.

Each time, look for that one thing where you can say “that is my voice”.

If you can put it in visual terms in your blog theme then you have found your purple cow. We have a fisherman here, who would probably not have made a name for himself in a big way except for one thing. After all there are many fine fishermen here. Rex Hunt however throws his catch back in the ocean quite often, again nothing too unusual about that, but before he does it – he kisses the fish.

Now that’s something you remember when you see it. And when you remember, you remember his name as well. That’s branding. That’s unique. Strive to be an expert, strive to be great but find a way to emphasize something unique about yourself and it may well be a turning point in your blog writing career.

Jack Humphrey has concentrated on Traffic, he’s an expert at it.

But I don’t remember Jack because he’s an expert, there’s a lot of those online. I remember him because he is generous. Because he did not make a video saying how much money he made launching a product. He made a video about a plugin that made it so much easier to embed a video in my wordpress blog. He saved me time, he solved a problem, he asked for nothing more.

So when in my travels, I hit a link to something Jack has created, it’s like meeting an old friend in the street. Sure, I say, I’ll follow along wherever you lead, because I know there’ll be something good there for me to find and the company is fun.

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Best Blogs on Blogging _ Pro Blogger

I have been reading Pro Blogger for some time now and I always enjoy the posts. It is a high readership blog and has contributions from many other people, as well as from its owner Darren Rowse. This really is a top of the line Pro blog on blogging. It’s fast to load and change pages, the related posts and links to other content is outstanding and frankly – I have to say that I’m outright envious and know this is the standard of blog I’m aspiring to create and as yet don’t have the time or resources to do.

I just finished reading this post about targeted readers
Targeting Your Readers
and as with all tricky questions it always seems to come back to – market research.

Rather than give specific strategies he returns the question to us all and asks us.

What type of readers do you want?

Knowing what you are blogging for and assessing who may want to read what you write is hard. Our heads are full of info and send us off in many different directions and pinning down specific goals is like trying to keep a tablecloth on an outside patio table on a windy day. If you want to keep it there you can peg it down or weight the edges but simply putting a bowl on the table is not enough.

Pinning down your objectives is something worth doing. Similar to nicheing it requires that you cut something into bite sized bits. I have a feeling this is some advice I’ll have difficulty following. Stubborn as I am, I will come around because I can see results when I follow good advice.

So, are you wanting beginners, intermediates or advanced readers? he asks.

I know it to be true that beginners can’t understand advanced information because they have no clear picture yet about the concepts. Just as a toddler may guess “dog?” when it sees a goat for the first time, beginners will make mistaken assumptions about what advanced users take for granted. Likewise advanced users will skim a beginners article and dismiss it because they already know that and don’t want to waste their time on it.

Short of having three blogs however, how can you assess where the intermediate lies. The extremes are obvious. If you have no domain name or host and the only html you know is a text link – you are a beginner. If you can ftp and go straight to a page in the blog template and change some php, then you are fairly advanced.

In the middle are all the intermediate shades of grey in between.

Although ProBlogger is by name on pro blogging he has this post there for beginners.
Blogging For Beginners

Most people writing blogs on blogging are not experts, they are just taking turns in passing on information (me included). I fall into the intermediate range and claim no advanced expertise but to people who don’t know what a blog is I’m an expert – so point of view or perspective is also a factor.

Best I can say is try to be consistent and honest. I don’t mean brutally honest or nakedly honest – both are embarrassing to the audience. I just mean sincere.

If you have a sense of humour and tell a story, embellishing the truth, then let people know (subtly) that this is you. People will not need it spelled out if all your posts have a similar flavour. Don’t change track from post to post and be earnest in one and flippent in another, unless the topic itself is an obvious cause for the change. Remember when you write that people have no facial expressions to use as clues to your meanings.

Finding your blogging voice is important and it will take you a few tries. I started writing my blogs quite stiltedly as an educator or teacher, couching the articles in personality less business speak but my own voice wanted to be heard and it came through in the end.

I have a quirky love of double entendre, or in other words of saying things in a way where two meanings may be taken from a phrase or sentence. It comes out in my poetry and it shows in the types of quotes I use. It usually goes right over the head of my kids (luckily, but they are learning) and is often not picked up by many readers, but that’s ok.

