Want your blog to be hotter than the fire of a thousand suns?
Of course you do! Like all things in life, someone will have walked the path before you. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to blogging.
Utilizing social media, keeping your blog up-to-date and marketing a website that actually sells, rather than making a few cents in Google ads, is hard work. Let’s take the heat off you, and focus that heat towards your online efforts instead.
Start by taking a few minutes to read through these top tips. They have been specially selected from top bloggers with experienced advice to give, so it’s time well spent. In fact, over the years, I have purchased courses or coaching sessions with over half of these top bloggers and have learned so much from them.
Some of the tips are only a few words of wisdom, others are longer, but all are useful.
They aren’t in order of importance though! There’s too much good advice to rank these top bloggers against each other!
Coffee made and fingers at the ready? Let’s climb that top blogger learning curve together.
Yaro Starak explains how he came to make money from the internet on his blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey
Tip 1. Build a website that is full of relevant content
Tip 2. “I strongly suggest you start your email newsletter from day one”
Jon Morrow lovingly says, ‘By the time we’re done, you won’t be a spectator in the battle for attention, squeaking out your posts and praying for a couple of re-tweets’. Check out his blog at Boost Blog Traffic
Tip 3. Educational content isn’t as effective as it used to be for driving traffic.
Tip 4. Instead of just giving your readers a list of steps to accomplish their goals, give them a surge of feeling to go with it.
Henneke Duistermaat’s website, Enchanting Marketing, is on a mission to make faceless companies charming and dull products exciting!
Tip 5. Stop worrying about unsubscribers. Instead: build stronger ties with your real fans.
Tip 6. To keep your blog fresh and exciting, try something new. A long, epic post or a super-short provocative post.
M. Shannon Hernandez owns The Writing Whisperer. Her specialty lies in coaching and motivating clients to hone their writing skills.
Tip 7. Powerful copywriting secures a trusting relationship with your potential clients. Is it time for an update or overhaul?
Tip 8. There is a simplicity about list posts that make them so irresistible to readers.
Ash Ambirge at The Middle Finger Project leads a community that wants to learn fresh, original ways to hijack the sea of sameness and make real money.
Tip 9. When you do anything for your business, consider: Is this something people actually want?
Tip 10. If you’re wondering whether creativity is a waste of time; if you’re convinced that “your product / service/website will speak for itself,” then think twice.
Ian Cleary’s blog, Razor Social, provides you with a one stop resource for all your needs in relation to social media tools and technology.
Tip 11. Analyzing the activity around a hashtag on Twitter can help you identify the influencers, find useful links, analyze trends and much more
Tip 12. “I meet so many people that say they don’t get benefit from LinkedIn but when I ask them what time they are investing in LinkedIn, the answer is usually none!”
David Risley’s Blog Marketing Academy is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build their platform to deliver their solutions to people who need them, and to use the power of content marketing (blogging, videos, email marketing, etc.) to spread the word
Tip 13. While it might be a good idea to have some low-end offers out there which you can market in that way, the best way to make a LOT of money is to go for higher-end products with higher price tags.
Tip 14. People love to be able to participate in something that others cannot. How can you incorporate that into your offers?
Pat Flynn states “I hope that my experiences – both my wins and my failures – can help you reach your goals” We know they will, Mr Flynn! Check out his blog, Smart Passive Income
Tip 15. It’s always good to keep track of stats and analytics. Stats give you insight into your business that you cannot see on the surface
Tip 16. Diversify and feed people into your email list. Oh, and be sure to export that list from your email service provider every once in a while to actually have that list on your hard drive somewhere, in case that provider were to shut down too.
You must read Kim Garst, who regularly shares useful and practical information that’s easy to read and understand.
Tip 17. “My Top Tweet” will give you an overview of your 10 most popular tweets. From here, you can either create new tweets based on what you have learned, or even recycle your old tweets so they can reach your new followers.
Tip 18. Since Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, Search Engine Optimization focus has shifted away from short, overly-optimized content, and has moved toward longer, more comprehensive and in-depth articles.
Heidi Cohen consistently publishes useful content focused on blogging and social media on her blog. Pay attention!
Tip 19. Don’t stick your head in the sand when it comes to new technologies. Continually test new products and technologies. While no-one wants to be tied to the next Betamax, you don’t want to be yesterday’s news.
Tip 20. Time off lets you take care of yourself and get some distance from your work. It helps you see what you’re doing and where you’re going more clearly.
Danny Brown‘s blog provides excellent articles and thoughtful opinion pieces on social media marketing. Unusual landing page too!
Tip 21. Invite specific people to write guest posts for your blog; they will bring all the people they know to read, comment and share.
Tip 22. Publish interviews with some of the people who are most active in the communities you want to work with.
A great women’s blog platform that is seven years old and still growing is BlogHer
Tip 23. Posting to bookmarking sites is genius! Having one of your blog pages bookmarked on certain sites is free traffic!
Tip 24. After you’ve published a post, include it in the rough draft for your next email newsletter. You don’t want to forget anything when it comes time to send your newsletter, and creating it bit by bit will help make the task feel smaller.
