Posts Tagged ‘Blogging tips’


Posted on September 10, 2010 - by

10 Places to Find Blogs to Guest Post On

10 Places to Find Blogs to Guest Post On

Guest blogging helps you spread the word about your business or website. It is one way I get more people to view Sociatic and increase my RSS subscriber counts. It is also definitely one of the ways to become a better content marketer. Have you found any value in guest posting? If you haven’t, then you haven’t been looking in the right places.

Here are 10 places you can find blogs to guest post on. No matter the niche you’re in, I promise you’ll find a blog to guest post on.

  • Look on Invesp: This blog ranking directory provides a lot of insight on different blogs in different niches. It was on this site that I learned that Seth Godin has over 450,000 RSS subscribers. I don’t think he accepts guest posts though so don’t rush to contact him. Visit Invesp’s blog rank directory to see if you can find a blog that’ll be interested to accept a guest post from you.
  • Alltop: If you think there are no blogs in your niche to guest post on, guess again. AllTop is a news aggregator site that covers a diverse range of niches. I’m sure you’ll find some blogs there to guest post on so check them out.
  • Blog Ad networks: Sites such as AdvertiseSpace, BlogAds and BuySellAds (for creative industry) makes it easier for you to identify big blogs by sharing some stats with you. These are great places to look for blogs that accept guest posts.
  • Use MyBlogGuest: This is a forum community where bloggers give info about their blogs and then ask for guest posts from other users. You can also request to post an article on a blog whereby you share the terms and conditions of your offer.
  • Blogrolls of popular blogs in your niche: This is an overlooked place when it comes to finding blogs to guest post on. Authority bloggers normally list other authority bloggers in their blogroll. Most of the time, they blog about the same topic so be sure to check these places out too.
  • Adage Power 150 blogs: The power 150 is a list of the top marketing blogs. If you want to reach the business community, be sure to request to guest post on one of the Power 150 blogs.
  • Junta42 Top Blogs: Junta42 is the authority on content marketing and their list of the Top 42 blogs is a great place to find blogs to guest post on. You’ll find blogs covering topics in the area of content marketing, social media, and marketing in general.
  • Check out the social bookmarking and voting sites: Normally, the blogs on the homepages of sites such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit, etc. , receive lots of traffic and they have many subscribers too due to their success on these sites.

Other Tips to Remember About Guest Blogging:

  • It is not every blog that accepts guest posts. Look for a link or page that asks for guest posts to be submitted. If you don’t find any, you can contact the publishers of the blog to find out if they do.
  • Guest Posting works best when you write for a blog with many subscribers. If you write for blogs with just a few subscribers, there wouldn’t be any significant increase in your overall traffic and subscriber count (unless you plan to write a guest post every day). When it comes to guest posting, I don’t post on blogs with less than 5,000 subscribers. You can set your own subscriber limits.
  • Use Quantcast to check the blog’s RSS subscriber count if not available elsewhere. You can also ask the bloggers about this.
  • Hang around on a blog for a while before submitting a guest post. Mingle with its community and provide valuable comments. Leaving 2 or 3 valuable comments is enough to get the publisher’s attention.

Guest blogging is a really great way of marketing your business online on a shoestring and building a community around your brand. What other tips can you share regarding guest posting?

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Posted on June 10, 2010 - by

How to Audit Your Blog: 20+ Questions to Ask Yourself

How to Audit Your Blog: 20+ Questions to Ask Yourself

Blog auditing can be explained as an examination of all aspects of a blog to measure its effectiveness. It is a way of finding and fixing faults concerning your blog. It is an essential technique for general blog improvement.

You will need to take a pen and paper or open a word editor to take notes and answer the questions in this article.

I have divided each the audit questions into easy to adapt categories so that you will be able to understand the audit better. You should also divide your audits into these categories.

Now that we are all set, let’s start.

Design Audit

  • Are my colors well blended? Ask yourself if your brand’s colors is well blended with your website colors. For example, if you have a brown website design and a pink logo, that is “yuck”.
  • What can I cut out from my sidebar? So many people put unnecessary widgets on their blog’s sidebar that does nothing but to clutter the design of the blog. Remove the irrelevant widgets and leave only the relevant ones. I consider the calendar widget irrelevant. What widget do you find irrelevant? Remove it from your blog, fast.
  • Do I have the essential pages set up? Basic pages you need for your blog aside your homepage are: “About” page and “Contact” page. You can have additional pages you find relevant. Examples are: “Resources” page, “Services” page, and a Customized 404 page. Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary recently wrote about 20+ Blog Pages Every Blogger Needs To Have.
  • Do I have an author box? An author box gives your readers a brief description about the person who wrote the article they just read. When you have guest post writers, author boxes introduces them to your readers.

