Best Blogging Tips: How to Write a Top Blog Post in 30 Minutes or Less

I know you'll agree, it's the characteristic of this generation: toxic schedules! Sometimes we can't even have a decent dinner with our significant other. Hell, sometimes we can't even wash our hair! True? I can see you nodding there.

Yes, at times even our most important relationships will have to take the back seat just so we can write a good piece. This is especially true when you're just about to start a blog. If you're a newbie, here's a beginner's guide to help you get started.

For bloggers who are experienced, you're even more likely to be on the roll and will have to skip lunch, more frequently (at least, this is my reality). To maintain my momentum, from the moment I start and through the whole morning session, I'll just munch on a slider and grab a heavy snack at around 16:00 just to finish self-imposed tasks. Then I'd tell myself — the things I have to do to run an online business! And let out a big sigh!

Here's the thing. When you run schedules like the ones above, you have to write fast; the blogging industry now demands it. Indeed, it's undeniable; it's an ability we have to possess to be more efficient, to be more productive.

As I ponder upon these thoughts, it hit me — I'm not the only blogger who can benefit from this skill. All of us can take home something from this piece.

How to Write a Good Blog Post in 30 Minutes

1. List points and concepts: When you have an idea, scribble it into a notebook, pronto. Don't delay doing this. You have to capture the moment right when the idea hits you; that way, you won't lose any of your good ideas. When you're ready, pick one topic and write. Convenient, right? Efficient, too.

2. Open your first paragraph based on points you've saved: This is the best way to introduce your topic. By doing this, your audience will be properly guided on what you will tackle in the particular post they are reading. Most bloggers who are considered authorities in the blogosphere all agree on this specific principle: the way you introduce your post has a heavy bearing on the overall impact of your blog post. So do it with utmost care.

3. Write using key points: Bullet points make your writing easy to organise. I'll let you in a little revelation. Carol Tice, one of the most respected bloggers today admitted that she prefers reading blog posts formatted with bullet points. And the reason why? She likes scanning through the post. It helps her to read in an easier manner. If seasoned bloggers like her fancy doing this, how much more ordinary readers who, like you, always have to skim through articles because they want to move on to other tasks.

4. Pre-edit before you start: You have loads of ideas. At least, that's fast becoming the standard scene in my work area. If that's the same in yours, be brutal. Edit out all ideas that don't fit the main topic. Remember, we're talking about how to craft a post in 30 minutes, not a comprehensive report.

5. Keep it short: If you want to complete an article in 30 minutes, keep it under 600 words. Don't skimp on quality, though, and aim to be informative even with a short post. If it's at all possible, pack everything in a small package. Need I say more?

6. Knock it out fast and return later: Here's my strategy, and you can emulate it if it fits your style. Just bleed pen to paper. In case you're stuck, don't force the words. Save your piece and focus on other tasks. When you're ready, go back to the blog post.

Be guided accordingly. Follow these steps and you'll be on your way to becoming a blitzkrieg blog post writer; ready to produce posts to spice up your blog or other people's blogs.

What is Internet Marketing ?

Welcome to the latest and most effective Internet Marketing Training Guide, designed to take you by the hand and walk you through the process of getting the most out of Internet Marketing on behalf of your business. I’m so excited to have you here, and I know this will be very helpful for you.

Chapter I: What is Internet Marketing all about?

Definition:

The Internet is a worldwide network that enables easy sharing of information among users scattered around the globe. The World Wide Web is a feature of the internet which provides services specifically for web sites.

Marketing is the methodology of communicating where businesses are associated with the buying and selling of products and services, and dealing with offerings that have some advantages for their clients, customers and society.

Internet marketing would then mean a cumulative amalgamation of both these modes of communication which facilitates info sharing with its users.

Internet Marketing is the process of ‘How to advertise products and services, and promote business or brand’ over the internet with a set of powerful tools and techniques.

This marketing strategy consists of having an extensive range of marketing aspects and mechanisms such as Email marketing, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization etc., instead of traditional marketing.

Technology is changing at a very rapid pace which makes it difficult for marketers to be on track with it. Therefore, they are seeking the help of the internet to evolve and adapt their marketing to the online sphere.

The growing dependence of businesses on the internet is not hidden from anyone. With the advent of globalization, people have access to numerous sources of information, which subsequently increases their purchasing power.

Powerful search houses like Google, Yahoo etc. have enabled people to search fast and easily to suit their requirements. You can make use of various types of promotion tactics like pay-per-click and banner ads to bring valuable visitors to your website.

