5 STEPS TO SIMPLE BLOGGING

SUCCESS

By Beth Hewitt

Simple Blogging Network

Contents:

- Foreword by Beth Hewitt

1. What the heck is a ‘Niche’ and how the devil can I

find one?

2. Branding your Blog for Better Belief

3. Creating killer content

4. Content Syndi-What?

5. Simple SEO for Bloggers

- Afterword: It’s so Blogging Simple

Hi I’m Beth Hewitt and I am the founder of the Simple Blogging Network and

I’ve been a blogger a for 7 years. In that time, I ‘ve seen businesses and

talented writers become tired, frustrated and disillusioned because they never

generated any new business or leads from the content they created.

Perhaps that’s you? Maybe you have a blog, but you’re not sure how to get

traffic or maybe you have figured out the traffic part, but still no-one is

interested in your business. Or maybe your blog is tired and dated, in need of

a facelift or not social media ready.

Maybe you have been agonising over the difference between a widget and a

plugin and the three little letters S.E.O. scare you silly. When you have the

keys to blogging the correct way you unlock the secrets to business fans and

1000s of followers and before you know it you will be the go to expert you

always dreamed of.

Blogging - along with other methods of engagement is a sure fire way of

getting your business up there. There may be people who will disagree with

this statement. But the fact of the matter is this. Blogging is ultimately what

binds everything together. Your blog should be seen as your home, the place

that showcases YOU, your business, your products and services and what you

have on offer to the world.

It should easily integrate with your other social media platforms. It should be

where you drive traffic too, where you capture leads, build relationships, build

a community, and interact with your followers and an integral part of how you

convert your raving fans in to paying customers.

Over the next few pages I want to share with you the 5 simple steps to achieve

blogging success, so you can concentrate on the things that matter most to

YOU and your BUSINESS - making SALES!

CHAPTER 1

WHAT THE HECK IS A NICHE AND WHERE

CAN I FIND ONE? What is this thing they call a ‘Niche’? The little word that actually can

encompass so much about a person, business or spot in the market? In the UK

it is pronounced Neesh (Rhymes with Quiche kind of!) In the US it’s

pronounced ‘Nitch’,

But however you say it, you are going to have to be able to nail your specific

‘Niche’ on the head as soon as you can, in order that you can capitalise and

make the most of what you have to offer.

But what is it?

“A place or position suitable or appropriate for a person. A distinct

segment of a (business) market. Usually a job or a position that is

liked.”…

There are a few important parts of the quote above and it is important to grasp

them as soon as you can. When you are deciding upon your niche it needs to

be suitable to YOU! Sounds obvious, but this is really the crux of finding TRUE

success. There are so many people online purporting to be EXPERTS and

GURUS in a particular niche. But I would question 90% of them.

WHY? Because they are suggesting they have a too wide a set of knowledge.

Take for example someone who says they are a SPECIALIST in social media

marketing. Do you believe anyone can be a COMPLETE SPECIALIST in every

aspect of social media marketing? Do they really know every aspect of

Facebook, YouTube, Blogging, Twitter, RSS, Social Bookmarking, Traffic

Generation etc?

Unless the said SPECIALIST has an entourage of staff working tirelessly for

them, to get the most up to date information in every single aspect of social

media marketing, then how can they EVER be a SPECIALIST in every facet of

Social Media Marketing

Now if your SPECIALIST friend is choosing one specific ‘Niche’ of Social Media

Marketing, I would be more inclined to believe them. Take for example a

Twitter specialist that has knowledge of managing accounts, targeting

geographic location, growing organic twitter followers etc.

Finding YOUR niche is SO important!

If you start your business with a really wide net, you will just get a whole range

of fish and you won’t really be targeting anyone specifically. You will get your

net in a tangle and you’ll forget what your favourite fish really is. You can

choose to ignore me if you like, but I am talking from experience.

When I started online I was told by the so-called GURUS to just get going, just

start your blog. Write about anything, generate leads and sell sell sell….

Yes, I had a highly trafficked site and yes I had a ton of leads, but all my leads

had different needs, some were interested in personal development, some

social media, some blogging, some twitter, and some time management. Total

mess!!

