ProBlogger: 5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

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5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier Posted: 15 Feb 2015 06:33 AM PST Blogging. It goes a little something like this: Think of idea Write a post Take/source/edit a photo for the post Format the post Schedule or publish the post Push the post to social media Respond to comments But that is just the beginning, right? That doesn’t include planning, goal-setting, editorial calendars, blog design, design tweaks, multimedia, multiple updates on social media, a social media workflow plan, guest blogging, networking, sponsorships, affliliate sales, creating products, launching products, email marketing, creating newsletters, being part of the blogging community, going to events, keeping up with trends… There’s so much to do. In the five years I’ve been blogging I feel like I’ve made all the mistakes. One of my biggest ones was wasting time. When you’re blogging on top of work and life and other responsibilities, that time you have to spare is is finite. After crashing and burning with my poor habits, I learned very quickly what would work to cut down wasted time, and I then created strategies to be more efficient. 5 Ways to Make your Blogging Life Easier Batching Batching is when you complete the same or similar tasks in one period of time. Instead of writing a post with a headline, image, post body, etc, you might like to write all posts for the week in one go, edit and upload all images in one go, etc. It means you’re in the right headspace for each task, rather than switching between what you need to do, then the next task, then back again. Batching is also super-useful for returning emails, scheduling social media, general writing, researching, image sourcing, and the menial task you hate but must be done (accounts, anyone?!). I’ve even gone so far as to choose which days I batch process. Mondays was content creation, Tuesdays was email and images… I’ve had to make some adjustments this year, but picking days when I was most useful was actually the most successful strategy I tried. Scheduling This applies to both time and content. I schedule my time when I have it, and I schedule content. For example, if I have a few hours spare, I’ll spend a couple of minutes before I get started prioritising my tasks and adding them to blocks of time. I usually try and “eat the frog first”, i.e. doing the thing that’s the hardest to do, so the rest is easier (and also can be added to tomorrow’s to-do list if I get interrupted, as they’re not as time-sensitive as the frog). My frog is usually content creation. I need to do that when I’m motivated and have space to think. Image processing I can do later, and with less brain bandwidth. So I schedule creation first, then other tasks. Darren’s low-tech editorial schedule Scheduling content is super useful for when you don’t have time to blog every day, or you’re taking a break. Scheduling content on your blog and scheduling your social media means less hands-on work, and more time to work on other things. Like binge-watching Netflix and eating popcorn. If you’re scheduling your social media, do make sure you pop onto the platforms at certain times to respond to people. It’s best if you can post and respond in real time, but if that’s not always possible (I know for me it certainly isn’t), then schedule the updates, and respond when you have time. Or when you’ve scheduled time in your day to respond! Figure out when you’re most efficient I’ll never forget one morning I woke up before the birds and wondered if I should just study for my upcoming test seeing as though I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon. I was soon surprised to realise how clear my thinking was and how well I understood what I was reading. My attention was focused and things made perfect sense. I felt like I had mastered some pretty difficult concepts (it was a third-year psychology exam, after all) and was well on my way to acing a test – all before breakfast! I knew right away I was a morning person. While working in the early hours hasn’t been achievable for me in the last few years (two kids who don’t sleep, heaven help me), I do know I’m more efficient for brain tasks in the morning, and can satisfactorily respond to emails and requests, upload recipes, and do admin later in the afternoon. I’m pretty fried by night and can barely string a sentence together, so I don’t even bother. A friend of mine is the opposite – she doesn’t really get her writing groove on until late afternoon, and will write up until bedtime. It’s all about knowing when you’re the most efficient so you aren’t trying to write a 2000 word post on Facebook algorithm changes when you’re dog tired and fuzzy. When you’re efficient, you don’t waste time –  and as a bonus, you complete tasks faster. Automate Bless you, internet automation tools, where would we be without you? They are fiercely discussed, loyalties are strong – it’s hard not to love something that makes your life so much easier. There’s been plenty of discussion here on ProBlogger about what kinds of tools everyone loves to use for automation – everything from social media scheduling apps to creating reports in Google Analytics so they’re sent to you regularly and it saves you going looking for them. You can automate plenty of things for your blog: If This Then That (IFTTT) is huge for automated behaviours. It can do anything from posting your Instagram pictures to your twitter account (thereby bypassing that pesky issue of Instagram images not showing up in newsfeeds), you can be emailed when someone mentions you online, you can “like” a track on Soundcloud and have it directly downloaded to your Dropbox – plenty of things you can set