• The Purpose of internet marketing:

The basic purpose of internet marketing is to enable businesses to grow- both in terms of monetary gains and value addition to their products and services.

With effective use of internet marketing strategies, you can follow a pin-point plan of action and move ahead as per your desired targets.

Most of the business organizations have these basic objectives –

• Money making:

Most of the businesses today have the basic objective of using internet marketing to gain monetary benefits. It’s good to be money oriented, but keep in mind not to lose track of your quality aspect in the long run.

• Value delivery:

Value delivery aims to give customers the best quality at the most affordable prices.

This has been going on for ages in the business industry. Prolonged efforts have been made, and they have yielded expected results for the users.

• Brand enhancement:

A cumulative effort of both the above points, it focuses on maximum customer satisfaction by providing them the best quality products at an affordable cost, also. Brand enhancement enables you to enhance customer base with reduced efforts.

• Overall business success:

A careful and planned implementation of internet marketing strategies proves to be of immense help for your business. All the facets of growth are easily catered to if these strategies are given their due importance.

• Educating the consumers:

Internet marketing helps a great deal in educating the consumers. By proper utilization of it, information sharing becomes convenient and gets transmitted across various channels.

• Facilitates advertising process:

A company’s advertising process gets boosted with internet marketing. By making people aware of the products and services through internet marketing, businesses are cutting its cost on advertising in a big way.

• Better communication:

Communication within an organization as well as with customers is facilitated with internet marketing. Through effective online promotions, large numbers of people get information in a short time.

• How to get started with Internet Marketing:

Internet Marketing is a great method that will help you make big bucks with the latest technology, online power tools and low cost. The below mentioned points will enable you to get started with internet marketing in a simple manner –

1. Set goals: Be attentive and have clearly defined goals. Find the answer of “Why.” This “Why” gives you a straightforward idea to decide clear objectives for your business and follow them in a smooth manner. It also enables you to move forward in a stream lined direction and avoid going off track for achieving your goals. (you’ll have clearly defined goals)
2. Manage expectations: Do extensive research on your targeted customers, and their likes and dislikes. You should find out what their exact requirements are and give an apt solution for that. (That’s called need recognition)
3. Set yourself up for success: You need to determine proper tools to manage your web presence. Distinctive views of every product and service will help you to get more traffic. You can try numerous ad copies to find the best ad copy for specific products and services to attract your potential customers.
4. Have something worth selling: Give some great offers to capture your visitor’s attention. You can also print out your product and service benefits and why they should opt for your product instead of others.
5. Get started: You are done with everything, such as setting up the goals, research, tools and products. Now, you can opt for sites or networks that you want to use or test to make your campaign successful. Be honest and realistic with your expectations because nothing is a magic bullet.

http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/im-made-easy-internet-marketing-01193769

Google Analytics for Bloggers

This past weekend I was invited to Houston, TX to speak about Google Analytics to the first ever Blog Elevated conference. For a first time conference, I was very impressed by how well it was planned by Lisa and Bobbie. They had a great venue, big name sponsors and an amazing group of speakers lined up. You should attend next year if you can.

I knew all along that the presentation would be focused on Google Analytics and in participating in the#txbloggers chat before the event, Lisa and I decided that the audience would most appreciate a beginners guide to Google Analytics (aka Google Analytics 101). The goal of the presentation would be to both inspire bloggers to get more involved with their analytics as well as demystify the complexity of getting started. Given the reaction from the crowd and sheer number of tweets from the presentation, I think it went very well.

Google Analytics for Bloggers: Presentation Notes

While the slides should do a decent job of speaking for themselves, I’m going to use the rest of this post to put some “color” behind what you may see in the presentation for those who did not have a chance to see the presentation in person. For those of you who want to see me in action, in the next few weeks I will be giving a few more GA talks in Minneapolis and Indianapolis and they may borrow liberally from the concepts presented here.

This presentation was broken down into 8 quick hitting tips that any blogger could use to get Google Analytics on their site and start to find insights into the data that they collect.

1) Creating a Google Analytics Account

We start by walking through the shockingly easy process of creating a Google Analytics Account.

In addition to setting up the account, we touch on the difference between Universal Analytics and Classic Analytics tags

2) Placing Google Analytics On Your Site

Next, we walk through how to add this code to your site. Several methods for adding code are defined, including:

• You Can Put the Code In Your Template
• Add Google Analytics in Your Theme Settings
• WordPress Blogs can use Yoast GA plugin

The end recommendation is:

Don’t Be a Hero, Use a Plugin!

