MackCollier.com

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Sharing Your Expertise Without Being ‘The Expert’

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Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat.

If you think about it, there’s a lot of seemingly contradictory advice being passed around about how to improve your blog.  On the one hand, one of the best arguments for blogging is that a blog allows you to share your expertise.  This is completely true and one of the best arguments in favor of blogging.

However, one of the problems that many bloggers of all stripes encounter is a lack of interaction and participation on their blog.  They create this place where they can share their expertise, and then no one wants to talk to them.

Often, there’s a reason why.  Because experts are scary people.  When you encounter an expert, the assumption is that they know more than you do.  And for many people it’s very intimidating to discuss a topic with someone that you believe knows far more about said topic than you do.

This is exactly why #Blogchat has a ‘No experts allowed’ rule.  Because when people are identified as the expert, what that really signals to everyone else is that you’re not the expert here.  And that shuts down communication.

So if you are the blogger, you need to walk a fine line of sharing your expertise without coming off as ‘The Expert’.  It’s a very tricky proposition, and even veteran bloggers struggle with this.  For example, I recently wrote a post that I was really excited about.  The topic was a bit more advanced and I envisioned it as creating a more high-level marketing discussion.

Instead, it got zero comments.  Because when you start a conversation at a more advanced level, you are setting the participation barrier at a high level for your readers.  For example, if you start a 301-level conversation about a topic, anyone that feels that they are below that level or ‘not as smart’ as the writer, likely won’t comment.

So if you are blogging to establish your expertise and also want to have engagement on your blog, you need to strike a balance between the two.  You need to share your expertise, but not in a way that discourages your readers from engaging with you.

That’s what we’ll discuss tonight at #Blogchat: How do you strike a balance between sharing your expertise and building engagement on your blog?  Please join us at 8pm Central tonight (3-2-2014) for the discussion.  Come on, who wants to watch the Oscars anyway?

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How to Turn Your Blog Into A Platform, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the link to the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat

Tonight at #Blogchat (2-16-2014) we will discuss how to turn your blog into a platform for your ideas.  Many of us blog because we want to share our ideas and our voice with the world.  But if you are truly committed to having your ideas reach as many people as possible, then you need to build a platform.  That’s what we will talk about tonight at #Blogchat.

To turn your blog into a platform, there’s certain steps you need to take:

1 – Understand that it will take a LOT of work to build your platform.  Look at the most successful bloggers, the one that have built a platform for their ideas.  They blog almost every day.  They create content in multiple forms.  Many of them also have podcasts, they are active on Twitter and Facebook, as well as other tools.  The point is, there is a lot of hard work involved in building a platform.

It’s great to want to see your blog grow and reach readership milestones, etc.  But you need to be honest with yourself about the work involved in reaching those goals.  Granted, as you reach your goals, more doors will open for you, but you have to first invest the work necessary to get there.

2 – Decide why you want a blogging platform.  What’s the end goal here?  Do you want to leverage your platform to launch a public speaking career?  Do you want to eventually write a book?  Why do you need a platform?  What goals are you trying to reach?  Once you’ve figured out why you need a platform, that will help you greatly in developing your strategy for building one.

3 – Narrow your focus.  It’s almost impossible to build a platform around 5 different topics, even if they are complimentary.  Focus on 1-2 core topics that you want to build your platform on.  Or think of it this way, if someone mentions you to a friend, that friend would say “Oh I know her, she’s the ______ gal!”  What would go in that blank?  Do you want to be known as “The WordPress gal!” or “The Facebook gal!” or “The #TwitterChatNameHere gal!”  Think about how you want others to know you.

4 – Build the Castle first, then the kingdom.  What will be the foundation of your platform?  In many cases, I think your blog is a great choice, so focus on first building your blog.  Think about how you can build your blog and turn it into a platform to help spread your ideas.  Think about how you can create better content and MORE content.  Simply writing better posts and blogging more often will be huge drivers in helping you grow your blog’s audience.

5 – Build a support network for your platform.  How can you use other tools to help build your platform?  For example, I use Twitter extensively to drive traffic back to this blog.  In the last year I’ve also started growing an email newsletter that helps send people here.  You want to think about how you can use other tools AWAY from your blog to help build out your blog.

 

So those are some of the areas we will cover in tonight’s #Blogchat when we talk about building a platform for your ideas.  #Blogchat will start tonight at 8pm Central.  I think this is an incredibly important topic, and here’s one reason why I think building a platform for your ideas is so important.

