Blog Tips Archives - Page 117 of 119

How Do You Handle Blogging While Out of Town?

December 24, 2013 by Kelsey Jones

Maintaining a well-oiled blog can be a difficult process that can be hard to do when you are out of town for a conference, vacation, or other engagement. However, with a little bit of planning, it can be easy to make sure your blog stays updated while you aren’t at home.

Have the Right Resources

In order to be a good blogger while you are away, you also need to be a good one while you are at home. Be sure to take advantage of a free writer’s resource area website that offers tips on effective blogging that gets your point across while also being time efficient. These tips are helpful no matter where you are blogging from.

Use a Freelancer

If you’re going to be away for a long period of time, it may be helpful to use a freelancer to fill in the content gaps when you aren’t able to. Hire a capable freelancer from a site like oDesk or FlexJobs that has a background that is related to your blog’s main topics. It’s best to hire someone before you leave so you have time to learn their writing style and they will be able to learn the type of content and formatting you like.

Schedule Ahead of Time

If you can fit it into your schedule, start stockpiling blog posts that can be scheduled out while you are away from your office. These can be evergreen topics which are timeless and contain useful information that anyone can use, even in the future. Some ideas might be best practices, trends in the last year, or tutorials that will still be timely in the time you are gone.

Write About Your Travels

Another option is to write about your travels and what you are doing out of the office, if it’s possible. For instance, if you are going to a conference or event that is related to your blog, it would be great to do a round-up post with what you have learned, photos, and key takeaways that you will be able to put into practice with your blog or work once you get back to your home base.

No matter which option you decide to take (which could be a combination of all of the above, depending on what time allows and the amount of content you need for your site), making sure your blog stays active while you are away can help keep your traffic engaged and showcases your dedication.

photo credit: szeke via photopin cc

How to Increase Blog Comments

December 11, 2013 by Kelsey Jones

Having an active and engaged blog community is at the top of every blogger’s wish list. While the goal is clearly outlined, the way to get there sometimes isn’t. Although not guaranteed, there are some ways that you can get more comments onto your blog.

Paid Traffic

Sometimes getting a high level of engagement does take a financial commitment. In this case, having paid campaigns to get more traffic to your website will certainly increase your chances of more engagement, especially when they come from social media. Do some research on paid social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter and also through the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Facebook and Google also occasionally send out coupons to new account users, so be sure to research that before signing up for a new account. [Read more…]

Is PPC For Your Blog To Get Traffic Worth the Cost?

December 4, 2013 by Kelsey Jones

A paid search advertising campaign, sometimes called PPC (short for pay-per-click, which is the term that means an advertiser only pays on a per click basis, when a person clicks on their ad), are used by webmasters and marketers to push traffic to their websites and e-commerce sites. For many, the traffic they receive translates into massive amounts of sales or traffic, which not only brings more sales, but can allow the website to grow their online influence.

When it comes to blogging, more traffic from PPC campaigns have a lot of benefits, including:

Charge higher rates to website advertisers
Grow number of returning readers/users
Drive sign-ups for newsletters or giveaways
Promote important posts that highlight a new company service or event
Grow engagement through more social shares and comments, as more traffic usually equals more audience engagement.

For the majority of blogs, PPC ads aren’t used to drive product sales. Because of this, it can be hard to justify the cost. While Google AdWords occasionally sends out credits and coupon codes for beginning PPC advertisers, starting a blog PPC campaign requires know-how, patience, and initial cost.

Getting Started

If you don’t know how to build, launch, and maintain a PPC campaign, it is worthwhile to either pay someone to do it for you or to learn the entire process yourself. Google offers an AdWords certification program, as does Bing. In Google’s case, even though there is a cost to become certified, you can view the majority of the course materials for free. This can help you begin to craft a PPC campaign.

Available Platforms

It’s important to note that even though search engines are the main place for PPC campaigns, Twitter and Facebook also offer advertising (and Pinterest is also beginning to roll it out). This is a good solution if you want to target a specific demographic, based on their interests or profile details, like age or location. Facebook occasionally also offers promo codes for new advertisers as well.

Charting Results

In order to make sure any PPC campaign is worth its cost, be sure to track its traffic. Use UTM tags to verify when traffic is coming from PPC ads in Google Analytics and make sure it can be tracked all the way to a company’s other external pages that are outside of the blog, such as products or contact us. When you have analytical proof of your results, your PPC campaigns are much more likely to become invaluable.

photo credit: x-ray delta one via photopin cc

Best Premium Tumblr Themes From ThemeForest

November 28, 2013 by Blog Herald

Founded in 2007, Tumblr quickly gained momentum and continues to serve a whole array of purposes. Its user base is huge and varied – from personal bloggers to fandom bloggers to companies geared at marketing. Some people may think that Tumblr is no longer a major player today, but even earlier this year, Tumblr boasted 102 million blogs with 6.6 billion pageviews in March 2013. If that is not relevant, then I don’t know what is!

Source

One of the things Tumblr has got going for itself is the way it presents information. Sure, it still is blogging in a way, but it caters to the generation of short attention spans. With its themes usually highlighting visual aspects more than plain text, the attraction is çertainly there.

And, just like most other blogging platforms, Tumblr’s appearance can be customized to suit your personal preferences. Tumblr Blog Themes are not hard to find – free or otherwise. If you’re looking for something different, here are some of the best premium Tumblr Themes you can find from ThemeForest, one of the leading sources of themes out there. [Read more…]