ProBlogger: Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately?

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Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately? Posted: 23 Dec 2016 05:00 AM PST It’s Christmas eve! And the final roundup of this year! Looking back, it’s amazing the amount of tips, tricks, advice and inspiration that’s been shared over the last 12 months in these posts. Every Saturday a handy list to peruse over your morning coffee. It’s been a blast collating all the cool stuff I read during the week, and I always feel I’ve learned something usef ul. Next week in lieu of the Reading Roundup, we will have an epic, super-in-depth blog audit for you to conduct on your work throughout 2016. You won’t want to miss it, it sets you right up for a fabulous new year if you know where you’ve come from and where that now makes you want to go. Keep an eye on your inboxes on December 31! January 7 has its own excellent topic of all the things you can do to ensure 2017 is your best year of blogging yet! Helpful hints, hacks, and helpers to start the year off right. You’ll want a notepad and pen for that one. But for now, it’s the last roundup. Check back January 14 for a brand-new bunch of fresh news from the web to help you stay across the latest. How to Write a High-Value Lesson Plan that Makes Your Course Easy to Sell | Copyblogger I’ve no doubt plenty of you have “launch an online course” on your to-do list for 2017 so this one should be extra-useful for you! How to Deal with Information Overload, the Multipod Way |  Puttylike This time of year is especially hectic – I dare say I’m not the only one looking forward to an online-consumption-free break, but these are excellent tips for those of us who enjoy learning about different things and having different interests. It can add up to one hell of an info avalanche! 15 Content Marketing Pieces That Won Our Hearts & Ranked Most-Shared in 2016 | Search Engine Journal From TechCrunch’s "Everything The Tech World Says About Marketing is Wrong", to Digiday's "85% of Facebook Video is Watched Without Sound", this is a roundup of what everyone read and shared in the content space this year – they are JAM-PACKED with info. A nation of geniuses: Social media made us all special — now what? | Salon I found this really interesting to read, because I do find I live in a social media bubble most of the time. The blogs and people I read and follow aren’t Perfection Crusaders, they’re honest and authentic – but that doesn’t mean there isn’t lies and fabrication. I just either don’t see it, or I don’t realise it when I do. For others, it’s all they see. Research: Why Americans Are So Impressed by Busyness | Harvard Business Review Busyness doesn’t always equate to success – in fact, it can burn the lot of us right out if we don’t balance it right with the other things that are important in our life. And of course, that balance looks different for everyone. But if you think just doing the work at all hours means you’re going straight to the top, maybe look at 2017 as being your year to go slow. Instagram surges past 600M users, fueled by algorithmic feed | TechCrunch It seems like all the updates that have ever happened to Instagram have happened in the last six months. No wonder they’re trying to keep up with the changes, 600 million people using your product is nothing to sneeze at! Have you noticed your audience growing too? 7-Step Checklist to Refresh Your LinkedIn Profile | Social Media Examiner Now’s the time to get yourself up-do-date on this super-fast growing platform, ready for all the 2017 opportunities to come your way! One (unsexy) word that will make 2017 your best year ever | Kelly Exeter I’ve made a point of doing this with time this year, and it has made all the difference. A round of applause is deserved for Kelly here –  I do hope you adopt this unsexy word for yourself! What Are Vision and Mission Statements and Why Having Them Is Essential | Smart Passive Income I couldn’t agree more here. They might sound too businessy and a bit weird, but honestly, when I put one in place for my blog, it suddenly gave me a much clearer framework from which to make decisions. It made saying “no” to those things that didn’t serve me a lot easier. And you know that only frees you up to say all the right “yes”es! Monthly review – productive meditation | Planning with Kids And may I leave you with Nicole’s experience of how productive meditation has been a huge benefit to her. Maybe a new hobby for you in the new year? Can’t hurt! The post Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately? appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: 6 Things You Can Do in January to Make Your Blog Better in 2017