Since my book Think Like a Rock Star came out, I have become enamored with not only my book’s progress, but I also watch when other books are released by people in this space.  I want to see what I can learn from their efforts, but I also want to compare their results against my own.

One thing I began to notice a few months ago was that even though TLARS had excellent reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, some books that didn’t have as many positive reviews were selling better than mine.  I started trying to figure out what they were doing differently, then I realized that in every instance, these authors had a bigger platform to promote their book from than I did.  They had the popular blog PLUS they had 100,000 followers on Twitter PLUS they had 50,000 people on their email list PLUS they had a popular podcast, etc etc etc.  It helped me realize that simply having a great idea/book isn’t enough, you need to have a platform in place that helps carry that great idea to other people.

Tonight let’s talk about how you can build the platform that your ideas deserve.  See you at #Blogchat!

Pic via Flickr user PhotoAtelier

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Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic is ‘Content Shock’ With Special Co-Host @TheSalesLion!

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Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat!

Tonight (Feb. 9th, 2014), Marcus Sheridan, AKA @TheSalesLion will join us to discuss the idea of ‘Content Shock’ and whether or not it’s too late to start blogging.  You can read Marcus’ thoughts on ‘Content Shock‘ here.  One of the reasons why I wanted Marcus to co-host on this topic is because his views on supporting new bloggers and new voices dovetails with mine.  We both believe the entire online community is richer and more valuable for all when more people feel empowered to share their thoughts and ideas with the world.

Tonight’s #Blogchat will cover two areas:

From 8:00-8:30 Central we will discuss if it is too late to start blogging.  And if you start a blog today, what do you need to know?

From 8:30-9:00 Central we will discuss the idea of ‘Content Shock’, and how you can make your content stand out from the rest!

 

Please follow @TheSalesLion on Twitter, and check out Marcus’ blog tonight in prep for #Blogchat!

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Is Your Blog Still Your Front Porch? Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the transcript for tonight’s #Blogchat

Tonight (Jan 26, 2014) we’ll discuss if your blog is still your front porch.  Recently, I went back through the archives of The Viral Garden, which was my blog before this one.  I started blogging there in 2006, before we all found Twitter or Facebook and years before there was a Google Plus.  In 2006 and 2007 if you wanted to share an interesting blog post or article, you didn’t tweet it or post it to Facebook, you shared it on your blog.  I did this as well, in fact once a week or so I would post a ‘Viral Community News’ that would have a roundup of 4-5 blog posts that readers of The Viral Garden had wrote that I thought were interesting.  It was also a great way to build readership.

But over time, I discovered Twitter, and then Facebook, and my linking behavior changed.  I stopped linking on my blog as much, and moved to sharing content via other social media channels and tools.  I think most other bloggers have done the same thing, but at the same time, it seems that bloggers are more worried today about building readership.  In my opinion, part of the reason why it’s more difficult to build readership is because of that change in linking behavior.  Years ago when linking was primarily confined to blogs, that meant traffic bounced back and forth among those blogs.  Today, linking has moved off blogs, and additionally a lot of our thoughts that years ago would have been shared as a blog post, are now shared as a Facebook update.

I wanted to talk about this tonight at #Blogchat, and specifically three areas:

1 – Has the way you use your blog changed in the last few years as Twitter and Facebook have become more popular?

2 – Are the things such as linking and content sharing that make social media as a whole more valuable to you, actually making blogging less valuable?

3 –  What can we do to make sure that blogging stays the centerpiece of our social media presence?  Should it be?

Hope to see y’all tonight at 8pm Central on Twitter!  If you are new to #Blogchat you can learn more here.

Pic via Flickr user YellowstoneNPS

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Amazing #Blogchat Stats From 2013

Thanks to Hashtracking I was able to track the #Blogchat stats for 2013, and came up with some pretty interesting results that I wanted to share with you.

First, a caveat: Hashtracking switched me over from their account to an account just for me in February, so there’s a gap of 9 days where we didn’t have stats for #Blogchat.  So all stats associated with the chat are approximate.

#blogchatStats2Actually the number I currently have is right over 116,000, so if you add in the gap in February and the final 12 days of this year, we’ll end up with right at 125,000 #Blogchat tweets generated this year.  Yes, we are a chatty bunch!

Here’s how those tweets break down (Feb-now):

#blogchatStats3As you can see, 39% of the #Blogchat tweets are someone replying to someone else.  It’s a conversation, which is why #Blogchat has been so successful and what I love about the chat.  Smart people sharing what they know and learning from each other.

