“How to Land a Job as a “Resident Blogger”” plus 1 more

How to Land a Job as a “Resident Blogger”

Posted: 19 Jun 2012 01:04 PM PDT

This guest post is by Jane of Runaway Jane.

I recently secured the position of Resident Blogger at PLUS Hostels, a large hostel and camp site chain based in Europe.

I’d spent more than two years blogging on my independent travel blog RunawayJane.com, and that experience undoubtedly led to me securing this position.

But it wasn’t the only factor.

I thought it would be useful to illustrate exactly what led me to land this job so that if you’re looking to secure a freelance position like this, you’ll have a head-start on your competition.

Initiative is key

I approached PLUS about becoming their Resident Blogger. This was an idea that I pitched to them.

I had looked at their social media output and saw that they were very active. They also had a very cool, well-designed site targeted at a young audience.

So I was surprised that they didn’t already have an active blog, and I took it upon myself to email them and ask if it was something they’d be interested in doing.

My first email was short, to the point, and didn’t waste anybody’s time. I simply asked if it was something they’d be interested in. I decided to wait for their response before I’d go into more detail about how we could potentially partner.

Timing and a bit of luck

As it happened, my timing was spot-on: PLUS was already looking at implementing a blog sometime over the coming months when they received my email.

However, before I approached them, I was not on their radar as someone who could help—in fact, they were considering approaching other people. I was told in my interview with them that one of the reasons I was chosen above other candidates was because I approached them. They knew I was keen.

I guess you can guarantee that someone who’s approaching you is more likely to work hard for you, because they obviously have an interest in working with you that goes beyond just monetary value (although of course money is important!).

Follow up

I initially approached PLUS around January or February 2012. I remembered they’d said they would be considering bloggers in April, and would get back to me then.

So I sent them a follow-up email in mid-April to ask whether they had considered my proposal, as I hadn’t head anything from them.

This was another key factor in me securing the position, as it meant I was not forgotten, and, again, that I appeared keen and interested.

Previous blogging matters

There is no doubt that if I hadn’t been blogging as Runaway Jane for some time, I would not have been considered for this position.

As soon as I got in touch with PLUS they were able to go onto my blog, and access hundreds of blog posts I’d written. They could see the quality and style of work that I was producing, and assess whether or not it would fit their blog.

They could also see I was active on social media channels, and already had a following. This proved that I understood the demands of blogging (as opposed to straight-up travel writing), and had demonstrated the self motivation over two years to create my own standing within the blogging world.

They could see that I updated my blog regularly, was interactive with my readers, and could write the types of content that engaged an audience. That audience also happened to fit their target market.

Get paid!

I was asked by quite a few other bloggers whether or not I was getting paid by PLUS for this position.

These questions surprised me. To me, the matter of getting paid was obvious—of course I was getting paid! It was a freelance blogging position that I was going to be putting a lot of time and effort into, so payment was only fair.

That said, PLUS are also putting a lot of effort into promoting me, my brand, my Twitter handle, and my site. I took this into consideration when I was quoting them a price for my services—after all, not everything is about immediate monetary gain.

For me, long-term value is more important, and securing this position was more important than an extra hundred dollars a month or so.

If you’re trying to build a brand and a long-term future in blogging, it’s important to be able to seek opportunities that allow you to promote yourself, further your experience, and create case studies that help to prove your abilities for future opportunities.

It’s also something which I hope will grow to become a long-term partnership, rather than something short lived.

With all that said, I’d be lying if I said I was an expert on quoting a price for such services. Blogging is such a new industry, and a new way to earn a living. Even now, people still look puzzled when I explain to them I make a living from blogging.

Prices and expectations change all the time, and you have to weigh up factors such as earning a living now against the long-term gains and opportunities for building a career. Then there is the fact the the value of bloggers is now starting to be realised by big companies in almost every industry. I predict more positions will open up like this in the future…

Create your own job

I hope that if you try to create a Resident Blogger position like I have, you’ll find some success using these tips.

Overall, the key is to go out and create your own opportunities (although what I did involved luck in terms of timing). All this would never have happened had I not approached PLUS myself.

To be a successful blogger you really need to seek out and create as many opportunities for yourself as you can. Offers that land on your doorstep are great, but I wouldn’t plan on that happening!

Jane has been blogging from her travel blog www.RunawayJane.com since early 2010. She has been making a full-time income from blogging since 2011, and travels the world full-time as she goes, living a location independent blogging lifestyle.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Land a Job as a “Resident Blogger”

Titles That Work on ProBlogger—And Why

Posted: 19 Jun 2012 07:09 AM PDT

Darren recently highlighted some of the posts that attract clicks at Digital Photography School. Many readers were interested to see the kinds of titles that do well here at ProBlogger, so today I thought I’d show you the posts that garnered a lot of traffic here in April.