If you are just starting out online GREAT! But don’t make the mistake that I did

and get so far down the line without a specific niche that you have to start all

over. Or if you have had a business online for some time, but have STILL not

identified your niche, you need to STOP right now!

You will NEVER have a successful business online (or offline), until you

IDENTIFY your niche!...PERIOD!

(Now read that sentence again!)

When you identify your niche, you are going to be able to target a specific

piece of the market, you are going to be able to build and capture the

attention of a specific group of people who will become your biggest fans, and

YOU will become their go to expert for that specific niche. You will become a

SUCCESS in your niche!

Your niche, should be something you are passionate about, something that you

love, something that you want to get up to do every morning, something you

want to find out more about each and every day. Imagine waking up every

morning, feeling like its Christmas day because you are doing what you love.

Finding your niche doesn’t have to be hard and certainly don’t have to take

you years to figure it out properly. Even if you have been building a business

online for a number of years with periods of success, I would like to challenge

you and ask you how specific is your niche?...But don’t get too specific, being

too specific can be like cutting your arm of and leaving money on the table.

Many people find it helpful to get help from a mentor or coach, someone who

is neutral and can see things from an independent perspective.

If you head over to my resources page you can download my very own formula

for helping you find your niche. I have free worksheets to first find your niche

and then to drill down into your niche get more focused.

CHAPTER 2

BRANDING YOUR BLOG FOR BETTER BELIEF

Branding for bloggers is King (or queen) and it follows on very nicely from

finding your niche. In fact, without labouring everything I have just said again.

It becomes very difficult to build a successful brand when you don’t know

WHO or WHAT your target market is.

Branding for bloggers is SO important because there are just so many bloggers

out there. Not just a few, but millions upon millions of bloggers and the great

majority of them are all trying to make blogging profitable.

So many blogs have the same look and feel. Some have the same theme, the

same opt-in offer, the same layout and whilst it’s important to start

somewhere and that sometimes means using a generic template and

approach, how is this REALLY branding YOU? Even if you are the best writer in

the world and your content is quality.

How are you really standing out from your

competition?

For me ‘branding’ in its simplest form means this: “A promise (to your

target audience) that you will be the same where ever you are, on

and offline”

And this has as much to do about your design as it does about your personal

message, your vision and your offer. Let’s have a look about some of the key

parts that you have to get right when it comes to branding you and your blog.

Design

Design has the potential to make or break a blog. Some people have a creative

eye and others don’t and that’s ok. For me, design is about individual choice

so I don’t have too many restrictions on what you should and shouldn’t do, but

one thing I always recommend clients don’t do, is use florescent colours.

Whilst they might get you seen in the dark, they won’t do you many favours

online.

If you don’t have a creative bone in your body, get recommendations from

other bloggers, who did they use to create their blog design? Once you have a

design you love and that is right for you, make sure you use the design across

all your social sites as well as all your stationary and literature about your

business.

Buying a header design for your blog, can be the most cost effective approach

for your design brand, because once you have your design you can use it for

pretty much everything. Your Twitter and You-tube backgrounds, your

Facebook groups and pages. You can even really scale down your design and

use it on business cards, email signatures, bulletins and newsletters.

Be True to YOU!

For many bloggers, blogging in the beginning can be about that awakening

journey of actually finding out who we really are. Be sure when you start on

your blogging journey that you know which route you are travelling. One of

the worst things a blogger can do is constantly reinvent themselves.

Rebranding can be done (I did it), but it is also a lot of hard work and you

definitely don’t want to be doing it more than once and often!

What is your message?

What is your mission statement, what is your vision, what are you trying to

communicate? Ensure that your message is consistent and congruent across

all your social media platforms. Mismatched messages are confusing for your

target audience.

Your Gravatar

Just as important as design is your Gravatar, the little profile icon that can be

used across all your social media platforms. Keeping this consistent is a great

way for people to notice you all over the web, try to ensure a headshot with a

strong colour that colour that can be remembered. (But not fluorescent!)

Celebrate your uniqueness

What is your unique selling point? Do you have a British accent? Are you

funny, do you like hats? Embrace your quirkiness and be you, we are creating a

brand around you and your company so sell your best bits…and bobs!