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Amazing number, isn’t it?  That’s the size of many small towns!  It also speaks to the diversity of the #Blogchat community.

#blogchatStats5I think this is really interesting.  26% of the tweets come from the 20 most active contributors, and 48%, almost half, of the tweets come from the 100 most active contributors.  So half the tweets are coming from 0.5% of the members!   

#blogchatStats6Thanks to Patrick, Linda, Bruce, Georganna and Janice for being the 5 most active members of the #Blogchat community this year.  If you are new to #Blogchat, these guys are a must-follow!

Of course, one of the things that makes #Blogchat so valuable is all the amazing co-hosts we get to learn from.  2013 was certainly no exception…

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 We were extremely lucky to learn from Kerry, Chris, Mitch, Jay, Carrie, Dave and Sheila this year.  As an added bonus, here’s the transcript from each co-host’s #Blogchat:

Kerry – Legal aspects of blogging

Chris – Incorporating video into your blogging

Jay – How to create Youtility in your blogging

Dave – Leveraging your blog as a networking tool

Sheila – Blogger outreach

Carrie – How a small biz can make money from blogging

Mitch – Lessons learned from a decade of blogging

Biggest #Blogchat of the year?  That came on the Sunday of March the 10th, when 3,038 tweets were generated!

Oh and who was the person with the most followers that used the #Blogchat hashtag in 2013?  That would be this guy:

#blogchatStats8Ok granted he only tweeted twice about #Blogchat and they were both RTs but hey, it’s MC Hammer!

And the biggie:

#blogchatStats10Isn’t that amazing?  And no, ‘Reach’ and ‘Impressions’ aren’t always the most accurate measurements around, but still, the number of people exposed to the #Blogchat hashtag this year cannot be denied. It’s a staggeringly large number.

Finally, thank you to everyone that has helped make #Blogchat the amazingly valuable and helpful community that it is.  Here’s to an even better 2014, which will be #Blogchat’s FIFTH year!

PS: Want to sponsor #Blogchat in 2014?  Here’s price and details.

 

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Your 2,000 Word Guide to Building a Better Blog

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First, start with where you are now.   

Before you can move forward with your blog, you need to assess where you are now.  Let’s start by looking at your blog’s stats.

First, are you tracking your blog’s stats?  Hopefully you are, if not, start by adding Google Analytics to your blog today.

Assuming you have access to your blog’s stats, look at your stats for this year.  Start broadly by looking at the entire year.  Look for trends.  How is traffic doing?  How is search traffic doing?  Pageviews?  You want to see if you can find movement up or down and then try to figure out what triggered that movement.

But the main point is, you want to baseline where your blog is now so you’ll know if you are improving on your efforts as the year progresses.

What were you blogging goals for the previous year?  Did you reach them?  Look at how successful you were at reaching your goals and then decide if you need to alter anything for the year ahead.

Creating a Blogging Strategy 

Let’s assume that you either need to create a strategy for your blog, or you need to totally revamp your existing efforts.  How do you get started?

First, you need to decide what you want to accomplish with your blog.  Here’s some examples:

Increase sales

Increase brand awareness

Establish thought leadership

And those are examples for a business blog, but the same principle applies for a personal blog.  Basically ask yourself “What needs to happen in order for my blog to be a success?”  Answering this question is imperative because it’s the foundation for your blogging strategy.  

Defining Your Audience

This is critical.  You have to understand who it is you are writing for and what actions you want that audience to take.  If you’re trying to use your blog to build brand awareness, then it’s probably not a good idea to post your political rants there!

Here’s an example.  My desired audience for this blog is marketers that are interested in either working with me to help them build programs to better connect with their most passionate customers, or who want to hire me to speak or lead a workshop at their event.  In order words, my desired audience is primarily marketers at mid-sized and larger companies.  A couple of months ago a friend of mine pointed out that my content focus had gotten off center.  She helped me realize that a lot of the content I was creating at the time was actually focused on helping small businesses and solopreneurs.  maybe even personal bloggers.  I went back and checked and she was right!  I was focusing so much on creating helpful content that I lost track of the fact that the content wasn’t as helpful to my desired audience.  So you need to not only define your audience, but keep who it is you’re writing for in mind at all times, so you can create content that’s useful to them.

What Actions Do You Want Your Audience to Take?

Let’s go back to your goals for your blog:

Increase sales

Increase brand awareness

Establish thought leadership

Once you’ve figured out what your blogging goal is and who your desired audience is, you need to decide what actions you want that audience to take.  And those actions should tie back to your goals for your blog.