up to automatically happen after a trigger of your choosing. I had to giggle when I saw this automation for parents: Email canned responses are a wonderful thing if you find yourself answering people with the same information over and over. Gmail in particular is useful for this – it will send a pre-written response as a reply to inquiring emails. You can automate the responses to be sent based on the criteria you choose – often sender, subject, keyword, etc. Very handy for freeing up your time. Automation doesn’t get much better than apps that manage your social media. No longer do you have to wait for posts to go live before you manually update them to your Facebook! Or set reminders for when you wanted to tweet out your link based on when your audience is online. There are plenty of places to go where you schedule a bunch of posts to go out at a time of your choosing. Darren uses Sprout Social (see his social media scheduling workflow here), I use a combination of CoSchedule and Buffer, and there are plenty that will help you out when it comes to Instagram and Pinterest, too – namely Schedugram, Latergramme, Viraltag and Ahalogy. Planning I cannot recommend this enough! I haven’t always done it, but it made a huge difference to how I spent my time, and how efficient I was when I finally had the time. After I nailed the planning of time, I moved onto the planning of content. It was important for me to take a step back and see the bigger picture of what I needed to do and what I wanted to achieve when it came to blogging. It was no longer enough to just show up every day and do what needed to be done, I had to plan first so I could be in control, rather than always running to catch up. I hate running. The first thing I did was figure out when I was most efficient now that I couldn’t do the early mornings any more. Then I figured out which parts of the day would be used for which tasks. Then I made the holiest of holies: the editorial calendar. Even if I didn’t know exactly what day I’d be blogging that pot pie recipe, knowing I had a post to write about pot pies (or creating achievable blogging goals) meant I wasn’t faffing around wondering what to do or what to write. When I finish one post, I look at my list and move onto the next. I move the calendar around when I write spontaneous posts, but having an overarching framework with which to reference has been the breakthrough for me. You can listen to the webinar Darren and I did with Darlene of Digital Photography School where we discuss how we approach editorial calendars on each site, and how to plan one for yourself. I use good old pen and paper plus CoSchedule for Veggie Mama, and I use a Google Doc and Google Calendar for content here on ProBlogger. Bonus tip: Outsource Sometimes it’s just necessary. Here’s 44 Things Chris Ducker Thinks Bloggers Should Delegate to Virtual Staff. And there you have it! Five (well, six) ways you can streamline your workflow to get more done. So what about you? Have you found some shortcuts that help you blog effectively? I’d love to hear them! Stacey is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama or be entertained on Facebook. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

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ProBlogger: 10 Quick Tips for Going Viral

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10 Quick Tips for Going Viral Posted: 12 Feb 2015 06:32 AM PST This is a guest post from Jerry Low. If you're on the web, your site and blog are likely unique – but one thing all blogs have in common is the drive for new subscribers and increased traffic. In the past few years, we've learned about the power of going viral – every blogger’s dream. But going viral is not always something that you can plan… or is it? Here are 10 ways to increase your chances of going viral and hitting blogger gold: Square one: Know that it can be done Going viral isn't like catching the fabled leprechaun – it does exist. At square one, you'll need two things to make it happen: (1) Great, unique content, and (2) Crazy awesome outreach and promotional skills. Here's the thing – 99 percent of us don't have that fat wad of cash sitting around that huge marketing campaigns require. Additionally, with respect to #2, 99 percent of us don't have access to insider information – which is why it's very hard for the "little guy" to go viral. Note: very hard does not mean impossible; it can be done if you are smart and hard working. Take, for example, Richard’s post on Link building tools – the post, published early on in Clambr's days, received 2,000 FB likes, 100+ Google+ +1s, and 300+ tweets… no chump change. Early on – with little expendable budget – done thanks to great content and great social media and outreach skills. Tip 1 – Getting the basics done right If your post isn't easily sharable, the odds of it going viral are slim at best. The most basic element of going viral is ensuring that your content has easy pass through via clearly visible social sharing icons. Use a Click-to-Share plugin (as Garrett Moon suggested earlier) if it helps. Beyond share-ability, you need to have your other basics aligned. Image credit: Mashable. For starters, make sure that you blog loads fast enough – slow loads lose visitors. Additionally, within your actual post, make sure that you have a clear call to action – if you're wanting to go viral, make sure that you ask your followers and readers to share your content – clearly and visibly. And finally, make sure that you have the SEO fundamentals down – your site and post need to be easy to find through search engines. Tip 2 – Be trend leading You can't go viral if you're saying the same thing as everyone else – you have a better chance of getting your content read when a topic is trending (and you're on the forefront of it or offering a unique perspective). It's common sense why trending content gets higher click-through rates on social media; that's the content people are interested in. But beyond the "Trending on Twitter" feed, you can also use Google trends to find search trends – from there, it's about creating relevant, quality content on that topic. Tip 3 – Write list posts List posts are notorious for increasing SEO ranking – but they're also notorious for attracting readers (why else do you think sites like BuzzFeed and Tumblr have exploded). This list format is appealing because of the unique topics, original insight, and easy readability. In fact, after analyzing 100 million articles, Noah Kagan from OkDork concluded that list posts receive more average shares than other types of blogposts. 