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6 Ways to Get Some Attention for Your Blog

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attention

One of the most disheartening experiences for a newbie blogger is the realization that nobody’s commenting — or even reading — what you’re putting out there.

The vast majority of blogs are abandoned after a few short weeks, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t assume that people will instantly start reading your sterling prose; some PR and outreach are required. After all, how are readers even supposed to know about your blog in the first place?

Even the apparently simple blogs that are successful have a done a lot of marketing work behind the scenes. It takes more than great writing and high-quality pictures to be a success. Here are six ways to get attention for your blog. Ideally, you should use them all to get off the ground floor. Proper blog management requires at least one hour per day apart from the writing. [Read more…] about 6 Ways to Get Some Attention for Your Blog

How To Improve Your Writing From Southpark Inspiration

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All writers struggle for inspiration at some stage in their writing career and it doesn’t matter if you’re writing online or offline you’re eventually going to wind up with writers block of some kind. We all have different ways of getting over that particular hurdle and one of my most recent finds in this regard surprised even me. I wound up realizing that the South Park TV series could make me a better writer.

How exactly does this work?

Read on loyal reader! [Read more…] about How To Improve Your Writing From Southpark Inspiration

Developing a Website for User Interaction

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One effective method for creating a successful website is to develop in a way that encourages interaction from visitors. If visitors are involved with the site there is a greater chance of repeat visits as well as improved loyalty. Think about some of the websites that you visit on a regular basis. Many of them get you involved in one way or another.

On the internet today there are a number of relatively simple things you can add to your website to encourage interaction from readers. Here are a few possibilities.

Blogs

Blogs are constantly increasing in popularity. Part of the reason people enjoy them so much is because of the community atmosphere that exists between a blog and its readers. By allowing readers to leave comments and questions a blog makes communication between writer and reader extremely simple and convenient. This helps readers to get more out of the articles and it helps bloggers by building strong relationships with readers.

Blogs can be extremely easy to set up and manage. Many web hosting companies offer one-click installations of several different blogging platforms, most commonly WordPress. In this situation a new blog can be added to your website in 5 minutes or less.

WordPress isn’t the only option. Movable Type, Text Pattern, and Drupal are also common choices.

Forums

Web forums have been popular for years. Some of the leading forums are on websites that are strictly dedicated to forums, but many websites also use forums as part of a larger, overall strategy. If you’re not interesting in spending a lot of time and effort coding, there are plenty of choices for quickly and easily adding a forum to your website. Some of the options include vBulletin, phpBB, Community Server, minibb, and Gossamer Forum.

By hosting a forum on your website you can add another way for your visitors to benefit from your site. Additionally, the content of the forums can help you to draw search engine traffic, and the forum threads can be very valuable to searchers when other people have already discussed the information that they are looking for. Every good forum has a number of regular visitors that participate in the forums consistently. This is s great way to build repeat traffic to your site.

Quizzes/Polls

Many visitors also like to get involved by participating in polls, surveys or quizzes hosted at your site. Visitors enjoy this because it allows them to get involved, and it’s different than the average website. Polls and surveys give visitors the opportunity to voice their opinion, and many of them like to see the results.

A few months ago Daniel released the Pro Blogger Test on Daily Blog Tips, which was a fun activity for readers and drew plenty of attention from other blogs.

You may think that adding a poll, survey or quiz to your website would be pretty difficult, but that’s not the case. There are several resources that can make the process simple, including PollDaddy, WP Polls Plugin, QuickQuizCreator, GoToQuiz, and Quiz-o-Matic ’76.

Video

As high-speed internet connections continue to become more and more common, the amount of video on websites is steadily increasing. Video can be used for any number of reasons, including testimonials, product demonstrations, fun and humor, education, etc. Video hosting services such as YouTube allow you to add video to your website without even using your own disc space or bandwidth. Video can make a site more interesting for visitors and with an increasing number of social media websites adding categories for video, the chances of creating viral content is increasing.