The Boss Network is a community of entrepreneurial women who support each other through conversation, online and event-based networking.
Tip 25. The door of opportunity won’t open unless you do some pushing.
Tip 26. Constant promotion allows you to reach potential customers who may not be aware yet. Always promote!
A useful online community and association for work-at-home moms with resources to help with the juggle is Home-Based Working Moms founded by Lesley Spencer Pyle.
Tip 27. Setting your business aside for any length of time can lead it down a slippery slope you may not be able to crawl back up from.
Tip 28. Move your business forward one step at a time, and more importantly, know where you’re going before you try to get there.
Lynn Terry’s blog on internet and affiliate marketing is at ClickNewz!
Tip 29: Choose your blog topic wisely. The niche you choose, or the topic for your blog, has the potential to lead you into your ideal lifestyle. You will eat, breath, sleep, live, read and become this topic – so you want to put a lot of thought into this upfront.
Tip 30: “From the beginning, I integrated Affiliate Marketing into my business models (even offline), and it was the one thing that really stood out to me. It required the least investment, and the least work, for the highest return.”
An active and engaging site for female entrepreneurs, Ladies Who Launch provides a resources for starting, building and running a business.
Tip 31. Discover events, meetings and workshops near you or consider starting your own.
Tip 32. The most important thing is that you feel passionately about what you are doing
Chris Brogan blogs practically every day on a plethora of topics, but is mostly known for his small business marketing and growth advice.
Tip 33. You don’t have to be robots, you don’t have to “fit in,” You can build a powerful life through finding your own path.
Tip 34. You’re in business to make money. Yes. That’s very, very true. But you make money by solving challenges. You make money by making your buyer the hero.
Derek Halpern’s Social Triggers is a ‘psychology in marketing’ dream world. You can always expect nothing but ‘high protein’ from Derek. No fluff.
Tip 35. Stay calm if someone can’t pay up, or you risk alienating them completely.
Tip 36. When something bad happens – turn it into a valuable lesson and learn from it.
Anita Campbell’s Small Business Trends is packed full of useful blogging information. The sheer volume of what’s available is nothing short of impressive.
Tip 37. Many small business owners and employees have separate social media sites for business and personal use. However, their brand image on both sites need to be consistent since customers will do a web search that will cover all of them.
Tip 38. Research shows that the best time to send email to every age group, ranging from college students to senior citizens, is between 10 am. and 1 pm.
Carol Roth is a straight-talking long-time business owner and entrepreneur who enlisted a team of writers to write about the realities of running a business. Her blog at CarolRoth.com is not for the faint-hearted !
Tip 39. Beware of anyone who won’t tell you when you have spinach in your teeth.
Tip 40. You don’t have to give up your values or your mission, but you may have to implement them in a way that cuts out some of the smaller details in order for the business to thrive.
Becky McCray’s blog is different from the rest because it zeroes in on rural and small town businesses. (These specific tips are from blog contributor, Glenn Muske.)
Tip 41. Turning a hobby into a successful business also requires that the owner bring in new skill sets such as bookkeeping, marketing, inventory control and customer relations
Tip 42. Starting out as a sideline business also allows you to do more testing than what you might otherwise do if you are depending on the business as your primary income source.
Naomi Dunford blogs at IttyBiz. Her blog posts center primarily around online business success (and she cracks me up!).
Tip 43. You should take your pricing seriously, just like you should take your tagline seriously, your contact page seriously, and your email sequence seriously. But if you mess it up, there is a very low chance you will die.
Tip 44. A good number of businesses could double their revenue and profit in far less than three years if they actually made a point of saying, “This is what we sell. Please buy it.”
Founder Danny Iny quit school at fifteen to start his own business . He now owns Firepole Marketing. The blog publishes a good variety of information from smartphone apps to marketing podcasts. The posts are always engaging and well-written.
Tip 45. Google constantly changes its algorithms – and when it does, the tactics that websites use to direct traffic must also change.
Tip 46. Drawing inspiration from your competitors should be par for the course.
Melinda Emerson juggles plenty of topics in her blog from social media to female entrepreneurship.
Tip 47. Once you are a person of influence, you can monetize your blog because there are corporations who will pay for access for your audience.
Tip 48. Keyword-rich headlines, topics and themes will boost your online visibility, attracting more visitors to your blog, encouraging more social shares and attracting the attention of Google.
Ivana Taylor talks shop at DIY Marketers, coming at the small business topic from interesting angles.
Tip 49. Use Instagram, but instead of consistently showing shots of your product, share lifestyle content that accurately conveys your brand’s persona.
Tip 50. Take advantage of Pinterest’s simple-to-use search options to locate photographs that you would like to share on Instagram. Of course, always remember to cite credit for any photographs you use.
So there we have it. All the information you could possibly need to boost your blogging, your readership and potentially your income. It’s a lot to take in, so bookmark this page and come back when you need inspiration. But in the meantime… Learn, Blog, Learn, Blog!
Tell me please, in the comments, which tip you are going to take action on?