I’ll use this blog again as an example.  I want to connect with companies that can either hire me as a speaker, or that can hire me to help them build smarter marketing programs to connect with their most passionate customers.  So keeping this in mind, note what you see at the top of the blog on the nav bar.  The options are to learn more about me, to buy my book, to learn about hiring me to speak, and to learn about my consulting.  Then look at the top of the sidebars on the right.  At the top of the first sidebar is a form to signup for my email newsletter.  At the top of the other sidebar is my brand advocacy posts.  All of this is set up to give you information on how we can work together, or give you valuable content that can help you improve your marketing, but that also helps establish my expertise.  So either way, I am trying to move the reader closer to hiring me to either speak for or work with them.

Keep in mind that your most important real estate on your blog is Above the Fold.  This refers to the area you see when you first arrive on a blog without scrolling down.  The content at the top of your blog is always seen, so make sure that you use this space wisely.  For example if you want to drive email newsletter signups, simply moving your signup form from the bottom of your blog to the top will greatly increase your signup rate.

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What’s Your Content Strategy?

Remember earlier when we talked about defining our audience?  A big reason why was so we could craft a content strategy to connect with that audience.  Essentially, you want to think about how you can create content for your audience that is valuable to them, but that also helps them move closer to engaging in the types of actions you want them to take.  Your content needs to ultimately help you reach your larger goals for your blog.

An important distinction to keep in mind is that they type of content that you feel is valuable for your brand might not be valuable to your audience.  For example, if your goal is to increase sales, then you want to create content that moves your audience closer to buying from you.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should create content that directly promotes your brand.  Often, content that teaches your audience a skill and that empowers them will make it easier for them to buy from you.  Sometimes pointing out what your competitors are doing can work because it can help your audience trust you.  Keep in mind that blogging is a great way to facilitate selling INdirectly.  Create valuable content for your audience, and that makes it easier for them to trust you, and easier for them to trust buying FROM you.

Developing a Posting Schedule

In many ways, your posting schedule will be a function of who you are writing for and what you are trying to accomplish (see how we are building the strategy as we add each layer?).  This post goes into creating a posting schedule a bit deeper, but we’ll talk about it here as well.  Think about who your audience is and when they are most receptive to your content.  In general (and please pay attention to the end of the post), posts seem to do better in the middle of the week.  For myself and most bloggers I have talked to since 2005 (whether personal or writing for a company blog), Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for traffic.  After that Monday, Friday, then the weekends.  So if you can only write one post a week, start running it on Tuesday or Thursday and see how it does.

Also keep in mind that certain goals will be dependent on creating more content.  For example, none of your goals for blogging will be easily reached if you can only write 1 post a month.  You need to create as much valuable content as possible.  Now ‘valuable’ is a very subjective term, but in general a good goal to shoot for is writing a minimum of one new post a week on your blog.  If you go below that it really becomes difficult to build readership.  A lot of people don’t like to talk about this, but there are several advantages to creating more content.  First, it trains you to become a better writer, quicker.  Second, search engines love sites that update their content frequently.  So new content helps your search rankings, and search traffic.  Third, new content helps build readership quicker.

So as a minimum baseline for your posting schedule, shoot for at least one post a week, ideally either on Tuesday or Thursday.  Another point to focus on is consistency of posting.  If you can only write 1 new post a week, then publish it the same day every week so your readers know when to expect it.  Not everyone will subscribe to your blog.

Tracking Your Blog’s Progress  

Did you take care of your blog stats as we discussed at the start of this post?  Good, because you’re going to need to have access to this information throughout the year.  Now comes the fun part, where we start tracking if this stuff is actually working.

First, read this post I wrote on blog analytics.  It will help you understand what you are looking for.  Go back and look at your goals for your goal.  What we want to do now is track metrics that relate to those goals.  Here’s some examples:

Stats1 These are metrics you can track to tell you that your content is helping you reach your goal of building brand awareness.  These metrics are all signals that your content is resonating with other people, and as such, that content is building a tool to help you or your brand build its reputation and awareness.

So when you start tracking metrics, pick metrics that tie back to your goal.  Don’t simply settle on the metrics that are the easiest to track, you want to make sure that you are focused only on tracking what makes sense for your blogging strategy.