CHAPTER 3

CREATING KILLER CONTENT When you start out on your blogging journey, you may not be thinking about

being the expert in your niche, but it is really important from the start to keep

your message consistent and deliver meaningful and targeted killer content for

your followers and raving fans.

If you don’t have attention grabbing quality content, then it is going to be

really difficult to get attention and drive traffic to your site. Content is the

lifeblood of a blog. Without regular content, your Blog becomes arid and dry

and your customers will start to forget you faster than you can say ‘blog-roll’.

It’s sad but it’s true!

But writing content can be hard, especially when you are new. Just the

thought of having to write 700 words brings back feelings of childhood

homework and essays. For some writing comes naturally, for other it does not.

The one thing I will say however; is that it gets easier, but you do have to get

started and do it regularly.

And of course it helps when you are passionate about your niche, when you

know what you are talking about. But what if you aren’t an expert yet, what if

you don’t know everything? Oh what to do! And when are you going to find

the time to write, let alone optimise it for SEO, add keywords and images and

where am I going to get those?

You don't need to be a guru.

Many new bloggers think they need to know their subject matter in great

detail before they can start to write content for their blog. I am here to say

that this is not so. It is important to remember that we all have something

unique to offer and what is important; especially if you want to grow and

nurture your blogging abilities. Share what you know, however little and put

you own spin on it.

The more you write the more you will become comfortable in your own writing

style. It is also important to remember that you don't need to write lots and

lots. If you want to hold your reader’s attention, it's a good idea to keep it

short anyway or think about using other mediums like video, pictures, info-

graphics and audio.

Whilst some bloggers may have a blog post in mind with a clear beginning,

middle and end, it is OK to experiment. Start with a topic and just write,

keeping it flowing until it comes to a logical end then create some attention

grabbing title.

Listen, Read, Watch

The thing about great content is that it usually comes from some knowledge

lodged somewhere in our minds, mixed with experience and a little bit of a

personal spin on the topic. The reason great content doesn't always flow, is

because you aren't keeping your mind and inspiration fresh. It is therefore

really important to keep your eyes, ears and mind open to new ideas.

You can do this by spending a small percentage of your time reading new

material, books, other blogs, listening to inspirational or personal development

type audio and podcasts or watching videos. There isn't a magic formula but

find the learning method that works best for you and start to absorb some new

information and you will be able to create more and more great content.

Blog Daily

This might seem like a really strange thing to say, but actually committing

yourself to a blogging schedule will actually get you in to the habits of being a

successful blogger. It will also help you develop your imagination and really

build you leverage in terms of creating more traffic to your site.

As a subscriber to the Simple Blogging Network and blog you can share your

content daily in the community and get more comments, likes and shares.

As well as reading other blog posts, videos on You Tube or a book or too, I also

like to use some really cool sites that have all kinds of information that you can

browse. I especially like Alltop, Mashable and Problogger. But depending on

your niche, do a search for some quality sites that are of interest and start

creating some new content from what you find,

When you know what your area of expertise is going to be, you can do some

research on other experts and authority sites in your niche. It’s easy to keep

track of new online content by adding the websites RSS feed to a RSS Reader

or via services such as Blogtrottr if you prefer to receive notification via email.

Find information relevant to your business and blog about it, do a video about

what you learnt and post it on your site.

CHAPTER 4

CONTENT SYNDI-WHAT? Getting your blog ready is only the start in your blogging journey. Your next

hurdle is to get eyeballs on your content.

But traffic generation is a whole other e-book. With SEO, backlinks, keyword

research, article marketing, forum marketing, social media marketing and

more – how are you going to figure out what you need to do to easily create a

presence and community on your site?

And it is important that you do quickly generate a community environment on

your site, not only to make sales, increase your brand and to show that you are

the expert, but to also ensure that you can build a solid reputation and start to

network with other bloggers or others in your niche.

But it’s hard to find people. It’s hard enough just managing to write a blog

post every week without the added pressure of finding others who may wish

to stop by your site as well.

Until now…

Let me introduce to you….

Content Syndication

Content Syndication is a method of…well… sharing content! It is basically a way

for the creator of the content or someone else to re-publish the content.