3) Getting Clean Data on your website

The key to getting clean data in your website is to make sure that you filter out the visitors that you don’t want to see in your reports. The most common visitor you want to filter is actually yourself!

You can create a filter in Google Analytics to blog your IP address. It’s actually quite easy.

4) Setting Goals For Your Website

Start by answering the question “What is the purpose of my website” and then set up goal tracking in Google Analytics to help you measure if you are achieving that purpose. Setting up goals is easy and can be done in one of 4 ways:

• A key page view on your site (like your thank you page)
• Time spent on site
• Total Pageviews in a visit
• Events triggered (like a video view)

The most common events for bloggers will be a key page view, with the next most common being time on site and page views per visit.

Another piece of advice is to group your goals into Macro goals (things that make you money) and Micro goals (things that are important, but may not generate revenue).

5) Analyze Content Performance

Perhaps the place where bloggers can go to learn the most about their writing is the content report, which provides insights into which pieces of content are receiving the most views and how visitors engage with those posts. In this section we define what some of the metrics in this report mean and I give advice for how to understand what you are seeing.

• Average Time on Page: Indicates How Long Visitors are Engaging with Content. Generally, more time is better
• Bounce Rate: Shows the Percentage of Visitors That Leave Your Site Having Only Viewed This One Page. Lower is better (but can be misleading)
• Page Value: Indicates the Relative Value This Page Contributed to Your Goals. Goals Must be Configured to Work

While these metrics can guide you in the right direction, make sure that you put your numbers into context. A long time on page could mean people are reading every word OR it could mean your content is confusing. Use these metrics to help piece together a story, but make sure you apply the appropriate context while doing so.

6) Tracking SEO Results in Google Analytics

The keywords report in Google Analytics is almost entirely useless since over 70% of all keywords are currently shown as (not provided). Fortunately you can use the Google Webmaster Tools reports in Google Analytics to try to piece together a story. Just be careful when looking at this data, because it does not match what your organic search traffic report shows you.

We walk through the process of configuring Google Webmaster Tools for those who do not have it set up yet. Signing up for Google Webmaster Tools is very important for all bloggers to understand how their site is viewed by Google.

7) Track Social Media Activity on Your Site

The Social Media reports are a great feature in Google Analytics that many people are not aware exists. We talk about 3 uses for these reports that everyone can use. This includes discovering:

• How Traffic is Driven to Our Sites Via Social Media
• How Visitors Interact With Social Sharing Buttons
• How Google Harvests Activity from Social Data Hub

The social data hub is particularly interesting for bloggers, because it harvests information from all over the web.

8) Custom Dashboards for Bloggers

Last, we talk about how to pull all of this information by creating a custom dashboard. Rather than looking over every report each time you log into GA, how about looking at a consolidated view of activity for the previous 30 days?

We start with a blogger dashboard by Portent and then graduate to the recently announced Google Analytics Gallery.

Why spend your precious time creating a dashboard when you can download a dashboard from an expert analyst like Avinash Kaushik? The Google Analytics gallery allows you to install reports from all kinds of sources.

Live Tweets from the Presentation

Before I was set to give this presentation, I scheduled several tweets that would accompany my slides as I was talking. It was my first time doing this and it was a fairly big risk to schedule tweets in the event that my timing was off, but I went for it anyway. The result? Some great engagement with my twitter account and some awesome shares and retweets. I’m definitely going to think about scheduling tweets alongside my presentation again!  Here are some of those Tweets.

http://www.jeffalytics.com/google-analytics-for-bloggers-presentation/

Michael Hyatt's 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever Part 1

How to achieve your goal settings?

5 Social Media Tips For Small Business

Social media is a great way to get the word out about your business. But if it’s not delivering results, take a step back and see if you’re following these best practices.

1. Communicate your uniqueness

Too many businesses are trying to be too many things. Instead, focus on what makes you unique and incorporate that into your social media strategy. That means communicating how your value proposition to customers is different from competitors, of course, but more importantly it means having a personality! If you’re building your business around your personal brand, don’t be afraid to let your real self shine through. And if your whole company is using social media, establish editorial guidelines and an editorial voice that feels real and has a personality that everyone on the team can understand and bring to life.

2. Stop selling

Just because you can sell doesn’t mean you should — or at least, don’t use social media strictly to sell. For example, I recently met with a real estate agent who wanted to be known as the go-to expert agent for his community. He feels he knows the community better than any other agent. He lives there, has a family, and is involved in the community through things like local youth sports. But when I saw his Facebook page, it was littered with images of available listings — and nothing else. Not one thing on his page demonstrated that he knew the community. Instead he demonstrated that he was an expert at uploading listings in his area — and any service can do that.