The top titles

Here are the top seven, in order of their traffic levels:

Why they work

Looking at this list, a few features immediately jump out at me—I wonder if they do for you, too?

Titles that quantify the post’s benefits work well: Facebook tactics that’ll triple your fans? 100,000 pageviews in one month? 19 Essential plugins? Win one of ten trips? Quantification of benefits is a theme among these titles. I know people say “list posts do well,” but I think the issue—at click—isn’t the list so much as the perceived payoff. And all of these post titles promise a big payoff, up-front. Of course, to be shared, the posts need to deliver on that payoff, and these ones obviously do.
Natural language speaks volumes: The title 3 Reasons No One Comes Back to Your Blog—And How to Fix It quantifies a benefit, but it also speaks in natural language. It’s a slight exaggeration—you’re probably not getting zero repeat visits to your blog—but it’s one that we’d use in conversation with our blogging friends: “Man, no one comes back to my blog!” The same goes for “tactics that’ll triple your fans.” Bloggers seem reticent to use contractions in titles, but they can work really well—especially in keeping the rhythm of the title swinging along. They also suggest that the post will be written in language that’s approachable and on the level.
Titles that speak to “you” have cut-through: Three of these titles refer directly to the reader: your blog, your fans. While you’ll want to mix your titles up a bit, bringing the message and the benefits home to your audience by speaking to them directly is a good way to pique readers’ interest. Using “you” and “your” can give titles personal relevance.
Unique ideas grab attention: We see titles about Facebook marketing and WordPress plugins all the time, and they’re basically essential reading. But some of the other titles in this list communicate unusual ideas, and get attention for that very reason. Get 100,000 pageviewss a month … using SlideShare? That’s going to make a few people stop and sit up. Similarly, systemizing writing is a bit of a foreign concept for many: just how do you systemize what’s seen as an unruly, unpredictable creative task? So topics are important to the success of these posts, too.

How we tweaked them

Finally, I wanted to show you how we’d altered these titles, so you can try similar tweaks on your own post titles.

Win 1 of 10 Trips to the Great Barrier Reef in QLD, Australia #QLDBLOG: This post was originally called “Queensland Competition” but Darren updated it before publication! Smart move.
19 Essential WordPress Plugins for Your Blog: The only change I made here was to the ending. The post’s original title was “19 Essential WordPress Plugins for 2012″ but I thought the content would have more longevity without the time-limitation. I also like to use “your” in titles where I can, because I think it gives some titles more cut-through: “Essential plugins for my blog? Really? Alright, I’ll take a look.”
9 Facebook Marketing Tactics That’ll Triple Your Fans: This post was submitted with the title “9 Facebook Marketing Strategies to Triple Your Fans”. I changed “strategies” because, well, they weren’t strategies. I also wanted a stronger sense of causality between the tactics and the results, so I used “that’ll.” Altogether, these changes alliterated well and gave the title a strong natural rhythm, too.
3 Reasons No One Comes Back to Your Blog—And How to Fix It: This post was originally titled, “3 reasons no one comes back even after a huge spike in traffic”. The problem was length, and context. Comes back to where? When I see titles in my Twitter feed or RSS feed reader, keywords jump out. I wanted to get “blog” into this one. Also, since Alex had included “The fix?” headings for each of the reasons he’d identified in the post, the “—and how to fix it” part of the title basically wrote itself.
And the Winners Are… #QLDBLOG: Again, Darren wrote this one and, within the context of the blog, there was no need to change it.
Attract 100,000 Pageviews in 1 Month Using SlideShare: This one was submitted with the title, “How to get 100,000 views in 1 month using Slideshare” but I wanted to get that big number closer to the start of the title. Also, we have a lot of “how to” posts on ProBlogger, so I try to vary them a bit so the blog doesn’t come across as one big how-to post. Finally, the full word “pageviews” seemed a bit more Google-responsive than “views.”
A Systematic Approach to Writing Successful Blog Posts: This post was submitted with the title “How to write a successful blog post,” but on reading it I saw that it presented a system for writing, and I’d just scheduled another post on systematized blogging. I thought this post would be a nice follow-up, so I scheduled it for the same day and gave it a title that tied it to the theme of systematized blogging. As I mentioned above, this title was a bit more of a head-turner, since the whole problem with creative tasks like writing is that they seem so slippery and difficult to manage.