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21 Days to a more profitable blog - Day 2! Enhance your blog to compel word-of-mouth
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21 Days to a More Profitable Blog Tutorial > Day 2! Enhance your blog to compel word-of-mouth
Why hello there! Glad to see you back!
Hope your day is treating you most spiffy-like (over here in LingLand, it’s 3:59am and my beloved TwitterBudgies are actually (get this!) NOT imitating feeding time at the Serengeti Plains!). I just heard Paradise Emerge from the kitchen (ie, my coffee maker dinged) so give me a sec to grab me first cup of the day….
(tick tock tick tock tock tock)
Alrighty, I’m back again and let’s now dive into:
Today is Day 2 of my series, 21 Days To A More Profitable Blog! And for today, I’d like to talk about…
Carts, horses and the location of such.
Got that mental image in your mind? Alrighty now….imagine the following. You have piled into that cart gold bullion that would make Daffy Duck swoon in joy, and Gabrielle to scribe in Linear B, and Indiana Jones to offer his whip to the Smithsonian and and and …you get the idea.
Let me now ask you:
Would you prefer the horse to be AHEAD of the cart….or behind it?
Hmmmm?
Think about it. Lots of make-your-blog-superDeDuper-profitable lessons begin by diving you headfirst into Pay-per-clickees and Adsense and affiliate programming and all of those yummy goodies, right?
But let me now gently drop the following clue upon the landscape!
And it’s this:
Doesn’t it make sense to FIRST enable your blog to COMPEL visitors to tell their friends about it…prior to embedding all the money-generating stuff?
In other words, why put the cart (making money) in front of the horse (your blog) from the get-go? After all, it’s kinda sorta common sense - your visitors can reach their friends ‘waaaaay faster than you can!
But for them to tell their friends, not only should your content be stellar, but your blog should also welcome your visitors, make them feel at home, and when they do decide to leave, gently remind them that hey! Your friends might enjoy this site too!
And the good news is, it doesn’t take a lot of time at all to add some lovely tweakies to your site that enable the above.
So! With coffee in hand (okay, coffee in cup that’s in hand), let’s turn to:
Before You Begin - Know how to install Wordpress plugins.
The goodies I’m going to reveal to you shortly are Wordpress plugins that you’ll need to install on your blog. If you need help for doing so, check out:
Wasn’t that fun?
Ready to continue? Wondrous! Move smoothly now to:
Step 1 - Install CommentLuv and Linky Love and….
"CommentLuv" is a Wordpress plugin that grabs the last post by a commentor and appends it to their comment, thus giving them a backlink to their site.
This is a goooood thing! And Lucia’s Linky Love is a plugin that let’s you turn on the DOFOLLOW (good for search engine stuff) on comments after a prescribed number of contributions (for example, here on my site, DOFOLLOW is turned on after people comment 3 times). Did I mention how much I enjoy reading comments by readers, by the way? 
Let’s stop for a second and think what this does. When you offer CommentLuv and Lucia’s Linky Love, you’re proactively showing the "What’s in it for me to comment on your blog?" question many readers possess - why, you get a direct deep link back to your site! That’s a pretty good return on the few minutes it takes to write an insightful comment, right?
Other great comment-related plugins you can investigate include:
Step 2 - Install Social Bookmarking Plugins
Adding cute little social bookmarking buttons after your posts make it very easy for people to tell their friends about your posts…and thus encourage more and more visitors and page views.
Here’s what I use:
And here’s others you can use:
Some neat articles to learn more include:
- Add Social Bookmarking Links To Your Blog
- What is Your Favorite Social Bookmarking Site?
- 22 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites That Actually Work (and how to bookmark QUICKLY)
- How to Use Social Bookmarking Websites
- Add Social Bookmark Links to your Posts in Blogger
- 10 Social Media Blunders that Can Destroy Your Brand
Remember your goal here. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to tweet about your articles, to tell their friends via email/IM and the like!
Social bookmarks can really assist you here.
And finally, for my last step in Day 2 of 21 Days to a More Profitable Blog, I’d like to ….
Lose the technology entirely (eeek!) and talk about:
Step 3 - Add simple post closes.
Have you noticed something about my blog postings? Besides the fact they’re monetized by eBay and are infused with kind of zany humor only raising 4 kids, 15 Twitter Budgies and worshipping coffee can produce, they almost always end up with:
=============================
#BEGIN highlights of this blog writing post:
Beginners blogging tips:
Intermediate and/or Advanced blogging tips:
#END highlights of this blog writing post
Like this post? Please feel free to tell your friends and Digg It - I very much appreciate your time!
