Blogging Questions Answered
Hi Everyone!
While Susanne is attending her grandfather’s funeral and taking care of things with her family, I’m here to help keep her blog active (as she’s done for me in the past when I’ve needed her to).
Why the heck am I? Good question. I’m Susanne’s friend, Nicole Dean. We’ve been mastermind partners since 2005 and help each other to grow our businesses. I’m considered to be a pretty successful internet marketer by some. Of course, I don’t know everything. (Who does?) But, I do know a lot about marketing with content and using shortcuts to make more money in your business while still having a life.
On that note, Susanne asked me here today to talk about one of my favorite topics. “How to Blog without Going Bonkers”. She asked great questions, so I’ll dig right in.
How often do you recommend blogging per week?
When I’m asked that question, I can’t give a definitive answer until I understand the purpose of that person’s blog.
- If you consider yourself a business person – and your blog is just one part of your platform, then you can get away with blogging once or twice a week. Of course, if you run a special promo, then you can always blog more. However, it’s not necessary for you to blog daily. The blog is one part of your business, not the entire thing.
- If you consider yourself a blogger and the blog is your business, then you’ll want to be blogging at least three times per week, in my opinion, to really get momentum.
Of course, these are just guidelines so decide what’s right for you. Regardless I would not skip an entire week on your blog, unless you have a darned good reason to. An inactive blog is worse than a bad blog.
What’s your favorite type of blog post? (to write).
My favorite type of blog post to write is one where I can incorporate some humor. I love posting about Weird Niches on my blog and making people smile. If I can’t have fun and be me, then I’ve obviously built the wrong business for me.
I know that’s not exactly the question you were asking, though. The type of blog post that’s easiest and most enjoyable for me to write is one just like this where someone sends me 5-10 really good questions about a topic that I’m considered an “expert” about.
It’s very easy for me to buzz through the questions, and I know that the final blog post will be helpful.
I have a severely neglected blog. Can you share some quick tips for reviving it?
Absolutely. The first and foremost thing is to figure out why your blog is neglected in the first place.
It’s kind of like having a health problem. Before you begin treating it, it’s helpful to understand how the problem began in the first place.
Ask yourself these three questions…
- Are you passionate about your niche, your market, and about helping people in your chosen area? If the answer is “yes”, then that’s not it.
- Are you struggling to come up with topics? I can help you with that, as you’ll see in a moment. That’s an easy one to fix.
- Are you just not a writer? IF not, that’s ok. You can still be a huge success with your blog in a few different ways. You can turn to audio (run a podcast) or record videos to become the “go to” person in your field. Or, if you’d rather not be that person, surround yourself with others who are and feature them on your blog. Either way, there is no writing involved.
You can learn more about all of those methods for making blogging easier in my course Blog CPR. http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/blogcpr
As you know, I’m out of town (actually out of country) at the moment and won’t be working as much as usual for the next 10 days. Any tips for keeping my blog going even when I don’t have much time to devote to it?
Yes, invite me to be a guest blogger. Oh wait. You already did. :)
Other than that, of course, you can use PLR articles to write posts quickly and easily. That’s one of my favorite shortcuts. (Learn more about PLR here: http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/easyplr )
Another easy way to create content when you have very little time is to do a round-up of a few of your posts about a specific topic. For instance, you could start a blog post about “Aweber for Beginners” and then link to any of the following pieces:
http://www.affiliatetreasurechest.com/category/internet-marketing/list-building/
Just choose 5 of your best posts and create a blog post that says “Read these 5 blog posts to get started with Aweber.” That would be quick, easy, and very effective.
Do you ever run out of ideas or just plain get bored with a blog or even an entire niche. What do you do to work through that and how do you make sure you still have stuff to blog about?
Ok. If we’re talking about niche blogs, that’s completely different than my blogs where I’m the expert, like NicoleontheNet.com.
Niche blogs can easily be outsourced. I’d recommend you start by getting a copy of Blog CPR and using the lessons in it to train a Virtual Assistant to keep your blog active and interesting for your readers. That’s what I do.
OR, I go out and get people to write for those blogs for free so they keep making money without any ongoing effort from me. But, that’s a topic for another day.
I hope this has given you some ideas!
Have a wonderful day.
Warmly,
Nicole Dean (standing in for Susanne)
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Thanks for your insight Nicole. Being new to blogging myself it seems like an insurmountable task but you and susanne make it seam easy.
Great article!
Nicole,
You are everywhere! What a wonderful friend you are to post here as a guest during this difficult time. Susanne offers us excellent information and advice, and now we are benefitting from your perspective and training. This is a win-win-win!
Connie
Great tips, Nicole. I am glad to hear that I am not necessarily supposed to be posting to my blog every day. Need to work on time management to get blog posts in all of my blogs at least once a week though. LOL
Great Q&A ladies :)
Over on my cross stitch site I’m finding that three posts a week seems to be where readers are happy … they don’t mind if I have more, but if I have less than that they start getting worried, or worse they get bored.
And if I blog every day, while that’s great for the search engine, sometimes it’s too much for the readers to absorb and they get overwhelmed.
I agree it definitely varies by niche how often you want to blog, it can take awhile before you find that right balance.