Blogging

How to Find Topics to Write About

business ideasThe best way to find topics to write about is to start from the beginning with the minutia about your niche. Don’t assume your audience has already seen everything or that you can’t tell them about it in a new way. Even if other people are talking about the same thing, you will do it differently and appeal to your own audience.

  • Forums and Message Boards – Find out which forums your audience uses and go there and observe. What are they talking about? What are the titles they give their new posts? Use this information to formulate ideas of what to write about.
  • Read Comments on Other Blog Posts – Read industry blog posts, and then read the comments. What is the audience saying? What questions are they asking? You can use these questions and comments as fodder for new blog posts and articles.
  • Questions Asked by Others in Groups – Both LinkedIn and Facebook have groups that you can join. Find groups that consist of your ideal audience and observe what they are talking about. These are all ideas for blog posts.
  • Read Industry News – Subscribe to online and offline magazines for your industry so you can keep up to date on new technology and information. This will help you with increasing your knowledge so that you can find more topics to write about.
  • Keep a Swipe File – You don’t want to plagiarize so be very careful, but use something like Evernote.com to keep a file full of interesting quotes and information that you can use to write about.
  • Brainstorm – At least weekly, sit down and give yourself 15 minutes on a timer to list everything that you can think of to write about. Keep in Evernote or on a publication calendar that you can make with Excel, and upload to Google Drive.

Finally, it can’t be said enough that it’s essential to keep notes at all times. If you don’t keep notes, you will not remember what you thought about while you were showering, shopping, or out with your friends. Keeping a running list of ideas that come to mind, then doing research on those ideas, you’ll be sure to have plenty of content to write about when you’re ready to sit down and write.

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Blogging

Blogging Your Way to Success

girl bloggingOne of the most popular methods of marketing on a shoestring is blogging. Blogging is a very powerful, though long-term, marketing method that gets results. It’s important that your blog is on your website and not on an external blogging site where they own the content. You want to own all your own content.

Nine Tips to Making It Work

Blogging is one of the most powerful ways to market your business on a shoestring budget if you know what you’re doing. It may take some practice before you get good at it, and it will definitely take perseverance. But if you have that, you can get a lot of business by simply blogging your way to success.

  1. Blog Regularly – It’s important that you update your content on a regular basis, and at first you should shoot to fill your blog with content three to five times a week. Once you have over 300 pages, you can cut down to weekly blogs.
  1. Know Your Audience – Before you write a single blog post, it’s essential that you know who your audience is, what their problems are and how you can solve them. Plus, you need to know how all that ties in with your products and services.
  1. Understand Your Niche – Study all you can about your niche, including your competition and the industry as a whole. The more you know, the more you can share with your audience, and the more valuable of a resource you become.
  1. Include Keyword-Rich Titles – Going nuts with keywords is no longer necessary, but you should still use them in titles, headers, and subtitles. This will enable search engines to locate the content but it will also intrigue your audience.
  1. Make the Content Unique – The content on your blog and website should be 100 percent unique to you. You can check it using software like Copyscape.com or Grammarly.com.
  1. Share Other People’s Content – An exception to unique content is that you can share other people’s content if you do it right. Include a blurb about the content you’re sharing, and link to it where it was originally posted.
  1. Keep Your Comments Open – A great way to encourage user-generated content is to ask for comments and then comment back to people. You can have entire discussions right on the blog in the comments.
  1. Use Relevant Images – An image is worth a thousand words, as they say, so you should be using them to help explain your message to your reader.
  1. Use a Variety of Formats – Don’t just use one type of blog post. Try to use a lot of different formats and types of content for your blogs, such as “how to” posts, long-form posts, guides, vlogs and more.

Using these tips will help you market your business on a shoestring using blogging. Blogging regularly, in a relevant manner, will bring your audience to you. But you also need to remember to promote the things you publish. Just like you promote your YouTube videos, promote your blogs regardless of which form or type they happen to be in.

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Reviews

Propresser Garlic Press Review

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I work from home, because I love my garlic. And since I’m home most of the time, I can more easily eat garlic without worrying about being socially unacceptable. Of course, I use garlic in my cooking, and then it doesn’t smell, but we love eating baked fish with home made garlic mayonnaise 😉

Are you hungry yet? I’ll give you my garlic mayonnaise recipe in just a minute, but first let me tell you about the Propresser Garlic Press I received for review. It’s sturdy, looks great and most important, makes using garlic easy as pie.

garlic-press

Garlic Mayonnaise Recipe:

  • 1 head of garlic
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/2 cup of oil

Crush the garlic (with the Propresser Garlic Press you don’t even need to peel it), add the salt and then slowly mix in the oil without changing direction. It’s really that simple, and it’s delicious with fish, Lima beans, and home made fries! YUM!