=============================
Would you believe, this is not hard-coded in my Wordpress php code? And it’s not a plugin either?
No indeed - awhile back, I simply created a test post with the above, viewed the source, and copied/pasted it to a file entitled "close_post.txt" that’s on my computer. Whenever I write, I have that file open…and once I’m done with the post, I simply paste it at the end.
See, you don’t have to rely on new-fangled plugins to enhance your blog…you can do it the old-fashioned way by copying and pasting.
Voila! End result? Every one of my how-to posts are uniform and (again!) remind the viewer that wow! You might want to tell your friends about it too.
Nice, eh? The above is part of my Critical Blog Checklist series I wrote back in March. Please do feel free to check it out - I think you’ll enjoy it greatly!
See how it works? Remember what I had written in Day 1:
FIRST: You tweak your blog/site so that people are encouraged to tell their friends to check out what you have to offer.
NEXT: You add affiliate programs/PPC programs/Clickbank Programs/etc. that mesh seamlessly with your theme
NEXT: You offer complimentary downloads that get passed around online and bring people back to your site
NEXT: You build your reputation online by doing what only YOU can do - Providing value via your own unique style.
There’s always a method to me madness.
And that brings me to:
In closing
In today’s lesson, you learned about simple plugins you can add to your blog that will compel others to tell their friends about your site, thus effectively doing your marketing for you.
But! An opportunity now arises!
(remember, there’s no such things as problems in real life - just misunderstood opportunities)…..
HOMEWORK - One of the goals of bloggers and site builders is to grow their subscriber numbers as high as possible (speaking of which, have you subscribed yet so as to not miss a lesson? Find out all the reasons why you’d love subscribing over here!).
Your homework tonight is to figure out just why people would like to subscribe to your site. Trust me, you want to do this…it will be a key component to tomorrow’s lesson.
Can you think of anything else to include? Feel free to comment about it below!
Until tomorrow,
Barbara
#BEGIN highlights of this blog writing post:
Beginners make money blogging tips: You’re not the only one who will promote your blog - happy readers do that as well!
Intermediate and/or Advanced make money blogging tips: Always make it worthwhile for people to comment on your blogs. I highly recommend installing Commentluv and Linky Love and goodies of that nature.
#END highlights of this blog writing post
Like this post? Please feel free to Digg It and let your friends know about it too - I very much appreciate your time!
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Related posts:
- 22 Resources To Make Visitor Blog Promotion Easy - Day 3 of 7 Days To Making Your Blog Blossom
- Update on Kid Making Money via Blogging - Superb progress!
- 21 Days to a more profitable blog - Day 3! Customize your blog’s welcome message for new visitors
- Easy Ad-optimized Wordpress blogs to boost your income and monetize your site
- 21 Days to a more profitable blog - Day 1! Internalize from where online money comes.
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Stumble it!
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I’ve heard about social bookmarking and how it can be useful - thanks for the resources. I’m reading them now.
Hi Sarah,
Glad you find the article useful!!
Barbara
Now THAT is really turning things upsidedown - most tutorials begin with the Show Me The Money aspect. Sometimes I forget that you need to really lay down a firm foundation before powering up your site.
@MMOstorm - trust me, it took lots of time for me to gain the patience (and wisdom!) to realize that everything should proceed in a logical format. You make far more money when you *plan out* your strategies, I’ve discovered.
Thanks for commenting!
Barbara
Thanks for the detailed infos. I`ll come back tomorrow
best regards
sevenjobs’s last blog post..Kann ich die Zeit der Hausarbeit sinnvoll nutzen?
Hi Barbara,
This post comes at the right time when I am planning to write my next article on social book marking. It’s very powerful and one should learn how to use it effectively. Thanks for sharing your inisghts. Last blog post -
Work From Home Business Blog
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@sevenjobs - my pleasure!
@Peter Lee - Glad you liked it!
Enjoy,
[...] Social bookmarking has helped the average webmaster grapple with the ever evolving internet marketing world and the more seasoned ones on the way to find real success in their work at home business. It’s here to stay and no webmaster or home business owner can afford not to recognize its full potential and make the best out of it. Check out some cool social bookmarking plugins at Barbara Ling’s 21 Days To a More Profitable Blog. [...]