Additionally, you will want to drill down and analyze your content to see which posts/topics are generating attention with your readers.  It’s a good idea every month or at least every quarter to look at your most popular posts for the last 30/60/90 days.  What you’re trying to figure out is which posts were more popular with readers and why were they more popular?  For example, if you look at your blogs stats for the last 90 days, you might find that 3 of your 5 most popular posts were posts that included industry news and links to stories within your industry.  That’s a key insight, and it could prompt you to start writing a post recapping industry news every Friday on your blog.  That one change could result in a 15-25% increase in blog traffic over the rest of the year.

Also, look at the keywords that people are using to find your content.  This will also help you learn how to change your content to make it more accessible to search engines.  When you look at your keywords, you will probably find that a lot of the phrases used are something like this: ‘How do I….’ or ‘What’s the best way to….’  So if you start writing your post headlines as a question, that can really help your search results because your post’s headline will closely resemble the actual search phrases that people are using.  One of my most popular posts here is How To Write Your First Blog Post.  A big reason that post is so popular is because the headline closely resembles common search terms such as ‘how do I write my first blog post?’ or ‘how to write my first blog post’.  So factor in how people will search for content when you write your posts and especially your post headline.

Finally, Remember This is All a Guide, Not An Absolute

I want to close with a word of caution: None of this is absolute and it shouldn’t be taken as such.  The purpose of this post is to get you started.  But as you start fleshing out your blog in the coming year, you may find that some of the advice I’ve shared with you here doesn’t seem to be working on your blog.  That could be because you are doing something wrong, or it could be because your blog is different.  For example, it may be that your particular audience wants new content on Saturdays and Sundays, instead of during the middle of the week.  If you truly want to build an awesome blog then you need to experiment and be willing to try new things.  You need to tinker, and see what works and what does not.  I have been blogging now for over 9 years, and I am constantly trying new things.  The reason why I do this is because I want to get better.  Like you, I will read what others tell me I should be doing.  I look for best practices, but I also understand that just because something works for every other blogger doesn’t guarantee that it will work for me.

This post will get you started on your journey to have an amazing blog.  But if you hit a pothole along the way, don’t be afraid to step back, and try something different.  It might not work, but even if it doesn’t, you will still learn something in the process.   As long as you are constantly learning, you are constantly improving.

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Blog Layout, Navigation Tips and Best Practices, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

Here’s the transcript to tonight’s #Blogchat.  Click Transcript on the right.

Tonight (12-1-2013) at 8pm Central, we’ll discuss how to organize and layout your blog at #Blogchat!  This is a very important topic because your blog’s layout and how you present your content has a very important impact on its success.

To frame tonight’s conversation, I wanted to cover a couple of key points.  First, make a list of the top three things you want visitors to do on your blog.  If I come to your blog right now for the first time, what are the three most important things I could do?

Write a comment?

Signup for your newsletter?

Download a white paper?

Think about what you want me to do.  For example, the three things I’d like visitors to do when they visit my site is:

1 – Contact me about hiring me as a consultant or speaker

2 – Signup for my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter

3 – Read my posts on brand advocacy

Those are the three most important things that a visitor could do for me when they visit here.  So I plan my navigation and content here accordingly.  This leads to the second key point:

All content Above the Fold is prime real estate

‘Above the Fold’ means all the content that people see when your blog/site loads.  This is the stuff they can see WITHOUT having to scroll down.  So you want your most important stuff to be at the top of your site, and in general, to the middle and right.  Consider again the 3 most important actions a reader could take here, and where that content is:

1 – Contact me about hiring me as a consultant or speaker (All my consulting/speaking info is on the top nav bar)

2 – Signup for my Think Like a Rock Star newsletter (signup form is at the top of the left sidebar)

3 – Read my posts on brand advocacy (posts are at the top of the right sidebar)

 

All the content associated with those 3 actions is Above the Fold, at the top of my blog.  So if you want me to signup for your blog newsletter, guess what, that needs to be at the very top where I can easily find it.

So tonight we’ll be chatting more about blog layout, navigation and architecture.  Thanks to Jessica Northey for the topic suggestion!

Does your brand or company want to sponsor #Blogchat in January 2014?  Here’s price and all the details.  See y’all tonight at 8pm Central!

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Time’s Running Out to Land the #Blogchat Sponsorship in December

#BlogchatTweetIanHey y’all! I wanted to bring the #Blogchat sponsorship to your attention for a couple of reasons:

1 – December has 5 Sundays, so that means 5 #Blogchats.  So you are effectively getting 25% more #Blogchat for your money!

2 – Rates will increase by 33% starting in January.  Due to constant demand for sponsorships, the monthly rate starting in 2014 will increase from $1,500.00 a month to $2.000.00 a month.  So I wanted to make sure you have a chance to get the $1,500.00 rate before it disappears.