I noticed he was getting no engagement, so I told him stop thinking like an agent and begin thinking like a resident. For example, when he told me about the local yogurt spot that’s popular in his community, I told him that was a perfect opportunity to create a community “insiders” post. I suggested he take a photo of himself having yogurt and post it to Facebook asking for engagement from locals: “I love Jimmy Yogurt shack, my fave flavor is banana cream, what’s yours?” Then every fourth post or so, he could include a marketing message with an available property and explain why it’s great for that community. In other words, he can become the go-to expert agent by being the person who evangelizes the neighborhood rather than real estate.

3. Tell a story with images

Images are your secret weapon in breaking through the clutter of social media. Images are an incredible way to say a lot, quickly and easily, in a way your followers can easily react to. Multiple images and collages are especially great for saying a lot without words. For example, a baker could show me one image that actually contains four separate images: ingredients, the mixing, the finished cupcake, and someone smiling and holding a half-eaten cupcake. You get the idea. Images can tell a story. They’re also easy to digest, like and share. Think about how huge Instagram is.

4. Show us with video

People don’t have to imagine as much with video, so it’s another great way to communicate your uniqueness and tell stories while making content that’s super shareable.

Recently a bike store owner approached me about expanding his business and mentioned he was creating a blog to help show why they are the best at what they do. A blog is a great way for a business to drive site traffic, but when I went to his blog it was static. There were a few articles like “how to fix a flat tire on your mountain bike,” but it didn’t have regular updates that help drive readership and search engine optimization. He didn’t have the kind of content that differentiated their bike shop.

So I told him to shoot video. For example, take video of the workers in the store and tell me about them. I want to know the story and what makes them experts. Show off a bike designed for super diehards — not just recreational cyclists — so we can experience the skills and expertise of his team. But I also told him to keep it casual and avoid a hard sell.

“Here’s Jim who works in repairs. Jim, what’s the most common repair you have to make?” But then you might notice his sandwich is half-eaten and you ask him what he had for lunch. In other words, shoot quick videos that help show his expertise but also make him human and tell me more about him. Creating a human connection is a great way for potential customers to remember you. Imagine a customer who walks into the shop and says, “Hey Jim, I saw that video, great tip and by the way did you ever finish that sandwich?” That’s instant credibility – especially if customers are wondering whether he cares more about fixing bikes than finishing his lunch!

5. Do A/B testing

If you aren’t getting results, try experimenting with your content in a systematic and scientific way. Study your content and what seems to resonate, then try different variations and see what gets engagement. Remember to only try to test one “variable” at a time; otherwise you won’t know what’s making the difference.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/att/2014/11/13/5-social-media-tips-for-small-business/

6 Ways to Tell If Your Social Marketing Is Working

Once you’ve established what you want to accomplish with your social media marketing efforts , it’s time to get a measuring system in place. This will let you know when you reach (or don’t reach) those objectives.

While you should expect some trial and error when putting your measurement strategy together, the ultimate payoff will be worth it. Over time you should see correlations between social media and growth in your businesses’ revenue, web traffic, and general visibility.

Be sure to build a simple dashboard to track and update your social media metrics every week or every month. This will help you monitor trends and set new goals, based on what’s working. If stuff isn’t moving in the right direction, monitoring the right metrics gives you a chance to mix it up and try new things.

There are six metrics found to be highly effective in determining social media success:

1. Referring Traffic from Social

Set up goals based on the actions you want your visitors to complete (retweet, share, click-through, etc.). This should boost traffic to your website.

2. Conversions from Social

Set up conversion goals and measure the source. Is the referral traffic coming from social converting? If the answer is no, switch up your content strategy so you are attracting folks that meet your prospective customer profile.

3. Share of Voice

This refers to the number of conversations that are happening about your company vs. your competitors/market. There’s a simple formula to calculate this metric:

Share of Voice = Your Mentions / (Total Mentions for Competitive Companies/Brands) 

4. Share of Conversation

This is similar to the Share of Voice metric, but instead takes a look at the more specific topical conversations around your business or brand vs. the market.

5. Sentiment

Although an imperfect science, paying attention to the human element is a very useful measure of success. Go through your mentions manually and tag them as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.” Add up the totals and measure over time to see if the number of “positives” go up and the “negatives” go down.

6. Pipeline Contribution

Once you define what social success means for your business (shares, Likes, Tweets, form completes), you can determine how social touches like these contribute to pipeline creation.

http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2014/07/social-marketing-measurement.html