HellBound Bloggers

“The” Basics Of Blogging And How To Get Them Right

Posted: 23 Jul 2012 03:46 AM PDT

Don’t Worry, making Weird Faces with “o” in mouth is definitely not a Blogging Basic. What are Blogging Basics according to you? What are the things that you should get right to be a successful blogger?

I am sure I will get a lot of difference responses. Some will say it is monetizing your blog, some will say it is making a big email list and so on.

The thing is that we have been conditioned to so many different things that we are forgetting the real basics of blogging, or “the” basics!

What Are The Basics Of Blogging

Blog These three:

1. Writing
2. Reading
3. Promoting

No matter what else others tell you, don’t believe!

Because if you get these three things right, everything else will work.

Monetizing? You can easily monetize if you have traffic which you will get by pomoting.

Want more readers? Good content and promotion are the keys.

Want new ideas? Reading is the best solution.

How To Get These Right

As I said before, if you get these three things right, you do not have much to do. But how to get these right?

1. Writing

Writing is not a hard thing to do. Just follow following and you will be fine:

Write, Write, Write: There is only one proven way to become an expert in any field, practice. You have to do the actual thing to learn. And with writing, the case is same. You have to write a lot to learn writing well. Start writing and write a lot!
Try Free Writing: Struggling for ideas? Try this: Turn off everything else and open a blank document. Go full screen and for next 5 minutes, do not do anything but write. Write everything that comes to your mind. Do not stop in between. After 5 minutes, you will be amazed to see how many ideas are there.
Set A Writing Schedule: If you train your brain to do one thing at a particular time, it will soon make it a habit. So try writing on a fixed schedule.
Do Whatever You Want: Every human is different and everything does not work for everyone. So don’t care about what others say. Do what makes you write. For example, I usually write with my headphones and instrumental music. Other think it is distracting but I write quite easily with it.

2. Reading

We all do a bit of reading everyday. And it is really helpful. Reading helps you by introducing you to some amazing ideas. By reading, you can learn a lot.

Read Other Blogs: Blogs have lot of innovative ideas and reading blogs in your niche can get you lot of good ideas.
Read Books: Books have one advantage over blogs: structure. Most of the blogs publish posts that are not in a specific order. With book, you go systematically, according to structure.
Research: It pays to know about latest happenings in your niche. When free, go and surf a bit and learn what’s new and famous in your niche.

3. Promotion

Promotion is one of the hardest things to do. Many bloggers read and write well but fail here. And this is one of the biggest reasons of failure.

Guest Post: Guest Posting is one of the best ways to get traffic. Though you may not get hundreds of visitors in a single day, guest posts will get you constant traffic and help in search engine optimisation as well.
Search Engines: Search Engines are one of largest sources of traffic. By optimising your blog posts for them, you can attract a good amount of traffic easily.
Comment: By leaving comments on other blogs, you can get visits by other interested bloggers. Though you need to make your content interesting.
Social Circle: I have seen that many bloggers do not share their blog in their own social circles. If you are doing it, stop and start telling others about your blog.

Conclusion

If you master reading, writing and promoting, you will soon be a Pro Blogger. Ignore other things, just try different things in these three and see the result.

This article is written by Ishan. He blogs about Blogging Tips and Tricks at Blogging With Success. If you have any question related to blogging, feel free to ask him. If you wish to write for HBB, kindly check this.

“The” Basics Of Blogging And How To Get Them Right is a post from HellBound Bloggers (HBB)

How To Compile A Killer Newsletter Easily

Posted: 22 Jul 2012 03:38 PM PDT

Newsletters help you connect with your readers and clients and develop a good relationship with them. It is best alternative source of returning traffic besides the Social Media. For online startups and businesses, newsletters could be a great marketing strategy.

Feedburner Newsletters

Feedburner is the most widely used RSS subscription platform in blogs. It doesn’t allow much customization to your newsletter content as it compiles the newsletter, leeching the content of the blog’s RSS feed. RSS subscribers are important, you can even monetize your RSS feeds to earn money.

1. If you are using post excerpts in the feed, make sure the excerpt is intriguing and attractive. For certain niches like News Blog, a suspense building excerpt is very effective.

2. By default, Feedburner newsletters have a boring text-only interface. You can customize your newsletter to brand your Blog feeds.

Feedburner Customization

Log on to Feedburner. In ‘Publicize’ tab, Choose ‘E-mail Subscriptions’ and then ‘Email Branding’ submenu.
Under the “Email Subject/Title” form, Fill it with your Blog Name seperated by the snippet ${latestItemTitle} with a hyphen or any other symbol.
In the “Logo URL” field, input the direct URL of your logo.
You can also change the Headline Font, Body and Link colors e.t.c by customizing the corresponding fields.

Custom Newsletters

With great content and design you can easily increase your blog subscription rate.

1. Content: Content is the primary factor you need to consider before compiling your killer Newsletter.

If you are marketing your online products, you should consider your subscriber demographics to find what they are interested in.
Use Catchy and interesting Headlines to increase reader’s engagement.
Don’t forget to Proofread to avoid Grammatical mistakes which might ruin your reputation and makes your readers regard you as a amateur.

2.Design: Design plays an invariable role in luring your subscribers into your blog and also brand your feeds.

Use a simple and elegant design and avoid embedding excessive images.
Using Too Many images can render your e-mail longer to load as well as many popular email providers disable images by default.
If you have no idea how to design using HTML, you can Google ‘Free HTML newsletter templates’ to find an ocean of template to download from.
A regular font is always preferred and avoid making the newsletter bulky, which is a major turn off because of increased load time.
You could include different sections and categories to help readers interested in specific category.
Always compose interesting headings in the newsletter. Let the headings alone explain what it is regarding in a nutshell.
Newsletter frequency is the factor most of us overlook. Business newsletter frequency shouldn’t exceed a few per week to avoid landing up in Spam Boxes of your clients.

This article is written by Gautham Nekkanti. He is a technology addict and a gadget freak. He blogs at SmashPixels, an informative technology blog which provides latest technology news, tutorials and tips. If you wish to write for HBB, kindly check this.

How To Compile A Killer Newsletter Easily is a post from HellBound Bloggers (HBB)

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luni, 23 iulie 2012