The same advice goes for staying on topic. Your targeted readers are coming to your blog because of your blog description. In my case here, they are probably arriving because I have monetize your blog in the title. To be honest, as yet,  I have failed to give them what they are looking for here. This is mainly because my time is too divided between too many other projects.

I have articles on all aspects of blogging because its blogging I really have an interest in. But if I want to please the targeted readers I am getting, I’ll need to get my act together! Peripherally these readers may also be interested in traffic and readers ( what this post is about ) about plagiarism, about other blogs, about niche research, ( what the last few posts have been about ) but their main interest, reasonably,  is making money.

So unless I have some recent posts on making money I have failed to satisfy the impulse that brought these targeted readers to my blog.

So just a few more things to things to think about while we’re in the market research methods weeks of the launch. The above pro blogger article recommends you hang out where your targeted readers hang out and see what questions they are asking. Find out how they speak (technical babble or help me I’m a newbie screams), interact with people and start to build relationships and write about the niche topic you have set for your blog.

I wish applying what you learn was as easy as reading it!

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Just letting everyone know that there are new “Best Blog” Feeds in the library. I found some great new blogs for you this month, most are authority sites with some a bit techie and over the top for the average blogger. If you find these intimidating (Ido!), check some of the post descriptions from the blogging newb and the work at home mom.

Keep working on that seo, but take a look at Sphinn, the site that crashed recently when a certain marketing group recommended people to use it and drove them into overload. There’s always some good articles here and some have a bit of light relief.

The top 10 feeds added this February include -

Blogging Tips From Blogging Mix – All about Blogs, Bloggers and Blogging!
Make Money Blog – Inside the mind of a money making blogging noob!
Work at Home Mom Revolution – jobs and tips for working at home.
White Hat Crew – Internet Marketing with Ethics.
Search Engine Land – latest news with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Ask.com and the world of search engine marketing
Sphinn: Hot Topics and New Topics – the place for web, search, interactive and internet marketers to share news stories and talk within subject-specific discussion forums
Tech Crunch  – profiles the companies, products and events that are defining and transforming the new web.
Search Engine Watch Experts – News and views from SEO Experts
Online Marketing SEO Blog – the intersection of search engine & social media marketing, optimization and online public relations.
Link Building – Link Building Best Practices from Vertical Measures

You can access them in the library now by clicking this link.
Rich Niche “Best Blogs” Feeds

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Blog search engine performance, Wordpress and general niche and affiliate marketing tips.

If you want to learn more about the “no follow” attribute you will be interested in this article on Andy Beards blog regarding an interview with Matt Cutts. To be honest, the no follow debate is all too hard for me currently and I apparently have juice leaking out all over the place. Since I don’t have many people visiting yet I can stand the mess but when I’m cleaned up and want to show off my best dress I guess this will be the next curve to tailor.

When that happens I’ll be taking another look at this article so I can start stitching up those dangling links. The biggest problem is apparently that different themes handle link sidebar elements differently, so it’s hard to advise the right thing to do for everyone.

If I understand things correctly, you use a “no follow” tag in a link so that bots don’t get distracted from your own site and wander off exploring other peoples site’s. Kind of like at parties when the luscious young blonde arrives and all the men’s eyes swivel in her direction. How can we compete with that?! We make her invisible. (At least we thought we did but the bots were just pretending not to look)

However doing this incorrectly can leave you with pages that are dead ends and so overall this doesn’t help you. The bots think the party’s over and go home.

He has created some great illustrations on the post to help most people understand, so rock on over and take a look.

It’s fine. I know I can’t compete with such brilliant experts. It’s all good. Go.

SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make

humming… It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…

Oh. Still here? Maybe you too get headaches looking at code like I do. Look, I really think you’ll learn a lot from this expert. I put his niche marketing blog feed on the library site, so you could while away the time a little longer that way.

But , one day, you really should take a look at a number of solutions he provides in his Wordpress SEO masterclass.
Wordpress SEO Masterclass for Competitive Niches

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