You can get full details here on what’s included in the sponsorship.

One area I wanted to cover here is that when you sign on as a sponsor of #Blogchat, I’ll work with you to make sure you get as much bang for your buck as possible.  We’ll work together to determine what you need to happen as a result of the sponsorship in order for it to be a success for your brand.  I don’t want this to just be a box you check off, I want you to see positive gains to your business from this partnership.

Also, please keep in mind that all potential sponsors are vetted.  I want to make sure that the sponsorship makes sense to you, and makes sense to #Blogchat.  In fact I have turned down three requests to sponsor #Blogchat just in the last week because I didn’t feel that the company would be a good fit for #Blogchat, or vice versa.

One of the first questions most potential sponsors have is ‘Will we have a say in the topics chosen for #Blogchat?’  The answer is ‘yes’, to a degree.  Obviously, I want to make sure that we cover topics that are relevant to you as the sponsor.  At the same time, I want to make sure the topics are relevant to the #Blogchat community as well.  Don’t worry, I am pretty creative in setting topics that create value for everyone, and here’s some examples of topics that were set for previous #Blogchat sponsors.

By the numbers, #Blogchat is one of the biggest if not the biggest Twitter chat around.  Each week 20-30 Million impressions of the #Blogchat hashtag are generated, and usually 2,000-3,000 tweets during the week.  Typically 1,200-1,500 tweets are generated during the hour of #Blogchat, Sunday at 8pm Central.  That’s an average of a new tweet every 2-3 seconds!

Additionally, I did a survey of #Blogchat participants early last year, and you can see the results here.  In general, about 1,000 people follow the #blogchat hashtag each week, half of those people blog for a company, typically a small B2B company.  And the majority of the participants are female.

If you’d like to sponsor #Blogchat in December, the rate is $1,500.00.  The sponsorship will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis, and if you are interested please email me and we’ll go from there!  Also if you know a company that would be a good fit to sponsor #Blogchat or one you would like to see sponsor #Blogchat, please share this post with them.  Thank you!

 

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Getting and Writing Guest Posts, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the transcript to tonight’s #Blogchat (Click on Transcript on the left)

Tonight (November 17th, 2013) we’ll cover one of the most requested topics at #Blogchat, how to write and get Guest Posts!  #Blogchat is sponsored all month by Pencils.com, please follow them on Twitter and check out their blog!

Here’s what we’ll cover tonight at #Blogchat, starting at 8pm Central:

8:00PM-8:30PM Central – How to write Guest Posts for other bloggers.  We’ll talk about how to approach other bloggers about letting you guest post for them, and how to figure out what they want you to write about.  Writing guest posts for other bloggers is an excellent way to build awareness and exposure for yourself.

8:30PM-9:00PM – How to get bloggers to write Guest Posts for your blog.  On the flipside, if you can have other bloggers guest post on your blog, it’s a great way to get additional and valuable content on your blog, which benefits you by boosting your traffic and exposure!  Plus the blogger that wrote the guest post for you has a vested interest in promoting the post, which also promotes your blog!  Here’s a recent guest post that Kerry wrote for this blog.

 

So join us tonight starting at 8pm Central, or stop by a few minutes early to say hi!  You can follow the hashtag on Twitter here.

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The Creative Process: How We Write Our Blog Posts is Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat, click Transcript on the left.

Hey y’all!  Tonight (Nov. 11-2013) our #Blogchat topic is The Creative Process!  #Blogchat is sponsored this month by Pencils.com, please check out their selection of writing and drawing tools as well as their blog and please follow them on Twitter.

I think tonight’s topic will be incredibly useful and it will definitely be one where you’ll want to be favoriting a lot of tweets as we’ll all be sharing some of our favorite tips, tools and tricks on how we create our blog posts.  Here’s what we’ll cover:

8:00-8:30PM Central – The Creative Process.  Here we’ll talk about how we actually write our blog posts.  Where do we start, do we write the headline first, or last?  How do we flesh out our post ideas?

8:30-8:45PM Central – What digital tools do you use to help in writing blog posts?  Are there apps or sites that help you collect information or save ideas for posts?

8:45-9:00PM Central – What analog tools do you use to help in writing blog posts?  Do you take notes the old-fashioned way, with pen and pad?  If you write your posts out, do you prefer to use pens or pencils?

 

It should be a great discussion tonight so please join us starting at 8pm Central!