Subscriptions Audit

  • Are my subscription boxes well placed? Make sure your subscription boxes are well placed. To increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog, place your subscription boxes in multiple areas. Very good places you can place your boxes are: directly after posts (before the comments box), in your sidebar, a “Subscriptions” or “Join Us” page.
  • Do I have bait for my subscription boxes? By bait, I mean a freebie or any other valuable offer. Have a reward for people who subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Twitter and “Like” you on Facebook. Common rewards people give out are eBooks, e-courses, website themes, et cetera.
  • Do I have any social proof to show? Apart from baits, sometimes you will need to show visitors to your blog that other people read your content. You can do this by showing your subscription numbers; Facebook fan page subscribers, Twitter followers and RSS subscription numbers. If you don’t have large subscription numbers, don’t show it on your blog. Other ways of showing social proof are: Top commentators, number of times your articles have been read, recent visitors using Mybloglog or Amungus, et cetera. There are plugins that can help you display these info to people.

Content Audit

  • Is my content easy to read and understand? Cut out jargon, write concisely and cut out big vocabulary. It turns people off. Make your content as easy to understand as possible. Images and graphics can also be added to make your content easy to digest.
  • What calls to action can I use on each page? Make your blog like a book. When someone visits your homepage, where will be the next place you will want them to go to? Perhaps your “Subscribe” or “Join us” page or maybe straight to your pillar article pages. On your article pages, perhaps you will want to “call” people to subscribe by placing your subscription box in your article. Use the appropriate design and calls to action to move your visitor from page 1 to page n.
  • How can I increase page views? You can increase page views by installing a “related posts” plugin or by linking to your older articles. Setting up a “resources” page has also been known to increase number of page views.
  • Are my headlines catchy? Do your headlines have “read” appeal? Your headlines should grab the attention of the people you are writing the article for. If you are not able to grab their attention with your headline, they may never read your content.
  • Do I have link bait content? Contents that have tremendous value are considered link bait. This is because they are more likely to be linked to by other bloggers. Examples of link bait content are “How to” articles and list posts.
  • Is my content well formatted? You need to have a formatting style and stick to it. Consider colors you will use as sub-headings, headline tags you will use, your in-post thumbnail positions, et cetera. Once you’ve made your choices, stick to it.

Monetization Audit

  • Is my current monetization method working? Do you have banner ads on your sidebar with affiliate links in them? Have you made any sales in the past month or 2? Do you have Adsense on your blog? Are you making enough from it? If your monetization methods are not working, change them, don’t quit your blog. I used to monetize my blog wrongly but now, I have found a better way to monetize it.
  • What other monetization methods can I employ? You can choose any monetization you find suitable from the following list:

1) Making and selling digital goods such as eBooks, video tutorials, graphic design, web templates, et cetera.

2) Starting a membership site

3) Providing services like writing, coaching, setting up blogs, or any service related to the niche you blog about.

4) Selling ad spaces privately.

5) Selling other people’s products; a.k.a. affiliate marketing.

Before you start with any of the monetization methods, make sure you have some proof of success. Say,

1) When you are doing affiliate marketing or Adsense, you need to make sure you have enough traffic if you want to get real results.

2) Before you can sell banner ads, you have to be able to show advertisers that people read your site by showing them some stats.

3) Before you start a membership site on your topic, you should have had some success or experience that you can show and tell people about.

4) Before providing coaching services, you should have enough knowledge and experience about the service you are selling.

Marketing Audit

  • Do I have guest posts out on other blogs? Guest posting is one cool way of getting your blog noticed. It also helps you get more inbound links and helps increase your page rank and search engine rankings if you optimize your byline.
  • Do I have a well branded social media presence? Do your Social media profiles have your logo on them? What about your Fan page names, Youtube channel names and Twitter handles? Do they have your brand name in them? What about your Facebook fan page landing pages, Twitter backgrounds and Youtube backgrounds?
  • Is my blog showing up in all the major search engines? You need to submit your blog to the major search engines. Make sure your site is showing up in the search engines. Check your analytics results to see if you are getting any visits from some search engines. Search for your blog in the major search engines. If your blog is not there, submit it.
  • Do my comments on other blogs start conversations? Don’t just leave “Thank you” comments. They are boring and so common. Leave insightful comments that generate conversations. This can help you build new relationships with other bloggers.

Measurement Audit:

  • Do I have analytics installed?  Are you tracking your blog’s visitors? If you are, that’s great. If you are not tracking, better start now. Set up your analytics system and track your visitors. If you can add heatmap tracking, it will give you more insight about what you visitors do on your blog.
  • Do I have brand mention alerts set up? Set up alerts in Google Alerts and SocialMention so that you can get notified of any mentions of your brand online. You will get email notifications when someone mentions your brand on Twitter, on their blog, in forums, on Facebook, and any other online places you can think of.
  • Which content of your post types get the most comments? Can you work on more post types like those ones? Which posts get the most search engine visits?
  • What keywords do you rank high for? By high ranking, I mean page or 2 in Google. Can you improve that ranking? You can check your rankings out by setting up Google Webmaster Central to track that data for you if you don’t already have a system to check that.

Conclusion Au…(uh-um):

After performing the audit, develop a day to day plan to help you fix the stuff that you have not already worked on. You can develop a 10 day plan, 20 day plan or even 30 day plan to help you fix your blog.

What questions will you add to these when performing a blog audit?



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