'Nuff said. Tip 4 – LOL, Win, OMG, Cute, Trasy, Rail, and WTF No, I didn't just walk off a high school campus. BuzzFeed has identified several specific content categories that most of its successful content fits into – the seven categories include: LOL – humorous content Win – useful content OMG – shocking content Cute – cute content (think fuzzy baby animals) Trashy – ridiculous fails… typically of others Fail – something that everyone's frustrated with WTF – strange, bizarre content Beyond that advice, though, are the studies that suggest that positive content is more likely to go viral than negative content. For example, this study from U Penn that considers how emotions affect virality. Tip 5 – Write long post Bloggers often stick to the magic 500 words for posts – but did you know that, statistically speaking, longer posts with higher word counts are more contagious? Of course, correlation isn't causation. In my opinion, longer posts tend to get more social media shares simply because the more verbose posts have an opportunity to offer more value to the readers. The takeaway? Don't cut yourself off for fear of exceeding 500.   Tip 6 – Not all social media shares are created equal This one seems like common sense, but all too often, we count the number of shares, rather than the quality of them (talk to anyone measuring social media clip counts and you'll get an earful on the topic). From the same study in tip three, Noah Kagan found that the average shares are generally higher if you manage to get more influencers to share your content. In fact, having just one influential person share your content can result in 31.8% more social shares. Expound upon that by having five influencers share your content – this can nearly quadruple the total number of shares. Quality, not quantity. Make a point to connect with – and build relationships with – influencers in your industry. Tip 7 – Use visual content People's attention spans for web content are shockingly limited – and continuing to shrink. Again, we direct your attention to the success of sites like Pinterest or Tumblr that rely on minimal content with lots of images. A bold, relevant photo speaks volumes to your viewer – so consider using a photo or GIF instead of a big old block of text. Need more reasons to rely on imagery? Here are 19. Tip 8 – Don’t just focus on the big three Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are undeniable social media giants – but there are plenty of other worthwhile social media sites out there. Take SlideShare, for one – this site gets about 120 million views each month. Or Pinterest which, as of July 2013, had more than 70 million users. That's huge! Tip 9 – Create videos Video has been a huge asset in the marketing world since the TV era first bloomed. And, it has continued to grow. More than 100 million people watch videos online these days and, thanks to modern technology, it's crazy easy and cheap to create unique videos yourself. From instructional how-to's to product overviews, vlogs, etc., the opportunities are endless – and if you aren't taking advantage, you're simply missing out. Need some incentive? Check out these 100 video stats and facts. Tip 10 – Understand and segment your followers You must understand who are your targeted audience and how they are using each social media channel. Yes, as a blogger you are likely working from the comfort of your home or office or local Starbucks. You do not have to sit down face to face with your audience. But that does not mean you don’t need to know them. Quick tips – Think about your ideal reader – Who are they? Where do they live? What makes them smile? What makes them feel like they can’t resist clicking on that Facebook share button? Study your competitors – Spy on their blogs, follow their hashtags and see what events or online hangouts they are attending. Research your targeted audience via different media – Literature, interviews, movies, school programs, or even TV and radio shows. Is there anything you may turn into a great post or article? Segment your followers and if possible, treat them differently – For example, readers on ProBlogger.net might be interested with blogging topic but not into WordPress tutorials (they could be using Typepad, Blogger, Tumblr, or even Square Space). To get maximum engagement rate, think of a way to feed personalized content to your followers. Conclusion - While you can't force your content to go viral (by definition, viral means other people are sharing your content with growing momentum), you can give it a boost so that it's more likely to get picked up. Do these 10 things and you'll be well positioned to take the internet by storm. Have something I missed? Share it below in the comments. Jerry Low is a geek dad who enjoys building web assets. You can get more of his blogging tips here Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 10 Quick Tips for Going Viral

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