4 Game-Changing Lessons from Losing My Guest Blogging Virginity - DailyBlogTips

---

4 Game-Changing Lessons from Losing My Guest Blogging Virginity Posted: 16 Feb 2015 03:03 AM PST A couple of years ago I started my blog. I didn’t know much about blogging and traffic at first. I started reading popular blogs like Copyblogger, Dailyblogtips and Problogger. I was amazed at how other bloggers were getting avalanches of traffic and shooting up their subscriber counts by the motherload. And from everything I'd read, guest posting seemed to be the right way to go. Motivated by the challenge of guest posting, I submitted a few pitches and wrote a few posts, but guess what? Nothing happened. My pitches weren’t responded too and my posts were rejected. I felt depressed.I took action, but why didn’t I see results? I started to think guest posting was too hard. That it was for the "big guys" in the blogosphere, and resorted to binging on even more information and advice. Meanwhile, my blog continued to stay silent. But last November, things changed. I decided to do whatever it took to grow my blog and enrolled in Jon Morrow's guest blogging class. After finishing the program, I finally started to land guest posts. It felt amazing. Getting my words read, my posts commented on, and my blog viewed changed everything for me. My love for blogging grew, and a confident euphoria crept up from within as I realized… I could do this. Since then, I went from nothing to being featured on sites like Problogger, DailyBlogtips and Firepole Marketing. Now, I'm not going to sit here and boast about the sky high traffic and jaw dropping numbers of shares and subscribers I had, because the truth is, I didn’t experience any special results. But, I did lose my guest blogging virginity (and land my first client). And that's what this post is for. To help those of you who are still a little intimidated by guest blogging or just want to improve your results with it. Because If I can do it, so can you. Let's go. 1. Slash Your Stresses by Getting Help Whether it's from a coaching program, a course, or an eBook, getting help from someone who is more experienced than you can be pivotal to your success. By being proactive and getting help, you: Gain access to someone who has years of experience and success doing what you want to do Get support and motivation along your journey Have someone who you can share your pains and problems with because they’ve been there before Allow yourself to make decisive manoeuvres without doubt, because you can bounce ideas off someone and come to a decision quicker Now, despite their being tons of free information on guest posting, actually getting published can still feel a little daunting. I know that's how I felt anyway. So I saved up and enrolled myself in Jon Morrow's guest blogging program. It was a tremendous help. The program highlighted the steps that I needed to take and supercharged my guest posting education; but most importantly, it gave constant support and feedback, leaving me primed to cannonball my way into the blogging world. I honestly don't think I'd have started guest posting if it wasn’t for the program. The most powerful thing you can do right now, (if you haven't already) is get help. Find a coach or a course and get started. If you're not sure about which one to choose, I personally recommend Jon Morrows guest blogging program. You can also check out Danny Inny's Write Like Freddy and  Mary Jaksch's  A- List Blogging masterclass. 2. Slap Your Doubts Right In the Kisser "My writing sucks." "Those bloggers don't know me" "I’ve never wrote a guest post before" Those were some of the poisonous doubts and fears swirling in my head before guest posting. I never started landing posts until I stomped those doubts to dust. But what if some of them seem to be true? What if your writing does suck, or you aren’t connected in the blogging world? What then? Easy. Work on the thing that you're worried about. If you feel like your writing could improve, focus on getting a little better each day. If you feel like you could make more connections, start regularly commenting and emailing people. Consistency is key. Now this doesn’t mean spending a year commenting and making connections; or vanishing into a secret cave to practice for years until you become a great writer. It means taking small, concrete steps that bring you closer to squashing your doubts and fears every day. The above step will have two main benefits. You'll actually start to get better at thing you doubt yourself at. Because you’re making progress and you’re working on the thing that you've been worried about; it'll no longer worry you. You’ll know that you're getting better and your confidence will improve significantly. And once you’re confident in your abilities…you’ll find that you'll be sending pitches and posts with a smile on your face instead of a butterflies in your belly. 3. The More You Write The Easier It Gets "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." (Hemingway) That's exactly what writing my first "proper"guest post felt like it. After the excitement from getting my pitch accepted wore off, it dawned on me that there was a lot of writing to be done. I sat down for what felt like hours at a time and had to take regular breaks because my back was aching. My eyes felt dry from scanning the same screen for the hundredth time, and my brain begged for mercy. I don't know how long it took to write; I stopped counting at 30 hours. After that initial haul, I started writing regularly and I realized something. My typing speed was increasing. My sentences flowed better . My choice of words was stronger and I snapped on to errors and bad sentences quicker. I went from writing 1000 word posts in 6 hours, to writing them in 3 hours. This may seem slow to some, but for a beginner like me, it felt like I just stepped into the blogging equivalent of the hyperbolic time chamber. All because I decided to write regularly. If you want to quickly leapfrog your writing skills, set a writing goal everyday. 500-1000 words is a good starting point. It could be anything, a blog post, a random story, or a sales letter. Stick to what you like to write about and just write. You're guaranteed to see improvements within just a few weeks. 4. Research Your Way to Success One of my most fatal mistakes (that led to my rejections) early on was a lack of research. Thorough research can make the difference between an insanely viral post that leaves readers exploding with energy, and a weak post that draws no more attention than a pin drop in the Sahara desert. For your posts to be popular on another blog, you have to know the audience. What makes them tick? What are their biggest pains and problems? Why do they visit the blog that you want to guest post on? To get a better understanding of the audience you're writing for: Read the blog you want to post on to get a feel for the content Read their about page and find out who the blog is for Check out the shares and comments to see the most popular posts Look at the questions readers seem to be asking Bottom line is, the more you research… the more your chances of landing a well-received guest post increase. If you’ve been putting of guest posting, I hope this post helps you out. If you have any problems with guest posting please let me know in the comment section below so we can all help you out! Hassan Ud-deen is a freelance blogger and email copywriter (who likes to be called "The Wordslinger"). He helps businesses use content to grow. You can find out more about him on his blog www.f-bombmarketing.com or if you need help with your blog posts or copy, shoot him an email or connect with him oFacebook. Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

You are subscribed to email updates from Daily Blog Tips To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

ProBlogger: 5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

---

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

You are subscribed to email updates from @ProBlogger To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States