Historically this method would require that the original content was mentioned

and back-linked to the republished content.

However, as the social media world grew, it wasn’t long before Internet

Marketers and Bloggers could see the value in mutually sharing each other’s

content on a range of social platforms, and with this, the concept of Tribe

Syndication was born.

Tribe Syndication describes the method of groups of likeminded individuals

working together to share each other’s content. Sharing content as a

community ensures that you can maximise the amount of exposure for any

one piece of content you have produced. For example, if you are in a group of

5 people and each of those has 1000 friends on Facebook, 1000 twitter

followers not to mention all the other networks that people share content to -

you can easily propel your content in seconds to a wider network of people,

then you would ever be able to do on your own.

Tribes also mutually comment on each other’s blog posts. This in turn naturally

starts to grow a community environment and customer engagement on your

blog. However, for syndication to work effectively you MUST be open to

mutual reciprocation and you will need to GIVE as much as you EXPECT to be

given.

You owe it to yourself to NOT blog alone!

CHAPTER 5

SIMPLE SEO FOR BLOGGERS Search engine optimization, known as SEO, refers to the method of improving

visibility of a website in a search engine. SEO for many bloggers is felt difficult

to understand, considered more of a science and often shelved by busy

bloggers because of the feeling it is too time consuming to do.

But SEO is actually relatively easy to do once you know how (like anything

right) but with the constant changes with Google and its Algorithm’s, it is easy

to understand why some bloggers see it as a waste of time to keep on top of

what is working now.

There are a number steps that you can take to ensure that your blog is search

engine optimized from the word go such as the All in one SEO Pack Plugin for

WordPress which will automatically optimize your blog. You should also

change the permalink structure of your blogs URLs.

It is important to make sure you research your keywords before placing them

into your content. Try using websites like Google's Keyword External Tool or

Word Tracker to see what keywords are "hot" when it comes to your subject

matter. By strategically using and placing keywords like this, you can raise your

ranking in the search engine results.

Some people will tell you to do your keyword research first and then write

your blog post around the keywords. I find blogging in this way will make your

blog posts look stilted and forced and the post will not flow (unless you are

very good at it). I highly recommend that you write your blog post and then try

to naturally insert the keywords in to your blog posts.

To better optimize your site for search engines, you should place keywords in

the title tag for every post. Most search engines place more importance on

titles than other types of content. This means that using effective keywords is

your title is one of the best ways.

To maximize your search engine optimization, consider your off-site networks

as well. Is your website and/or business widely linked? Are you doing

everything you can to take advantage of the power of social networking?

Consider using tribe syndication to increase your social rank.

What I consider most important of all is that you consistently provide content

that is - high-quality with substance based around the keywords that people

are actually looking for. If you are not regularly providing content to your blog

or site, and if it does not contain the keywords you want your audience to find,

you simply won't get found in searches and this is why it is important to have a

site that is niche specific and has lots of relevant niche information that you

can also link-to within your blog.

Be sure to provide a site map on your website. This makes it easier for search

engines to determine what you have to offer, and it makes it easier for people

to find what they are looking for. This will bring benefits to your website as you

rise up in search engine rankings and produce more satisfied customers.

Keep your blogging organic and naturally grow your backlinks from the other

people you are forming relationships with in your blogging communities.

AFTERWORD

IT’S SO BLOGGING SIMPLE Thank-you for taking the time to read my 5 simple steps blogging success,

obviously there is more to learn on your blogging journey, like learning to

master building relationships, becoming consistent in your messages, engaging

with your customers and raving fans. But the 5 aspects I outline above are for

me the foundations of making blogging a success. Work out your niche, brand

yourself, create quality content, rub shoulders with other successful bloggers

and entrepreneurs and learn how to use SEO to increase your position online.

This E-book is just the start of what I aim to deliver to all those who take them

time to invest in their blogging journey. My vision is to make blogging simple

for businesses. I hope that people will find blogging fun, satisfying and

worthwhile. I aim to cut out the learning curve for bloggers new and old. I

want to deliver the tips and tricks, the tools, the systems, the knowledge and

expertise; to bloggers all over the world, so that they can be the success they

deserve in their niche.

To Your Simple Blogging Success,

Beth Hewitt