Job Boards

Another way to add a useful resource to your site that encourages interaction from readers is to provide a job board. You may think that a job board on your website would generate very little interest due to the huge job sites like Monster and Career Builder, but this is not always the case. Many websites that target a specific type of visitor have been successful with adding a niche job board that caters to the specific audience of the site. An example is the blogging job board at ProBlogger.

If you are interested in adding a job board on your site, your options include SimplyHired, JobCoin, Intellogy, and job a matic. Each of these options is a little bit different, so be sure to look at the specifics. As a bonus, adding a job board can even help by creating some revenue for you.

What other elements have you added to a website to encourage interaction from visitors? What results have you had?

17 Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Your Website

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Guerrilla marketing is a term used to describe unconventional marketing tactics, particularly those of low-cost or no-cost.

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We’ve all heard the key tips for promoting a website, but this article is guaranteed to have some new ideas for you. Some are clever, some are crazy, a few are farcical (if you wonder whether I’m joking, I probably am!). I think these seventeen unconventional ideas should get you thinking differently about the way you promote your website.

Guerrilla marketing for Website Owners

1. T-shirt Marketing. Get a T-shirt made with your website’s logo and URL on it. Offer the T-shirt as a prize in a competition. If the T-shirt looks decent the winner will wear it and act as a walking billboard for your blog. (You can get a T-shirt made at CustomInk.com, though there are plenty of websites that do this).

2. Bumper stickers for all. Mail out bumper stickers for your website to readers who want one. The price of an envelope is not much to pay for some advertising on busy roads. (You can get custom stickers made up at Kinko’s or your local equivalent).

3. Post some bills. Stick a poster about your website on your work or school’s noticeboard. You probably want to wait until no-one is around before you try this one.

4. The browser trick. Go to your local library, internet cafe or computer room and set your website as the default browser homepage on all the computers you can easily access. I can’t help you when it comes to dealing with tetchy librarians, however.

5. Release a free eBook. Link back to your website throughout and encourage sharing. If the eBook is good it could go viral and drive traffic back to you.

6. Go to the beach and write your website’s address in the sand (preferably out of the way of the rising tide, and large enough to be seen by passing airplanes.)

7. Run a competition to win items you own and could do without. Instead of auctioning CDs, furniture, art, video games etc. on eBay, why not use them to build your website?

8. Carry around blank business cards with your website’s URL on them. You can hand out a card whenever your website comes up in conversation — or whenever you bring it up.

9. Get your website URL tattooed on a visible part of your body. Warning: this might look a little dated if the no-www movement wins out in future. Scared of the needle? A temporary tattoo or permanent marker will do the trick. Better yet, draw the URL on someone else, preferably while they’re asleep.

10. Run a competition and make the prize a service you’ll perform. This could be marketing consulting, graphic design, a guest-post, or some other service which utilizes your own individual expertise.

11. Organize a meet-up for webmasters and bloggers in your area and use it as an opportunity to network.

12. Leave fliers for your website at niche hot-spots. For example: leave fliers for a personal finance website outside the economics faculty of your local university, or fliers for a book review website outside a library.

13. Participate in forums related to your niche. Drive traffic back to your website through your forum signature.

14. Run a competition to win advertising space on your site. This is yet another no-cost prize you can use to market your website: free for you but valuable for others.

15. Take out an ad in your local newspaper. They’re often pretty cheap and local papers can have a circulation of thousands.

16. Add your website’s URL to the signature of each email account you use. If appropriate add a funny comment or quote to draw people’s attention.

17. Wear your URL. Make a custom hat, T-shirt or hoodie with your URL on it. This is bound to be a conversation starter.

Guest blogging is also an excellent method of getting exposue for your site specifically within a certain niche. Usually this can be done yourself but it is immensely time consuming, in these case try a guest posting service. Have you used any unconventional strategies to promote your site?