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6 Things You Can Do in January to Make Your Blog Better in 2017 Posted: 21 Dec 2016 05:00 AM PST As 2016 winds down, many of us are looking towards 2017 wondering what we can do to take our blogs to the next level. Will next year be the year we finally: Turn our blog into a legitimate side-hustle? Score a guest post on a big site? Launch that online course? Whatever our individual goals might be, every blogger can benefit from doing the following six things in January: 1. Take a break Those first couple of weeks in January? Everyone’s either still on holiday, or slowly working their way back into the new year after the craziness of Christmas. If ever there was a good time to take a blog hiatus, this is it. Many people fret that if they take time off they will lose the momentum they’ve spent the whole year building. Experience has taught me nothing is further from the truth. A hiatus makes your readers miss you and this is always a good thing. Give yourself permission to have at least the first two weeks of January off. Don’t post anything on your blog. Reduce the time you’re spending on social media. Use that time to catch up on reading and go for long walks. Not only will you be mentally refreshed when it comes time to write on your blog again, you’ll also have a ton of ideas ready to work on. 2. Reflect on 2016 January's also a good time to do deep dive into your stats. Analyse what was common to your most popular posts. Make a note of the posts you most enjoyed writing. Identify the things you thought would go well, but didn’t. The difference between a good blog and a great blog lies at the intersection of what your readers enjoy reading, and you enjoy writing. It’s difficult to identify where that intersection lies if you never take time to reflect. 3. Run a survey If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the years, it’s that many of the assumptions I make are wrong. Which is why it’s good policy to always test your assumptions and there’s no better way to do this than via a survey. Identify the assumptions you have made about who your readers are and what kind of information they want from you … and then create a survey that tests those assumptions. The results you get might lead to a slight change in direction that makes all the difference for your blog in 2017. 4. Set goals like a ninja January is not the time for vague statements like ‘I want to be a better blogger in 2017’. January is the time for identifying exactly what you want to achieve and then ensuring the things you are striving for are SMART goals: S – specific, significant, stretching M – measurable, meaningful, motivational A – agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented T – time-based, time-bound, timely, tangible, trackable {Source} What your 2017 SMART goals might look like: Increase my email subscribers by 5% in the first quarter of the year Publish eight quality posts over the course of February and March Send out a subscriber email every week without fail Start a podcast Create an e-book 5. Map out the exact steps for achieving your goals Telling yourself ‘I will increase my email subscribers by 5% in the first quarter of the year’ is one thing. Doing it is another. (Sounds silly, but quite often I see people thinking the setting of the goal is all they need to do to achieve it.) What actually allows you to achieve your goal is mapping out, step-by-step, the things you are going to do to get there. The steps for increasing your email subscribers might look like this: Check your email sign up form actually works Ensure the call to action/opt in gift is something your readers really want Create a pop-up version of your subscribe form and set it to appear when a reader has made it all the way to the end of a post Monitor the conversion rate on the pop-up subscribe form after two weeks and see if there is anything I can do to increased that conversion rate If your goal is to write one blog post each week for the entire year, you will benefit from writing down exactly which day of the week you're going to: Write your first draft Edit the post Press publish As an example, this year I've aimed to publish a high-quality blog post every Thursday. To do that consistently I know I need to write a dodgy first draft on Monday, edit it on Wednesday, then give it a final polish and publish it on Thursday. Studies have shown that writing down your intentions about WHEN you are going to do the things involved in achieving your goal significantly increases the likelihood of you achieving that thing – and I have certainly found that to be true this year. 6. Choose a guiding word or mantra for the year Sometimes, when we’re toiling away deep in the bowels of our blogs, it’s easy to lose sight of why we do this thing. Particularly when things aren’t going as well as we’d like. At times like these, it’s handy to have a guiding word or phrase that acts as a reminder of the impact we’re trying to have on people’s lives. Phrases like: Be useful Change lives Interact – Inform – Inspire While we’re all blogging for some kind of personal gain (increased income or profile, an outlet, a way to connect with others), it’s important to remember that a blog can’t be successful without happy readers. The mantras above (or the mantra you choose for yourself), help remind us of this. Bring on 2017 In an interview I did with Mark Manson a few months he said: ‘With my writing, I aim to always be moving ahead, always experimenting and exploring. A repetitive blog is a dead blog.’ Take care of the above six things in January and you can be assured your blog won’t be in any danger of becoming repetitive or dead any time soon. Kelly Exeter is a writer, editor, and designer who's endlessly fascinated by the power of the stories we tell ourselves. She explores these on her blog and in her books Practical Perfection and Your Best Year Ever. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The post 6 Things You Can Do in January to Make Your Blog Better in 2017 appeared first on ProBlogger.

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