Blogging Advice

Aaron Wall’s post about books reminded me that books are great sources for content on your blog.

Many blogging experts advise beginner bloggers to follow the popular blogs in their industry. Then, they say you should write about what the other bloggers are saying. The same principle goes for reading the popular books in your niche and writing commentary about them on your blog.

Why should you write about books?

Well, for one thing, it shows that you are well read and are keeping up with the trends and developments in your industry. Also, many people are reading the books. They are searching the web to see what other people think about the books.

What kind of blog posts can you write?

You can write short blog posts commenting on the concepts and ideas you found interesting in the books.

Book reviews can drive traffic to your site since people often search online for reviews before they buy a book. Check out The Simple Dollar’s book review section for great examples of in depth reviews. You don’t have to write super long reviews, but if you call a blog post a review, I think it should be at least 500 words. Most people seem to expect reviews to be longer and more in depth than the typical blog post.

Surprisingly, outlining a book is helpful for many people. If you’re looking for good examples of book outlines, visit this a neat site: bookoutlines.

One fear many business bloggers seem to have is running out of stuff to say. They know blogs are supposed to be updated on a regular basis, so their fear is definitely legitimate.

When blogging expert, Chris Garrett, tackled this issue on Blog Herald, I took notice. He’s a prolific blogger with over 500 blog posts this year so he knows what he’s talking about. He basically gives two principles.

1. Be truly interested in your topic.
2. Talk to other people about your topic.

I’ve found that most business bloggers are passionate about their topic so the number #1 principle doesn’t seem to be a problem. However, many bloggers don’t do the number #2 principle.

Interacting with other people is great idea if you get a bad case of writer’s block. Chris writes:

Most of my best ideas come from just talking to people. I am mainly in niches where I have a real fascination with the subject so I love to discuss them, and inevitably something inspires a post so I note down the ideas I have.

So, where can you interact with others? Chris gives five places:

1. Twitter
2. Forums
3. Chat
4. Real life
5. Skype

There’s another great benefit from talking with others. If you’re writing about something other people are willing to talk about, chances are your blog readers will also be interested in that topic.

I don’t usually post on Sundays especially during NFL season 🙂 I’ve pretty much obsessed with American football and today has a lot of big games.

However, I have this simple but effective blogging tip that just came to me and it shouldn’t take too long to write.

Getting writer’s block while you’re in the middle of writing a blog post can be frustrating. You started with a great idea and you’ve knocked out a couple of paragraphs. However, somewhere during the writing process you get stuck and can’t think of anything else to write. Still, you know the post is incomplete.

If this happens to you, try taking a break. Take a tea break, coffee break, or whatever kind of break you like to take. Basically, step away from the keyboard for a couple minutes and don’t think about your post.

When your break is done, you’ll usually have new inspiration to complete your blog post or at least, improve on it.

This tactic seems counter intuitive but it actually works because it allows your subconscious “to work on the post”. Let’s face it, much of our great post ideas come from seemingly random flashes of insight when were not even thinking about blogging.

You can focus too closely on your post that it becomes hard to think creatively (or “outside the box”). However, by taking a break, you can often jar your brain into a new perspective that leads to great ideas to add to your blog post.

Also, it can be hard to see the big picture of where your post should be going. This is especially true for longer posts. While you’re trying to get that one sentence just right, you may be losing the big picture. Oftentimes, a break is just what is needed to get that big picture perspective again.

This principle works with longer breaks too. Some of my best work has come from half-written blog posts that I didn’t look at for days – even weeks. But when I finally looked over the posts again, I was able to turn them into high quality posts.

Yesterday, I talked about how your business blog can help you create profitable online partnerships. Today, let’s look specifically at some of those partnership opportunities. This list is not meant to be comprehensive. These opportunities are just some of the common ones I’ve seen.

Link Exchange

Link exchanges are link swaps. A blogger will email another blogger and basically say, “I’ll link to you if you link to me”. The links usually get placed on the sidebar or a links page. This tactic is usually done for SEO purposes but you might get some traffic if the blog your partner with is popular. I just wrote about this partnership opportunity so check out “How to Deal With Link Exchange Requests” for more info.

Guest Post

A guest post is a post which doesn’t go on your blog. Instead, it’s published on another blog. At the end of your guest post, you talk briefly about your blog and link back to it.

Basically, you send a blogger your guest post and ask them to publish it on their blog. This benefits them because they get free content while you get some traffic and SEO benefit because of your link.

Compared to a link exchange, you’ll usually get more traffic because your link is in the content part of the blog. Also, your link will provide more SEO benefit because search engines give more weight to content-based links over sidebar links or links on a links page.

Affiliate Program

An affiliate program involves two different partners. One is the merchant and the other is the affiliate. The merchant lets the affiliate sell his product. Whenever the affiliate sells the product, he gets a percentage of the revenue.

An affiliate program benefits the merchant because he gets free traffic while the affiliate pitching the product gets an opportunity to make money without buying or creating the product.

Collaborating on Content

Sometimes it’s better to co-write a blog post than write it yourself. If you can write 1000 words on a topic and then find another blogger to add 1000 more words from their unique perspective, with a little bit of editing, you could combine both blog posts into one killer blog post. Add a little bit of marketing and that one post could get popular through word of mouth and be known as a top resource in your industry.

This blog post was co-written by two bloggers. It received a ton of traffic and links. Also, it brought both of them many new clients and sales.

Collaborating on a Product/Service

You’ll often see this partnership with two people with different skill sets. For example, a web designer will work with a web programmer and create a package deal for their clients that want both design and programming services.

For information products, it often makes sense to partner with another blogger to add value to your existing product. For example, a blogger that sells an ebook might work with a video blogger to create a video product based on his ebook.

Over to You

What have you done to partner with other bloggers?