If garlic isn’t part of your diet, you might want to think about the benefits. Here are just a few:

  • strengthens the immune system
  • helps lower high blood pressure
  • helps prevent heart disease
  • helps repel mosquitoes (I bet you didn’t know about that one 😉

If you want your own Propresser garlic press by Orblue, you can get it at amazon here:  http://www.amazon.com/70-OFF-TODAY-Propresser-Stainless/dp/B00HHLNRVE

To learn more about the company, check out their site

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

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Reviews

Need Some Extra Cash for Holiday Shopping?

10K-121213Of course you do. Who doesn’t need a bit of extra cash? What would you think if I told you it’s possible to raise some cash in time for holiday shopping just by going through your home and getting rid of stuff you no longer need?

In October 2012 I discovered selling on Amazon, and in December of last year I sold $10000. I even managed a $1K day on Cyber Monday 🙂

cyber-monday2013

It’s not hard to get started selling on Amazon: there are lots of Facebook groups, and many blog posts with tips, but if you want to skip spending time finding the right answers to your questions, you could read Cash for Trash by Amanda Craven and you could be on your way to that extra cash by tomorrow.

In her Cash for Trash course, Amanda walks you walks you through how to source and sell unwanted items from your own home, as well as inventory sourced at thrift stores and yard sales for next to nothing.

Cash For Trash is perfect for those of you who just want to earn some quick money on the side, as well those who want to eventually earn a 6 figure income, especially if you love shopping. You can start by looking at things you have around the house, like new and old books, unopened/unwanted gifts from the past, etc.

And once you’re done there, you can go to thrift stores in your area and find more treasures there. Amanda gives you a step by step look at starting your own amazon business: from opening up the right type of account, to finding the right items to sell, to pricing everything right, and so much more.

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Website Traffic

The Basics of Link Building For SEO

Link building is still one of the best ways to increase your website’s link popularity and page rank. While it sounds simple enough, it can be a mammoth task and you want to make sure that you are being linked to by high quality websites that people respect and trust. You also want to make sure you are building SEO links in positive ways that will not undermine your brand. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. Quality over quantity. Sometimes the most important principles are also the most obvious, but people still overlook them all the time. While you want your links to be visible and attract the attention of as many people at once, you do not want to flood the internet with irrelevant links. If you are foolish enough to do that, you will dilute your brand, and your links will become synonymous with spam. Instead, be mindful of where your links appear, and make sure if someone clicks them, they lead somewhere relevant and engaging. Remember this is the guiding principle of good SEO practices. You provide quality content that is optimized so people can find you, not junk content that is trying to trick people into landing on your page.
  2. Embrace social media. It seems every web page you go to these days is asking you to like it on Facebook, Tweet about it on Twitter, or share it over a variety of sites including Digg, delicious, and LinkedIn. If someone does decide to do any or all of those things, you have just received the most valuable word of mouth possible. We all tend to pay more attention to these because people we like and admire are deciding something is noteworthy enough to recommend. Depending on your venture, this can seem silly sometimes, but it is a simple element to integrate into your website which can pay off big time.
  3. Share your opinion. Both Review and Q&A sites are extensions of social media, but they do deserve their own special category. While tracking what others say about your company and responding in a professional way are both good practices, writing reviews of other products and answering questions are also excellent ways to establish yourself as a resource. Amazon’s review and list sections are great ways to build relationships (and links) with consumers. Make sure that when you do this, your submissions are genuine, relevant to your brand, and truly helpful.
  4. Expand your website. These days, the most interesting (and SEO link friendly) websites are ones that offer more than just an avenue to whatever you are selling. Resource sections that explain things that relate to your products and provide instructions or ideas on how to use your services can add some quality content to your website. Yes, your website needs to be functional, but it can also be fun and informative. Blogs and forums are two other great ways to expand your website’s reach and foster deeper connections with prospective clients. Just make sure you are offering quality content and not content for content’s sake. If you need to hire a person or an SEO firm to manage that for you, do so. It will be a worthwhile investment.

Focus on what is a good fit for you. Whether you are manufacturing widgets, making rock n’ roll, or offering a service that makes people’s lives easier, your primary focus should be on doing whatever it is you do well. When you provide something of value, link building will happen as enthusiasts spread the word. That does not mean you should not run contests, upload instructional videos to YouTube, or be an active internet presence. It means that balance and authenticity will mean more than throwing everything on the web to see what sticks. Invest your resources wisely and do not hesitate to secure some professional SEO help.

Link building is still one of the best ways to increase your website’s link popularity and page rank. Building SEO links in positive ways makes a significant impact. Ryan Michael Farrell is a professional off site SEO specialist for the search engine marketing firm Wpromote.

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